Chapter 454 - Trials and Tributions IV

  Cire continued to blink even after the darkness took hold. Slowly tilting her head, she stared curiously at the all-too-familiar scene. Before her y the usual—a set of peculiar doors pced against a darkened backdrop. If she had to call one difference to mind, it once again would have been the presence of an extra entryway.

  Situated behind the other doors, the recessed, stone construct came hand-in-hand with an irrationally granur timer. It went far beyond seconds, milliseconds, or even nanoseconds. There were so many trailing digits that she couldn't be bothered to count them. The only ones that mattered, the ones in the very front, confirmed the length of her sentence as being just shy of 213 hours.

  Nothing compulsed her towards the time-limited door. There were no shadowy hands to drag her in, no words of power to drive her steps, nor any binding contracts that damned her. And yet, she found her hand on its knob regardless. She couldn’t help it. Knowing that it stemmed from Builledracht’s most powerful ability, knowing that it was something she could only experience for so long, and knowing that there was nothing else for her to do in stasis, she had approached with every intention of emuting the cat responsible for the usual metaphor.

  She half expected a house of horrors, something terrifying enough to numb her mind, something that would instill the fear of god and terrify her to the point where she was unable to return to combat, but twisting open the knob revealed only another dark room.

  Like the infinite abyss, the second space was devoid of light, but that was about where the simirities came to an end. Unlike the first, the second area was more of a cell than a never-ending expanse. She had her head between her knees and her arms all scrunched up. She was packed so tightly that she felt like she was going to suffocate. Left with no other choice, she struggled, pushing against the walls of her tiny world until she heard a crack.

  For a second, she thought that it was her spine. She had been pushing very hard, after all, but the light that streamed in assured her that the world was first to give. It split apart at the seams, slowly at first, but more rapidly as she continued to thrash. Until suddenly, she found another yer of darkness.

  Oh how strange the second yer was. It was exactly as pitch bck as the first, but for some peculiar reason, it didn’t seem to block all the light. Some of it slipped through, raining down on her surroundings as she finally beheld them.

  Finally allowed to survey her surroundings, she found that was standing in a valley of rge, rounded rocks. Their colours led her to believe them to be gemstones, but she wasn’t quite sure which kind. The green one was deeper than emerald and brighter than jade. The light streaks that ran across its surface almost made her think of machite, but it wasn’t quite so fun to look at. If it really were machite, it would certainly have ranked among the most worthless pieces thereof.

  The red and bck rocks were equally as ugly. The former cked the beautiful gleam of ruby, while the tter was without the glimmering radiance expected of obsidian. It was more like coal, only its surface was more bumpy and porous.

  Her confusion sted until the ceiling shifted. The second yer of darkness suddenly peeled itself away to reveal the true sky beyond it.

  That was when everything suddenly clicked.

  Rolling her eyes, Cire desynchronized herself from her host and stepped out into the open. She didn’t bother turning around. She had no interest to waste on the scene of Builledracht’s birth.

  The world seemed to recognize this as well. It distorted again, becoming a series of rge fuzzy blocks before coming back into focus with all the props and characters rearranged.

  She figured at a gnce that the second scene would be equally disinteresting. Builledracht sat in a group of dragonlings, ranging anywhere between two and ten meters tall. An older, bearded fellow was in the middle of giving the whole cohort a lecture, one hand on a cane, and the other on his beard. Cire immediately looked for something, anything else to steal her attention, but she returned it to the man as she noticed the magic circle floating in front of his jaw. Builledract was not quite as studious. He was chatting away while the instructor said his part, not listening in the slightest. His own thoughts shuttered the seemingly important lesson. So again, Cire departed his body; her own two ears were far superior to the dysfunctional holes drilled into the side of the dragon’s skull.

  “The second yer represents a bit field corresponding to 256 distinct properties that it is possible for your breath to take,” said the lecturer, as he pointed a finger at one of the outermost circles. “These are strict on and off fgs which will be enabled if any more than 5 points of mana are run through them. You will have to precisely control the flow of your magic in order to prevent any leakage. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that not all of these properties are compatible.”

