Sacrifice Mage

Se-Vigilance did her best to humour her “little sister”. She wasn’t known for such things, of course. If anything, she had a reputation for the opposite—someone who was all business, all the time, where even leisure had a purpose to it beyond mere enjoyment or relaxation. Ever since Se-Vigilance had become a Councillor, she had never really been able to turn her mind off.

Nevertheless, if there was one person in Zairgon who deserved a side of her no one else ever got, then it was her fellow Councillor, Ghistara.

“—and the Sinthesar contingent are bringing in their own goods they want to auction off,” Ghistara was saying. Se-Vigilance was only half listening, truth be told. “And—”

The words faded into a comfortable buzz. It wasn’t like Ghistara needed Se-Vigilance to pay attention or provide feedback or anything of the sort. In fact, Ghistara was much better at organizing things such as these than Se-Vigilance could ever hope to be.

They all had their own expertise.

It was coming along nicely, though. Se-Vigilance could attest to that. She had already received a tour of the auction hall, which they were now strolling past. It had been set up in such a short time to host everyone who would be attending, yet it looked for all the world like a palace the king of Kastkor would have been jealous of.

“So,” Ghistara said rather sharply. “And this is a direct question, Vigi—what do you want at the auction?”

Se-Vigilance was taken aback by the query. Not that it should have been too surprising. Ghistara was always like that. Trying to dig deep into others, especially Se-Vigilance, like everyone was an onion she could never stop peeling to unearth more and more layers. “I’m sorry, what?”

Ghistara sighed. “Why are you so lost, Vigi? You seem very preoccupied.”

“Well, you know of all the things that occupy my mind, Ghistara. There is the Nether Vein, potential meetings I need to attend alongside Wargrog with all the dignitaries we will be hosting, making sure we keep an eye on any secret dealings and the like going on between our ever-opportunistic nobility and the foreigners…”

Alright. Ghistara had raised her brows. Even to Se-Vigilance, that was starting to sound like a lot.

“Is that really all?” Ghistara asked.

Se-Vigilance considered. “I am also thinking of… implications and possibilities…”

“That is tremendously vague, even for you, Vigi.”

“You must trust me to reveal more when it is time.”

Ghistara didn’t look happy about it, but she knew better than to argue the point. It wouldn’t help.

They didn’t get much farther on the little tour. Se-Austerity was hurrying towards them, looking more consternated than Se-Vigilance remembered seeing him.

“Sincerest apologies for interrupting your meeting, Honoured Councillors,” he began, then patiently waited for the answer despite clearly wanting to keep speaking.

“Go on,” Ghistara said. “I’d rather you speak before you explode, Se-Austerity.”

Se-Austerity’s wings twitched along with his mouth. His concern returned very quickly, though. This wasn’t portending anything good. “Councillor.” He faced Se-Vigilance. “The cultist wants to meet. He says it’s urgent, and that your prediction came true.”

Ah. Now Se-Vigilance understood what had her fellow Se-Targa so worked up.

“Apologies, Ghistara,” Se-Vigilance said. “But I must leave.”

Ghistara didn’t comment about it, though she was obviously disappointed Se-Vigilance was going. The way Se-Austerity appeared also professed that it was highly irregular to leave a fellow Councillor in favour of anyone else.

But this was Ross Moreland. This was the future. The future of many more things than she would like to admit, Zairgon itself being the least of them.

Se-Vigilance would be foolish not to guide the future in the best direction she could find.

I should have considered myself lucky that I was able to secure an appointment with a Councillor of Zairgon as soon as I did. The letter I sent not only got a reply the same day, but also got an invitation to Ring One for the same day as well.

All along the way to the peak of Zairgon, I tried to contain the strange new sensation burgeoning inside me. One of the things about the Weave was all the new ways it made me feel so much weirdness I hadn’t even thought was possible to experience. Such as how, in this instance, I felt constant tiny tugs on my impulse and intentions in every direction and at all times.

What in the world was that? How was I supposed to decipher a sensation of that nature?

I was slowly getting used to the feeling. Once I discovered there was an underlying tether of mana involved, kind of like with my artificial sprite, I was slowly starting to exercise control.

“Your letter failed to mention any details,” Se-Vigilance said when I met her in the plush office that a Ring One officer took me to. The officer was Se-Austerity, the Se-Targa who had visited me in Ring Four when I had lost my leg. I couldn’t recall seeing him in uniform back then, though. “Very shrewd of you. But it leaves me rather curious.”

