Chapter 1224 – The Fate of Another Kingdom 10 – The Heart of it All [Horned Rat POV]


    ‘Oh, the delightful taste of new knowledge,’ the schemer god thought. His hand brushed over the outside of the black sphere. Distantly, the sounds of battle reached the holes in his skull that served as ears. He ignored them. Nathalia had always been useful, as a friend and as a rook. She would hold Jevaine off while he deciphered this enchantment.


    Among the twisting, wailing faces within, ravens flew and rats scurried. The fragments of the god’s being were connected with his palms on the smooth surface of the sphere through umbilical cords. Constantly, the necromantic energy inside sought to dissolve what the Horned Rat sent to scout. Such fragments of his being were readily sacrificed in order to elevate the wisdom of the whole.


    What had been easily intuited was swiftly confirmed. ‘The sphere breaks souls down into essences based on the type. That’s how Arkeidos was able to precure so many of these elemental metals. Dissolved souls of a thousand years of generations. How does it work, how does it work?’ The Horned Rat reached deeper inside with cold curiosity. The depth of this sphere and its layered process would take a while to decipher. ‘Too long to stay here.’


    The Horned Rat drew his hands back. The umbilical cords stayed connected for a moment, then snapped with a pang of pain. Unbothered, the god turned away. If the fragments survived they would have valuable intel. If not, that would hardly matter. He had the Faith of a nation to draw from and humanity’s superstitions of the unknown. Everything was easily replenished.


    There was only one resource here the Horned Rat cared to preserve. Hurry may have been appropriate to see the boy secure. However, to see him grow, danger was required. A few more scars would help forge him into an heir worthy of the new generation of the Abyss.


    All the pieces were gradually aligning.


    Looking outwards into the cave, the Horned Rat began to march up the strand of metal he stood on. It connected to a distant pillar. As he walked, he bent over to one side. The right arm elongated, the fingers growing long and thin. They clacked over the rune-covered surface of the path. With his mind, he interpreted the string of symbols and the magic flowing through them.


    “Do you want help?”


    The words were accompanied by a creeping sensation. Most magical creatures, even gods, shuddered from it, but the Horned Rat had dealt with pariahs since he first learned about them. For him, the crawling sensation on his neck was just another friendly spider skittering over his mutable skin.


    A black, wet dot appeared in the middle of his left palm. The crow eye blinked, looking at the blonde on his back. Nia had one arm wrapped around his neck and played with one of his horns with the other. Her chin rested on the space between, her skin almost as pale as the exposed bone. The piercing blue eyes gazed with clear benevolence.


    ‘I do owe the boy some gratitude for helping her be human,’ the horned god considered, his steps carrying on leisurely. “Should you not enforce your help to get to your lover quickly?” he asked out loud, deliberate mockery in the question.


    Nia did not register it as such, she knew him too well. It made her dangerous, especially combined with her still-rising might. Removal was not an option, however, for few reasons and no good ones. A plain retort came after an explosion in the distance faded away. “We always arrive when we need to. I trust you.”


    “Don’t let that be your grave,” the schemer god warned her and stopped when his fingers trailed over a peculiar rune. He knew that shape. It was a standard connection rune, linking what was written on this strand of metal to another elsewhere. “I need your eyes.”


    “Okay.” Nia nodded and slid off his back. Black, non-existent matter oozed from her hairline and formed a pointy visor from its various strands. It flowed further, down her back and over her exposed shoulders. A network of thin, silver lines met it there, the two intersecting. Where the black met the silver, the silver was elevated intensely. Where the silver veins travelled through her skin, the silver was near invisible. The pattern created was reminiscent of paper that had been used to make graphite copies of the texture of a wall or other solid surface.


    Nia knelt down by the rune and then traced something with her fingers even he could not properly see. First towards a neighbouring bridge, then towards another, the pointing finger wandered along her gaze.


