Cale's first thought was sothing along the lines of: Oh, great, I'm greeting a god by stealing their eyes. Again.
His second thought was less of a thought and more of an imdiate concern, given most of his experiences with drawing the attention of unknown entities were negative ones. This one presumably wasn't that unknown—it was most likely Ashvali, given the timing, and Ashvali was probably a force for good given Adam had described them as "holy"— but he knew too little about the circumstances of the Bitter Path to really say. Perhaps he hadn't caught Ashvali's attention at all; perhaps one of Ashvali's enemies had taken an interest in him, or perhaps those ice shamblers were staring at him right now and he had no idea.
Though that last one didn't seem too likely, since generally accompanied with freezing cold, and Cale wasn't experiencing any particular change in temperature at the mont.
"Well," Cale mused out loud. "It's not the worst way I've greeted so unknown cosmic entity."
His friends predictably gave him looks that were simultaneously exasperated and worried, and Cale ignored that in favor of ruminating over which of his greetings actually qualified as the worst.
Probably a tie between the ti he'd been caught stealing a dozen kidneys and the ti he accidentally interfered with what had turned out to be an extraordinarily elaborate roleplay?
In his defense, in the forr case, that god had owned a truly excessive collection of kidneys. Who even needed that many of the things? And kidney disease had been a very real problem amongst that god's congregation, so if anything Cale had been trying to help.
Anyway.
Eyes were a comparatively ta sort of treasure, as far as gods were concerned. Kidneys were one thing, but eyes would just grow back if they were stolen. Apparently this hadn't always been a thing, but after a few centuries of various deities having their eyes stolen, used as core ritual components, clawed out by other deities, or otherwise rendered non-functional, the deities of the Great Realms had just... collectively developed the ability to regenerate their eyes.
A bit like teeth, actually.
Nowadays divine eyes were more like a valuable, tradable commodity, and most deities—assuming they had eyes to begin with—had about a dozen of their eyes in active circulation at any given ti. Many were used in the construction of divine artifacts or in the brewing of so sacred potions, though many more were locked away in so holy vault or the other.
And then there were the whole communities that thrived on obtaining and collecting sacred eyes, sotis for more esoteric rituals and sotis just because mages as a whole tended to be weird collectors of all sorts of things. Case in point: Akkau's collection of soaps, Syphus's collection of jars, and Damien's collection of blasphemous paintings...
Cale blinked. What had he been worried about, again?
Oh, right. He'd stolen a god's eyes and had presumably attracted their attention. Cale waited for a few monts, but there was no indication of anything outside the ordinary happening other than the spell taking effect.
Well, alright then. Hopefully, whoever this was, they were just watching because they were interested. Though if he was right about this being pre-Yggdrasil in so form then there was the chance that the deities hadn't yet developed the ability to regenerate their eyes, in which case he might have angered Ashvali quite a bit...
He checked the spell description just in case it had more information for him. This particular spell was taking unusually long to take effect, so he had ti.
[Eyes of Ashvali, Level MAX] [Fifteenth Tier (Unique), Active] [1.0e54 Mana]
Borrow the eyes of the Fifth Intersection.
Cale paused. "Well, that didn't help at all," he muttered, squinting at the Gift.
"What didn't help?" Flia asked suspiciously.
"Spell description," Cale explained absently.
He supposed he couldn't be too surprised. It was surprising enough that the Gift had been able to evolve a spell directly related to what should have been a lost history, one that existed only within the Bitter Path. If it had been able to uncover so great truth about the pre-Yggdrasil cosmology on top of that, Cale would have had so serious questions about how the Gift worked.
Okay, he had so serious questions about that already. He would have had more, though.
The good news was that the spell specifically noted that he was borrowing the eyes, not that he was stealing them, which ant the effect was both temporary and that he was unlikely to invite sudden divine retribution down on him and his apprentices. Borrowing indicated a certain degree of consent, didn't it? With that in mind, the spell had most likely just reached out to Ashvali to establish a contract with them.
As opposed to just ripping their eyes out of their skull to catalyse the magic, which was a real spell. Cale had unfortunately once been a front-row witness to such a spell being cast. Talk about unnecessarily brutal.
He glanced back at the tier and cost of [Eyes of Ashvali], frowning. That was the biggest problem with the divine contract theory; establishing a divine contract alone couldn't explain the tier or the exorbitant cost of the spell. That was the domain of twelfth-tier spells. Fifteenth-tier spells were spells that had the potential to impact the stability of an entire realm, and Cale could see no reason for sothing like this to carry that risk.
The Gift hadn't warned him the way it had when he evolved [Fangs of the Festering Fields], though, so presumably this spell wasn't as great of a risk? If it would just hurry up and finish casting—
Cale winced, then began blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes vigorously as the spell accelerated.
Okay, he'd been asking for that one. Apparently he wouldn't have any more ti for theorycrafting until after the spell took effect, because when the Gift had said "borrowing
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