Fortress Al-Mir

“Lady Shadows,” Arkk said, kneeling in front of the statue of the Cloak of Shadows. “In times past, your followers laid many offerings at your altars.”

Arkk produced a small bowl of fruit. Dried preserves left over from the long winter. It was a strange offering, in his eyes. He expected an obsidian dagger, one of those bolts of shadowy cloth, or even something made in the Shadow Forge. But, after a consultation with the Protector, Arkk had settled on a few more mundane items. Fruit, back in the day, was commonly thought of as the favorite food of the Cloak of Shadows. Those who made proper pious offerings of fresh fruit were often seen experiencing fortune and good luck in their day-to-day lives.

The Cloak of Shadows wasn’t the god of luck. That concept belonged to the Fickle Wheel. Nonetheless, Arkk decided fruit was as good a start as any to his attempts this evening. Even if he wasn’t quite sure how a god would eat a bowl of fruit. Xel’atriss had been so massive that an apple would have been akin to a grain of sand on her tongue.

“Today, I offer you this bowl of fruit.” Because of the recent winter, it wasn’t fresh. Hopefully, that wouldn’t matter. “And I offer my appreciation for allowing me the use of your tools, your Shadow Forge, and the Protector.”

Unlike many of his other planned attempts, Arkk wouldn’t ask anything of the Lady Shadows. He felt like he had gotten enough out of the Underworld. If the Cloak of Shadows wanted to give him more as additional thanks for this offering, he wasn’t going to refuse, but he wasn’t expecting that. He mostly just wanted to see what would happen, if anything.

So far, kneeling in front of the wispy dark cloak wrapped around the vaguely feminine form that was the statue, nothing had happened. And it wasn’t looking like anything would.

Arkk stood, bowl of fruit in hand, and approached the edge of the silvery pool closest to the Cloak of Shadows. He then upended the bowl, dumping it all in. Vezta had said that the pool was a direct connection to the realm of the gods, so hopefully the Cloak of Shadows could pluck them out of the aether and have a nice snack. Or whatever a god did with favored food.

The bits of fruit simply slid underneath the surface. There were no ripples, no disturbances to the liquid. Just like when he threw in that gold coin all those months ago, it made him uneasy. Like some part of the back of his mind knew that this was wrong. It wasn’t how the world worked.

Arkk took a few hasty steps back and waited a moment.

When nothing continued to happen, he nodded his thanks one last time to the Cloak of Shadows before moving on to the next experiment.

Arkk approached the statue of the Eternal Silence with a sense of trepidation. The god of death, stillness, and sleep was not one to be invoked lightly. The statue was a serene, masculine figure, resting in a chair with his head slumped against his shoulder. A polished skull sat on his lap.

Arkk knelt, his knees pressing into the cold tiles of the floor, and placed a small vial of nightshade extract at the base of the statue. From the alchemical books Morford had sold him, along with a few other books he had acquired outside Darkwood Burg, he had seen one plant associated with both sleep and death over and over again. If anything might be an appropriate offering, it would be nightshade.

Either that or the flowery plant he had taken from the Silence. But that felt more like returning something he had stolen.

“Eternal Silence,” Arkk said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I come to you seeking your boon. I don’t know what your followers might have done in your honor. As far as I can tell, your name has effectively been wiped from the surface of this world. Perhaps you prefer it that way… But today, I offer you this vial of nightshade, a symbol of your dominion. In return, all I ask is a fitting response.”

Arkk placed the vial down at the base of the statue and waited, bowing his head.

Unlike the Cloak of Shadows, Arkk waited long minutes for any possible answer. Yet still, nothing happened. Just silence. Silence might have been a positive response, were it not the default for any given moment. He expected the silence to deepen, to deafen with its absence.

Yet it was just regular silence.

Looking up at the statue, noting the unchanged serene face, Arkk sighed and stood. There was no indication of approval or disapproval.

