Chapter 632 — Divine Calamity
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
For the first time, the man-made god opened its eyes.
They were eyes beyond the power of words to describe—limpid as crystal, with countless gleams of light drawn inward and held there, as though the utmost of beauty and purity had been distilled into those enormous eyes. Yet at that moment they held no emotion at all—they simply watched, quietly, fixed on the mortal who had floated before it and boldly hurled its challenge. In that gaze there was no hostility, no friendliness—not even the faintest spark of curiosity or concern.
Beiyila felt a faint stinging in both her eyes and her mind. She had not met the god's gaze, yet merely seeing those eyes from a distance was enough to make her spirit reel under the impact. She did not look away. Instead, as though in deliberate defiance, she fixed her eyes on everything about to unfold—and no one among the black-robed priests standing on the floating isle looked away either.
High Hierarch Pingxi met the god's eyes, then stepped forward, his body slowly wreathed in a layer of phantom radiance, as though he had already merged into the holy glow surrounding the man-made god.
The ultimate act of defiance—the most absolute negation and opposition to a god—and its final step was this: to infuse the god with humanity, and thereby erase its divinity.
Humanity would be freed from the shackles forged by divinity and given the right to develop freely, and a god standing on the side of humanity would be born in this rite—becoming the first weapon of mortals against the gods.
The High Hierarch's body slowly dissolved into the light; a hazy radiance sank slowly into the man-made god's brow. Beiyila felt blood begin to seep from the corners of her eyes, but she still stared without blinking at all of it, at the rite as it reached its final step.
The Dark Hierarchs bowed their heads and chanted an ancient prayer in unison—a prayer once used to extol the supreme might of Amorn, God of Nature. But now it was laden with endless gloom and oppression, like a funeral dirge, proclaiming that one of the gods' divine thrones would come to its final end this day.
All things perish, and so do the gods—in this world where none can escape extinction, the druid priests who had fallen into darkness had long since ceased to hope for any eternal or supreme power. They had cast off their reverence for the gods, and their longing for that throne had ended with it. They did not mean to forge a god, nor to make themselves into gods—their true aim was to make a god into a human.
Beiyila's hand brushed lightly across the coarse cover of the Book of Ultimates, and she said softly, "The throne of the God of Nature will become history. Whatever corner the Great Stag Amorn fell in, whatever means the gods use to revive themselves in every cycle—from this day on, at least this throne will no longer exist…"
At last the boundless radiance in midair merged completely into the man-made god's body. A low breath broke the silence over the ritual site; Beiyila started from her reverie and lifted her head, and with joy and anticipation saw that the man-made god was slowly closing its eyes.
After a moment of calm, those eyes finally began to open again.
Within them was nothing but boundless chaos and madness.
……
A hazy, vast magical barrier encircled the borders of the former Empire, and within it the wasteland was as it had always been.
Dark, heavy clouds pressed down as though weighted with lead, while lawless winds howled in every direction. Smoke and dust whirled and veiled the sky, and bolts of energy-lightning darted between the clouds and the dust storms, producing ceaseless low rumbles and brilliant flashes.
In this "energy storm," so common on the wasteland, the Stalker that had become a tree shifted its tangled roots; the whole forest crept and crawled its way up a hill covered in black crystalline stone.