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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
[---]
123 AC, Oldtown
"We still have a job to finish and stop this god's realm from spilling over to this world. Thankfully," he continued while staring up at the knot filled with power, "the maze builders gave us exactly what we need to do that."
Daeron had a hard time believing what had happened despite witnessing it with his own eyes. He had seen a man, a sorcerer of all people, stand before the Seven and defeat them. He had seen their true face, their true nature, and the sight still made him shiver despite them being gone. And in the end, he won through trickery by somehow removing the gods' connection to the corpse, denying them a very powerful weapon.
As for Harry, he seemed to be mostly focusing on the dead god, looking as if he was listening for something that Daeron couldn't hear. It was strange, to say the least, but then again, everything about this day was strange to begin with.
Then, Harry started creating glowing circles that had strange symbols which shifted faster than Daeron could read. Alas, the sorcerer seemed to understand them well enough, seemingly moving them until there were over a dozen of them layered on top of another, hovering over the decapitated god's head.
Daeron walked forward and noticed that the living shadows from before were actively avoiding them, likely intimidated by Harry's display of power, and what a display it was. He didn't even think that something like this might have occurred in the Age of Heroes, let alone now, in a world where magic was gone from the world.
But it wasn't gone, was it?
What he had seen was proof of that.
Daeron couldn't help but wonder what else was there, in the world, that he didn't know of, or that he thought was lost as well. A part of him ached to find out, and then something occurred to him. Why wouldn't he try to find them himself?
There was nothing stopping him from doing it later.
Given the fact that he had just renounced the Seven, his dream of becoming a knight would likely remain just that, a dream. It felt wrong, for lack of a better term, and unfitting. But perhaps, travelling like Harry and trying to discover things that the world itself had forgotten seemed far more appealing.
He walked towards Harry, who had a look of concentration on his face before speaking up, "What are you doing?"
The man did not turn from his circles when he answered, "Oh, nothing much, just finishing up my calculations. In my younger years, I used to do this by feel, and it worked surprisingly well. I still do it sometimes when I'm in a hurry, but there's nothing stopping me now, and I'd rather not leave something like this to chance, even if the odds are nice enough."
Daeron opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He had so much to ask about that he didn't know where to begin. Seeing his awkwardness, Harry turned away from his circles, and instead, his gaze met Daeron's, "I bet you didn't expect that when you took a couple of strangers to the Hightower, huh?"
The young prince scoffed out a laugh, "That I did not. It was… enlightening."
"I'd say so. Dealing with gods is pretty tiresome. I can't believe I genuinely stumbled into that one. I swear that I just planned on seeing the Citadel. Fucking hell, to think that I almost brought the girls with me. I'd have never heard the end of it, I swear."
Daeron ignored the man's ramblings. He realised that Harry tended to speak of seemingly nonsensical things to distract people. It was obviously aimed at making sure that Daeron wouldn't think deeply about what had happened, but the young prince would not be deterred: "You are quite the warrior, to fight toe to toe with the gods."
The man released a loud sigh, "It's not exactly something that I am proud of. Then again, this could barely be called a fight, maybe a little spat."
"A spat?" The prince of the realm muttered with incredulity.
He didn't really know what to say to this comment. What he had witnessed defied everything that he had believed about the world. He had seen power in its truest form, even stronger than that of a dragon, and to call this a spat…
His incredulity must have shown on his face, as the sorcerer released a chuckle, "The Seven weren't exactly taking me seriously at first. I slowly escalated things until they finally got tired and decided to smite us, which is what I was aiming for in the first place. Even then, neither one of us wanted to destabilise the Black Stone and risk spilling an entire realm of darkness onto Oldtown, so you have to take that into account as well."
Daeron choked on his spit, finally realising how dangerous the situation had truly been. If things had gone just slightly differently, if Harry had failed, or if the gods had responded more violently, Oldtown could have been destroyed.
It made sense, in a way, that Harry would defeat the gods when they were obviously restraining themselves, but did that mean that Harry was also holding back? The mere thought terrified him more than it should have.
And so, Daeron changed the subject completely, "Why did the gods… look like that?"
