Chapter 1091
New
Malcolm Tent
Monkey with a typewriter.
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The rest of the trials were in a similar vein. Puzzles, riddles, math, at one point a personality quiz that assigned us a color based on our food preferences, at which point we were forced to play a game of ten person chess against three constructs in order to pass the round. It was harder than it sounded.
Finally though, we came to the final room. We KNEW it was the final room because there was a big sign over the head of the person waiting there that said 'welcome to the final room'. Sometimes it was nice when people were direct.
The woman waiting for us was…strange. She had wide, unblinking eyes behind large round glasses, a light dusting of freckles, and wild curly hair that looked like hammered bronze more than any natural color. Her eyes were a mirrored brass color, and they shimmered with hopeful enthusiasm.
She was possibly a little TOO enthusiastic, actually, sitting at a table with a large cake and a pointed hat, multicolored decorations and paper plates surrounding her. "Congratulations!" she cheered. "You passed the test! Please, sit and have some cake!" I blinked at her in confusion, thanked her politely, and then moved to walk around her. "No, wait please!"
I paused. "Oh, sorry, was there another test?"
She slumped slightly. "No," she said desolately. "I just…don't get guests very often. There are quite a few of these testing paths, and mine isn't chosen even when we DO get trial participants. Plus when they DO come this way, they usually die. That Sphinx is an asshole. It's eaten the last eighteen people who attempted my trial path."
"Really?" I asked with a bit of surprise. "I mean, the riddles were kind of novel, but not 'kill eighteen people' novel. Nobody got them?"
She rolled her eyes. "They were easier this time. It's under review after what it did to the last party. Some of the riddles it used were weirdly ambiguous, and Elodie was suspicious it wasn't playing fair."
I frowned. That Sphinx had been pretty strong, but I was almost positive we could have taken it. I wondered if that had been part of the reason it had apparently gone easy on me. I was also pretty pissed hearing that. Those riddles had been pretty tough and I was proud of myself for figuring them out.
Looking at the sad girl in the party hat, I sighed and took a seat at the table. The others all sat down, and the girl cheered happily and started cutting slices of cake for us. "So, who exactly are you?" I asked. "Not to be too abrupt or anything."
"I'm Shayla," she said proudly. "And I'm four hundred and seventy third daughter of Deveskane!"
"Wow…" I said slowly. "That's…so many kids. You have almost five hundred siblings? And I thought my family was complicated. Not to be indelicate, but do you all have the same mother or…"
She giggled. "Not like that, silly. I'm a spirit of knowledge. My father manifested a new child every time he had a grand idea. There were eight hundred and sixty four of us total, so I'm an older sister. I am the spirit of destinium, created when my father discovered the recipe for his most prized alloy."
I blinked in fascination. "That's really cool. So were you part of his Domain? How old are you? How does your growth work?"
Something about the way she'd been born reminded me of my own Domain. I hadn't really heard of any entity manifesting creatures through the power of their Domain the same way I did, and even if he'd been a god and didn't exactly count in some ways, hearing more about someone who had taken a similar path could only be helpful.
She blushed. "I'm…not very old. It takes a long time for an idea to gestate into a living being. My brothers and sisters and I hatched from our memory crystals after our father had already passed away. I only know as much as I do because of Elodie. We were part of an experiment father performed in an attempt to use his sealing powers to store important memories to pass them on to his disciples. Sadly, the crystals were unable to transfer the memories directly, but Elodie says we were a happy accident and an even better result."
I was fascinated. The world of Ascendants was so wide and complex, so many of us had unique or unusual powers I'd never even considered before. Deveskane hadn't taken my path, but being able to create almost a thousand beings was impressive.
Azazel seemed just as interested. "I imagine so," he said eagerly. "I myself am a created entity." He jerked his head at me. "This is my king, though we don't profess any family connection, it was he who was responsible for my manifestation, as well the seventy one other demons in our court of Gehenna."
Shayla's eyes widened. "You're a progenitor?" she gasped. "At C-rank? That's fascinating. I've never heard of anyone creating life on a large scale that early before. Even many of the gods never reach progenitor status these days."
"There's a term for it?" I asked with interest. "My ancestor hadn't really heard of it before." I paused. Had he said that? I couldn't remember. Maybe he hadn't addressed it at all. He'd said Gehenna was unique, but that didn't mean he'd never seen anything SIMILAR, just that he'd never seen anything the SAME."
She nodded excitedly. "Elodie told us that father always dreamed of being a progenitor. Apparently it involves the secret of ascension to Overgod."
