BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 74
🕑 Added 2025-04-16 18:26:02 +0000 UTCValens locked himself in the room after the shower. He weaved a Blockage around the door for good measure. He wasn’t sure what awaited him beyond the Gate of Surges, but with a former Wailborn in the house, and the old, dusty walls of his room, he decided he couldn’t be too cautious with his arrangements.
The bed creaked when he poured himself over to it, partly since focusing on the frequencies of his chest cavity was almost like an out-of-body experience. He might as well make himself comfortable in the process.
Think of it as a meditation session. Clear the mind, and clear your chest. Deep, long breaths.
He took each of them with focus, feeling a gentle calm settle over his mind, immersing himself in the rhythm of his breaths. Then with a tap of his hand he sent a Lifeward into his chest cavity, followed by a Hexsurge tailing it quickly. He watched the mana strings worm a silent way across to the deep nothingness that nestled in his chest, and slowly, the frequencies painted a picture in his mind.
It was a door. The Gate of Surges, to be precise, the alien alloy with which it had been constructed gleaming with a metallic hue. On its face was a great circular array, sprawling outward like veins from a heart. The Void Sphere cocked in the middle of it pulsed slightly as if it felt Valens’s touch upon its surface.
The world within, is it?
Valens sent the Hexsurge threads into the string-like threads across the door. The multiple facets of it, the spheres circling the Void Sphere in the midst of them, remained muted save for the single one shining a weak light down near the leftmost corner.
The last time he tried to open this door, his mana proved insufficient, but that was him trying to brute force his way to the other side. Now, the Hexsurge threads found the little crevices unseen to his mind’s eye. They leaked inside through them like the waves of a fog. They filled the dark sphere from within.
Its light grew harsh in moments. Valens nearly sighed at the efficiency of his new skill. It used more mana than a Lifesurge, sure, but there was something insidious about those threads unlike the bursting vitality of lifemana. They carried the unmistakable touch of Void inside of them.
Too complex, and yet it feels simple. Then again, the System acknowledged my mastery over this skill as just Basic while I’m considered a Master on most of my old skills. But this Void… It feels like it has close ties to the Spiritum. The boundaries between the frequencies there are different. Layered, and squashed in a way that remains separate from each other, but not entirely disconnected.
The Necromancer’s web was the most clear application of Void that he had ever seen until he came across the world of Spiritum. Hundreds of creatures had been bound to him through a web of dimensions that could be used to fuel them with mana, and relay the commands of a mind like a network. Yet, Valens cut through those layers as easily as carving a block of dirt from the ground with his Lifesurges.
He didn’t have a tight control over that web. He wasn’t aware that I infiltrated the layers, at all. That’s likely something he was given, not a skill that he learned by himself.
There came a click from the door. Valens pulled his focus back and watched as the Gate of Surges creaked loudly deep in his mind. The whole thing rattled, and moved with such difficulty that the sounds of its opening echoed across the deep nothingness.
[The Gate of Surges has opened.]
Wind whipped madly on the other side. Screams tore through the frequencies. The rhythms scattered across the Resonance, broken in bits like a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces. Some were too loud that they stabbed at Valens’s mind. Others were tame, gentle, almost too silent that he couldn’t hear the entirety of their songs.
There was one thing they shared.
They all beckoned at him.
Valens accepted the call, and allowed his mind to be dragged into the thick fog that awaited him beyond the door.
Breath stuck to his chest. He tried to manage his control over the Lifeward with his mind reeling and senses scrambling, his stomach churning as if the bed underneath his back was turning round and round at impossible speed. He choked. He coughed. He tried to blink, but the call beckoning him from beyond the Gate kept its tight control over his Resonance.
Uh…
A last stretch through the wavering shroud ahead, then the world turning madly about him decided to stop and give him a moment to breathe. He did just that, with a hand over his chest, breath wheezing out his lips. He took another breath, and felt the touch of something soft around his skin.
“What?” Valens gawked at the silken robe whose tails swept the floor around him, covering his frame from tip to toe and leaving only his head out in the open. “This—“
[You have arrived at the Spiritum.]
“I did?”
[The Throne acknowledges your presence.]
[You have been granted entry.]
[Enter, Surgemaster.]