Taking the nightshade, he approached the edge of the pool. This time, he knelt, said the same thing he had just spoken, and dumped the vial into the silvery liquid.

“Hello, Xel’atriss. Remember me?” Arkk knelt at the woman with the outstretched arms.

“Cloak of Shadows. I have another gift for you. A cloak that I made myself using the dark fabric of your dagger…”

“Jailer of the Void, I’d like to start off by apologizing for… uh.. killing your avatar…”

Twelve hours after locking himself inside the temple and Arkk had to wonder how anyone figured out how magic worked.

Arkk paced back and forth in front of a large board pinned with notes. Everything he knew about the gods, both those whose statues stood around the room and those still missing, was listed out on long rolls of vellum. From the way Xel’atriss, Lock and Key communicated by shifting the boundaries of what he knew and didn’t know to every observed magical effect the avatar of the Heart of Gold had demonstrated. From the effects of the Silence to the factory of the Anvil. From the Laughing Prince’s domains over undeath, festivals, and children to the Holy Light’s dominion over light, the sun, and knowledge.

The Holy Light’s segment was a great deal longer than any other. He had paid attention to the Suun sermons. There were entire tomes of holy texts that he didn’t even know about, let alone know the contents of, but what he did know was still more than any of the other gods. Even Xel’atriss, the one he likely knew the second most about.

Unfortunately, the Holy Light was also one of the gods he didn’t want to accidentally contact, if at all possible. Regardless of what that letter said, he was still ill at ease with the idea of consorting with the traitor gods. Vezta would probably be… displeased if she found out, which was also a contributing factor to his reluctance. If all else failed…

The board next to the details of the gods was a listing of everything he knew about the temple room itself. It wasn’t a very long list. He knew that acquiring boons was possible, he knew that human sacrifice was likely a way to do so, though it wasn’t the only way. He knew they had already used a ritual within the temple room to directly entreat with Xel’atriss. That option was off the table, obviously, but he still had it up on the board for completeness.

The final board was a list of everything he had tried so far. Mostly, it consisted of throwing things into the pool, setting things at the bases of the statues, or otherwise asking for assistance and hoping for a response. He had also gone around to each of the statues, asking each in turn for even just a small sign that he was on the right track. None had answered.

Naturally, he avoided the statues of the traitor gods.

In addition to everything he tried, there was also a list of things he suspected or wanted to test, but couldn’t at the moment. For example, did he need to try this at a certain time of day? Or a certain time of year? Did the moon phases matter? What of the constellations in the sky?

This would be easier with Vezta present. But there were two problems with that. The first was that she had never been present during her former master’s rituals. Arkk didn’t know if there was a correlation there but it seemed like changing that now would just add extra possibilities to test for and he didn’t have that much time to work on this. The second problem…

Arkk’s eyes drifted to the statue shrouded in light. The Holy Light and Xel’atriss were the only two to have communicated with him. And the latter only during a complex and powerful ritual.

If any of the statues were going to do anything, Arkk had a feeling it would be the Holy Light. He admitted he was curious about that letter too. It said to simply speak out, asking for an ally, and he would have one.

Arkk kept his mouth firmly shut.

His curiosity wasn’t going to stop him from exhausting every other possibility first.

Turning away from the Holy Light, Arkk approached the grinning statue of the Laughing Prince. Arkk teleported a clattering skeleton directly at his side. One of a very small number that hadn’t fought the Evestani army. This skeleton had been his first test with necromancy, raising it from the dead under Zullie’s instructions. Unlike all the others, it had not come from the dead at Elmshadow.

Arkk had taken it from the graves behind Langleey Village’s church.

His father. Rickkton. A man Arkk barely knew and barely had any memories of. He had died when Arkk was only five years old, far too soon to form any real memories. There might be one or two vague feelings rattling around in the back of Arkk’s mind, but nothing clear.

Arkk had chosen his father for one reason and one reason alone.