I froze, my heart almost stopping in my chest. "I'm sorry…to WHAT now?"
"Overgod," she chirped. "That's the rank after god, of course. There hasn't been an Overgod in this universe in quite some time, sadly, but father dreamed of being the first. Sadly he was destroyed before he could manage." I tried to pry a bit more into the details, but Shayla didn't seem to know any more than that. It was a shame but understandable given the subject matter.
There was a rank AFTER god? I mean, I had kind of assumed, given the desire the vanished gods had to Ascend the universe, but I hadn't heard of anyone MENTIONING it. How old was Deveskane? I knew gods didn't age, but I'd assumed he was maybe a peer of Suvaya or something. Knowing he'd been alive less than twenty thousand years ago, I'd assumed he'd been destroyed by the six like she had.
Except I'd forgotten something. This was the Void. The six had cleansed realspace of other gods in order to prevent the Ascension of the universe, but the old man made it clear that only had an effect when the god's world was connected to realspace. Hanging Lands, fragments, the hidden worlds of the vanished gods, it was clear there were a lot of ways to maintain a world in the Void without making that connection.
Deveskane could have been a god in hiding in the Void. Maybe from a time as far back as Atlas himself. The fact that Atlas's realm had ended up here showed that the Chaos Chasm was a place where various powerful fragments could end up. Hell, it was possible Deveskane had been hiding IN the Chasm. If anywhere was safe from the six and the Void Children it was here.
Which begged the question, what had killed him? Was it just a random Ascendant who had taken advantage of the suppression, or was there something really dangerous in here with us that we hadn't even thought to consider. Or maybe I was being paranoid again. I did have a tendency to do that, as earned as it might be to think that way. I decided to put it out of my mind for the moment and focus on the task at hand.
Still, even after refocusing my mind was racing, and I barely tasted the cake as I wolfed it down. I had so much new information to process. Shayla chattered away as we ate, talking to Azazel raptly, and I could tell my first minister was really enjoying the conversation, but sadly we didn't have time to chat about casual things, we had a job to do, and I had information to pass back to my family.
Before we left, Azazel passed the girl a small pad and paper. "This is a thaumaturgic tablet. The study of fate has a strong connection with linkage and connection. Basically, writing on one side of this tablet changes the destiny of the other side, which creates a corresponding text. I should function across any distance and even between realspace and the Void. After all, destiny is ever present. This way, we can keep in touch and you won't be quite so bored." He smiled at her in a way I recognized from my own face when talking to Callie, and I tried not to snicker as she lit up and snatched the paper away. Then she thanked him and gave him a hug, and we set off through the large door behind her, into the treasury of the Hermetic Hall.
Shayla, aside from waiting to have cake with us because she was absurdly lonely, had also been our guide of sorts. She'd told us exactly where to go and which item to take from the treasury. She had been EXTREMELY specific about what to do, informing is that if we tried to take something that wasn't ours, we would die horribly.
The treasury was so strict that even she couldn't enter. Only people who had successfully won the trials, and only to collect the single object that they had earned. Any deviation would mean destruction.
Upon entry, I was surprised how low key the treasury was. Based on the design and location I'd expected a huge hall with like…golden chests floating on clouds or something. But in reality, it was a small dark room with white stone pedestals on the floor. The stone was carved with faint reliefs of great battles and heroic rescues, but you had to get close to see them. The only reason they were visible at all was the bright pools of light shining down from above, casting shadows along the faint edges.
We followed Shayla's directions, turn left, down ten, turn right, up seven. We came to a stop in front of one of the pedestals, upon which lay an open wooden box with a velvet cushion inside. On top of the cushion lay a short wooden handle, nine black leather straps connected to the end, braided with the same black glass I'd seen on the Lady's throne.
I looked around to double check I was still ok, then stepped forward and reached into the light. I paused incrementally as I entered the illumination, worried something would happen, but it didn't. I withdrew the item slowly, gripping the handle tightly as I felt the energy pass out of it and into me. Along with the energy, I felt a surge of information. Tale of Nine Cats, a powerful beast taming relic. When used…
I groaned. Apparently strikes with the Tale would injure the wielder, transferring the understanding caused by that pain to the struck beast in order to form a bond. The more powerful the beast, the more lashes required. Of COURSE the Lady would invent a whip that tortured you to allow you to make friends.
Still, it WAS a powerful object. While you might theoretically need a whole bunch of strikes to tame something above your rank, you COULD still do it. If I was willing to endure the torture I could tame an S-rank dragon. It would require SO much pain, but it was possible.
