Chapter 61: 59 – Awake

A slow nod. The Seer shifted to a sitting position, crossing his legs without regard for decorum or respect. 

“I was a soldier with the twenty-fourth. A lowly aethermancer. Our battalion was wiped out down to a tenth of its strength, and we were stranded in enemy territory, even before the Wall went up,” he began, and the Emperor listened. There was no accusation, no supplication, no hate or condescension in the Seer’s voice - just pure, familiar serenity. It was a welcome break from the business of the man-god’s life, even if it amounted to a flicker in the grand scheme. “We came across a cave, and in that cave, a gate - a gate to a dungeon. You know which one I speak of, for your scrying ritual was targeted at the very individual who brought that plan to a screaming, burning end. I had the good fortune of becoming entrapped by the dungeon’s mechanisms before any mutations took hold, and as I subsisted on my dwindling supply of God’s Blood Elixir, the dungeon spoke to me. I poured out my heart to it, thinking it no more than a machine. Came to terms with my death, with the reality of my existence, that I would likely never see the light of day again. Knowing this the machine took pity on me, for my entrapment in its halls meant I was exempt from the laws that prohibited it from disclosing new information, as long as I accepted a geas that stopped me from doing the same, should I ever encounter another living thing ever again. It taught me things. Spoke of ages past, of things no mortal man would be taught again until the existence of the world itself was in peril. It taught, I listened, and I drank… And I changed, until I no longer required worldly sustenance - the dungeon’s own aether-rich atmosphere was more than enough.”

“I have all the time in the world, Seer - but not for you. Cease this huén-a-dozen storytelling and reach the conclusion I know you are working towards,” the Emperor finally commanded. With a sly grin, the seer obeyed.

“Very well. As I said, the dungeon taught me things,” he said, raising a hand. A tiny wisp of iridescent Fog escaped from the palm of his hand, expanding and forming into the image of four concentric circles. “First Circle - the Dream, or Somnium. Second Circle - the Waking, or Pervigilium. Third Circle - the Knowing, or Gnosis. Fourth Circle, the Endless Work - or Opus ad Infinitum. You’ve kept the world asleep and snuffed out those who wake. A most excellent plan, I must admit. Not to worry, I shan’t reveal thy great deception. I seek merely to observe and learn, to help those of the material world along on the paths they have chosen… Which is why, you understand, I will not remain here.”

The Enlightened One’s mandibles curled into an approximation of a cruel grin. “So strike down this body. Entrap me whence I am ejected from this shell. Torment my spirit and burn it away in seeking to understand my liberation from the ephemeral. That is what you intended from the moment you learned of my reincarnation, is it not?”

The seer was mocking him, prodding at him. But the Divine Emperor knew better than to personally engage with prophecy, no matter how much he benefited from the practice of divination. Among the lessons he had learned from the Dead Ones was to never, ever, under any circumstances, take actions directly spurred on by prophecy. Especially if such actions would be to prevent the fulfillment of that prophecy, for engaging with a prophecy, believing in it, legitimizing it, that was how prophecies came true.

He knew better, and he also knew one more thing: “I see that there is nothing to do besides congratulations. You have escaped the cycle of life and death, escaped not just the Dead Ones’ methods of ascension, but cultivation altogether. You’ve succeeded where even I failed. Now shuffle off this mortal coil, perhaps reincarnate a few times until you get bored of the mortal realm, and then drown in the Sea of Fog as your kind is wont to do. Perhaps you shall grow into a nascent god, in a few centuries - by then I will have already surpassed anything you could ever become a hundredfold. By then, I shall have ships sailing that very sea, and perhaps one day they will fish you up, only to let you go - a worthless catch, compared even to a piece from the carcass of the lowest war-god. Your path is that of apathy, one I deign not to walk.”

The Divine Emperor gave the Enlightened One one last look in the eyes before he raised his hand, and with the ring on his index finger he willed the marble beneath the Enlightened One’s feet to reshape itself. A dozen stone spikes ran the seer through from below, and as he stood dying, the creature gave a brief chuckle before the unbound spirit exited its shell and just left.

---

At the very outskirts of Willowdale, in an abandoned house whose architecture still spoke of its past as a church, two people sat on the ground of a darkened room across from each other. Two figures, one clad in black mourning robes, the other in nothing at all, exposing the countless scars and tattoos that covered her body and told the tale of a long and storied career. 

It was lit by the colorless glow of sacred black-wax candles, the flames spitting sparks at every opportunity as incense and cold-iron flakes within the wax succumbed to ignition. An impermeable blanket of holy smoke hovered just above their heads, rolling like the clouds in the heavens. 

The Inquisitor and the Confessor.

Between them was spread out a long mat, woven in ancient times from materials and using methods that the modern Order dared not pry into, even though they possessed texts with instructions on how to produce a new one should this one be lost or destroyed.

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