  He tweaked a few of the numbers before spitting a burst of fme that ended just a few meters out from his face.

  “This is the result you will see with output that cannot be processed. Your breath will still inflict all of the usual damage, but it will be without additional functionality.”

  Cire nodded along as she considered her mist. It was basically what he was describing.

  “Now, the rules surrounding compatibility are somewhat complex, so you may want to take notes.” The old dragon scanned the less-than-attentive crowd before breathing a sigh and continuing. “Between 70% and 85% compatibility, where net compatibility is taken as a percentage of the number of edges in a graph of all possible retions, most of your breath will carry the necessary properties. Above 85% compatibility, you will find your entire breath converted, though the properties themselves will strengthen with a rger value. Fortunately, the gods have made it fairly easy to determine compatibility. Properties with even designations are compatible with other evenly designated properties, while odd properties prefer other odd properties. Multipliers and divisors are also considered to be compatible, meaning that thirteen is compatible with twenty six, and the first property is compatible with all others. It’s important to note that the 256th property cannot be disabled.” He looked around again and shook his head. “I’ll leave you to experiment with the properties in your own time. Now, onto the next topic, the third yer is…”

  Cire was eager to keep listening. She tried to put the world back into pce as it faded away again, but it was to no avail. She was probably going to have to ask Builledracht in person—a thought accompanied by a groan. The silly moose pinched the bridge of her nose right as the world came back into view. She almost couldn’t believe it took her so long to consider the divine resource considering that she had only picked up her draconic traits as a result of his intervention. He wanted her to become one of his kind, and he had never come off as underhanded or otherwise malicious. A quick chat would save her hours of longform experimentation, but at the same time, that was exactly the reason she didn’t want to visit.

  Fiddling with the formu seemed more like a pastime than a chore, especially now that she had a solid pce to start. Though admittedly, it didn’t seem like the wisest decision, with everything coming up as it were.

  The world faded back into existence as she continued to debate her options. The third scene was that of a city. Builledracht was riding through the streets, waving out of his carriage as people around him threw flowers and cheered. Cire waited for a moment to see if anything interesting would happen, but nothing did. She was simply stuck in a parade, watching as the draconic hero’s name was praised for a feat she cared little about.

  Sighing, Cire detached from his body, grabbed the key buried in her chest, and vacated the boring illusion. A simple twist was all it took to return to the usual darkness.

  Her eyes opened wide when she noted the timer hovering above the door. Two full days had passed already, even though it’d felt like maybe five minutes. There was clearly some sort of distortion at py, something that bent and circumvented all of the usual rules, but Cire couldn’t be bothered to figure it out.

  Whatever the case, she was fed up with his nonsense.

  She knew she would probably be stuck in stasis if she woke herself up, so she passed through the door that allowed her spirit to part from her body.

  Returning to reality confirmed that she was not the only one frozen in time. Builledracht was affected by the same condition. He sat cross-legged in the rainy crater, outlined in a skintight aura made of glimmering, golden clocks.

  The rain refused to touch his body, but it never once overpped with his flesh. It simply stagnated when it touched him before suddenly teleporting through him. While stasis certainly barred standard methods of death delivery, individuals within it were far from protected. It did nothing to stop a more persistent killer from arranging a series of attacks whilst waiting for the person to awaken. Cire wasn’t quite so patient. There were still 156 hours left on the clock, and she wasn’t about to hunker down for the better part of a week just to set up an ambush.

  Thankfully, her spirit form was capable of ignoring any of the usual constraints. She wandered straight out of her body, even though it was subject to the same magic, and teleported in front of her target.

  She felt a strange hesitation as she raised her fist. There was something inside of her that seemed to want to resist, something that made it difficult to twist her hips and really drill the blow through his body—not that it mattered either way. Her hand froze on contact before teleporting behind him; her astral form was bound by all of the same rules forced upon the rain.

  The phenomenon almost seemed familiar, so familiar in fact that it happened to fill her head with ideas. For her next attack, she waited for the rift to open before applying her own vectors. It seemed like a promising ploy, but as, the automatic defense mechanism ignored her magical orders.

