Mark of the Fool 8: A Progression Fantasy Epic, page 7
Merzhin threw his hands up. “So then why craft a construct to torture us after doing so much good? There is no sense to it! Why would he create a wonderful kingdom for his people, then punish them eternally with a spawning golem that endlessly brings nothing but death!”
“In times of fear, people call on and cling to their faith, right?” Theresa pointed out. “Maybe he wanted us to be always praying to him.”
“Perhaps, but why?” Merzhin demanded. “He had ascended to full godhood. He had an entire nation that loved him. Why go to all the trouble of building a golem that generates fear instead of continuing to perform miracles to help us? He had our love! He still has it! Why would he need our fear?”
“Many gods control their people through fear,” Watcher Hill pointed out. “Maybe he wanted both.”
“Then why not just be a tyrant when he first began shaping our kingdom with his own two hands?” Merzhin argued. “He could have made himself into a divine warlord! He could have let those who were bloodthirsty love him, and all the rest fear him!”
“Maybe he wanted to act the hero, while letting the Ravener play the villain,” Khalik suggested.
“Thameland had enemies that he’d defeated before. He was already steeped in divine power; if deities could expand their strength so easily by conjuring their own nemeses to defeat, wouldn’t other gods everywhere do that? Wouldn’t that be a constant problem in other parts of the world? And besides—”
Again, Merzhin gestured down the passage. “—what about those murals? Why focus so much on the Heroes’ triumphs and his own in helping Thameland. If the snail-like creature in one of those murals upstairs was the Ravener, then why did it look so different?”
Alex recalled one of the murals in the stairway leading to Uldar’s throne room.
Most of the murals had depicted the god being worshipped or the Heroes fighting the Ravener. In one, however, Uldar had faced a creature twice his height; the thing had looked monstrous, snail-like, with a familiar orb serving as its shell.
That shell had looked much like the Ravener, and where a snail’s head would have been was instead a humanoid shape, reaching toward Uldar with a mass of arms that terminated in stingers. Beneath bulging eyes, its lamprey-like mouth had been wide open, as though screaming and lunging at Uldar. The god gazed had upon it, looking regal and unyielding.
“Its shell looks the way the Ravener does in modern times,” Merzhin continued, "but everything else is different. And then there’s this Mark of the General.”
He looked around at everyone. “And what about the blank space along the stairs? What about his room; his most private retreat. Think about what he chose to surround himself with? Images of humans. Not just him helping humans, but them helping themselves, and smiling, and partaking in joy. What’s clear to me is that Uldar was kind. His actions to Thameland were benevolent.”
Merzhin snapped his fingers. “So what could change such kindness, such generosity? Why did he change? What led him down such a cruel path? Who was his guest? Why is he dead and just as importantly… what killed him?”
Silence followed.
Alex spoke first. “You’re right. I don’t know if he was fully evil—though his actions seem to be—but I do know that we don’t have the full story yet. There’s nothing we’ve uncovered that really explains anything about his motives. So far, we have part of the story, but we’re missing key pieces. We need to find out what those are.”
He looked down at the notebook dedicated to creating the Ravener. “But we’ve already gained something valuable.” His finger tapped the cover. “These formulas are beyond advanced, and it’s going to take time and a bunch of alchemists for us to get an idea about how they work. We’ll need Professor Jules and probably the entire alchemy team for that.”
“An’ why d’ya want t’figure out how they work?” Cedric asked.
“Because, in the end, Uldar’s motives are important. Who he was is important. That’ll help us figure out why this cycle exists.” Alex took a deep breath. “We’ll keep looking around and see if we can dig out any secrets we might have missed, but I’ll tell you something we’ve already learned: the Ravener regenerates. Every hundred years, it comes back, yet no one has ever figured out why or how.”
He tapped the book. “But if we can understand how it was made, we can understand how it can be unmade.”