The man took a deep breath, "Ah, a deceptively complicated question. The truth is that they don't look like whatever you have seen. You are to the gods what a painting is to you. To them, you are flat, and what you're seeing is what you're capable of understanding about them. There's a reason gods use avatars and try to take a mortal form to communicate with mortals. It's much less of a hassle."
"Are all gods like that?" he couldn't help but ask.
"Every god is a unique being, at least one in a different Pantheon. They are born differently, influenced by different beliefs over centuries, but most of the time, they're more than you can understand, and yet less than humanity in many ways."
"They… They forced me to attack you. I remember it, the rage that wasn't mine. It was only gone…"
"It was only gone when you lost faith in them," Harry continued, "That's part of their spell, a horrific spell to you and me, but to most, I think that they would welcome it, despite its connotations."
"They would?" Daeron asked with incredulity in his voice.
"You're a prince, Daeron. You have the opportunity to make your choices. Choice is a luxury to most people in this continent. Your smallfolk live and die without warning, often to choices outside their own, and I suppose, the idea of a god watching over you, guiding you, would seem appealing, given that the alternative is to simply suffer alone without having much of a choice anyway."
"But that's terrible!"
"It is. Faith can be a beautiful and terrible thing," the sorcerer solemnly said before turning back to his glowing circles, "Ah, the calculations are complete. I suppose it's time."
He then yelled out, "Are you ready, Daph?"
"I am!" the woman yelled, "Just get this over with, the tree can only handle so much power!"
Harry chuckled and walked back, grabbing Daeron with him, "You're about to see something very special, Daeron."
The sorcerer raised his hand, and his scythe appeared in his hands once more, only this time, the blades were seemingly made of fractals with some kind of grey shroud around them. A cloak appeared on Harry's shoulders that looked more like a pool of silver than a garment, and his green eyes thrummed with power.
Harry slowly moved his scythe to touch a fragment of the god's head, and a small glow seemed attached to its tip. Harry moved his scythe in circles, with each spin, seemingly undoing the god, as if he were taking a string, with a faint glow following his every movement.
If Daeron were to describe it faithfully, it would be that it resembled a dance, with every swing of the scythe leaving a string of light, creating a floating tapestry. The glow intensified as strands knotted up to one another, and he could see the giant head slowly, but surely, fade away into the nothingness.
Slowly, but surely, the weaving light morphed into strange, distinct symbols, floating in a sphere all around the still dancing Harry. The symbols shifted with each rotation, responding to his movements, like pieces falling into place. The corpse of the god had faded entirely now, leaving only the strands, which still pulsed faintly with power.
Then, the strands began to converge. They twisted together, spinning faster and faster, orbiting Harry in erratic, layered spirals, and Daeron could swear that he could see repeated geometric shapes fold into one another and fade in and out of reality.
Then suddenly, with a sharp crack, it stopped.
It was only then that Daeron noticed that there was something on the other side of the sphere.
He couldn't help but gape at the sight before him, just an endless expanse of darkness shifting around, with no horizon, no clear land or sky. The darkness moved, but in a way Daeron couldn't fully follow. It shifted in layers, slow and steady, like a heartbeat. He could see shapes in the distance, but they kept changing.
"Quite the view, huh?" Harry asked from behind him, making Daeron stiffen in surprise. When had he come behind him?
"I… It is, yes," he stammered before looking back at the dark world before him, "Was this the dead god's realm as you said earlier?"
"It is, or at least my interpretation of it. When it comes to higher entities, understanding is the key to almost everything. It's like describing an emotion in a song; it can only give you so much, but I suppose it would do for now."
Daeron was too exhausted to ask the man to explain himself, and just commented, his eyes still not leaving the dead realm before him, "This was not a nice god."
"Likely not. But it is interesting. You see, gods are their realm. The fact that it remained while the god perished is something that I never thought possible. I suppose one could compare it to brain death, only that this was definitely done on purpose as some kind of attack."
Daeron thought about asking another question, only for a voice to make them both jump, "Do you mind talking after we're done?"
The young prince turned and saw that the woman seemed somewhat strained, and Harry rubbed the back of his hands, "Sorry, Daph. Will do now. You'd better step back a bit, Daeron. This isn't going to be pretty."
Harry raised his hand, and layers of fractals appeared between the sphere and the glowing, knotted branches. They arranged themselves like they were lenses, all directed towards the sphere, and finally, the man yelled, "NOW!"
