– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 220, Season of the Rising Sun, Day 28 –

  Terry’s mind was spinning. They had talked throughout an entire night without ever leaving the chamber protected by the Judge’s Order. The Blasphemer had continued interviewing him about all kinds of things.

  About the current threats in Terry’s native realm. From the Wastes in general to the known deathcults, no matter if they were connected to False Gods or to the Abyss.

  About the remaining empires and their political attitudes, both towards their own citizens and towards the threats to the realm.

  About the connected oldfolk realms and the newfolks that made a permanent connection with Terry’s native realm since the Blasphemer had last walked its earth. To Terry’s shame and to Swen’s disappointment, Terry wasn’t exactly knowledgeable on this topic. He couldn’t answer how the old alliances were standing.

  Terry knew the elven empires had mostly retreated from his realm when the mana had changed with the arrival of the Wastes. He knew the dwarven realms were still connected and open to visitors, but that was all Terry could say on the topic of oldfolk politics.

  For the newfolk realms, Terry knew even less, but this ignorance didn’t feel as shameful, given that few people knew even this much. At least Terry had picked up bits and pieces from his newfolk acquaintances – friendly or otherwise.

  Terry interviewed the Blasphemer in turn, with questions about the Court of Gods, about the Faithless Saints, and, of course, about the Veilbinder.

  Unfortunately, Swen couldn’t answer what happened to the Veilbinder, either. Swen hadn’t even heard the most well-known title of his friend. However, the vampire could quickly connect the dots to get the meaning behind it.

  When the Veilbinder and his companions had departed the realm, the Faithless Wars were at a precipice. The Twin-Gods of Death had been slain and most cults loyal to the False Gods had been hunted to extinction, but the veil was weakening and, with fresh waves of invaders from an increasing number of open tears, the fight was unending.

  However, after the Veilbinder’s departure, the veil tears eventually stopped. The veil was bound, somehow, to become more stable and seal off their realms. Without that stability, it was doubtful whether the faithless alliance of mortals would have been able to hold out against the invading flood of faith users.

  To bend the veil in such a way was an impossible feat, never seen before or ever since.

  A feat for which the entirety of the Faithless Realms could only attribute a single mage known to achieve the impossible. The Mortal Godslayer that had killed the gods of death themselves.

  The Mage that had stood defiant against all odds and risen above the fate laid out for him.

  The Mage that had paved the path.

  The Mage.

  The only one capable and willing to become the Veilbinder protecting their realm.

  Terry couldn’t shake the feeling that the Blasphemer was still testing him somehow, but from everything Terry could tell, he was passing. The longer they talked, the more genuine the Blasphemer’s reactions appeared.

  Particularly when it came to Day and the Faithless Saints.

  Terry got the distinct impression that Swen had longed for someone to talk to about them. Swen seemed almost nostalgic when recounting stories, and immensely proud as well. Not just for his own contributions, but for simply being a part of the fight.

  For being a friend of Day, in particular.

  Terry could feel himself ease up as well. These days, the paranoid corner of his mind was never tired of reminding him to be wary. However, it was difficult to take these thoughts seriously when, in addition to Swen being a literal Faithless Saint, the archmage vampire in front of him could probably have him squashed and his mind laid bare whenever he wished.

  Instead, Swen seemed genuinely concerned about their faithless realms, and about Terry as their newest representative.

  Aside from the death of the Twins, Swen warned Terry not to share any details about the crazed Leviathan’s defeat and the death of Sophis with anyone. The Mortal Godslayer’s reputation rose with the mystery behind the wins. Explaining the exact process takes away some of the magic, which was a bad idea if they depended on that magic to inspire wariness and hesitation in the gods.

  Terry explained his background and how he had reached the Court of Gods. He could see the frustration built in the Blasphemer with every part of the story. The Faithless Saint had hoped that, after all this time, he would be joined by mages of godlike power to keep the fight going and permanently secure the position of the Faithless Realms in the Court of Gods.

  Instead, the Blasphemer had gotten Terry.

  Just Terry.

  Terry.

  I can’t imagine the immeasurable disappointment.

  The reality of magic was undeniably leaps better than at the time of the original Faithless Wars. More mages. More standardized practice and sophisticated spellwork. Enough for people to quickly pick up mana use and then progress in power and cultivate their craft.

  However, after all the time the departing faithless companions had bought, the Blasphemer had expected more of mortal magic. Expected everyone to understand the need for learning and developing magic. The absolute need for sharpening the only weapon they had to protect their realms from regressing into mortal subjugation.

  The worst wasn’t the lack of numbers and power.