Snickering, I tucked the whip into my belt, planning to drop it into Gehenna once we were outside, then turned to the others. "Alright, mission accomplished, now we're headed further into the interior. This is where the hard part begins."
Finally though, we came to the final room. We KNEW it was the final room because there was a big sign over the head of the person waiting there that said 'welcome to the final room'. Sometimes it was nice when people were direct.
The woman waiting for us was…strange. She had wide, unblinking eyes behind large round glasses, a light dusting of freckles, and wild curly hair that looked like hammered bronze more than any natural color. Her eyes were a mirrored brass color, and they shimmered with hopeful enthusiasm.
She was possibly a little TOO enthusiastic, actually, sitting at a table with a large cake and a pointed hat, multicolored decorations and paper plates surrounding her. "Congratulations!" she cheered. "You passed the test! Please, sit and have some cake!" I blinked at her in confusion, thanked her politely, and then moved to walk around her. "No, wait please!"
I paused. "Oh, sorry, was there another test?"
She slumped slightly. "No," she said desolately. "I just…don't get guests very often. There are quite a few of these testing paths, and mine isn't chosen even when we DO get trial participants. Plus when they DO come this way, they usually die. That Sphinx is an asshole. It's eaten the last eighteen people who attempted my trial path."
"Really?" I asked with a bit of surprise. "I mean, the riddles were kind of novel, but not 'kill eighteen people' novel. Nobody got them?"
She rolled her eyes. "They were easier this time. It's under review after what it did to the last party. Some of the riddles it used were weirdly ambiguous, and Elodie was suspicious it wasn't playing fair."
I frowned. That Sphinx had been pretty strong, but I was almost positive we could have taken it. I wondered if that had been part of the reason it had apparently gone easy on me. I was also pretty pissed hearing that. Those riddles had been pretty tough and I was proud of myself for figuring them out.
Looking at the sad girl in the party hat, I sighed and took a seat at the table. The others all sat down, and the girl cheered happily and started cutting slices of cake for us. "So, who exactly are you?" I asked. "Not to be too abrupt or anything."
"I'm Shayla," she said proudly. "And I'm four hundred and seventy third daughter of Deveskane!"
"Wow…" I said slowly. "That's…so many kids. You have almost five hundred siblings? And I thought my family was complicated. Not to be indelicate, but do you all have the same mother or…"
She giggled. "Not like that, silly. I'm a spirit of knowledge. My father manifested a new child every time he had a grand idea. There were eight hundred and sixty four of us total, so I'm an older sister. I am the spirit of destinium, created when my father discovered the recipe for his most prized alloy."
I blinked in fascination. "That's really cool. So were you part of his Domain? How old are you? How does your growth work?"
Something about the way she'd been born reminded me of my own Domain. I hadn't really heard of any entity manifesting creatures through the power of their Domain the same way I did, and even if he'd been a god and didn't exactly count in some ways, hearing more about someone who had taken a similar path could only be helpful.
She blushed. "I'm…not very old. It takes a long time for an idea to gestate into a living being. My brothers and sisters and I hatched from our memory crystals after our father had already passed away. I only know as much as I do because of Elodie. We were part of an experiment father performed in an attempt to use his sealing powers to store important memories to pass them on to his disciples. Sadly, the crystals were unable to transfer the memories directly, but Elodie says we were a happy accident and an even better result."
I was fascinated. The world of Ascendants was so wide and complex, so many of us had unique or unusual powers I'd never even considered before. Deveskane hadn't taken my path, but being able to create almost a thousand beings was impressive.
Azazel seemed just as interested. "I imagine so," he said eagerly. "I myself am a created entity." He jerked his head at me. "This is my king, though we don't profess any family connection, it was he who was responsible for my manifestation, as well the seventy one other demons in our court of Gehenna."
Shayla's eyes widened. "You're a progenitor?" she gasped. "At C-rank? That's fascinating. I've never heard of anyone creating life on a large scale that early before. Even many of the gods never reach progenitor status these days."
"There's a term for it?" I asked with interest. "My ancestor hadn't really heard of it before." I paused. Had he said that? I couldn't remember. Maybe he hadn't addressed it at all. He'd said Gehenna was unique, but that didn't mean he'd never seen anything SIMILAR, just that he'd never seen anything the SAME."
She nodded excitedly. "Elodie told us that father always dreamed of being a progenitor. Apparently it involves the secret of ascension to Overgod."
I froze, my heart almost stopping in my chest. "I'm sorry…to WHAT now?"