  Cire frowned. Trying with her own body, she found that she could touch herself however she pleased, despite being subject to the same effects. Entering her body, however, proved to be more difficult. Whereas normally, she would have regained control as soon as she donned her flesh, she found that it remained entirely unresponsive.

  She pondered for a little before pulling the key from her chest again, inserting it into her body and giving it a twist. The key fought back; the more she torqued it, the harder it was to turn. But eventually, it gave, allowing her to complete the cycle and return to her flesh. She reasoned that she could do much the same thing to Builledracht. She could easily set up a series of traps and end him with a twist of the key. But with her body back online, there was something else she wanted to try.

  She walked towards the giant bck dragon. Her steps were slow, quiet, completely drowned out by the rain as it washed through the world around her. She hesitated when she first looked at Boris, but soon drew a third vial from his throat after calling him into her hands. She only had two left, but two was enough to keep in reserve. There were still three months before she had to confront her father, and she was unlikely to win in the first pce if she had to drink too many.

  Nodding, and certainly not making a reckless and uninformed decision, she raised the stabilizer to her lips, drained its contents, and channeled her divinity through her body again.

  She lightly fpped her wings as she finally reached the giant bck dragon and rose so they were eye to eye.

  And then, after beating back the strange hesitation again, she slugged him.

  Her taloned fist passed through his barrier, crashed into his face, and dug straight into his eye. She felt the pain as well. Her head rang in protest while her eye screamed up a storm, but she grinned regardless.

  It was pretty much as she expected.

  There was some resistance, something to tell her that she was breaking one of the fundamental rules imposed by the system, but the results spoke for themselves.

  Her divinity won out over his magic.

  All she needed was a concentrated dose.

  It wasn’t like the spell itself had been broken. Builledracht was still stuck in time. His face was the only part of him that had moved, and though she had crushed his eye, the blood therein was static, remaining perfectly stagnant, exactly as it had been since her fist returned.

  Satisfied with the result, Cire pumped Boris full of divinity, turned him into a nce, and drove him through the dragon’s face. His orders were simple. He was to suck the overgrown lizard dry, to drain every drop of health he had. The only recoil that Cire suffered was from the initial stabbing. The rest only healed her; the damage didn’t come from her directly.

  A shiver rippled through Cire’s body. Accompanied by precisely the sort of itch that followed a run in the middle of winter, the chill traveled along her tail, through her guts, and out of her extended lizard as time was distorted again.

  The precise behaviour was a little different than it was when she sped up her perception. Rather than slowing as usual, the world found itself half-stopped. The rain, which had at some point become rge fkes of snow, came to a perfect standstill. The only pieces that moved were the ones she touched—they broke free of the spell and fluttered to the ground, joining their countless brethren beneath her feet.

  Blinking again, she found that Builledracht’s copy was gone. She was standing on the other side of the gate that had marked the divine trial. The icy mountain was missing as well, repced by a series of gentle slopes that led up to a sparkling winter castle beneath a clear, moonlit sky. And yet, so too did the frosted peak remain. The castle and its hills were gone when she blinked, returned again to their prior state.

  The world flip-flopped between the two scenes every time she batted her shes. She tried it over twenty times before spinning around with her hand clenched into a fist. She couldn’t see the target approaching her from behind, but her strike was perfectly aimed.

  Were she just a thousand times faster, she likely would have fulfilled Primrose’s request. As, her fist was caught by the goddess who had appeared alongside the first change in perception.

  To describe her as a goddess required some degree of generosity, for she embodied none of the beauty typically expected of the bel. Not even in her present, near-naked state would she have inspired wicked thoughts in any but the most degenerate. She had two articles of clothing. One was presumably a pair of panties. Made of cold steel, the giant metal diaper was coated from head to toe in exposed nuts and bolts. Only the topmost bits were covered by the goddess’ checkered shirt. The red and bck pid outfit was left to hang off her shoulders unbuttoned, but little of her skin was exposed. Her overflowing chest hair shielded all but the bottom of her exaggerated abdominals. Like her bulging biceps and her mountainous thighs, they were built so bulky that she spanned the space of three people.