    The snake slammed into the assailants, growing even larger as it continued to rampage. Unbothered, the Horned Rat followed an invisible trail in the air. Arcane sparks showered down, when he got closer to the nexus of the magic. Runes that mirrored those on the ground appeared in the air. The central of the three bowls was turned into a sphere through a manifesting, translucent wall of arcane energy. Under the ceiling was a thick cluster of runes. In its middle, a ring with seven lines crossing through it.


    “Marvellous,” the Horned Rat gleefully whispered. “The shape of Gaia’s Eyes, the simple sigil of ultimate magic. Quite the feat, quite the feat.” Standing atop the pile of bones and other varieties of fuel, the schemer god rammed his hand into the centre of the enchantment’s nexus. What crossed through turned ephemeral, a blue, translucent outline of his claws and upper finger joints. “What type of enchantment is this, Nia?”


    “Ellermore circle, it connects various Eve type enchantments in a central node.”


    “Very good,” the Horned Rat hummed, pleased. A few steps removed, one of the skeleton guards was swiped away by the black snake’s tail. “What a complicated, complicated construction. Fail-safes upon fail-safes. Knocking over the pillars would do us no good. The fuel order has been reversed. The forge eats the metal it would normally contribute too... but every process can be dismantled from its operational core.”


    The Horned Rat turned his hand ten degrees. A sudden, metallic sound rang through the entire cave, like a massive lock turning at once. It was closely followed by the strands of metal above disconnecting from their pillars at one end and then, like silk wrapped to a new post, latching onto somewhere else.


    ‘Interesting,’ he thought, sending his arcane influence to deeper infiltrate the network. He probed what had changed, what else he could change. Simultaneously, he looked over his shoulder to tell Nia that she should go be helpful somewhere else. His skull creaked, the bare jaw stretching into a wide grin. The pariah was already gone.


    The bones under his feet boiled, one of many defensive wards. Dismissively, the Horned Rat pointed his right hand downwards. Several blades of pure, black mana shot out of his palm, killing whatever had stirred instantly. The blades had been perfectly measured to not touch any of the runes. Before they were done here, he would have the chance to study them. To dissolve human souls in mass into elemental and necromantic essence powerful enough to forge these metals, that was a power no one should know about. Which was exactly why he needed that knowledge. To identify, to learn, and to extinguish.


    More guards streamed into the open space. Two clusters of spider eyes grew on the Horned Rat’s back, allowing him to see the mortals run in reluctantly. They shouted words of religious fervour and barked panicked orders. Their power would be no issue, but their numbers were bothersome.


    The flesh and bone of his right arm started to slouch, as if prolonged decay had turned it into jelly. Weight caused the sloppy matter to tear off the healthy, firm muscles beyond the shoulder. Bone without any support simply dropped out of the socket. The arm dropped to the ground. Another one of the legion of dispersed wills, all connected to humanity’s superstitions related to coming catastrophes, inhabited the limb. Now separated from the controlling deity, it exerted its dominance over the flesh given.


    The arm completely lost its shape, dissolving the bone and fur, until only a grey mass remained. It boiled as it expanded. Squelched and wetly crept as it moved its oily shape. “Aid Septa in pushing these humanoids off,” the Horned Rat reminded the dim-witted goo. “Don’t kill too many of them. I have an interest in this civilization.”


    There was something akin to a nod at the centre of the slime, before it started its slow, expanding crawl. Upon coming across the first shattered skeleton, it pulled the being into its own mass, until only the torso stuck out. A new un-life came to the arms of the soldier, as a puppet to the grey goo.


    While his spawns defended him, the god of future calamity turned his hand back thirty degrees. A deeper sound echoed through the caves. Before it settled, he moved clockwise 4 degrees. Then back 1. ‘There it is,’ the Horned Rat thought and sent a surge of his own power through the nexus.


    Deep arcane purple flashed outwards. A pulse moving at rapid speed expanded from the centre of the pit to the pillars, then bounced up through the cave, following seven different paths up to the central orb. The Horned Rat stayed connected to the network to confirm the damage he had done. Leisurely, he disconnected from the enchantment and saw the arcane light dim away.


    “Protect this point,” he ordered the snake and the goo.


    Then he tore open another portal.