Chapter 461: The Direction Is North

Ruggah’s eye left me and went to the sky, where the clouds had been torn to pieces. The stars were showing through now, and the edges of the hole were still faintly red, as if the sky itself had been cut and had not finished bleeding.

I could almost feel his mind moving on to the next task, already back to business. I could see why he was the leader of this warband. There were not many who could focus after the sort of revelation I had just delivered.

"We should not be here when the sun rises," he said. "Everyone for thousands of miles saw the eruption from this place, and I have no doubt that a host of forces are converging on Serrath as we speak."

He frowned as he stroked his chin. "But this could be a good thing for us, if we are able to slip through the cracks. It would make our journey a bit easier, since eyes would be drawn to this place and away from the roads leading out of Serrath."

He gestured to the warband and they began to check their gear, and he turned towards me. "Where are we going next... Elric?"

I patted my side and drew the compass out of my pocket. I did not know how I had not lost it. I saw that the needle was pointing north, and I just pointed. "We are going in that direction."

Ruggah looked at my hand, then the compass, and he sighed. "After we leave this place, I will bring out the map so we can plot our route more clearly."

I nodded. "Great. Take the warband out of this place. I’ll catch up."

Ruggah’s eye narrowed. "Catch up from where?"

I looked down. Beneath the shattered earth was the chamber where this whole mess began, and a crystal that was at the centre of whatever messed-up business had gone on here. I should have left it all behind, but I could not. I needed answers for the atrocity that had happened here, and one way or another, I would get them.

"I left something in the basement," I said with a smile. "I won’t be long."

If this had been before, they would have protested, but with the bones of a dead god behind me, well, my words were very convincing.

Tam was about to follow the others when he turned towards me. "Sir Mage, how..."

I winced. "Call me Elric."

"Yes... Elric," he said, looking flustered.

"Mm."

"You said a Mage studies the rules until he understands them." He closed his hands, then opened them again. "Could anyone learn?"

I did not answer right away, and then I sighed. "That is a question for another day."

He did not look satisfied with this answer, not that I expected him to be. Nevertheless, he followed the rest of the warband as they began to head north, travelling along the length of the god’s bones. I thought I could vaguely hear the Shades talking about taking pieces of bone as souvenirs, and I smiled.

I waited until I could not hear their claws on the stone anymore. Then I closed my eyes and let Eldritch Perception go down into the ground.

∞

My sight sank into the ground as if it did not exist. Every point the skill had gained made it a little less like a stranger in my head and a little more like a hand I could reach with.

I sent it down through the glass, which was thin and brittle and full of little bubbles where the god’s blood had boiled, and down through the rubble underneath, which was a jumbled mess of stone and old mortar and the crushed ribs of the fortress. Then down further, through bedrock that had cracked in long lines where our fight had shaken it, until I felt the air open out beneath me into a great hollow dark.

It was surprising that the chamber was still there. Half of it had come down. The fight had broken the roof in three places, and great slopes of rubble had poured in and buried the rows of the dead nearest the walls. But the centre still stood, the floor of vitrified stone and the rows and rows of bodies laid out across it in their millions.

And in the middle of it all was the altar, and the figure still sitting on it. I felt a small, cold relief at that. I don’t know why I had half expected to find the altar empty. I found the crystal a moment later, and the relief went away.

It was nowhere near where I had lost it during the fight. Now it was lying at the foot of the altar, just below the figure’s empty hands.

As if it had rolled home.

∞

With my pen, I made my way into the earth. It would have been easier to use Stone Stance and carry myself down, but I was wary of using Celestial power in this time, not before I understood the structure of the world I found myself in much better.

It did not take long for me to reach my destination, and I landed inside the cavern. I looked over the rows of the dead, laid out like seeds in a field, and shivered at that image.

I looked closer as I walked between the rows, and I saw that the light in their chests was gone.

When I had come here before, every one of them had held the faintest spark of life. Now there was nothing. Wherever I looked, row after row after row, the sparks had gone out.

I did not know when it had happened. Had the god I killed been maintaining the lifeforce here, or had I disrupted whatever was happening when I took the crystal from that figure’s hands? Whatever the answer, what mattered was that after who knew how long, this chamber was nothing more than a grave.

I found I was glad of that. It felt like the only clean thing that had happened here.

∞

The altar was exactly as I remembered it, with the figure sitting on it, thirty feet tall even seated, with its blue skin and its hands still held out in front of it, open, cradling nothing. The blank white mask stared straight ahead over the rows of the dead. There was no light in its chest, and no breath. Looking at it now, it felt exactly as it had the first time, like a vessel waiting to be filled.

I did not look at it for long. I crouched at the foot of the altar and picked up the crystal.

The pressure came back. The lifeforce inside it was so dense that it pushed against my hand. Imagine pressing so much light into a container that it begins to feel solid... that was what it felt like to hold this orb.

There was nothing miraculous about it. I just felt nauseous when I imagined how many people had needed to die for this to exist.

The hunger suddenly stirred inside me, and I grimaced. There was no blood in this crystal. But there was life, a great deal of it, chaotic and churning, and some part of me that had been a god’s weapon until a few hours ago knew exactly what that was, and was curious.

"No," I told it.

It lay back down. I would have to think about that later. I tucked the crystal into the inside of my coat, and then I turned to go.

I do not know what made me look back.