"Overgod," she chirped. "That's the rank after god, of course. There hasn't been an Overgod in this universe in quite some time, sadly, but father dreamed of being the first. Sadly he was destroyed before he could manage." I tried to pry a bit more into the details, but Shayla didn't seem to know any more than that. It was a shame but understandable given the subject matter.
There was a rank AFTER god? I mean, I had kind of assumed, given the desire the vanished gods had to Ascend the universe, but I hadn't heard of anyone MENTIONING it. How old was Deveskane? I knew gods didn't age, but I'd assumed he was maybe a peer of Suvaya or something. Knowing he'd been alive less than twenty thousand years ago, I'd assumed he'd been destroyed by the six like she had.
Except I'd forgotten something. This was the Void. The six had cleansed realspace of other gods in order to prevent the Ascension of the universe, but the old man made it clear that only had an effect when the god's world was connected to realspace. Hanging Lands, fragments, the hidden worlds of the vanished gods, it was clear there were a lot of ways to maintain a world in the Void without making that connection.
Deveskane could have been a god in hiding in the Void. Maybe from a time as far back as Atlas himself. The fact that Atlas's realm had ended up here showed that the Chaos Chasm was a place where various powerful fragments could end up. Hell, it was possible Deveskane had been hiding IN the Chasm. If anywhere was safe from the six and the Void Children it was here.
Which begged the question, what had killed him? Was it just a random Ascendant who had taken advantage of the suppression, or was there something really dangerous in here with us that we hadn't even thought to consider. Or maybe I was being paranoid again. I did have a tendency to do that, as earned as it might be to think that way. I decided to put it out of my mind for the moment and focus on the task at hand.
Still, even after refocusing my mind was racing, and I barely tasted the cake as I wolfed it down. I had so much new information to process. Shayla chattered away as we ate, talking to Azazel raptly, and I could tell my first minister was really enjoying the conversation, but sadly we didn't have time to chat about casual things, we had a job to do, and I had information to pass back to my family.
Before we left, Azazel passed the girl a small pad and paper. "This is a thaumaturgic tablet. The study of fate has a strong connection with linkage and connection. Basically, writing on one side of this tablet changes the destiny of the other side, which creates a corresponding text. I should function across any distance and even between realspace and the Void. After all, destiny is ever present. This way, we can keep in touch and you won't be quite so bored." He smiled at her in a way I recognized from my own face when talking to Callie, and I tried not to snicker as she lit up and snatched the paper away. Then she thanked him and gave him a hug, and we set off through the large door behind her, into the treasury of the Hermetic Hall.
Shayla, aside from waiting to have cake with us because she was absurdly lonely, had also been our guide of sorts. She'd told us exactly where to go and which item to take from the treasury. She had been EXTREMELY specific about what to do, informing is that if we tried to take something that wasn't ours, we would die horribly.
The treasury was so strict that even she couldn't enter. Only people who had successfully won the trials, and only to collect the single object that they had earned. Any deviation would mean destruction.
Upon entry, I was surprised how low key the treasury was. Based on the design and location I'd expected a huge hall with like…golden chests floating on clouds or something. But in reality, it was a small dark room with white stone pedestals on the floor. The stone was carved with faint reliefs of great battles and heroic rescues, but you had to get close to see them. The only reason they were visible at all was the bright pools of light shining down from above, casting shadows along the faint edges.
We followed Shayla's directions, turn left, down ten, turn right, up seven. We came to a stop in front of one of the pedestals, upon which lay an open wooden box with a velvet cushion inside. On top of the cushion lay a short wooden handle, nine black leather straps connected to the end, braided with the same black glass I'd seen on the Lady's throne.
I looked around to double check I was still ok, then stepped forward and reached into the light. I paused incrementally as I entered the illumination, worried something would happen, but it didn't. I withdrew the item slowly, gripping the handle tightly as I felt the energy pass out of it and into me. Along with the energy, I felt a surge of information. Tale of Nine Cats, a powerful beast taming relic. When used…
I groaned. Apparently strikes with the Tale would injure the wielder, transferring the understanding caused by that pain to the struck beast in order to form a bond. The more powerful the beast, the more lashes required. Of COURSE the Lady would invent a whip that tortured you to allow you to make friends.
Still, it WAS a powerful object. While you might theoretically need a whole bunch of strikes to tame something above your rank, you COULD still do it. If I was willing to endure the torture I could tame an S-rank dragon. It would require SO much pain, but it was possible.
Snickering, I tucked the whip into my belt, planning to drop it into Gehenna once we were outside, then turned to the others. "Alright, mission accomplished, now we're headed further into the interior. This is where the hard part begins."