That last line stayed with me, and at first, I did not know why I was getting angry the more I stared at those words, and then I realized that it came from the unfairness of it all.
I became this thing that could kill demons, not because I chose this, but because I had been forced on this path. The reason I made all the painful choices, from standing to tribulations and fighting demons and pushing past eldritch gates, was to survive and protect my friends and family from demons.
The damned heaven, what did it do as the Sovereign of the Stars killed generations of Aldran and who knew how many other families to create a bloodline resonance to open this pyramid.
Where were the heavens when demons erupted from the earth, and countless were about to die? Why did the golden lightning not cleanse the world of this rot, but chose to focus on me when I stood up before this madness?
I suppressed my anger with a great deal of control, knowing that such exclamations were useless, like a puppy barking at the moon.
I used to loathe the loop a bit, but now I want to protect this loop. There were too many wrongs in this world that needed to be changed, and if it was up to me, I would tear down the heavens if it holds me back... what else could it do to me than to kill me.
Repeated use risks drawing the attention of the heavens.
It was as if this legendary spell was not meant for humans, and I had stolen it, and the more I used it, the sky would notice its property burning in a mortal’s hand and come, again, to collect. My single most powerful weapon was one I could not use often without inviting the worst day of my life to come back for an encore.
I had become an Adept, with spells that were beyond anything I had ever expected. I had a command that cost me my self, a field that cost me my body, and a verdict that cost me the sky’s attention. Not one of them free. Nothing about me was ever going to be free; I’d made my peace with that a long time and many deaths ago.
However, this peace would not last for long; first, I needed to stop this eruption from ever happening, and I was no longer just an Acolyte whose spells were simple lightning bolts.
I realized I had not checked the description for Lightning Adept, investigated all the upgrades of all my skills to at least the uncommon tier, or checked the changes that had occurred to all my skills at the Adept level. I could feel the pull on the Hollow Place inside me getting stronger, and I could no longer be distracted by what was on my status screen.
However, I glanced at the description that had appeared after I opened the Third Earth Gate, and I paused a bit before I continued climbing.
- As You Push Deeper Into Rot And Madness, Do Not Become What You Have Slain.
∞
I had been climbing for what felt like hours, though time moved strangely in the pyramid’s depths, but my internal clock was telling me that hardly any time had passed at all, as if inside this pyramid, the higher I climbed, the slower time became. I chose to trust my instinct when it told me that time here was extremely messed up.
The steps had narrowed, the walls had closed in, and the air had grown thick with the weight of something ancient and patient, and now, the passage opened into a chamber.
It was... vast, and the ceiling was lost in darkness; the floor was the same pale metal as the stairs, polished to a mirror sheen, and at the far end of the chamber, a door.
The door was a great slab of black metal, taller than the gatehouse at Aldenmere, seamless, with a thin red line bleeding around its edges like lamplight under a shut shutter.
There were no handles on the door, just silence, and the things that guarded it.
They were golems, I supposed, though the word felt too small. Each was three times my height, cast from black metal, and they were standing on both sides of the door.
Their forms were humanoid, but blocky, unfinished, as if they had been shaped by hands that cared only for function. Their arms hung at their sides, and their hands were open, palms facing the door, but their heads had been cut off.
The decapitated heads lay at their feet, each one the size of my torso, their faces blank, their eyes closed. The cuts were clean, surgical, as if a blade finer than anything I had ever seen had passed through metal and stone and whatever else these things were made of without slowing.
And there was another wound. A gash that ran from each golem’s shoulder to its opposite hip, nearly splitting them in two. The metal around the wounds was dark, corroded, as if something had been eating at it for centuries.
I stood very still and looked at them for a while.
It was the neatness that frightened me. I had seen a great deal of violence by now, and I had also committed a fair amount of it that every morning, and violence is, as a rule, messy.
These were not. Whatever killed them had not fought them. Two cuts each, placed exactly, no scoring on the walls, no sign of a struggle, no evidence the golems had managed to raise a hand. Something had walked up to two of these, taken their heads, opened their chests, and maybe gone through the door they were guarding.
The Hollow Avatar stirred in the cold place behind my soul.
"Gate wardens," it said. "Likely made by Celestial Architects. Each was built to the capacity of what you would think of as a Sovereign."
I stopped breathing. "Sovereign?"
"Yes. The Architects did not build the Caeliths to be vulnerable. The Wardens had to be at this level to maintain a sufficient defense."
I glanced at the heads on the ground, "Sufficient, you say."
"Yes."
"And something came through them like wet paper."
A pause. When it spoke again, the Hollow Avatar seemed to be unsure of its answer.
"Yes. Whatever did this was not a Sovereign. A Sovereign would have fought them, and the fight would have left marks, no matter how long ago the battle was. This was done by something that did not consider them an obstacle. Most likely, this had happened in the void, and must be one of the reasons that the Caeliths crashed on your world. Behind that door is the Control Center... Its Jade Oracle."