Rick’s face went through approximately twelve distinct expressions in rapid succession, cycling through several distinct stages of emotional processing.
Sebastian appeared on the shore next to Liora, arms folded and wearing the expression of soone who had been waiting patiently for this exact mont, finding it more satisfying than anticipated.
"Before you say anything," Sebastian said, "the divine channeling process purifies the source material entirely."
"What remains in the water is sacred ward-energy in solution, and the original biological dium is completely transford."
"FUCK YOU!" Rick said. "THAT IS NOT THE POINT."
"The point is that you are being purified."
"BY—"
"Sacred ward energy... In solution... as described."
Rick looked at the softly glowing water he was currently standing in, waist-deep, having just floated in it and ducked his face into it and drunk it from his cupped hands twice.
He was quiet for a very long mont.
"I was going to say this was heaven," he said finally, in the voice of soone who has achieved sothing like peace through the sheer practical necessity of finding it.
"And now?" Sebastian asked.
Rick gazed at the lake, taking in the golden-green luminescent water that swirled around his waist. He turned his attention to Liora, who observed him with the calmness of soone who had carefully chosen her mont.
He glanced at Sebastian. "Well..."
"It still kind of is," he said. "Aight... it’s still kind of worth it."
Liora made a sound that was, for her, the functional equivalent of laughing.
Sebastian vanished without comnt. He would not bring this up again, but he would rember it forever.
Rick waded to the shore and sat down next to Liora, dripping, and was quiet for a while.
"You could have told before I drank it," he said eventually.
"You asked whether you could drink it, and I told you the truth about its properties."
"You told the truth in a very specific order."
"I did."
"Was that deliberate?"
She paused for a mont with the consideration of soone framing an honest answer carefully.
"The purification protocol for tomorrow will be significantly more effective following a full imrsion," she said. "I suggest you rest well tonight because dawn preparation begins early."
She stood up, smoothed her robes with the efficient precision of soone who had never once had a wrinkle stay where she didn’t want it, and walked back toward the temple with the serenity of soone who had just done sothing professionally satisfying.
"And... Rick?" She glanced at him.
"Hm?"
"If you want to drink it fresh from the source... I could help you with that," she said, lifting her robes to reveal that she was not wearing any panties, instantly flushing his face red.
"W-WHAT!?"
"Hehehe. Bye for now." She winked at him and left.
Rick sat by the glowing lake as the last of the evening light faded with a mind full of questions. "W-What does she an by that...?!"
"Don’t tell ... I can drink it from her... heeerrrr...."
Sebastian reappeared for exactly one second. "For what it’s worth, you do look spiritually clearer, and you’re fucking nasty if you accept that offer."
Then he was gone again.
"Fuck you again, Sebastian."
...
Rick slept well, which he attributed to the combination of three days on horseback, the ward-cleansing treatnt, the restorative alignnt session, and possibly the lake. He was choosing not to think too carefully about the last of those.
The socket was quieter than it had been since the night in his Valdris room. He checked Natasha’s crystal before sleep and found thirty-eight percent, down from fifty-one percent at arrival, but the decay had slowed inside the temple’s ward boundary to an entirely manageable pace.
The bond network was stretched thin over the distance between here and Valdris but intact, all six threads present and identifiable. He fell asleep quickly and did not dream.
Morning preparation began before dawn. The ward-mapping session, which lasted two hours, involved Thessara and two senior priestesses who examined the socket using three different diagnostic instrunts, created a map of the artifact’s scar tissue and the corruption anchoring, and engaged in a lengthy technical conversation that Rick understood about forty percent of.
The portion he understood was sufficient to grasp the conclusion: the Severance Rite was indeed viable, as the socket tissue remained intact.
The corruption anchoring aligned with the artifact pathways in a sufficiently predictable manner for the temple’s sacred resonance to track, suggesting that the energy flow was stable and would not interfere with the ritual process.
The rite was set to succeed. Tomorrow morning.
He found Zephyra in the archive room after the session. She had apparently been there since before dawn.