If something went wrong and his necromancy went out of control, if there was even a slim scrap of his father left behind, Arkk figured his father would be the least likely person to cause him harm.

Nothing had gone wrong and, now, Arkk was well and truly convinced that there wasn’t anything left of his father. It still seemed a bit too sad to send his own father into a fight with his enemies, lost among a few thousand other bodies. Arkk intended to return his father to his grave, but…

He hadn’t ever gotten around to it.

And now, he had another test that his father could assist with.

“Well, Smiling Prince. You like necromancy enough to show up on your own. So let’s see if I can’t get a few more reactions out of you, hmm?”

Arkk let out a long yawn. He wasn’t able to stop himself. How long had he been in here?

With a shake of his head, Arkk focused. He wasn’t done yet.

Arkk plucked up a dried bit of apple and popped it into his mouth. It wasn’t the best meal but he had forgotten to eat for most of the last day. He could have teleported anything from the kitchens straight to him, but at this hour of the day, there wasn’t much already made and he didn’t want to waste time making something.

“You want some of this?” Arkk asked, leaning back.

He sat up against the pedestal holding the Cloak of Shadows. The wispy, ethereal drape of shadows over the actual figure underneath didn’t move. Neither did the figure. With a small sigh, he looked around the rest of the room.

“How about the rest of you? Dried fruit, anyone?”

Nothing but silence greeted him.

As much as he expected it, the silence still made him shift in discomfort. Once again, he was glad Vezta wasn’t around.

This was a bit embarrassing.

A marble made from the coldest ice hovered just above Arkk’s palm. He walked around the temple room, stopping at each of the empty pedestals.

He closed his eyes, humming lightly as he felt the magic in the room.

“Not this pedestal,” Arkk said before continuing to the next. “Nor this one… Then, it must be…”

As he approached the final unoccupied pedestal, a chill ran down Arkk’s spine. A sudden rush of cold came from the ice marble, but it wasn’t anything he had done. It acted on its own.

Shivering, feeling a little numb, Arkk nonetheless put on a smile. “Now isn’t that interesting?”

Stepping right up to the pedestal, he held out his hand over its smooth surface. Taking a breath and letting out a cloud of icy mist, he pulled his hand back.

The marble dropped through the air. It landed on the stone with the sound of glass shattering. A blast of icy air shot out.

Arkk teleported himself to the opposite side of the room the second he felt that cold. He hadn’t forgotten the last time the marble had fallen to the ground. He ended up frozen to the floor along with the inquisitors and half his team.

The marble bounced after the first hit, landing with another crack of glass. Another wave of cold rippled out, turning the moisture in the air into icy crystals. The entire half of the room started to fill with opaque white fog, making the temperature plummet.

Arkk waited, rubbing his arms with his gloved hands, glad he had thought to fetch a coat from his chambers before trying this out.

The sound of shattering glass that accompanied each bounce of the marble stopped abruptly. It didn’t sound like the energy of the marble had just petered out. Each bounce had a good second between. But it just stopped.

He slowly approached, wafting his hands back and forth as he neared the curtain of fog in an attempt to clear it away. Deciding that wasn’t working, Arkk pulled some hot coals straight from the forge and teleported them around that side of the room. That helped and, soon enough, the fog started to clear away.

The pedestal was no longer empty. A part of Arkk expected nothing more than a random mass of jagged ice.

He had not expected a finely sculpted ice statue. It looked like a dragon. A full dragon, the kind depicted in myths and legends, not the humanoid dragonoid that Priscilla was. It stood, tall and majestic. Four legs, perched like a cat, with its long and scaled tail coiled around the base of the pedestal. Its wings were neatly folded behind its back while its head, with a narrow snout, slit eyes, and curled horns, was poised in a regal, proud posture.

Legends said that real dragons were massive, able to crush an entire village without even noticing what they were stepping upon. A dragon god was probably even larger than that. The statue, however, was scaled to fit upon the pedestal, hardly any larger than the other statues around the room.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Arkk murmured.