His fingers tightened on the book’s leather spine. “If we can understand how it can be unmade, then we can kill it for good this time. No more regeneration. No more cycles. If we do this right, the Ravener’s gone forever. Now, let’s finish exploring the lab then take a look at that armoury. Uldar set this thing on us, either on purpose or by accident. The least he can do is provide us with some damn weapons to put it down.”
Chapter 9
The Call of the North
‘Damn Uldar to every hell and back!’ Alex thought.
Why would he design and make something like the Ravener? Why? The young wizard now had another shocking revelation about the god to consider, another revelation that was as far from good as one could get. His thoughts were reeling. He knew that even though Uldar was dead, he was still the architect behind Thameland being destroyed, the reason why people fled their homes, the reason why those who stayed behind to fight were dying. The attacks on his homeland were repeated every hundred years because of Uldar’s Ravener project, its spawn, and its dungeon cores. Everything was right there in his notebook, in his own laboratory, in his own sanctum. It all seemed so sinister, that Alex felt sick remembering that, not so long ago, he used to pray to him.
Finding the notebook was helpful in a lot of ways, though. Certain things were settled in his mind. He understood why Uldar’s followers were the only people who could control dungeon cores, why the Ravener only existed in Thameland, and why it only attacked his realm.
He also understood why the god hadn’t been seen fighting alongside his people for thousands of years. Him being dead explained that.
In the end, though—for every question the revelation answered—it spawned more.
Why had Uldar made the Ravener? Had he come to hate his people? Was he trying to keep them terrified? Did he want to strengthen Thameish faith, or shatter it?
All of those questions swirled in Alex’s mind, begging for answers.
But it was the answer to just one question that truly mattered: how to destroy his creation.
And if they could decode the formulae Uldar left behind, it would give them the most important answer of all.
The Heroes looked at the book with determination burning in their eyes.
“Let’s go get us some weapons,” Cedric said, cracking his neck.
The team went forward, heading for the armoury as Isolde moved closer to Alex. “I remembered that you said the Traveller’s device could be used for translation,” she whispered. “Could it not translate Uldar’s notes?”
“Unfortunately, not.” He shook his head. “The problem isn’t that his notes are in another language; it’s that I can’t understand some of the formulae he used, it seems he sometimes even made up his own terminology.”
Alex turned the book toward her. “Look at this: he pretty much discovered a lot of alchemy future generations would go on to discover long after him, which they did. But he came at alchemy from different perspectives and used different terms. There’s sections in here where I think he just used divinity, which makes things even more complicated than just translating some alchemy terms.”
“I see,” Isolde said. “What do you think we should do now?”
“I’m thinking about that,” Alex said. “Let’s talk about plans once we raid his armoury.”
The second door at the end of the hall was—indeed—Uldar’s armoury.
And the god had been well-equipped.
The room wasn’t overly large, but it contained weapons and armour that blazed with both mana and divinity. Though the designs were archaic—there was no full plate armour to be seen anywhere, or even anything as advanced as a crossbow—their inner magics would have more than made up for it.
On one wall, a bow carved from the bones of some ancient beast was displayed. Its frame was as thick around as a grown man’s forearm, and strung with what looked to be preserved fibres tightly woven together.
Hart took it down—his eyes alight—and tried to draw the string back. It wouldn’t budge. He tried again, clenching his teeth and bearing down until the string inched back a little. His arm was shaking from the effort as his face turned red.
“Damn,” he exhaled loudly, releasing the string. “That bastard was strong. I’ll need to build up to this.”
“Aye, he was a big’un too.” Cedric picked up some chainmail, which—on the Chosen—would have looked more like a mid-length dress. “We can still make som’ o’this work.”
Drestra’s interest was on a line of heavy daggers displayed in the centre of a wall, each was carved from the tusks of varied beasts. Nearby, axes forged of iron were hanging beside long spears and rune-inscribed clubs.
All in all, it wasn’t an armoury that was set up to equip an army.
