The Hundred Reigns

Chapter 94: The Church of the Stars (6)

It was decided that Simon would swear his Templar oath and receive the associated Crestone at the end of the month. Ironically, that would be the same day as when the Goddess’ Judgment was planned to strike Frightwall.

“The trap is set, Your Majesty,” Shabram informed him through telepathy. “We will crush the entire spy ring in one fell swoop.”

“Firewand will take care of Malphas and capture his daughter,” Simon replied mentally. “I want everything settled by the first day of Pluviose.”

“Yes, I have already contacted Miss Kano to potentially replace Lord Patriate. Both parties will no doubt try to push for one of their own loyalists, but I expect them to settle on a neutral individual like her should they fail to reach an agreement.”

“Good.” The discovery of a secret elven spy ring embedded in the imperial power structure should hopefully help delay the civil war. Every day the two parties spent looking inwards was one they wouldn’t waste on a pointless conflict. “Once we have crippled the Oracle’s organization, your next priorities will be to purge us of the Cobweb… and help me investigate Church-related matters.”

That slightly surprised Shabram. “Has something changed?”

“I have received some troubling information, and I am not sure what to make of it for now. I will keep you informed.”

The truth was that Simon was starting to alter his plans for this reign. His priority remained to learn more about time-travel, Visionaries, and how they were connected. However, the discovery of the abyssal portal in the Lighthouse’s basement and the absence of a miasma crystal in what should have been a demonbarrow’s heart had made him consider investigating other leads.

The way the High Confessor felt familiar to his Overlord Class also bothered Simon. He didn’t think Mastemo was a Zodiac Fiend host—someone would have no doubt noticed in an organization full of diviners and Templars, not to mention that he lacked the same oppressive aura of darkness as the Minotaur and the Twin-Tailed Fish—but he couldn’t exclude anything at this point in time. Balzam’s own notes marked Mastemo as a potential suspect for some of his unknown assassinations. He was dangerous, at the very least.

Finding what happened to the local miasma crystal had become a secondary priority. Simon hadn’t heard of a mass breakout of demons at the Lighthouse back when he was casting the Seasonal Key ritual, so he was confident that the Church’s wards at least resisted the black comet’s arrival. He would be sure to monitor the gate closely this reign.

Either way, Mastemo had agreed to fulfill his promise to Eole and invited her and Simon to a museum on floor sixty-four. He greeted them there, in a large gallery full of curios and objects on display behind tasteful vitrines, from Confessor marble busts to shifter statues and porcelain dishes.

“Welcome, Eole,” Mastemo said warmly, two Templar guards following along. “I hope you found our stay among us enjoyable.”

“It was fine,” Eole replied, albeit a bit defensively. Simon could tell she didn’t entirely trust the High Confessor. “What is this place?”

“This is one of the floors where the Church displays gifts and cultural artifacts it has gathered across the centuries. I dare say the only collection that matches our own is that of the Overlord himself.” Mastemo invited them to walk after him. “This wing contains objects from Telluria.”

Eole scowled. “Were they confiscated from my people?”

“Some were,” Mastemo replied honestly. If he took offense at Eole’s behavior, he didn’t show it. “Others, particularly those that matter to the kish, were recovered from archeological digs during the conquest of Telluria.”

He led them towards an exposition hall holding ancient items, such as pieces of a stone pillar, shattered ceramic, and defaced statues centuries old. The greatest and most important piece was an enormous tablet nine-feet wide and tall, which Simon suspected to have once belonged to some temple wall. It showed carvings of winged people bowing to one of their own and a woman with twin-finned tails. Eole scowled upon seeing the inscriptions, all written in the kish language.

“This…” Eole squinted in fascination at the tablet. “Where did you find this?”

“In the ruins of a long-buried kish outpost, south of Telluria,” Mastemo explained. “I had commissioned archeological digs based on rumors of the great sin of the kish people in the aftermath of His Majesty’s conquest of Telluria, but this was the first evidence we could find.”

Eole paled as she read the tablet, and Simon only had to read to understand why.

—and so the king lay with the demon queen, giving her his soul in return for her love. His scaled bride she became, and three gifts she bestowed upon the kish clan for her dowry: wings, so that they may look down upon all creatures of the earth; a long life, so they would not know the ravages of time; and a voice that could bind all the beasts of the world to their will. Then the king had her curse all the clans that once opposed them, forcing upon them fur and claws.

“Beasts they were,” said the demon queen. “Beasts they shall remain.”