  And yet, her face was withered, haggard and warted as a witch on her sickbed. If she didn’t know any better, she might have assumed that the parts belonged to two different people, but Cire was well acquainted with the goddess’ image.

  Like Vel, Aurora was widely worshipped across the nation. Her reliefs were as widespread as knowledge of her curse. Even the elves, who otherwise refused to believe in the existence of gods, told cautionary tales of the wicked witch of the north. For though blue-skinned, she was one of their kind.

  As with all standard depictions, they heavily featured her peculiar hair, defining it as chief among the goddess’ traits.

  Three quarters of her head was shaved. It was only from the leftmost part of her skull that her hair still grew—a single patch about the size of a fist. And yet, the thick blonde strands were so long that they nearly touched her feet. In fact, they likely would have done just that had she not thrown them over her head like a toupee and draped them over the opposite shoulder. Folded into a sideways ponytail, the trio of rge clumpy dreadlocks were heavy enough to be used as a weapon.

  “Good evening,” said Cire. She pulled back her extended hand, never once acknowledging it as she turned her armour into an over-the-top party dress and greeted the goddess with a curtsy.

  “Good evening and welcome,” said Aurora. Her voice was every bit as clear, deep, and husky as it was over the broadcast. But at the same time, it was melodic and soothing, perhaps even gentle. “I have been expecting you, Cire Augustus.” She wasn’t the slightest bit fazed by the attempted face-punch. Either the bluff had worked or she was simply magnanimous. Either way, she greeted the mortal with a smile.

  “So I’ve gathered,” said Cire. “Will the kill still register?”

  The goddess ughed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “But there are some things we must first discuss.” The world warped as the goddess took a step. An incredibly complicated series of vectors suddenly went off at once and sucked them into the distant, almost-imaginary castle.

  It wasn’t teleportation. It was more like the goddess had folded the world around them, forcing it to facilitate their movement. Like the wind, they were whisked through the passages and up the stairs before coming to a stop in a grand hall.

  The centre of the room sported a rge, frozen disk. Positioned like something of a bathtub, but made entirely of ice. Mist poured endlessly from within it, filling the space with magic and moisture alike.

  “This is the mirror of memoirs and memories,” she said. “It is one of the few tools capable of perusing the system’s records and presenting them before mortal eyes. It is a true divine instrument, created by Flitzegarde herself and pced within my domain for safekeeping. It is tradition to provide a mortal who has overcome my trial with precisely one scene from any perspective. But I will not do that for you.”

  “Why not?” asked Cire, eyes narrowed.

  “Because by sheer virtue of your presence here, in this pce, at this time, at that level, I have lost a bet,” she said, quietly. “So as promised to the goddess who reigns over the cycle, I will tell you everything of relevance to your genesis.”

  “My… genesis?”

  “Mortal or not, we are the products of those who have come before us. So I will tell you of those who came before you,” she said. “I will tell you of the fool who defied the heavens, whilst seeking its all-encompassing might. I will tell you of the soldier who struggled against the web of fate, only to be wound in its strands. And I will tell you of the padin who cast aside his name, precisely so victory could fall within his grasp. I will tell you of everything they were, everything they are, and everything dressed within their starcrossed dreams.” The goddess stepped atop the mirror and beckoned for Cire to do the same. “Now, come. I will open your eyes.”

  SpicySpaceSquid

  Virillius is on the verge of becoming an aspect and takes Vel's trial in order to complete the ascension. He sees 8 memories and 8 visions, both of which shape him as a character. These include:- Recalling how he fell in love with Violet and seeing that he will be successful in courting her- Recalling his master with Constantius, both the brotherly moments and the ones that drove wedges between them- Recalling his past with Ragnar and Allegra, and the moments that bound them- Seeing that he will one day have a son that grows up to be very simir to Cire- Seeing his son grow into a warrior with mastery over the power of fire- Seeing Violet's death

  At the end, he arrives at the conclusion that he will one day kill Vel, because she literally set up everything about his life in order to create someone who is capable of killing her.

  [colpse]