12-77. Altars
“What is it?” asked Elijah, kneeling next to Hu Shui. He had some ideas of his own, though he wanted an expert’s opinion before he reached any conclusions.
“Altars,” came a voice from a dozen feet away. Elijah didn’t need to look up to know that it belonged to Benedict, who’d remained characteristically silent for the past couple of days.
Upon arriving, Elijah had wanted to immediately move on – after all, he had every incentive to complete the Primal Realm as quickly as possible. Ironshore was under attack. They needed him. But it was obvious that they all needed to take at least a few hours to rest before moving on.
Benedict, especially.
Could Elijah have kept going? Certainly. He wasn’t near the end of his endurance. But the other two lacked his experience. Neither had been pushed so far for so long, and it showed. Even Hu Shui, who should have been bouncing off the walls in excitement over the setting, was subdued.
“Altars to what?” Elijah asked, finally glancing back at the man. Benedict had clearly seen better days. He was thinner than normal, and his clothes bore dozens of rips, burns, and tears. As he stared at the ground, the demonic knight stood guard.
“I don’t know. Gods, I guess,” he admitted. “But this whole thing is a moving ritual circle.”
“How does that work?”
“No clue.”
Hu Shui cut in, saying, “He’s right. This disc is like a thousand ritual circles built into one. It’s constantly moving. You feel it, don’t you?”
Elijah nodded. He’d felt it from the very beginning. The mechanisms he’d likened to clockwork were in constant motion, with dense torrents of ethera flowing through every single piece. He asked the obvious question. “To what end?”
“Power,” said Benedict. “It’s always about power.”
Frowning, Elijah tried to sense something actionable, but as had been the case every other time he’d attempted to glean something from the disc, he came up empty-handed. He announced, “I’m going to explore.”
Without further conversation, he shifted into the Shape of Sky and launched himself into the air. Despite the setting, the atmosphere was entirely breathable, so Elijah beat his wings, gaining altitude. Even after flying miles above the disc, he found that the air had yet to thin.
But that vantage gave him some much needed context.
First of all, the disc was moving, and within a few seconds, it disappeared out from under him. He quickly caught up, but he could only do so by pushing himself to the limits of Shape of the Sky’s flight speed.
Second, there were other discs.
Ten more, in fact. Nine were arranged in a synchronous orbit around their arrival point, with one far, far below. Elijah could barely see it, even when he used Eyes of the Eagle. What he saw suggested that it was the confluence of all that energy, and what’s more, it was obviously the origin of the corruption. Black tendrils crept around it in a lattice-work dome – enough to verify Elijah’s suspicion.
It also prevented him from seeing anything inside.
Overcome with curiosity, Elijah tucked his wings and dove. After a few miles, the dome had gotten no closer. A few more miles, and when Elijah looked back the way he’d come, he saw that he was still only a couple of miles from the arrival disc. It only took him a little while longer to reach the conclusion that he wasn’t going to reach the corrupted disc that way.
He turned, hovering in place as he looked back at the point of arrival. It was only then that he realized what was wrong. He was moving. So was the disc. But at a certain point, the gap between them had ceased to widen. It was almost like he’d been caught in an orbit from which he could not escape.
With that in mind, he turned back to the disc and returned the way he’d come. From his position, he could see what he’d already sensed with Soul of the Wild. The disc itself was comprised of multiple layers. From afar, they didn’t seem to be connected at all, but the closer he drew, the more obvious the ethereal bindings became.
Seeing the layered silver disc in motion had a hypnotic effect, and Elijah found himself staring at it for far longer than he’d planned. But when he finally broke away and returned to the surface, he knew that trying to figure out how it worked was far beyond his capabilities.
Elijah had never thought of himself as particularly stupid. His doctorate in biology was proof enough that his brain played host to at least a little intelligence. However, his straightforward nature tended to get in the way of complex problem solving. What’s more, in the company of two verifiable geniuses, he felt like nothing more than a brute.
That feeling was only exacerbated by his inability to understand the complexities of runic circles. Elijah wasn’t used to feeling inferior, but he definitely didn’t like it.
So, he was a bit surly when he landed next to their campsite. As a result, he didn’t waste time with pleasantries, instead launching straight into a recounting of what he’d seen. When he’d finished, Hu Shui said, “Interesting.”
“That’s it?” asked Elijah. “No other explanation?”
“Would you like to hear the long or short version?”
“Just tell me what’s going on,” Elijah commanded.
“This entire realm is suspended between space and time. Our rules do not apply here. Think of it as a domain, but one where the owner of said domain can command the very foundations of physics,” Hu Shui explained. “If you could feel it…”
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“I can’t.”
“I think he wants to know how we’re going to beat the Primal Realm,” Benedict remarked before Elijah could make his frustrations more apparent. “But he’s not going to like the answer.”
“Why don’t you tell me, then?”
Benedict finally looked up. “We need to do something at each of the other nine discs,” he said. “That should open the way to the final altar. I suspect that’s where we’ll find Etkatiran and the final battle of this Primal Realm.”
Elijah glanced at Hu Shui. “Is that an accurate assessment?”
The Astral Duelist nodded. “From my calculations, it’s the best explanation. Though I should point out that it’s still just an educated guess.”
After taking a deep breath, Elijah looked away. Their theory coincided with his expectations. From the moment he’d seen just how complex the layered disc beneath their feet was, he’d known that they would need to somehow learn to manipulate it. And when he saw the other discs? Well – it wasn’t Elijah’s first time in a Primal Realm, so it was easy to predict that they would need to confront whatever they found there.
Elijah had already told his companions what he’d learned about Etkatiran’s plans, so he asked, “Is it possible that he could create a World Tree facsimile with something like this?”
“Not a chance,” Benedict stated. “The amount of power needed for that…it would drain a hundred universes.”