It was one meant to equip a single god for battle, leaving him with plenty of choice when it came to crushing his enemies.
Alex admired the weapons, knowing that thanks to Uldar, the Mark would punish him the instant he raised one. He couldn’t use them, not yet, at least, which made knowing that the god made the Ravener all the more infuriating.
He stood among his companions, watching them catalogue Uldar’s armoury, his mind returning to the Mark of the General.
Nothing they’d found so far explained anything about it.
What were its powers?
What were its limits?
Did it have limits?
Had Kelda come close to finding it again?
The Fool of Hannah’s time had destroyed her soul trying to revert her Mark to its original form, which probably meant the Mark of the General. The only mark, as far as they could tell, that Uldar had obliterated then replaced with another one, one that was altered and weakened in key ways.
In the two years since he’d been marked as the Fool, Alex managed to find ways around it when he could. He’d accomplished a lot, but it still limited him.
He watched Hart lifting an immense sword—one even larger than his own blade, which was crafted from a Hive queen’s claw—down off the wall. Khalik was testing a short-sword, swinging it through the air, while Isolde examined a wooden staff.
“This staff is infused with some rather deadly battlemagic,” she murmured.
Deadly battlemagic.
Alex frowned. How much would he be capable of if he could use spells properly, especially spells that could destroy his enemies? He thought back to the battle against the First Apostle and the servants of the secret church.
His jaw tightened.
‘I wasn’t useless in that fight, but how much more could I have done if I was able to just fireball those priests’ formation?’ He flexed his arms. ‘That Third Apostle wasn’t just a deadly mage—he also wielded powerful divinity—but I bet I could’ve cracked his skull with one good punch. I built my body up so my strength’s far beyond human limits… yet I can’t even use it like I want to. I’ve got magic that can help my friends, but I’m limited in what I can do with it.’
His fingers squeezed Uldar’s notebook. ‘The Ravener’s been escalating lately; sending out monsters no one’s ever seen before. It’s working with Uldar’s hidden church, playing a deadlier game, and I can’t even play by the same rules.’
He looked at Theresa and Brutus.
The huntress was examining another chain shirt, testing the strength of its silvered links as they glinted in the white light. Brutus watched her.
Alex slowly shook his head.
‘If that First Apostle had attacked her, could I have stopped him? He tore through my summoned monsters like nothing, and he fought the Heroes to a damn standstill! Can I honestly say I could have stopped him if he’d tried to kill Theresa?’ Fear spread through his chest like water freezing. ‘No. I couldn’t. When I tore his arm off, one second, I’m upright; the next, I’m on the ground weeping blood. If it hadn’t been for Carey and Hannah, I’d be dead. That fight alone shows how much tougher our battles are becoming.’
He touched his shoulder and nodded, knowing what his next move had to be.
“Make ready, people,” Watcher Hill said. “Pack up. We’ll make one more sweep of the sanctum before we leave. A squad will stay behind to secure the entrance, and the rest of us will return to the Research Castle. There’s obviously a lot to discuss, a lot to plan, and a lot to report.”
“Aye,” Cedric said. “We gots t’be thinkin’ about what we’ll be needin’ t’do next. I say we hunt them secretive bastards down. They’ve been hidin’ away like rats fr’way too long as it is. I think it’s time t’expose ’em t’the light. We don’t need ’em comin’ outta the woodwork an’ surprisin’ us.”
“I agree,” Hart said.
“I’m not sure if we can hunt them down by ourselves,” Drestra’s voice crackled. “The Ravener seems to be getting more aggressive; the four of us should deal with Ravener-spawn while our Generasi friends figure out how to kill Uldar’s filthy black orb once and for all.”
“That’s true.” Hart swung one of Uldar’s axes through the air. “There’s something else our friends from the south need to do too.”
“An’ what’s that?” Cedric asked.
“Find the Ravener.” Hart’s knuckles cracked. “Every cycle ends with the Heroes finding it and destroying it; if we’re going to break it so badly it never comes back, we’ve got to find it first.”