Several of the material boxes from the previous day had been replaced by others, and her folio had expanded further, the new section now having multiple sub-sections with tabs she had made from folded paper.
Rick ca in quietly and sat down in the corner chair that was not occupied by docunts.
After about ten minutes, while still focused on the material she was cross-referencing, she asked, "How did the ward mapping proceed?"
"Well... it’s for tomorrow morning, actually."
"Good." She turned a page. "The pre-coalition ritual infrastructure here is in remarkable condition."
"The original ward writers understood compounding resonance in ways that the post-coalition frawork largely abandoned." She fixed her glasses. "The transition created efficiencies in so areas and genuine losses in others."
"Is that interesting to you? Personally, not just academically."
She was quiet for a mont, the kind of quiet that was working through sothing.
"Yes," she replied, her tone flat and direct.
Rick stayed in the archive room for an hour. He did not read anything. He sat in the corner chair and let the morning be what it was, and Sophia, asleep in her carrier against Zephyra’s chest, occasionally opened her eyes in Rick’s direction with the brief serious attention she gave to things she found worth checking on.
It was, all things considered, a very good morning.
...
The Shadow Covenant did not knock.
They ca over the east wall in the space between the fourth and fifth hour bells—three hours before sunset—when the afternoon light was still bright and the temple moved through its unhurried rhythms. It was a place that had not experienced an attack in three hundred years of recorded history and had no particular conditioning for recognizing what an attack might look or feel like.
There were eleven of them.
They were not wearing black. They were wearing temple amber, reproduced accurately enough that they were inside the outer garden before anyone understood that sothing was different about them.
The fabric matched perfectly. The cut was precise.
The junior priestesses who first saw the priests’ and priestesses’ movent quality weren’t looking for it, but it’s not right.
The first warning Rick had was the socket.
Not the bond network, not Liora reaching through their connection. The socket, which had been quiet all morning inside the temple’s ward boundary, ignited with a heat that had nothing to do with ambient corruption and everything to do with intent.
Sothing in whatever operational magic the Shadow Covenant used resonated with the cavity in a way that was targeted rather than ambient, and the socket registered it the way a tuning fork registers a matching frequency, indicating a significant and possibly dangerous interaction that required imdiate attention.
The second warning was a scream from the outer garden, short and cut off.
Rick was already on the move with a thought. "Can I just at least have a long break without any chaos?!"
He reached the inner courtyard as four Shadow Covenant operatives were crossing it toward the main temple entrance. The operatives were moving in a spread formation that efficiently covered the space and denied him access to the center, indicating that they had been specifically briefed on his combat tendencies.
"Oh my fucking milf... it’s all of you bastards again." Rick pointed at them. "Well, it has been a while, and I don’t have any ti to chit-chat with you all."
He activated Draconic Sovereignty, felt a forty percent surge in power, deployed his wings, and assessed the situation within the two seconds before the first engagent.
They knew about his draconic abilities. When he used Dragon’s Breath, two of them had ward-shields active and ready, not improvised, already running.
They knew about his bond network coordination too, because one of them was wearing a disruption charm that created interference on the magical resonance channels, degrading the signal quality without breaking the bonds entirely.
What they had not prepared for was that the bond network didn’t need to be perfect to carry a skill that had been designed to work at a distance.
Rick reached through the degraded signal to Sylvia and Zara, both in Valdris, both present in the bond even when stretched thin across the distance.
Sovereign Convergence required synchronization through the network, not proximity. The skill fired at thirty percent of its normal efficacy due to the interference.
Thirty percent of Sovereign Convergence was still enough to matter.
The combined Draconic and Demonic authority field hit all four operatives simultaneously, and the two with ward-shields had both crack under the opposing pressures. Rick closed the distance in the gap.
Two down in the first exchange. The remaining two retreated toward the archive wing, which told Rick exactly where the priority target was.
He went after them.
"Co back here, you fucking piece of shit!"
Reviews
All reviews (0)