B4 Chapter 48 - Ythar’s Cocoon

Golden lipstick made the woman’s confusion all the more amusing. She didn’t seem to believe Vivi, but also couldn’t come up with a response.

“I would think,” she finally said, “that if Ythar expected an arrival, he would contact the ones who have watched over his sanctuary for a century.”

“He is contacting you right now,” Vivi said. “Through me.”

“Ythar would not have chosen his apostle to be a cursed teenager!”

Vivi summoned the helmet back on and pushed more ether to her armor, as well as to her voice to give it an echo. “You are free to try and stop me. Your weapons won’t harm me.”

With that, Vivi lifted her foot and walked forward. The woman leaned back by intuition, then summoned her spirit blade, swinging from overhead, the blade slamming to shoulder with the force of an expert hunter.

Golden wisps of ether puffed into the air, like a pretty smoke bomb cast in a theatre show. From the tiny tap Vivi felt on the receiving end, the swing might as well have been for show. She continued onward without flinching.

“I told you, you cannot stop me.”

Out of sheer surprise, the gold-lipped woman stepped out of her way.

A pristine stairway of marble and gold reflected sunlight in the foyer. Statues of heroic hunters were built into the walls. The largest statue at the top of the stairway depicted Ythar himself. The locium chandelier behind him was larger than some houses.

Where to? Vivi thought. As grand as the foyer was, she wasn’t here to admire. Where is the cocoon?

“Uh, to the left and up!” Lucius said. “I think.”

Vivi hoped he wasn’t guessing as she took another stairway to the left. The Songwinds’ guardsmen at the door watched in concern, about to pull their weapons, until they spotted a group of hunters still following her a short distance behind. Vivi was let through.

This was working. She just needed to head straight to Ythar’s cocoon. Is the cocoon locked? And keep telling me directions.

“Uh, straight ahead!” Lucius said. “Of course it’s locked! All five keys must be present at once for it to open.”

Can Dawnpour break the lock?

“Probably,” Lucius said. “It’s not levelstone.”

They continued onward, past the most insane hallways of pure wealth. There was no need for surgeways to make the golden handrail of the indoor balcony shine. She could have looked in any direction and been met with art, from patterned carpets to engravings in the marble walls.

Ythar’s early servants had been the ones to construct everything, and that process continued during his slumber. Gods were still just spirits—insanely powerful ones, but probably not powerful enough to conjure entire palaces into existence. The amount of halls and stairways was dizzying, and it didn’t help to have a full line of doubtful hunters following her. Any second, they could have changed their minds and pounced on her, which she fully expected them to do.

She continued following Lucius’s nervous directions, only to find the same woman blocking her path yet again, having somehow rushed around, back ahead of her. Weak as she was, it looked like she knew the palace. “Vivian,” she said. “You claim we cannot stop you.”

“You cannot,” Vivi said. “And I will allow you to try.”

The woman’s stare was determined. “In that case, we will test out your claim. I cannot let you meet Ythar on such a simple claim. We pour our ether at you, to stop you with everything we have. If we cannot—if your armor still holds—we will gather the five keys.”

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“This armor cannot be stopped,” Vivi said and continued onward.

A dozen spirit blades sizzled to life like a surgebreak of beautiful gold, and the Songwinds pounced on her.

They swung, they fired ethereal arrows, hitting her with everything they had. Nothing their spirits could do left any damage on Vivi’s three-runed armor. If one of them stood in her way, she shoved them aside and continued forward.

Thankfully, Ivanna hadn’t followed into the palace with her inside-carved sword, and thankfully the Songwinds were stupid enough to exclusively use spirit blades. Their pride of being Ythar’s defenders must have locked them into using their pretty golden weapons, even at the cost of strength. Not that Jonah’s two-runed blades would have pierced Vivi’s armor—not cleanly, at least—but she certainly would have had to struggle through, leaving scratches on her armor.

She forced her way up a narrow stairway. At the top, a mage burned a discharge of ether, filling the hallway with pressure. Vivi lifted her foot, and one step at a time, walked straight through the burning wisps, to the woman’s staff, where she grabbed it from the tip and tossed it aside.

The commotion of useless attacks finally stopped, and at the top of the stairs, Vivi was faced with a door. Or rather, a vault.

The thick, circular door appeared much like a teleportation ring. The grey material looked deceptively similar to stone, though it conducted ether much better than stone ever could. The outside was lined with veins and runes, most of which were foreign to her. This was clearly the work of Ythar himself and not any runesmith Vivi knew of. Dawnpour would have struggled to break it, though Vivi could have probably avoided the door and broken in through the wall next to it.

Within the stone were four slots to insert something oval-shaped. Probably some sort of ether containers holding a specific number of wisps. That was how ether containers were often used as keys, though they weren’t terribly hard to lockpick. For a God’s cocoon, the safety measures must have been much more complex.

Four members of the Songwinds appeared, each holding one of the four keys. Vivi had heard that the process of gathering all four keys into one place was said to be such a political hassle that any attempts to wake Ythar up had failed due to disagreements from just a few influential Songwinds. That didn’t seem to be the case today.

They must have already been debating waking him up, Vivi thought. The keys were already held ready, just waiting for someone to gather the courage to talk to their god. Ythar may have just been the only person capable of saving them from storm season.

The first ether container was inserted into its key slot, and the veins around it lit up, just like a teleportation ring. The lower half of the vault glowed as the second key was inserted, followed by the two upper containers. Hesitation remained in the door wardens’ eyes. Stone grinded on stone as the vault door slid down in one piece by some mechanism.

A gust of ether breezed out from the mist-filled room like a breath during a chilly winter night. Vivi saw very little of what was inside, and calling void ether to scan the area would have been inappropriate.

“I will speak to him alone,” Vivi announced.

The Songwinds cleared the way, bowing their heads. With calm steps, Vivi entered the room.

The chilly mist of ether touched her face through her visor, and the door behind her began closing. Inwardly, Vivi felt anything but calm, her heart filled with nervous anticipation. Even now, a part of her believed that the Songwinds were leading her to some sort of trap. A fake cocoon to lead fake deities to.

She placed weight slowly to her steps as she could while she scanned the odd room for ethereal presences. The ceiling seemed high, and the circular walls were much more spacious than she would have anticipated. There wasn’t any furniture. No artwork, nothing to make this appear like a place where someone could live.

In the very middle was a platform, and on top of that was the silhouette of an altar. The misty wisps originated from there, like steam rising from a simmering pot. Something was there. Not an overwhelming aura of pure power like Vivi would have expected, but an odd presence nonetheless, like a lone flower thriving in a field of mud.

She approached slowly with her guard up and her visor down, not yet convinced of her safety. She would have liked to take a swing with Dawnpour to push mist aside, but she didn’t want to risk angering whatever presence was inside.

Five paces away from the altar, Vivi knelt down. “God Emperor Ythar. I am Vivian Runeblessed. I request an audience.”

Nothing happened. She remained there, waiting, but there was no response, no change in the ambient ether around her.

She stood back up. Biting her lip, she approached the altar. Two paces away, she finally saw what the altar contained. A man lay atop it on his back, head resting on a pillow, wrapped neatly in a blanket.

His skin was perfectly smooth, but he wasn’t breathing, and he didn’t seem to have a pulse. Prior to meeting Drean, Vivi would have deemed him a freshly dead corpse, but Ythar was clearly a spirit. The mist itself rose from his body, incredibly thin wisps of ether.

His features weren’t nearly as majestic as the statues all over the empire depicted, but the similarities were there. This was clearly the same man.

Ythar, the God Emperor of humankind.