  It was that the empires weren’t even united.

  The Faithless Realms weren’t ready.

  “Can only do our best to delay the inevitable,” muttered Swen. He took a deep breath. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Knowing about the cult presence in our realm means the corresponding faith parasites know about the death of the Twins. Either they don’t believe it or they’re trying to make a move before others find out. The latter works to our advantage, because then they won’t blabber about it with their filthy mouths.”

  Swen stood up. “I’d like to chat more, but I’m not like Day. My reputation isn’t served by being absent and mysterious. I have to rub my presence into the parasites’ faces.”

  Swen gestured with two fingers for Terry to stand up. “Come on, we have a busy schedule ahead of us. We need to sort you out, and then there’s training. Lots and lots of training.” He skeptically examined the young man in front of him. “I hope you’re up for it, because you’re all I got.”

  “What for?” Terry stood up. “You still haven’t explained what you need my help for.”

  “To fight a god,” said Swen as if this was obvious. “Didn’t that get across? There’s a fight I have to have, but can’t be sure I’ll come out like I would like. With you being here, I might be able to up my chances.” He chuckled shortly. “Don’t worry about it. For one, you’re not ready yet and I’m not planning to waste my only chance. We’ll deal with your snake-problem first. And besides…”

  Swen shrugged. “I don’t think either of us will get much of a choice. I’d bet my left nut that your presence is inevitably going to invite the exact fight I’m worried about. That parasite is as worried about me as I’m about her. You’re new and you’re going to attract a lot of attention. If you’re with me, that counts double. Around here, that turns you into a lightning rod for pisshead parasites. Get used to it.”

  Swen clapped loudly. “First things first. Shopping, starting with Allvoice. Training, starting with presence defence… Are you listening? Let’s go!”

  Terry miraculously found his breath again. It had involuntarily stopped the moment when the words ‘to fight a god’ were thrown at him.

  In his own native realm, that might have meant to fight a cultist or, at worst, to fight an avatar.

  In the Court of Gods, however?

  Terry suspected the words might be a lot more literal than he was used to.

  To fight a god? Who? Me?!

  Didn’t he listen when I told him about my abilities? Or lack thereof?!

  I barely scraped by against some avatars and needed an army of more powerful mages for that!

  Terry felt like he had accidentally stepped onto a stage meant for someone else.

  ***

  Terry’s eyes darted around at a dizzying speed. The input from his mana perception alone was enough to make his head spin, but he couldn’t help it.

  Awe-inspiring…

  “This place is huge,” exhaled Terry. “What’s beyond the dome?”

  “Chaos,” said Swen without pausing his stride. He felt the gaze of a god. A being whose upper half appeared elven while her lower half was the body of a spider.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Swen caught the arachne’s gaze and presented two middle fingers to the nosy god. “What’s up, parasite? Want a piece of me?” He curled his middle fingers to beckon her and all the other faith users. “Come and get some, you worthless worms!” He didn’t halt his steps and, satisfied by all the silent glares, he continued leading the way to the market.

  Terry couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this uncomfortable. The Blasphemer might not be bothered by pissing into a divine hornets nest, but Terry certainly wasn’t used to this much overpowered attention.

  Even standing between a lich king and a magic sovereign hadn’t felt this nerve-racking. Walking through these mingling gods was extremely suffocating. It felt like his chest was slowly being compressed…

  “Sorry about that,” said Swen.

  The pressure on Terry eased.

  “I forgot that I have to shield you from presence,” continued Swen. “I’m not used to company. Won’t happen again. After this trip, we’re going right to the training facilities to start you on defending yourself.”

  ‘Presence.’

  Terry filed the word away for later. He wondered about which of his many questions he could ask now.

  His most pressing question had already been answered… with an unsatisfactory result. Terry might be able to send a message for his companions back to the Realm of Wrath, but not anytime soon, and it would be complicated even after the required waiting period.

  At least I don’t have to worry about them landing here unannounced.

  The Blasphemer had assured Terry that he would be the first to know when something happened with the portal he was guarding, which was exactly why the Faithless Saint had been able to pick up and protect Terry after his arrival in the Court of Gods.

  “Why do they call some realms ‘hells’?” asked Terry.

  “Because the pissy parasites are quite full of themselves,” said Swen. “All of them. A faith user that offends their sensibilities is an evil god. Evil, but a god, nonetheless. Hated, perhaps, but still part of the parasite family.

  “Fuckers!” shouted Swen and let his middle-fingers draw a circle around himself, pointing towards all the gods passing by. “…and cowards.”

