Chapter 461
There have been centuries since the last Holy War. Those who didn’t live through one themselves can’t understand the difference, as we only understand now. None currently living, so far as we know, have lived through a Holy War until now. The invoking of a god’s name to pillage, loot, and rape was sufficient for a war to be called “holy” before now, but that is no longer the case. When the gods lay their hands on the scales, slaughter and devastation unable to be compared to what we’ve seen is wrought upon the world. May the ascended Gran Verat protect us from those beasts who would destroy everything in their path. May his apotheosis raise him beyond the heights of any other being.
—Declaration made by the High Veran to the Synod to be distributed to the populace of the Veratocracy prior to the Apotheosis.
With how much my stats had climbed over the years, it became increasingly difficult to inflict any harm on me at all. If I was prepared and protecting myself, then a bear’s claws or a Misti Hawar’s magic scraped off of the armored front I presented. Every day I better understood the reality that every inch of a Keel was a weapon. However, I had also long since learned that even the thicker armored scales on my forearms from elbow to fingertip couldn’t stand up to a tisarite blade. I carried the knife carefully as I made my way forward, walking with deliberate steps to ensure I didn’t manage to do something stupid like drop the blade on my foot.
There was effectively no chance I would do that, but even so, I felt my nerves spike just a little at the thought. When I finally stood before the altar, I bowed my head and repeated Nievtala’s Words of Power.
“Through the flaming crucible of war are we refined, through the quenching in the blood of our foes are we strengthened, through the tempering of the sacrifice of our lives are we completed. We are the blade bared at the throats of those who dare oppose us, the throne to which the wise submit, and the peak which casts the long shadow.”
Then, I raised my hand high above my head to the tip of the spear’s blade. Compared to my own height, the spear would be called a short spear, just about as long as I was tall, but compared to every other race I had seen except for the Indlovu, it would be called a long spear, given that it was nearly eleven feet long. With a quick breath to brace myself, I pushed my palm down onto the blade's tip. It cut through scale, sinew, and even bone without issue and I didn’t suppress the groan of pain it forced out of me.
There was no reason to pretend it wasn’t agonizing, this was a sacrifice to my goddess, and though she was good to me and mine, she was not a kindly, soft ruler. As I held my hand above my head and felt my blood course down my arm, and then my chest, I repeated the Words of Power to further dedicate my blood as a sacrifice to Nievtala. The sticky wetness coursed between my scales, but I simply watched the spear that had been made for the voice of Nievtala, my blood transforming the weapon.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Over the course of months, the metal within, victory’s alloy, had been teased from the stone that the Allmother had granted us. Until now, though Ytte had assured me that it was as refined as magic and technique could make it, the spear largely looked like a smooth, gray stone. In a dream, I’d seen that this was what I needed to do, so I watched as my blood seemed to purify and refine the tisarite. Everywhere my blood ran, stone compressed in on itself and became a dark red metal. It didn’t reflect any light, but I watched with my thermal vision and saw that the metal, despite the cool room, began to glow a faint red.