Yoiglah’s vast form barely shifted, yet the gravity in the clearing thickened with the weight of thought and history as the turtle’s eyes narrowed.
His voice trembled through the dirt, thick and slow with layered contemplation.
"You’re asking the shrine to assimilate with . That’s what you want. So that its reach, its influence, and the weight of belief it carries will ride along my shell wherever I may go, magnified through my core. This is no simple installation. You want to anchor a god into a beast."
"Incorrect," Samael answered imdiately.
Yoiglah paused for a mont, and so was Kivas who was holding her breath, thinking what kind of absurd shenanigans that Samael expected of the giant talking turtle in front of her.
"So you want to start assimilating again," Yoiglah answered, with not a single emotion that could be read from his form.
Samael didn’t hesitate. "Correct. And it’s necessary."
"And that reason would be?" Yoiglah asked.
"I have a foresight that a certain major bastion of humanity has either already been taken out or will be taken out in just a day or two," Samael answered. "In that foresight, even a special agent that works for the part of humanity that is prideful of their expertise in information, saw not a single mont of it coming."
Kivas raised a brow and glanced at her. "Does this have sothing to do with Zarangar Valley?"
"Yes," Samael answered, her voice sharp with mory. "In the first cycle, we saw it fall. We saw how little it took...
"In this one, we don’t know yet. But I’ve already seen glimpses of what could be transpiring beyond that future. Humanity will be face through another crisis. And with them, there’s no ti to treat peace as a guarantee for the rest of the major factions, and Vaingall as a whole."
Yoiglah shifted slightly. The earth around him humd with his movent, tree roots adjusting, birds scattering far away from the subtle disturbance. "And Vaingall, I assu that you don’t believe it can defend itself."
"Not in the state it’s in now," Samael replied. "When I was the Endless Dragon, I removed every being strong enough to challenge or replace . I kept no successors, for I had no reason to build a future I wouldn’t live to witness...
"But now, things have changed. I’ve contemplated my whole life and my future deeply after eting this dork right beside ."
"I appreciate you’re not using anything derogatory." Kivas nodded.
"I looked more into those who I have connection with, yet barely reciprocate their thoughts and emotion. Before I knew it, I needed every bits of crumbs, not gold, but anything that I can use to build a foundation, to ensure that I have a place that has my back."
"I see," Yoiglah began contemplating. "For that fiery and hungry dragon to talk in front of this passionately. Certainly, sothing has changed."
Kivas absorbed the weight of it, then turned back toward Yoiglah. "So you’re being offered the title of new master of Vaingall, to put it simply. Wait..."
"Offered," Yoiglah rumbled, "or tasked. It depends on the mouth that speaks it."
"Sa result in the end." Samael stepped forward. "I’m placing this region into your protection. And you know why I chose you."
Yoiglah closed his eyes, breath expanding his chest like the tide lifting a mountain. "I’ve grown slow. Weaker. Not in body, but in hunger and greed."
"I know." Samael’s gaze remained forward, unchanging in her decision.
"Once, I could shatter ranges and split rivers." Yoiglah heaved a breath. "I lived by pursuit. But then I fell. My peak was taken. I no longer sought to grow. I accepted regression." His gaze turned toward Samael with a trace of nostalgia. "And you allowed to continue existing in Vaingall, despite it, even when you grew too vast for my shadow to keep up. You allowed this carcass to reside in the sunlight, and remain beyond a re mory."
"Because you were still my equal," Samael said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "Regardless of how I treat you and everyone."
The turtle’s expression twisted—not sadness, not pride, sothing between mory and decision. "And now... that very dragon wishes to make hungry again."
Samael didn’t answer, for she knew how heavy of a burden that she was about to give to her old friend.
Yoiglah faced the iridescent of the young night, bouncing off the nature of Vaingall. "Very well. If this dragon believes that I’m the right turtle to carry Vaingall on his back, then I will carry this burden. I shall let hunger and greed envelope my soul, eyes, fangs and muscles...
"I shall let the shrine rest on my back."
Kivas blinked slowly. She breathed in, and out. "To be honest, I didn’t expect planting a shrine to be so dramatic. I thought it was just a fancy thod for to gain priest-level inco. Not a coronation for a new leader of an entire region."
Samael shrugged, a flicker of amusent playing across her mouth. "Yoiglah has a series of skill combinations to assimilate. A very strong one at that. The kind that doesn’t just absorb objects, but concepts, anchors, systems, and many more possibilities that she can abuse until the sky is red and white...!
"I’ve always been furious that he never used it to keep up with when he had the chance."