She was trying for academic aloofness, though I could sense a certain intensity about her. The same urgency that I felt.

“I thought it best to talk about it in person, yeah,” I said, taking a seat on the nearly thronelike chair I had been offered.

Everything in the Councillor’s office was at least a little oversized. A clock with too many golden hands that I could use as a table, paintings depicting other Se-Targa bigger than any bed I had seen, and then there was her actual table that could easily support a whole bedroom.

“Go on, please,” Se-Vigilance said.

I nodded then told her about my new Fervour Augmentation. “My mana core evolved it somehow. I didn’t even know it could do something like that.”

“Reverence Everlife…” Se-Vigilance mused. “It’s certainly a very evocative name. You don’t get Augmentations like that till you’re nearing Jade at least, usually. Which suggests that the power provided by your new Augmentation is as you suspect.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“So this strange feeling of like, an anchor…” I swallowed. “You’re really saying it’s some kind of immortality?”

I couldn’t help the incredulity in my voice. It was crazy. Unfathomable. I was only Gold-ranked. Someone like the Councillor, a Jade-ranked person with decades more experience than me, didn’t have something as busted.

“We will need to determine its limits and capabilities as soon as we can,” Se-Vigilance said. “I assume you haven’t tested anything yet?”

“I have, actually.”

I told her how I’d stabbed myself in the arm and found no sudden regenerative powers, and had then tried to go the day without eating or Sacrificing food and drink. Nope. I was still afflicted with hunger and thirst. If this was immortality, then it had to be the shittiest kind, which kind of tracked, honestly.

“I don’t think it’s as simple as the ability to simply not die,” Se-Vigilance said. “There is a way we could test that, although, it will obviously be extremely perilous.”

Right. She was talking about outright trying to kill me just to see if there really were any magical shenanigans going on that would prevent my soul from departing my body. I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to take experimenting that far.

I wanted to say that we’d find out naturally when I inevitably faced opposition I couldn’t overcome, but that was stupid. Relying on the possibility I might not die wasn’t a good idea.

“The idea of godhood,” Se-Vigilance said. “Is intricately tied with the idea of lasting through the ages. Through time itself. You, Ross Moreland, are taking the first steps along that path. It may be that you are simply extending your natural lifespan. It may be something as dire as sacrificing the lives of your fellow cultists to prevent your own death. The problem is determining which it is.”

“Hold on a moment.” I raised both my hands. “If this thing negatively impacts any of my fellow cultists even the slightest, I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Which is why I keep saying that we will need to find out what it does do.”

The only way to do so was through experimenting. We could conjecture endlessly, but it wasn’t going to help. Not really. The only thing I took from it was what Se-Vigilance had said.

I really was on the path to godhood.

A long while back, Revayne had asked me whether I wanted to become a god. I didn’t have an answer for it because I didn’t have an idea of what it even meant to be a god. If I was supposed to be something, then I didn’t want it to be something already defined that I was forced to adhere to. I didn’t care about followers, had no wish to be worshipped, and I definitely didn’t want my powers to be tied to or limited by how many people believed in me.

I believed in me. That was more than enough.

“Let me know what you find,” Se-Vigilance said. “It is regrettable I wasn’t able to provide much assistance or insight. I will say, however, that we have certain… facilities here, if you will, that might be useful.”

“Facilities, huh? What kind, if you don’t mind me asking. And also, why do you have facilities like that on Ring One of all places?”

Se-Vigilance arched her eyebrows. “What did you assume would be on Ring One?”

“Well… administrative buildings? Maybe personal residences of some of the Councillors and top officers? Embassies from other cities? That sort of thing, I guess.”

“We do have that. In fact, the facilities I mentioned are a part of that. Ring One also houses the main workplaces for the Councillors, and I manage a few locations where I can… test certain things.”

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows a bit. “Well, I’ll be happy to take a look, if you don’t mind.”

“Actually…” Se-Vigilance stood up. “We should take a look right now. I believe there might just be something that we can use to test your new Augmentation.”

Se-Vigilance took me to a place on the other side of Ring One that reminded me of an airplane hangar. It was dark inside, so I didn’t see the full extent of it, but the airiness suggested we were in a wide, open space. Although, there were makeshift “walls” made from tremendously tall shelves bearing everything from books to boxes filled with artifices.

“Here,” she said, handing me a small glass cube. “Try to channel whatever you wish to test through this. You will need to focus on your Augmentation.”