The skeletal figure of his father at his side didn’t respond.

Stepping closer, Arkk gave the statue a closer look. Was it as real as the rest of them? Or would it melt away? It certainly looked as if it were made out of ice. And the ice marble…

Arkk frowned, unable to find it. It wasn’t on the pedestal or anywhere nearby. Even with Fortress Al-Mir and his ability to teleport anything he owned within its walls, he couldn’t feel the marble. It was just… gone.

“I hope I didn’t need that,” he murmured, looking up at the dragon’s snout. If the marble was somewhere inside the statue, he might be able to retrieve it by destroying it… but that seemed like a good way to piss off a dragon god. He really did not wish to make more gods his enemies at the moment.

“I don’t suppose you might be willing to grant me any boons?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

The dragon statue didn’t move.

Of course, it didn’t.

With a sigh, Arkk focused on Priscilla. The dragonoid was currently with Hale. Again. They had been spending a lot of time together as of late. Unfortunately, both were out at Elmshadow. He made a note to ask Priscilla about how the Permafrost’s followers worshipped another time.

For now, he looked around the room. “Ten statues. Six empty spots…”

He frowned. “And no boons.”

Arkk stared, eyes wide and palms sweaty.

The skeleton of Rickkton sat leaned over the pool of silvery liquid. Both arms were below the surface, neither causing ripples. Arkk, mentally connected to the skeleton through his necromancy, could feel something there. Something that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

The skeleton grasped at the something, bony hands wrapped tightly around whatever it was. Large and somewhat angular, it felt like a carved stone. Arkk didn’t dare have the skeleton dip its head below the surface—he couldn’t see through its empty eye sockets anyway—which left hauling the stone up the only option to find out what it was.

But the skeleton was stuck. Arkk couldn’t tell if the stone was too heavy or if the skeleton was too weak. He certainly wasn’t going to reach into the pool himself.

A rope. Would a rope work? The skeleton could feel something like an underside to the stone. Strangely enough, there wasn’t anything beneath the stone. Just empty… whatever.

Holding out his hand, Arkk teleported a rope from elsewhere in the fortress. He passed it to the skeleton, keeping one end up and out of the pool. With some precise mental commands, he directed the skeleton to loop it beneath the stone, making a cross pattern underneath, and then tie it up at the top end. He used a knot he had learned down in the smithy, hoping it would be enough.

He tried hauling it straight up. It budged a little, but he lacked the leverage or general strength required to lift it.

Frowning to himself, he scanned through the currently awake employees in Fortress Al-Mir.

A disoriented Dakka appeared at his side. She opened her mouth, only to freeze upon seeing the state of the room. Her head slowly turned around, looking at all the random items Arkk still had lying about. She finally looked down at the skeleton, cocking an eyebrow in the process.

“Don’t ask,” Arkk said, handing her the rope. “I just need you to lift. Take care not to touch the liquid yourself.”

“Uh… sure,” she said, wrapping the rope around her hand. Bracing herself, she strained a moment before the stone came loose. She hauled it up and out of the liquid with relative ease after that.

It was a crystal. Larger than the keystone Sylvara had brought but made from the same yellow-iridescent material. The rune on its surface was a new one, a vague depiction of a skull.

Arkk glanced first at the skeleton pulling itself out of the pool, then at the statue of the Smiling Prince. Was this a boon? Or had he just found it randomly while searching? Both?

“So…”

“Thank you, Dakka,” Arkk said, looking back to the orc. “I’ll send you back to the kitchens.”

She vanished before she had a chance to respond. Arkk crouched down, frowning at the large keystone.

“Alright.” Arkk stood in front of the Holy Light, frowning up at his heroic visage. “Alright,” he said again. “You gave me a letter that said to ask for help. So here I am, wondering what kind of help you can give.”

The Holy Light didn’t move, didn’t react, and didn’t say a word.

As expected.