“True,” Drestra hissed. “It always appears somewhere different every single cycle. It won’t be easy to find.”
“We will need all of our resources,” Merzhin said, looking at Alex. “Which brings us to a point that I think we should deal with now, rather than later: will you be with us in our quest? Five Heroes will be needed and…”
His eyes turned to Claygon, the golem’s war-spear, then Alex’s staff.
“…you’ve obviously gathered powerful resources. I think you will be an asset at our side.”
“I can’t come with you,” Alex said. “Not yet.”
“Yeah, Alex has classes, y’know,” Thundar said, eyeing a heavy shield on Uldar’s wall.
“Classes? You would truly choose school over taking on the great burden that lays upon us? I do not know why you ran from your duties in the beginning, but you don’t seem to be the selfish type,” Merzhin acknowledged with no hint of insincerity in his tone.
“Classes teach me magic. Magic helps me get stronger.” Alex’s voice was granite. “But it’s not my classwork that I’m thinking about. There’s something else I’ve got to do. Something urgent.”
The room grew quiet at his words, and his teammates faced him.
“What do you mean?” Theresa asked. “Do you mean researching Uldar’s notes?”
“That too.” Alex lifted the book. “But, I think I have a lead on the General. I need to follow it.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean you have a lead on the Mark of the General?” Merzhin asked.
Alex gave him a look that seemed to pierce him to the core. “You’re asking me an important question, so before we go any further, I have one for you. Are you with us?”
The Saint frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean just that. Listen, what we’re about to do? What we’ve already done?” He gestured around the armoury. “No one’s ever done in the entire history of Thameland. We’re cleaning out Uldar’s armoury and we’ll be leaving people behind to dig through the rest of the sanctum. Every nook and cranny. Then there’s the Ravener. There’s a chance that destroying it for all time means going against Uldar’s wishes.”
Merzhin fell silent, his eyes looking down.
“If we’re going to do this,” Alex said, “any of it, we need to know that you’re on our side, fully on our side, which means no joining the First Apostle or—”
“I would never do that!” Merzhin snapped, sounding offended. “Not after what that monster has done! He is perverting Uldar’s will!”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t,” Alex countered. “We won’t know for sure until we find out why Uldar made the Ravener, if we even can. And it’s not only him: you’ll have to keep this information from the rest of the church. We’ll need to move quickly and decisively, and we don’t know who in the church could be working with its secret arm.”
“Aye, an’ we also gots no clue what’ll happen if them other priests find out Uldar’s dead,” Cedric said. “I can’t believe I’m the one sayin’ this, but we gotta hold things t’ourselves ’til we figure out what in all hells we’re gonna do.”
“If the church finds out,” Alex continued, “it could send Thameland into a civil war before we even get the chance to stop the Ravener. We need to plan, and we can’t risk those plans leaking to enemies, or possible enemies. So. Are you with us… or not?”
Not a sound was heard as everyone watched the Saint of Uldar.
Looking even smaller as he shifted from one foot to the other, Merzhin glanced skyward, muttering beneath his breath in prayer. At last, he answered, “Uldar forgive me, but I am with you. I can’t be sure of what Uldar would want. I’m not really sure of much anymore. But one thing I do know for certain is that the Ravener is killing Thameish people. Uldar’s people. It must be stopped forever, and those who caused Carey’s death must be brought low. I don’t know what we will do with what we’ve learned here, but, above all else, the Ravener and its cycles must end forever. So in this, I am with you.”
Alex watched Merzhin closely, studying his body language for the slightest whisper of a lie.
He found none and sighed with relief, nodding to the others.
“Alright, so now that’s settled, here’s my plan. First, I think what’s been said here is true: we need to put our focus on killing the Ravener for good, and we can assume it’s going to fight back with everything it’s got. Things have gotten bad, and they’ll be worse before the end. Which means we need a lot of two things: knowledge and power.”