A burst of light erupted from the branches, shooting straight into the layers of fractals Harry had created, getting thinner and yet brighter the more it approached the sphere, and it went through it and passed to the other side.
As soon as it entered, the realm began to react, seemingly trembling in fear and panic. In the distance, he could almost hear screeching, much like the one by the shadows that he had faced in this cursed place.
Slowly, he noticed something starting to surround the light in the distance, something that wasn't quite the darkness that filled the realm. He couldn't quite make up what it was, but it must have been Harry's aim.
Then, Daeron noticed the tree inside the temple start to crumble away like ash, suspended only by what must have been magic. He could see the glow of power sometimes go through them, until finally, there was nothing that remained but ash that flew away despite the lack of wind.
The beam of light faded away, letting Daeron finally see what Harry and Daphne had done to this realm. It wasn't obvious, not without him looking, but it was as if there was a rip on the other side of the sphere. He didn't know how to put it into words, but the best he could describe it was shifts of grey and black moving randomly, with faint flashes of shape and colour that never stayed the same. He shuddered.
"What's on the other side?" he asked quietly.
"Chaos," Harry said, "The possibilities that exist outside of reality, what separates one realm from another, and a far more dangerous place than one could ever imagine. We made a rip in the realm so that it would leak out and slowly become part of the chaos once more, a silent end of a once mighty God. Still, this was better than just sealing the breach and risking some cult using it to empower a god of Darkness or something."
Daeron stared at the incomprehensible expanse before him and muttered, "A so, a god dies in silence."
"Gods often do," Daphne spoke up from behind them, and she turned towards Harry, "We could have used this energy, instead of letting it all drift away into the void."
"Yes," Harry agreed easily, "But sometimes, one needs to make a statement. There will be others."
The golden-haired woman hummed, not showing her approval or disapproval, "I suppose you're right. The sheer malice trapped within the tree, even thousands of years after the god's death, showed that using it would have been a very troublesome affair."
Harry nodded his agreement but did not say another word. Daeron couldn't help but wonder what they spoke of. Could they possibly have usurped the power of the dead god? It sounded like they could have, but decided not to. The young prince did not like the connotations that came with that thought, not at all.
Still, neither mage said anything as the sphere into the Dark Realm shrank slowly, until it faded away into nothingness, leaving a crater where the severed head used to be, making the temple all but empty, bar the seven pillars that the tree was connected to.
Daeron turned to Harry and asked, "What now? Are we to go back up to the Hightower as if nothing happened?"
"Oh, I still have something to do first. I did say that I wanted to make a statement, after all."
The young prince didn't have time to react when Harry turned towards the seven pillars of Black Stone and spoke to them loudly, "I know that you're still here, watching, Seven Who Are One. Don't worry, I just disrupted your connection to the Black Stone, only letting you release enough energy so that you'd witness what I did. I bet that you didn't see that one coming, did you? Feel free to manifest yourselves now. I let go of the ward now that the rift is officially closed."
There was no response, at least not one that Daeron could hear, "Oh, don't tell me that you don't want to come out now. You've been trying for a while, and now you suddenly get shy? That's not very nice, is it? We both know that while I did remove a pretty powerful asset of yours, you are still a god with a lot of followers. I'm sure that after a few years, you'll be able to make a comeback, hopefully, if your faith doesn't collapse into nothing, of course."
A gust of wind surprised Daeron slightly, and he could feel the lights in the room flare slightly, but it seemingly made Harry laugh even further, "You should be thankful, really. That's a far better fate than the last god I fought. You're really lucky that you didn't make this personal, because if you had…"
The sorcerer raised his hand, and a small spark of ever-shifting light illuminated the entire room, and Daeron could feel the gust of wind which had been building utterly stop, as if frozen by fear. "I invested quite a bit of my time to make sure that this realm doesn't tear itself apart. If you try to get to me or my wife through our work or the people we met there, then I want you to remember this moment. Remember what you have witnessed and then rethink your actions. And most of all, remember that you will not be able to hide from me, not now, not ever. This is your one and only warning. I hope, for your sake, that we will never meet again."
Daeron then suddenly felt like some invisible pressure lifted from his shoulders, one that he hadn't even noticed before. He turned towards Harry, who was still staring at the pillars. The young prince couldn't help but gape as the pillars started to slowly melt away into some kind of thick black mud.
