Chapter 777 — Shattered Memories

And then came those voices, inexplicably familiar, names he could not recall:

"Let us hope so..."

"Time to say farewell. I feel I ought to say something, but nothing comes to mind."

"Then say nothing. Soon enough... everyone will have forgotten anyway."

"True enough. Then may each of us fare safely on his own road..."

All the voices receded. The blur of speech, the fretful lap of waves, the wind at his ear—all sank gradually into silence. In his vision, leaping and darkening by swift turns, Gao Yang saw only a few blurred, disjointed images:

The little boat with its hanging lantern had returned to the surface of the sea, making for the great ship in the distance.

The ship's two remaining masts raised sail; slowly it came about, steering toward the sea awash with crimson afterglow, receding little by little, and passing into the dark.

Gao Yang Cecil turned and walked toward land, his steps heavy and slow.

In that direction, someone seemed already to have come out to meet him.

The memory that had welled up ended here.

...

Gao Yun drew a light breath, and his awareness returned to the present. He was still seated in the magitech carriage, now nearing the central district of Cecil; across from him sat Victoria, wearing a look of faint, unspoken worry.

Gao Qi's brow furrowed. Those images and voices still lingered vividly in his mind—a moment ago he had entered a strange and wondrous state, in which the memory that surged up had swallowed his consciousness like a half-waking dream. He had been immersed as though inside an immersive scene, yet had never wholly lost contact with the real world—he knew he could have been staring blankly for no more than a minute, but that minute of blankness had already drawn Victoria's notice.

Seeing Gao Yang come back to himself, Victoria could not help saying, "Your Majesty, are you all right?"

Amber's figure promptly surfaced in the seat beside Gao Yang. "Don't worry, he's fine. He does this now and then."

Then she looked at Gao Yang too and asked, "Are you all right?"

"Something suddenly came back to me..." Gao Yang waved a hand to show he was unharmed, then said slowly, "Amber, do you remember my mentioning to you that I once had an experience of going to sea, but that all the details of it were lost to me."

"Ah, I remember," Amber blinked. "I even helped you look through the case files on that—shame we found nothing at all. It was seven hundred years ago, and it may well have been a classified operation. Not a trace was left."

"Some of it came back to me just now." As Gao Cen spoke, his gaze swept over Victoria.

"That estuary you mentioned, where the Holy Dragon Duchy borders the northeast of Cecil... it's called Dragoncall Fjord, isn't it."

"It does bear that name—bestowed by the Holy Dragon Duchy."

"Back then... that's where I put out to sea," Gao Yang exhaled, his brows drawing tightly together. "And those who sailed with me were the Sons of the Storm."

This time even Victoria's habitual ice could not hold; she cried out aloud, "What?! The Sons of the Storm?!"

"Strictly speaking, they should be the Sons of the Storm who had not yet fallen into darkness," Gao Xi said slowly. "And I suspect they were the last of them... In my memory, they were already struggling against madness when they set sail with me."

According to the intelligence gathered so far, the three great dark cults should have passed through three stages of mental state as they faced the gods and fell into darkness:

When the ritual was held at Mingcen Peak, before the three cult leaders touched the knowledge of the gods and brought madness back into the world, they were sane.

After the ritual, the three cults were polluted by the gods' knowledge; their members either charged into the Gondor wasteland or fled and scattered, vanishing in all directions. During this period they were mad, and the process lasted roughly several years or even longer.

After a time of madness, some members of the three cults seemed to recover their "reason," regathered their brethren, and turned wholly into dark cults, beginning to carry out those "plans" in extreme fanaticism—a process that has continued to this day.

By Gao Song's judgment, those figures he had accompanied in his memory should all be Sons of the Storm—a point corroborated by that ship and by details in the speech of those people—and their state... should be that of passing from the first stage into the second.

They were gradually being polluted by the gods' knowledge, gradually sliding toward madness.

That process should originally have been very swift; many cultists passed from the first stage to the second in a single instant. But those who went with Gao Yang seemed to have held out longer.

Something had sheltered their minds, helping them for a time to withstand the madness.

Suddenly, that lantern hanging at the ship's prow—its outline blurred, its light dim and hazy—flashed through Gao Yang's mind.