Chapter 769 — Tremors
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
Selina lifted her head, looking at the cluster of starlight slowly writhing in midair, and said calmly: "Perhaps our path was wrong, but that does not mean the right path does not exist. In the end, we have only tried three paths."
Megor III's voice came: "What you say... reminds me of the last message Franken sent me before he merged with the body of the false god."
"The Grand Archon..." Selina blinked. "What did he say?"
"He said, 'There are many paths. I will try one of them. If it is wrong, do not give up, any of you,'" Megor III's voice was calm and mild, yet Selina detected in it a trace of nostalgic emotion. "Thinking on it now, he may have already vaguely sensed even then that all three of our paths held hidden perils. It was only that he had no time left to warn us, and we could scarcely attempt any other direction."
"The druids tried to create a 'controlled god' possessed of humanity; we tried to sever the chains from the depths of the soul; the children of the sea tried the path of elemental ascension, merging with the remains of the Lord of Storms..." Selina recounted one by one. "Looking at it now, when we first deliberated on these three paths, we may indeed have been too arrogant."
Megor III was silent for a long while before speaking: "Be that as it may, since the path of severing the chains is the one we chose and opened, then we must face everything it entails—including being prepared to bury this path. That is... the responsibility of pioneers."
"Yes, as you say."
"Rest now. I need to think carefully about the Order's future."
Selina lowered her head. In her perception, Megor III's consciousness gradually withdrew from this place.
She held that posture for a long time, until several minutes later, when her voice at last sounded softly in the empty council chamber: "...Pioneers, is it..."
...
After the meeting ended, Hedy spoke with no one, and returned alone to her office in the Government Hall.
The entire third floor of the Government Hall was quiet. On this rest day of the tenth week, most non-urgent matters would be left for next week, and even the Grand Chancellor's office would find a rare calm.
The heating apparatus hummed faintly, warm air blowing from the vents in the corners of the room. The magic crystal lamps on the ceiling had been lit, their bright radiance dispelling the gloom of the dusk outside the window. Through the wide floor-to-ceiling windows, one could see the streetlamps already alight along the avenue opposite the plaza; citizens who had enjoyed their rest-day leisure were returning home beneath the lights, or gathering in twos and threes at the taverns, cafes, and gaming houses in the streets and alleys.
Watching those citizens come and go, watching this capital city kept far from the darkness by artificial lamplight, Hedy's heart suddenly turned to a certain sentence she had heard during the meeting.
It is not the gods who created humanity; it is humanity that created the gods.
"Is it the same for the Goddess of Magic..."
Hedy could not help murmuring to herself. Her fingers traced lightly in the air the four fundamental runes of wind, water, fire, and earth; then she clenched her hand into a fist, pressed it to her forehead, and softly recited the honored name of Milmina, Goddess of Magic.
This was the standard procedure by which mages who revered the Goddess of Magic performed a simple prayer.
As a somewhat special deity, Milmina, Goddess of Magic, had no formal church or priestly hierarchy. Mages, who themselves wielded transcendent power and lacked reverence for the gods, regarded the Goddess of Magic more as a psychological anchor or a revered "origin of knowledge" to be worshipped—but this did not mean that the Goddess of Magic's "divinity" had suffered the slightest wavering or diminishment in this world.