He heard Harry mutter, "Fucking coward ran… I didn't even finish my speech…"
His wife gently pushed his shoulder, "Stop being dramatic, Harry. I think that you made your point well enough."
Daeron, who had all but been gaping since the conversation started, couldn't help but stammer in disbelief at Harry's actions, "You… You summoned them back. You banished the Gods and then summoned them back just to threaten them. What sort of madman are you?"
Harry snorted, and his wife gave him a sympathetic smile, "Gods understand power more than anything. They could easily believe that Harry tricked them, that they would have won the fight if things had gone differently. Believe me, things would have been a lot more destructive if they had some kind of physical champion, or any real anchor to the material realm. To their perception, all we did was stop a spell, nothing more, and that gives room for retaliation."
Harry continued his wife's argument, "But witnessing something monumental, proof that I could hurt them, that would stay their hands from retaliation. What we did will likely weaken them, and they will have to act like most other gods or find some other way to expand their faith without risking an entire Dark Realm spilling over, but that is a far better fate than destruction."
"Would you kill them, if they…" the young prince couldn't even finish his sentence.
And yet, the sorcerer's answer was resolute, "I would. Without question."
Silence reigned at his answer, as Daeron started to ponder what a world would look like without the guidance of the Gods. He didn't think them all-powerful or benevolent, not anymore. He had seen their light, their power, and their cruelty towards their worshippers. Despite knowing their existence, he felt all very distant from them.
As they walked back out of the maze, he noticed none of the shadows bothered them, and yet, they were still there; Daeron could almost see them ruffling around in the empty structures of Black Stone.
"What of the shadows?" he commented, if only to stop the oppressive silence after Harry's statement.
"What about them?" The sorcerer commented.
"Will you banish them?"
"Hmm… I rather like them here. They seemed restricted well enough by the maze, and their numbers shouldn't explode."
Daeron wasn't a skilled politician; he was just a child, after all. However, even he knew the subtle threat beneath the man's words. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary if his magic could release the shadows from the maze, and that meant that he had a near-invincible army of monsters, just beneath Oldtown, one that no one would ever be able to stop.
It was when he was thinking of a reply that Daeron noticed the stairs rising up to the Hightower and felt like sobbing in relief. As he walked up, he noticed Harry looking at some device on his wrist, "Oh, we got distracted for a while. Hopefully, we'll be able to make it to the Citadel before dinner."
"The… The Citadel? Are you still planning on going there?"
"Didn't I tell you that this was where we were going in the first place? Nevertheless, don't bother with the whole invitation thing. We don't exactly need one. Still, it's good that everything went well without too many complications."
Daeron blinked, trying to process what he had just heard. "You call this without complications?"
Harry gave a light shrug. "The Hightower is still standing, isn't it?"
The prince had no response. They walked up the final steps. The light of the upper Hightower was ahead. Everything looked normal again. No one would know what had happened below, of the corpse of the gods, or the ploy of the Seven. No one would know of the threat living beneath their feet, and yet Daeron would never forget.
As he reached the top, he couldn't help but wonder how no one had found the visibly open secret passage. He glanced at his companions only to find himself completely alone on the staircase, and the entrance behind him sealed away.
Then he sighed. He truly should have expected that.
He left the secret passage and closed it carefully, his eyes widening as he saw the night sky. Had they been in the maze for so long?
Daeron didn't have the time to wonder as he felt himself being grabbed by the shoulders, only to stiffen as he saw his uncle Gwayne's manic expressions, "Daeron, where in the Seven Hells have you been. Lord Ormund has half the guards in the city looking for you! You'd better have a good explanation, young man!"
As Gwayne dragged him through the halls of the Hightower, Daeron could only wonder what in the world he was going to tell Lord Ormund.
[---]
AN: And that's the Oldtown arc done. I wanted to explore a different sort of battle with the Seven, one that I think fell short of what I wanted, but it was supposed to be a fight between what was essentially a projection of their will, as compared to a full champion like the Drowned God had. All in all, Harry stopped the Seven from using any of their energy through the Black Stone, which would have inevitably continued the fight, just to make them witness the death of the realm as an intimidation tactic. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
[---]
If you want to support me, check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.