And the kish people rejoiced, resolving to raise a capital upon the site of their rulers’ union, built on the back and toil of slaves. For thirteen years the king and queen ruled, casting the land into terror and shadows, but though the demon granted her husband wings and a crown, she could not change human appetites. He took a liking to a slave girl and bestowed his seed upon her womb, for which his wife punished him by trapping him in eternal ice, so that his weeping may echo into eternity. She would have turned on the kish people in her fury, had the princes and princesses not joined their songs together to lull her to sleep. The demon’s gift was turned her against her, and her sleeping corpse entombed—

The text stopped there due to the damage time did to the tablet, but pictures illustrated the events depicted well enough: the kish gathering to sing the demon queen to sleep beneath their old palace, not knowing what disaster would befall their land once she awakened.

Mastemo was right, the Twin-Tailed Fish of the Zodiac Fiends had been involved in the creation of the shifters.

She tried to turn me into some sort of dragon before Unyielding Essence cancelled the effect, Simon recalled. That demon can forcefully polymorph others… and control them.

This had to be the reason why Vouivre sought to secure that particular Zodiac Fiend. She could use it to enslave the shifters into an army, then turn captured humans into more of them. No wonder she thrived in any reign where she could get her hands on Eole.

“This cannot be…” Eole said, her voice weaker, her hand covering her mouth. “This… I cannot believe it.”

“I understand the truth may seem harsh to you, child, but unfortunately, I have more proof,” Mastemo said. “Come with me.”

The High Confessor led them to an elevator and then to a floor holding one of the Lighthouse’s hospices. The chamber they walked into was filled with rows of white-sheeted beds lining the walls. Not even the wind flowing through the open windows could fully wash away the stench of alchemical brews and sickness pervading the area. Nuns catered to the needs of dozens of sick people, most of them humans, by feeding them alchemical brews or casting healing spells on them.

There was a small anomaly among the sick: a small shifter child no older than five, with lion ears, a tail, and a growing mane. The elf librarian Izulon mixed fluid-filled beakers and other substances on a worktable.

“Your Excellency,” Izulon said with a bow. “A new batch of the Joining Elixir is ready.”

“Good.” Mastemo turned to the shifter child and put a hand on his head. “Are you ready for your big day, my boy?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” the child replied meekly, a smile forming on his lips once he spotted Eole while light filled up his eyes. “Is this the angel?”

“Lady Eole is a guest, who will witness your courage today,” Mastemo replied before switching to Elvish for Eole’s sake. “Lyon’s parents entrusted him to the Church’s care soon after he was born. He has served faithfully since, and volunteered to participate in the development of a cure.”

Eole bit her lip. “A cure for what?”

“Beastmanhood.” Mastemo switched to the common tongue as Izulon brought the boy a small bottle of a scarlet elixir Simon did not recognize. “You must drink to the very last drop, Lyon. Only then will you truly join us.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Lyon gathered his breath and then brought the potion to his lips, dutifully drinking it all.

“Painlessness,” Mastemo cast on the boy, no doubt to spare him whatever side effects the medicine might cause.

The potion’s purpose became clear the moment the boy finished it.

Simon and Eole watched on in amazement as the child’s body underwent a quick and radical transformation. His claws receded into nails; his tail vanished; and his feline ears grew rounded. By the end, the young shifter had become indistinguishable from any human child.

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“How are you feeling, my boy?” Mastemo asked Lyon.

“I do not hear you well, Your Excellency,” the child replied with a slight frown. “The smells… they are all gone…”

“Do not worry, Lyon. Whatever gifts your curse endowed you with pale before the burden you have finally shed today.”

“A curse?” Simon quickly put two and two together, his gaze settling on the empty bottle. “This elixir exorcizes the shifter curse?”

“Indeed,” Mastemo replied as he switched back to Elvish for Eole’s sake. “As you can see, we are making headway into undoing the great sin of the kish.”

“You… can turn shifters into humans?” Eole repeated, her skin pale, her voice shaken by what she had seen.

“Only children for now,” Mastemo conceded. “Their bodies can still shed the curse and recover from it. Our tests on adults have instead resulted in… worrying side effects.”

“Side effects?” A chill traveled down Simon’s spine as the truth dawned upon him. “Like uncontrollable rage?”

“Something like that, yes.” Mastemo studied Simon for a moment before reassuring Eole. “But I assure you we are making progress.”

Enough to turn it into a devastating plague, Simon guessed. Once the Church Party started losing ground in the north, this miraculous elixir would be turned into a devastating bioweapon. Was that always their plan? To exterminate shifters with it? Or the result of a botched attempt at turning them all human at once?

Moreover, this whole scenario was far too… fortuitous. What were the odds that one of Mastemo’s most devout shifter children was due to be ‘cured’ on the day of Eole’s visit? It all felt orchestrated for some grander purpose.

Eole’s shock swiftly turned to disgust and anger. “You plan to wipe my people’s culture off the map!”

