The amber-haired priestess arrived in eighteen minutes, which Rick appreciated as a marker of professional competence.
The restorative alignnt session involved her sitting beside the treatnt table, placing both hands near the eyepatch area without touching it, and directing sacred ward energy into the socket while maintaining a running diagnostic comntary in a voice that was the particular kind of calm that either cos from years of practice or from a naturally soothing register.
Rick chose not to investigate which one.
He was, he thought, having the best afternoon of his entire ti in Zorathia.
He felt slightly guilty about this given the circumstances. He accepted the guilt and continued having the afternoon anyway.
Liora was in deep conversation with Thessara about the Severance Rite protocol and had been for two hours by the ti the restorative alignnt session ended.
Rick found this out from a junior priestess who ntioned it while refilling his tea, noting that the head priestess had gone to fetch additional docunts twice, which apparently ant the conversation was going well by Thessara’s standards.
Zephyra had been given access to the archive room and had asked to see the pre-coalition architectural records. The archivist, a sixty-sothing woman with dry humor and the specific efficiency of soone who had spent decades knowing exactly where things were, had brought her three docunt boxes and had returned an hour later with three more when she ca back to find the first ones already read through.
When Rick looked in through the archive room door, Zephyra was surrounded by open materials; her folio expanded to a new section that already had sub-sections, taking notes with the concentrated intensity of soone who had been citing secondhand sources for fifteen years and had just been handed the primary material.
The archivist checked on her at regular intervals, observing with the deanor of soone witnessing an admirable event and opting not to interfere.
Heinz and Sophia were in the temple garden.
Sophia was on a blanket in the shade, examining a specific rock she had found near the garden path. Her assessnt of the rock had been positive and sustained for at least forty minutes when Rick passed by.
Heinz was sitting nearby, not reading, not doing anything in particular, just being present the way he was in most situations.
Three of the younger priestesses had found reasons to be in the garden at various points during the afternoon. One was sitting near Sophia, watching the rock examination with genuine engagent.
Heinz was explaining, with the earnest attention he brought to most things, that Sophia consistently found the most interesting specific object in any new environnt and that this was a consistent behavior he had observed and found impressive.
The priestess appeared to agree. Two more priestesses arrived from different directions.
By late afternoon, Heinz had organized an impromptu storytelling session where four priestesses were listening to him describe the ti he had accidentally borrowed a boat he didn’t know belonged to the harbormaster and had ended up giving the harbormaster’s lunch to three seabirds.
The story was not exciting in any conventional sense. It was, however, genuinely funny in the specific way that involves soone recounting a chain of reasonable decisions that each made sense individually and produced a collectively unreasonable outco.
The priestesses were laughing. Sophia had the rock.
Rick watched the scene for a few minutes from the garden path and walked on.
...
That night, Liora found him looking like soone who just rembered sothing they should have said earlier and was figuring out how to say it.
"Thessara wants to include a Lake of Wisdom imrsion in your preparation protocol," she said.
"Huh?" Rick tilts his head. "What’s the Lake of Wisdom about?"
"A sacred body of water on the temple grounds."
"The temple was actually built around it; it predates the construction by so margin." She began walking, and Rick followed. "The waters have purification properties that Thessara believes will significantly help with the socket preparation for tomorrow’s ward mapping."
"Sounds amazing! Let’s go then!"
The path through the inner garden was well-maintained and clearly walked often, leading between sections of the garden to a narrow gate in the inner wall that opened onto a space Rick had not yet seen.
The lake was extraordinary.
It was small, maybe thirty ters across, entirely enclosed by the inner garden walls on all sides. The water was clear enough that the bottom was visible, and from the bottom and the water itself there ca a soft, steady luminescence, not reflected light but a genuine inner glow, gold-green and slow-moving, like sothing lit from underneath at a depth that the water obscured.
Rick looked at it for a long mont.
"Holy shit... It’s glowing," he said. "And it feels like I’m staring at the purest water ever!"
"The purification properties create a mild bioluminescent effect," Liora chuckles. "It is indeed quite beautiful, and the light has been consistent for the full three hundred years of the temple’s records."
"It looks like the world’s most sacred hot spring."
He gazed at the lake, then turned his attention to Liora before shifting his focus back to the shimring water.
"Can I get in it?"
"Well, that is what we’re here for, dear."
He took off his boots. He got in the lake with the enthusiasm of soone who had spent three days on horseback and had arrived at what appeared to be a warm, glowing sacred bath, which was exactly what it was.
The water was warm in the comfortable way rather than the hot way, and the luminescence was visible from inside it, rising through the water in lazy drifting currents that moved around him as he moved.
Rick floated on his back and looked at the evening sky above the garden walls.
"I take back nothing I have ever done to get here," he said aloud to no one in particular.
He ducked his head under the water. The sensation was not rely clean; it was specifically clean, penetrating past the surface and reaching sothing beneath the skin.
When he resurfaced, the socket felt slightly cooler than it had in three days. Not healed—just quieter.
"Can I drink it?"
Liora was sitting at the edge of the lake, her robes carefully arranged. "In small amounts, yes. Ingestion of the waters has been part of various preparation protocols here."
"There are docunted benefits for spiritual clarity."
Rick cupped his hands and drank the water carefully. And for him, it tasted faintly sweet, like mineral water with sothing floral underneath it.
"Phewww~! Refreshing, indeed," he said and ant it entirely. "This is incredible, Liora!"
He floated once more, examining the luminescent water held in his cupped hands.
He subrged again and then resurfaced.
"Why is it called the Lake of Wisdom anyway?" he asked, looking up at the evening sky. "Is it that if you drink it, you beco wiser?"
"Well... the na has a historical origin," Liora replied, resting her chin thoughtfully in her hand.
"What’s the origin?"
The pause that followed carried a distinct weight. It reflected the deanor of soone who had held onto a piece of information for so ti, contemplating whether to share it. Ultimately, they decided that this mont was the most fitting to reveal it.
"The lake’s purification properties," Liora said, "are derived from a sacred practice that the temple’s priestesses have maintained for three hundred years."
Rick, still floating, only said, "Okaaay...?"
"The practice is central to the lake’s continued efficacy and cannot be replaced or artificially simulated."
"Mm-hmm."
"The priestesses contribute to the lake’s sacred content on a regular schedule as part of their devotional practice."
Rick tilted his head in the water to look at her. "W-wait just one second there!"
"When you say contribute—"
"The sanctification of bodily water through divine channeling." Liora’s expression was completely serene. "Priestesses in active divine alignnt produce, through their natural biological processes, fluid that carries their sacred resonance."
"When channeled with intention into a designated sacred space over ti, it accumulates and compounds divine ward energy."
Rick stared at her.
"The lake," Liora said, "is three hundred years of accumulated sacred priestess water."
A silence that lasted long enough to beco its own event.
"L-Liora..."
"Yes, dear?"
"Are you telling that this entire lake—"
"The Golden Temple has maintained this practice for three centuries. It is a significant part of why the water retains such strong purification properties."
"The divine resonance concentrates over ti, and forty-three current priestesses contribute regularly, along with their predecessors over the full three hundred-year period."
"I drank it..."
"In the preparation protocols, ingestion—"
"I drank it with my hands! I put my FACE in it! Multiple tis! I FLOATED in it!" Rick exclaid as he stood up in the lake, which was waist-deep at its center. "Does this an you—"
Liora’s expression remained entirely serene.
"All active priestesses participate in the practice."
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