“I think I already did,” Valens muttered against the screen of notifications before his face. “And I think I’ve truly entered this space in body and mind, both.”
He looked down at his silken robe. He was certainly dressed for the occasion. Trouble was, everything around him was mostly covered in fog. It spilled from between the cracks across the cold walls, barely visible in the shroud, and down the long gaps on the roof over his head.
Where am I?
It resembled the hall of a castle long forgotten, and scarcely cared for in what seemed like hundreds of years. Dust sat thickly over the stone ground, fluttering in wisps of ethereal smoke when Valens decided to take a step. The thick shroud allowed him passage, but he could feel its cold touch around the collar of his new robe, trying to seep inside down his back.
He shivered. He tried to reach for the Resonance, but the frequencies were too scattered, as if with the passing of time they died slowly under the empty negligence of the walls around him. Left behind them snippets of their memories, too fleeting for even a Resonant Healer to patch up.
It’s the fog.
It ate the pieces of this castle. Devoured them like worms nibbling at a corpse. Not a fresh one, by the looks of it, but one that had been laid to waste for quite some time. Years, likely, but how long had it been, Valens didn’t have a clue.
“Anyone?” Valens tried, but if there ever was someone in this place, then they had left long ago.
I suppose there’s nothing else I can do but explore. There should be a vault and a throne somewhere.
His Cursed Artifact had been stored inside the Vault of the Surgemasters, so by logic he should have access to this supposed vault. The only problem with that was his limited vision, and the sheer enormity of this castle.
He found an old bench beside a ragged chair under a great crumbling wall, coated with ivy and moss. He frowned down at the pieces of it. He plodded on, from one broken chair to another, bare feet stinging from the odd pebble strewn about the ground, chest heaving with the lack of air inside the place. He only saw one that seemed in a good state, a mighty stone chair whose legs fixed deep into the ground.
Nothing here…
He wandered up and down through parts of the hall, and saw more than a dozen doors locked with chains harder than steel. His spells didn’t work here when he called out to them. His fingers proved painfully weak when he took a chance at the locks. He saw symbols carved upon each of them, written in the ancient language of Magi, the one they called the Shadow’s Tongue in this world. Painted in splendid colors, gleaming fresh against the worn scene they were facing, all nothing but mysterious carvings to Valens’s eyes.
The only constant between the doors were the numbers written beside the symbols. One through nine, and then back from one again. Eighteen in total, Valens counted, which was odd if this was supposed to be a hall.
Eighteen entrances? Where is the throne?
He came across a steep stairway by dumb luck. Tried to work his way up through the steps, but was stopped when he banged his head against an invisible barrier. Someone didn’t want him to move upstairs. Nor did that particular someone want him to explore downstairs since the way down had been barricaded as well.
So I’m stuck with this hall.
And he might as well have been a blind man as the only thing he did since he came here was to slap and wave the fog away so that he could barely see the tips of his feet. It was always there, clinging to him stubbornly, refusing to clear out from the holes across the hall. He finally slumped down when his muscles hurt from the effort.
The air… is too thin.
Who were the Surgemasters anyway? What was the purpose of this building if the maker of it planned to choke the whole space and left anyone who dared to enter inside breathless? Was this all made by them? This great, spectacular, useless castle?
“I need to sit down,” Valens muttered and sat wearily down on the ground like a great construct of human flesh plopping in the middle of the shroud. His back stung, so he decided to relieve himself of the constant effort of keeping his body straight and leaned back.
“Ah!”
He crashed down on his back when the expected wall didn’t hug him back. No, there was nothing behind him, and the bulging part of his skull bashed miserably against the cold stone. He bounced back, wincing to his feet, cursing, waving, and slapping the fog off his body.
“Oh?”
He paused when the fog steered away gently from him, and allowed him vision in the place he just chanced upon by paying a little, but still painful, price.
It was a room, wooden interior soft against the stone passage to his back, carved wide open without the door anywhere in sight. The hinges were still there, as if someone had ripped the thing out of its place and flung it away somewhere Valens couldn’t see. The fog wasn’t too thick here, barely felt around his shoulders, and his lungs breathed greedily the rich air inside.
This… seems like a library.
Dozens of shelves welcomed him with their empty faces, lined in neat rows across the room, with only a single light beckoning him from the back. A round object, from what Valens could see, alive with a grayish hue.