“What culture?” Mastemo looked down on Eole, her face reflecting on his mirror mask. “A curse that transformed their ancestors into demonic slaves? A beastly countenance that allows your clan to take away their free will on a whim?”

“No, that’s…” his words took the wind out of Eole’s sail. “I…”

“Your Excellency,” Simon spoke up, choosing his words wisely so that he could help his friend without alienating the High Confessor. “Eole is not responsible for whatever her ancestors did.”

“No, of course not… but if she feels a duty towards her people, then surely she must see the righteousness of our mission,” Mastemo argued with honeyed words. “It is the will of the Light that all tribes be united as one. Once beastmen and humans become one people, then surely the evils of slavery and discrimination will die out.”

Simon expected Eole to correct him by calling her kin ‘shifters,’ but her scowl deepened instead, a forlorn look of doubt and remorse obscuring her face. Simon struggled to keep silent at the obvious attempt at manipulation.

“The beastmen’s curse started with the kish, Eole,” Mastemo said, extending a hand towards her. “With your assistance, we could refine our elixir and remove the side effects. We could find the resting place of that demon and undo the cur–”

Simon couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. “Your Excellency, with all due respect, I have had visions of Eole,” he said, earning himself the High Confessor’s full attention. “If she returns to Telluria, she will fall into the hands of the warlord known as Vouivre, who will then use her to unleash a calamity upon us all.”

Mastemo’s head turned to look at him. “Have you dreamed of it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must understand these visions will come to pass whether you try to stop or not, for it is the will of the Light.”

“Still, I would rather avoid this outcome if possible, Your Excellency,” Simon insisted. “Even should it happen, then I will know I have done all I could to prevent a tragedy.”

“A most noble desire, if naive,” Mastemo replied with a shrug. “Either way, Eole, I promised the truth and delivered it. Whatever you choose next will be your decision alone.”

Eole failed to answer him. It hurt Simon to see her like this, so full of doubt and unease rather than confidence. The possibility that her people had indeed created the very shifters she sought to help for the purpose of enslaving them shook her to her core, as was the possibility that her entire culture was little more than a curse that could be lifted through magic.

“Eole–” he said, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

“I need to think, Simon,” Eole replied, arms crossed. “I… need to think.”

Although no one could see anything past the High Confessor’s mask, Simon could have sworn he seemed… pleased.

Eole was too shaken to see the strings, but Simon saw them clearly. The High Confessor had quickly identified her weaknesses, then engineered this scenario to strike at them.

He needs her, Simon realized, his jaw clenching in annoyance. He was planning to guilt trip Eole from the start. He wields the truth as a weapon.

That alone would have further fueled Simon’s distrust of the High Confessor, but another detail bothered him. The Church had apparently been sponsoring archeological digs to learn more about the Kish Empire. Simon couldn’t fathom why they would take interest in a nation that had collapsed long before they arrived… unless they had been interested in finding the source of the shifter tribe and its demonic origins.

Simon, the Cobweb, and Vouivre weren’t the only parties looking for the Zodiac Fiends.

Eole didn’t say much in the days that preceded Simon’s Templar swearing in ceremony. She would spend her time sitting out on the balcony, playing music to the moon and sun while looking forlorn at the sky. Did she hope to see her people’s sanctuary flying over the clouds? Or to receive an answer to her own doubts? Either way, she politely ignored Meredith and Leonard’s attempts at reaching out as well, and Simon convinced them the best thing they could do for now was to give her some space. She had much to process.

The fateful day finally arrived, with Simon being summoned at dawn to the second most elevated floor in the entire Lighthouse. The ceremony was supposed to be restricted only to Templars and Confessors, but Mastemo agreed to allow Simon’s retainers to witness it.

The Malphases should confront Belzemine in the evening, he thought as he and his party ascended floor after floor on the elevator. He had come dressed in the white, sun-bearing plate armor of the Templar Order. This should buy me a few more months of peace in the forbidden archives.

“How does such a tall tower not collapse on itself?” Leonard wondered as they continued their ascent. “I feel the very air thinning in my mouth.”

“Powerful spells linked to the water megalith hold the Lighthouse in place,” Meredith explained. “So long as it remains intact, so will the tower. Its energies are what power this very elevator.”

Would Abraxas’ arrival disrupt that equilibrium? Simon wondered if the megalith would be enough to suppress the vast abyssal energies sure to awaken with the black comet.

“After today, I will renounce all my possessions and family name,” Simon warned Leonard and Meredith. “The two of you will no longer be my retainers. What will you do then?”

“I have discussed it at length with Leonard,” Meredith said. “We will keep serving you for now.”

“I will have to send you away,” Simon countered.