Arkk turned away, shaking his head. He had made a mess of the temple. Most of it could be cleared away with a simple wave of his hand, teleporting everything back to where he had gotten it, but the sight of it still wore him down. It was all evidence that he had wasted the past day. He had only one thing to show for the time spent and he still wasn’t sure if it was a result of his actions or if that keystone had always been under the surface of the pool—the skeleton was going around the edges of the temple pool, searching for more, but no luck so far.

“Well, I—”

“Are you finished playing around?”

Arkk teleported immediately, completely vacating the temple. Safely within his private quarters, he peered into the temple.

The statue of the Holy Light had moved once again. This time, it looked frozen mid-laughter. It remained like that for a few moments before, without passing any of the intervening space, it was back in its default heroic pose. Arkk waited another long few minutes.

This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? He got a response from one of the statues. Granted, it wasn’t one of the statues he wanted a response from, but it was a response.

Now he had run away from it.

Was it dangerous? If it wanted to kill him, it surely would have just stabbed him in the back, not spoken with him. And it had been the one to send that letter in the first place.

Mustering his courage, Arkk drew a breath and teleported back into the temple. He ended up well away from the statue of the Holy Light.

“Hello?” he called out from across the room. “Are you there?”

A light, flittering laughter cascaded throughout the chamber as the statue shifted back into an open-mouthed laugh. It didn’t move to that position. It just was in that position—had always been in that position. The laughter was full of amusement and, oddly enough for the very masculine statue, it was quite feminine sounding.

Then again, perhaps it wasn’t that odd. Surely a god could do whatever they wanted.

“Hello,” he said again. “I, uh… received your letter.”

The Holy Light shifted again, standing in a more neutral pose as it looked down at Arkk. “I noticed. Good to see that Vrox was right. You did just require a more explicit message.”

Arkk narrowed his eyes, frowning.

Vrox? Why mention Vrox? The only Vrox Arkk knew was Darius Vrox, the inquisitor. Was he speaking with gods these days too?

“Well, Arkk? What are you doing all the way over there?” The statue flickered into a gesturing pose, unmoving yet somehow welcoming. “Come closer, come closer. Don’t be afraid. I can’t attack you like this… or I’m sure you would have died at the hands of my… contemporaries already.”

“Is that really true?” Arkk asked, turning his head and noting the still statues of the Heart of Gold and the Almighty Glory. Neither had moved.

“You think I would lie to you?”

“Yes,” Arkk said. “You sliced off Vezta’s arm.”

“That is that, this is this,” the statue said with a shrug. Notably, it didn’t perform the action of shrugging. One moment, it had always been shrugging, the next, it returned to a neutral position.

“I think I’m good here,” he called back, not wanting his back to any of the statues, though with them at all four sides of the room, he didn’t have much choice. At least Xel’atriss at his back wasn’t likely to turn out poorly.

Probably.

“Suit yourself,” the statue of the Holy Light said, looking eminently disappointed. “But we have a lot to discuss… Best get comfortable.”

Arkk crossed his arms, frowning.

“I’ll skip to the end to get you thinking before returning to the start to explain. The long and short of it is that I wish for direct, physical access to this temple room.”

Arkk looked around slowly, somewhat confused. “Aren’t you… Don’t you already have access to it?” he asked, gesturing toward the statue. “I wasn’t aware that I could stop a god—”

That light, feminine laughter spilled out of the statue once again, though the statue didn’t move this time. “Oh. Oh my. You believe I am The Holy Light. No, no. No. Certainly not. Were I, I imagine things would be far, far different. No, Arkk. I am merely what you call the avatar.”

Arkk blinked. Then blinked again. All of a sudden, he felt the tension in the back of his neck drain away. He was not speaking with another god. That…

Made a lot of sense. Between today and his earlier encounter with Xel’atriss, members of the Pantheon didn’t speak. Especially not so… normally.

The statue laughed again before leaning forward, towering over Arkk with the added height. “Yes, Arkk. Let’s start at the beginning.”