A giant vault with only a single piece inside of it. It’s the Cursed Artifact, I presume?
When he reached it, the sphere-like object’s lights dimmed as though it didn’t feel a need to be seen now that Valens was aware of its existence. It looked like a ball, its crystal black surface smooth with an oily tinge to it.
[The Sphere of Veiled Fates: - Cursed Artifact
Grade: Divine
A cursed obsidian orb veined with silver mist, used as a medium to glimpse the fate of anyone who touches it. While even a fool can see fragments of a person’s immediate path, only one bearing the legacy of the Veiled Mother can unlock its full vision.]
“Interesting,” Valens muttered as he felt the cold surface of the sphere in the palm of his hand. It was small enough that he could carry it in a single hand, but in a way, it looked similar to those useless spheres the so-called fortune tellers used in the Empire to rip off the desperate seeking a way.
I don’t think this one is useless, though.
The question was how he could bring this thing out when he couldn’t even use a Lifesurge in this place, nor did he see any exits. That didn’t align with his first trip to the Spiritum. He had broken off the Weeping Horror’s thread that bound it to the material world with a Lifesurge, but here, he couldn’t even hear most of the frequencies.
Wish, and it shall happen. That’s what Nomad told me back in the day, didn’t he?
Taking another look at the sphere, he closed his eyes and wished with pure determination. He even dreamt of a scenario in which the sphere in his hands disintegrated into thousands of pieces that found their way to the real world and materialized beside his meditating body.
[You have called the Cursed Artifact - The Sphere of Veiled Fates from the Vault of Surgemasters.]
[The call has been accepted.]
“Huh.” Valens opened his eyes. The sphere wasn’t there. Vanished. Gone. “Okay,” he muttered, taking another look at the vault. Nothing. “Great,” he mumbled, eyebrows knitted. “So,” he wondered aloud, this time with more purpose. “Does that work on anything?”
He instantly thought of trying it on the robe even against the fact that he might be left naked in this castle, but for all his wishes and prayers, he couldn’t rid himself of the graceful touch of the robe. It stayed there, pressing softly to his skin, completely unaffected by his prayers.
It doesn’t work on clothes, got it.
Valens shook his head. This whole thing didn’t make any sense to him. He wondered if there was anything he could do to repair this place, or was that something he was supposed to.
What are you supposed to do when you have a broken castle filled with fog beyond the gate that lives inside your chest? And how do you actually go back?
He tried to feel the Lifeward, and the Hexsurge threads as he made his way back to the hall with the broken chairs. He only heard the distant rhythms of them, far away from his hold, but getting clearer with each passing second.
I think I’m going to wait it out. They’re coming back to me. Now if only there was a place I could take a little rest...
His steps dragged him past the crumbling chairs once more, but this time his eyes lingered on the only one that remained standing. It didn’t look any better than the ground, but considering his options, Valens sat without thinking.
He shuffled uncomfortably against its biting touch before finally resting his back against it.
[You are seated upon the Throne of the Surgemasters.]
[The Midnight Assembly has been summoned.]
[You are now present.]
The words dinned in his mind.
What?
Then the fog recoiled.
It peeled backward with a soundless shriek. Stone columns emerged from the shroud, grand and weathered, towering over a circular chamber he hadn’t seen before. Symbols flared to life across the floor in slow-burning white, tracing a massive, sigil-rimmed circle around the Throne.
Valens blinked.
The hall was gone.
No. It was transformed.
Figures emerged from the smoke. Six of them. Cloaked, faceless, wreathed in gray-gold light that bent unnaturally around their silhouettes. None of them moved. None of them spoke. But he felt them, their gazes like needles pinning him in place.
Each of them stood behind a faintly glowing chair, with the rest of the six chairs empty.
One of them spoke.
“Baht? You… have returned?”
Valens froze.
Comments
Myrdin
I wonder if Baht was also from another world
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
BlastYoBoots
I had to do some digging through prior chapters to remind me of other mentions of Baht before that head Bishop brought him up... Baht's cult of healers healing for no charge, searching for nine dungeons, hm? Some numerical and circumstantial lineups there I ought to keep an eye on...
pr0saic
The plot thickens! tftc
James Nagy
See psh those church guys were nuts thinking he WORSHIPPED Baht....