Leonard smiled back at him. “Your Highness’ wishes are his own, but our orders to serve you came from His Majesty Balzam Magnos himself. We will need to continue with our mission until our orders change.”

Simon smiled in amusement at the irony of it all. “The High Confessor might take offense at that.”

“Would he?” Leonard gave him a knowing look. “On the contrary, I suspect he would not protest too much. He clearly has plans for Your Highness, and he would rather see you with friends than not.”

He’s not wrong, Simon thought. Mastemo had given him a lot of leeway so far, likely to help him feel valued and welcomed into the Church. Will that change once I pronounce my vows?

Either way, the elevator slowly stopped and opened up into the most splendid room Simon had ever seen.

A vast, gilded temple rising to a looming length opened up before them. Golden pillars supported a gemstone-encrusted ceiling mimicking the constellations above their heads, while the lack of walls caused the wind from cloudless skies to blow inside the sanctum; one could see the sea on one side and the Valendre plains on the other. Great bonfires in bronze bowls lined along great marble footsteps kept the air warm, leading the way to an enormous altar holding the biggest manalith Simon had ever seen. Blue as a sapphire and dizzying in size, the water megalith shone brightly like a star illuminating the world. The raw mana it exuded was visible to the naked eye in the air, the same way the Darkwood’s miasma formed an intoxicating cloud over the land. Water flowed out from its base into a fountain at the base of the altar and into reservoirs that helped fueled the lighthouse’s elevators through hydraulic power.

“Such a beautiful shine…” Eole muttered in awe. The mere shine of the megalith’s natural beauty partially lifted her spirit.

As for Simon, he felt sick just being there. The Overlord Class demanded that he either leave or befoul this crystal, to cast this land into darkness rather than light. This was a moment of truth.

Nonetheless, Simon hid his unease and forced himself to smile as trumpeters heralded his arrival. His retainers walked away to the side to watch from afar while he stepped forward, climbing the stairs. The Confessors, Lady Beatrice, and Mastemo himself welcomed him at the top.

Having memorized the procedure by heart, Simon knelt in front of the High Confessor. “On this altar you offer yourself to the Light, highest of graces, holiest of powers,” Mastemo said, his staff thumping the ground. “What do you offer?”

“I swear my sword to the Light,” Simon said, hands joined in prayer. “I offer my service until the fading embers of my days to the holiest of graces, and to the most noble order of the Confessors. I shall protect the faithful and drive away the Dark in the prophetess’ name. I give away my name, lands, and possessions, for I shall own nothing other than what the Light has given me. I pledge my life, my strength, and my honor to the eternal Light.”

“Then let the megaliths be witness to your resolve,” Mastemo said upon inviting him to rise up again. “Offer thy soul and service to the waterstone, so that your past sins may be washed away.”

Here’s the moment of truth, Simon thought as he pressed his hand against the megalith. He held his breath as the crystal rippled with warmth at his contact. The mana in the air rippled, and he sensed an otherworldly spiritual presence weighing on him, touching his soul.

“I swear,” Simon said.

The megalith briefly brightened in waves of radiance, like a pond’s surface undulating when disturbed. The presence in the air grew heavier, binding him the same way the White Unicorn’s contract had tried to. The flashes of light accelerated, the crystal letting out a noise that sounded like half a cry and half a song.

It can tell something is not right, Simon thought. He couldn’t be sure whether the megalith sensed the fact that his Treacherous Title would let him violate the oath without issue, or that he hid darkness beneath false light. Come on, nothing to see here. Look at my false stats and see what your followers do.

In the end, not even the purest light could pierce the Overlord’s shroud of darkness. The megalith calmed down, having failed to see past Anathemic Secrecy.

“The Light has accepted your vow, and welcomed you into its service!” Mastemo declared with zeal and pride. Lady Beatrice stepped forward, her hands holding a familiar Crestone. “Now don its gift, and be reborn as a son of the Templar Order!”

Simon had put on the Templar Class outfit once before, but when he seized the Crestone and activated it, he could feel his true self lurking beneath the surface. The Overlord within him took dark joy in watching the acclaims of the priests and templars. All of them had sworn to challenge the Dark, and yet they now celebrated its champion infiltrating their halls. A thrill of experience coursed through Simon’s body, followed by a familiar notification.

Level 49 Overlord Perk: Devour Crestone IV (Active): You may consume a Crestone to absorb a Perk you have unlocked with its associated Class. The Devour Crestone IV Perk then permanently turns into the newly absorbed Perk.

That left him with two spots to fill.

“Now that you are one with the Light,” Mastemo said behind him, his voice calm and yet eager, “Our true work can begin.”

And as he said those words, a wayward thought crossed Simon’s mind.

How would it feel to devour the Cleric Crestone?