Yoiglah let out a low chuckle. "Because the shenanigans of a certain Endless Dragon required no audience. I didn’t think I was needed. I didn’t want to be needed."
"True, I didn’t need you for quite a long ti."
"Now can you see how selfish you are, Endless Dragon?"
"You think that I don’t know how selfish and cruel I am?"
"This is why your followers leave you for the better green. You’re lucky that this ancient giant was too lazy to walk beyond the border of Vaingall."
Kivas watched the exchange with a distant kind of curiosity, as if witnessing an ancient myth unfolding in real ti.
Samael extended her hand toward Kivas, pointing at the Curio item, "Tablet."
Kivas gripped the stone with both hands. The resonance inside it vibrated gently, asking for intent.
"We’re doing this now?" Kivas asked for confirmation.
"No, we’re doing this tomorrow."
"Didn’t know that you have a knack for sarcasm."
"I see, so tomorrow it is," Yoiglah began to turn around.
"No, Yoiglah!" Kivas cried. "The Endless Dragon is doing what is called sarcasm! She didn’t an it!"
After clearing up the misunderstanding, the process finally reached its start.
Kivas closed her eyes and drew in her breath. Her Mana Psyche rippled outward, filling the object as it floated from her hands.
Samael’s voice guided her gently. "Focus on the figure your Rembrance belongs to. See her. Not as soone else, but as yourself."
Kivas exhaled.
She rembered the warmth of grain between fingers, the whisper of milk in hollow bowls, the laughter of children whose nas she had never known but had once sheltered, the lives that were reared, and those who were nursed.
She rembered a spirit of patience, of cycles, of continuity. A mother to life. A silent guardian of growth. Protector of the noble. A figure of godly presence.
"I am Renenutet," she whispered deep in her heart, back and forth to the core. And as if she had been possessed, her voice deepen in tone, and words began to pour out of her throat, "And I rember, therefore I am...
"I shall harvest. I shall nourish. I cradle the sick and bury the dead. I whisper to seeds and silence. I shall birth the hope of sustenance...
"I choose who I want to bless. I choose who I want to rescue. My kindness knows no bounds, but boundaries there shall be when infidels invade the domain I nurture with blood and fertile soil."
The tablet rose higher, its edges glowing with gold filants, cracking light along its lines. Ancient script rewritten itself across its surface, forming loops of invocation.
Samael jumped, grabbed the tablet mid-hover, and launched upward with precise strength, landing cleanly atop Yoiglah’s shell.
Her feet sank a fraction into the moss and dried copper lichen on the turtle’s back.
"Humhp!" She held the tablet high, then drove it downward with force, embedding it at the shell’s center.
Light burst outward.
Just as it began to shine, black tentacles surged from Yoiglah’s shell—darkness wrought from within, smooth and oil-thick. They enveloped the golden radiance of the tablet like ink strangling fla.
The glow dimd.
Samael leapt away, landing beside Kivas as they both watched in silence.
The tablet vanished beneath the writhing tendrils.
The surface of Yoiglah’s shell convulsed, cracking, reforming. Plates folded and rearranged. The tal-like shell rippled, retexturing from stone to layered obsidian scales veined with amber roots.
From the center where the tablet had vanished, the shrine began to rise—or to be precise, willing itself into existence.
First ca a dais, etched with spirals and seed-runes, carved into the material of Yoiglah himself.
A plinth erged next, curving upward like a coiled serpent, at the top of which sat the body of a woman—faceless, headless, draped in robes shaped like windswept cloth.
Her arms were open in benediction. Her chest was adorned with grains and vines carved from luminous gold veins. There were curves to the figure, accentuating fertile physique.
A single snake spiraled around her body, its eyes closed, its scales ridged like ancient bark, yet scaly like that of a dragon. Its mouth held nothing, yet its posture was protective.
Hovering above where the statue’s head would have been, a flaming disc spun slowly, humming mystique hymns made out of blood and galaxies.
It glowed with the light of Kivas’ halo, halo-shaped in form, yet within its center hovered a miniature black hole—a stable void, gently drawing light into itself but never overwhelming.
And more details began to shape and form, the color, the texture of dusk and tallic night. Each trait shimred with pale gold as if kissed by the moonlight.
Kivas stared, words lost in her throat.
"I thought that this is a Minor Shrine!" Kivas shouted in disbelief. "In what threshold does this fit with the dictionary definition of ’minor’!"
"You can thank Yoiglah for that," Samael chuckled. "I forgot to ntion that anything that this old turtle assimilated will beco five if not ten tis more powerful, depend on how the turtle wants it."
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