I smiled, recalling memories that seemed more fun in hindsight. “I’ve seen these before, but I thought they were only for finding ranks and seeing potential?”

“Not these ones. They form a tiny, temporary copy of your soul that channels whatever you put inside, and you can then observe a demonstration of it. Aspect Affixes, Attribute Augmentations, even mana cores, it doesn’t matter. These are adamantine testing cubes, so we should be able to see what we need. They’re significantly more magical, as you’ll see.”

I took her word for it and started channelling mana. There was no problem if I touched the cube, according to Se-Vigilance. I did so, and mana travelled in while I focused on my Fervour’s latest Augmentation, Reverence Everlife.

The glass cube turned golden-white instantly. It shone so bright, I started regretting not asking Linak about his weird shades-goggles.

“Watch carefully, now,” Se-Vigilance said.

Easy for her to say. She must have had some kind of ability to look at bright things without trouble, or maybe Se-Targa eyes were naturally capable of doing so. Either way, I focused on my Highlight Affix and kept my eyes as open as I could.

The cube was acting oddly. Se-Vigilance was right. They were more magical than the other versions of them I’d seen before. The others couldn’t suddenly clone themselves, each cloned cube glowing with a much dimmer light that was also a different colour. Thin golden links formed between the original, overbright glass and the copies.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Hmm…”

Se-Vigilance summoned up a tiny feather on her finger, no bigger than my pinkie. Then she sent it flying at the cube. It spun so fast, I was sure that if I touched it, it’d slice right through my finger without trouble.

But that failed on the cube. When the razor feather made contact with the glass, the glow intensified, especially the links. At the very moment of impact, the original cube seemed to pull in the lights from the other, cloned cubes, which then sparked to form a strange, shimmering forcefield around the originator.

The feather struck it and bounced right off, though not before cracking the spherical field of translucent energy.

Se-Vigilance and I looked at each other.

“Did that cube just… replicate the power that Reverence Everlife is supposed to give me?” I asked.

“That is indeed one of the cube’s functions, yes.” She looked down at the little contraption. “Notice that the glows from the other cubes linger on the originator.”

I frowned. “Do you know what that’s supposed to mean?”

“Likely that the originator will retain a certain bit of the essence from which it pulls its power.”

“Essence…”

“I don’t think essence in this case equates to vital life.”

She was right. When I looked at the copies, they didn’t seem particularly diminished or damaged in any way. Their glows were still the same. It was just that a part of their originator was glowing the same hue as them, though the whitish gold was still pretty dominant.

“Thank you, Councillor,” I said. “I think this helps a lot. Gives me an idea to go off of.”

“You’re welcome, Demigod Moreland. I should be thanking you for keeping me in the loop. But regardless, it’s rather interesting it isn’t a blanket immortality so much as a shield of sorts. I am certainly rather curious what other benefits it might possess.”

I wasn’t sure if that was disappointing or not, but what I really wanted to test out was just how much that link affected others. Something I could figure out on my own. Helpful as the Councillor’s little cubes were, it wouldn’t make experimenting completely unnecessary.

“Can’t believe you’ve had something like this in your garage all this time, Councillor,” I said. “Would have come in handy so often before.”

“They are very rare and not exactly easy to find or create,” Se-Vigilance said. “I would not make a habit of relying on them.”

I gave her my best puppy dog eyes.

She didn’t seem particularly moved at first. Then she sighed. “Although, exceptions may be made for urgent cases. Such as our current one.”

“Thanks!”

My mind was honestly busy trying to think up what Reverence Everlife implied. There was a lot I needed to test about it. I was tentatively hopeful it didn’t have a horrific side-effect like draining the life of all my fellow cultists. Yet at the same time, I couldn’t truly rely on it if its inherent power came from others.

Se-Vigilance pulled me out of my thoughts. “I am hoping this won’t accelerate another Paragon coming to pay you a visit.”

Well, now that was a mood killer.

“I wish I knew too.”

“Safer to prepare for the worst, I believe.”

I looked at Se-Vigilance, then, and I took a deep breath. The last meeting with a Paragon had not gone well. “I… I’m not sure how exactly we’re supposed to prepare for a Paragon. The fact that we even escaped meeting the last one with our lives was a huge stroke of luck, I won’t lie.”

Se-Vigilance smiled. Despite the fact that she might have died at the hands of the Paragon in the Nether Vein, she didn’t look daunted one bit. “We will simply rely on the age old tenet—to fight a monster, one must make use of a monster. In other words, we’re going to need a Paragon of our own.”