“Scale it down,” Elijah responded. “Are the ingredients right?”
Benedict shrugged, but Hu Shui answered, “Yes.”
“How so?”
“I’m not saying it would work. If this Primal Realm is any indication, it clearly didn’t. But I’m not certain if that’s because the djinn tried to overshoot the World Tree by including the abyss or if something else stopped them,” Hu Shui explained. “Without getting too complex, if the other ancient gods are represented by the nine realms, then the World Tree is the god that binds them all together. It stands to reason that, if one wished to create a World Tree-like being…”
“They’d need elements of all the other realms.”
“We’re reaching for something we can’t possibly understand,” Benedict interrupted. “The complexity involved…”
“I know,” Elijah said. “My assumption is that the Primal Realm has dumbed it down so we can grasp the basic idea. For all we know, the original version of this spanned entire galaxies, with thousands of discs working in concert.”
“I think that is an underestimate,” Hu Shui said.
“My point is that we can’t get too caught up in scale. So long as we understand the basic idea, we should be able to find a workable solution,” Elijah suggested. “And we’ve already seen that Etkatiran is capable of rapid evolution. He probably intends to infuse someone – or himself – with whatever power he gathers from this array, then speed up time to give it a chance to settle.”
“This is the realm of transcendents. We have no chance of defeating someone who can do this,” Benedict said, gesturing all around. “The power coursing through this disc…”
“It’s overwhelming,” Elijah finished.
“Tyrannical is the word I would use,” Hu Shui provided.
“It doesn’t matter. These Primal Realms are meant to be conquered. That’s why they exist,” Elijah said. After all, Primal Realms, Rifts, and Towers were all there to channel excess ethera into something productive so that the powers of the abyss couldn’t use them to infiltrate and overwhelm the world. They were like regulators on the world, which meant that the system would not make them unbeatable.
That shut down any more complaints. In response, Benedict withdrew even further. Elijah knew that the man had issues, and plenty of them. He clearly wasn’t equipped to handle so much stress at once. But he was there, and there wasn’t much else to do other than push forward.
Though Elijah guessed that if Benedict had been alone, he would have simply shut down. Perhaps he could have summoned an army of demons to fight for him, but there was no way he could have been successful. By comparison, at least Hu Shui was proactive, even if he lacked the power to progress on his own.
It was just further evidence that no one was perfect. Not that Elijah needed to be reminded of that fact. Every time he looked in the mirror, the reflection staring back at him was testimony to the truth of that inescapable reality.
Perfection was as unattainable a goal as trying to recreate the World Tree, even for what was undoubtedly a transcendent with unimaginable power. That the system had used Etkatiran’s quest as a cautionary tale was evidence enough of that.
“The question isn’t whether or not we’ll conquer it,” Elijah said evenly as he looked back and forth between Hu Shui and Benedict. “I’ll do it, one way or another. Even if I have to bull my way through all the stuff I don’t understand. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again if necessary. No – the real question is if you two have it in you to help.”
He focused on Benedict for a few extra seconds, and even though the Warlock wasn’t looking at him, it was obvious that the speech was aimed at him. “There’s no shame in sitting it out. Both of you have already done more than anyone could expect,” Elijah went on, softening the blow. Though if he was honest with himself, he couldn’t respect anyone who took that route. Simply giving up was inexcusable.
But saying as much would help no one.
“I’m going,” Hu Shui said, unsurprisingly. The man had already been through so much, and he’d proved his mettle by overcoming his circumstances. He didn’t know how to surrender.
“This is not going to end well,” Benedict said quietly. He looked up and locked eyes with Elijah. “But I am not weak. I don’t give up, either.”
Elijah nodded. “Good. Now that that’s settled, we need to get to it.”
From there, they established a simple plan of action. Their only real hint as to how the Primal Realm was meant to go was that they would need to do something on each disc. Other than that, it was a mystery. So, the first order of business was to reach them.
Elijah had a plan for that, too.
So, without further ado, he shifted back into the Shape of the Sky and bade his companions to climb onto his back. Before he launched himself into the air, he said, “This is not going to be pleasant. Just try not to die.”
“Is dying a possibility?” Hu Shui asked.
Elijah didn’t respond, largely because the answer was yes. He didn’t think it was a real danger, but there was a non-zero chance that they would all be burned to a crisp.
In any case, it was the only way he could think to escape the pseudo-gravitational pull of the disc. So, once he reached the limit of normal flight – which was around three miles from the disc – he engaged Lightning Rush.
He instantly wished he hadn’t.
He and his companions transformed into a bolt of electricity streaking across the cosmos. However, the gravitational pull would not release them so easily. The result was that Elijah felt like he was being ripped in two. And judging by the silent screams echoing through his awareness, Elijah suspected that the others felt something similar.
It only lasted a moment, but those couple of seconds were filled with agony. Then, suddenly, the spell ended, and they found themselves barely outside the gravitational pull. With the arrival disc looming behind them, Elijah beat his wings and covered the ground to the next closest.
It was barely visible, but he could sense it now. It felt like a forest, though one so ancient and foreboding that his every instinct told him to flee. He ignored those feelings, forging ahead. With every passing second, the gap between him and the arrival disc widened until, at last, they passed into the nature disc’s locus of influence.
Elijah relaxed and beheld the disc.
As his feelings suggested, it was covered by vegetation, with a massive tree growing from its center. Its boughs stretched half a mile from the edge of the disc, and its height extended many times that.
But there weren’t just trees, bushes, and vines on that disc. There were animals as well. Elijah could see them, albeit only in short glimpses. However, one thing was certain – each and every one of them was a predator, which meant that they would be hunted the second they set foot on that disc.
Oddly, Elijah felt comfortable with that, though he knew his companions would not share that sentiment.