  Swen scoffed and glanced back at Terry. “Besides other parasites, the bastards only fear two things: Their own deaths, and immortal power they don’t understand, which means standing at the level of gods without relying on faith.”

  Swen placed his palms at his mouth to shout: “Which is why they’re all pussying out in front of me!” He moved his arms to the side and wiggled his fingers menacingly. “Hells are realms of immortals untouched by faith.”

  Terry furrowed his brow. He knew there were deathcults worshipping creatures from the Abyss.

  Guess they don’t rely on channeling anchors, then. But what about the mark on Devon? I’m sure there was something…

  “To the faith-users I’m literally an envoy from hell,” continued the Blasphemer. “A walking mirror in which they can see their own cowardice and incompetence reflected.” He turned his head to a scowling god. “That’s right, I called you a frightened doofus, numbnuts! Don’t just glare at me! Meet me in court! I’m waiting!”

  The answer made sense to Terry, but the Blasphemer’s behavior caused his brows to crease.

  It’s like he’s going out of his way to pick fights. Swen said he has to rub his presence into their faces. Is this what he meant?

  Is this all part of a show? Like with Rafael’s posturing in the Proving Grounds?

  Or is this just who the Blasphemer is?

  Guess the title must have come from somewhere…

  Terry involuntarily stumbled in his steps when he sensed something unexpected. He couldn’t help but walk closer and stare.

  “Curious?” Swen followed Terry’s gaze. “These are dungeon cores. We never had dungeons in our realms, but…”

  “We do, actually,” corrected Terry. “Not just a few, either.”

  “Really? Since when?” Swen crossed his arms.

  A while after the Veilbinder’s Final Sacrifice.

  For the first time, Terry became distinctly aware of not just the timing, but of the unique relationship with the veil that dungeons had. If Samuel’s theories were to be believed, then the dungeons were linked to the veil.

  Dungeons as the realm’s immune system.

  Dungeons as the realm’s first line of defense.

  They form predominantly in areas where the veil was weaker.

  They react to veil tears and, specifically, to some of the creatures spilling through them.

  They often act to contain and reseal veil tears, which, the more he thought about it, the more it started to sound a lot like…

  Veil binding.

  Terry recalled that the dungeon density in Arcana was supposed to be lower than in the surrounding empires. He wondered why. He wondered if it still held true, now that Arcana’s barrier had been gone for a while.

  Did the barrier protect the veil? Did the magic sovereigns discover something?

  Terry rubbed his eyes and put the thoughts away for later. Neither of these seemed like topics to discuss where the ears of the False Gods were close.

  “I’ll tell you later,” said Terry.

  Swen nodded with understanding. “They’re quite useful. Universally useful even. Haven’t seen a mana user that can’t find some use for them. We can come back here later if you want. I don’t want to act as your interpreter while you’re haggling, so we first have to equip you with Allvoice, and we still have to make a few other stops afterwards.”

  Oh, I’m definitely going to come back!

  Terry could sense monster cores he desperately wanted.

  Shadow-aspected cores, some of which might be slime cores he could feed to Oz to grow his number of satellite slimes.

  Cores of aspects considered extremely rare in his native realm.

  Cores of aspects Terry had never even sensed.

  Uncle Samuel would love this…

  Except for the masses of murderous gods. No one would love that.

  ***

  “How is it?” asked Swen. “Are you sure you want to stick with the choker-version?”

  “It’s a necklace, not a choker,” said Terry. Sometimes he got the impression he was dealing with a teenage sibling trying to rile him. He reminded himself that spending several hundred years isolated among enemies probably wasn’t the best for a person’s social development.

  “Whatever,” dismissed Swen. “It’s slower than the direct infusion. It means tossing other equipment to avoid the mana clash.”

  “I’m not tossing anything!” Terry shuddered. The dungeon hoarder in him recoiled at the thought. He still intended to wear his dungeon necklace when he slept to train his mana regeneration.

  As soon as the Allvoice infusion was done, he would switch back to the protective necklace that Sigille had given him during the day. As powerful as the necklace was if charged to the brim, Terry wasn’t sure how it would fare against the gods walking the Court, but still.

  “And it allows the crafter to track you.” Swen pointed out. “Which I try to avoid. Only at close-range, but still.”

  “Didn’t you say the goblin crafting god was trustworthy and their work guaranteed by the Order?” retorted Terry.

  “As trustworthy as a faith user can be.” Swen clicked his tongue. “But yes. To both. Bulgur and those in his corner are among the least unpleasant parasites crawling around. I find those relying primarily on concepts for their godhood to generally be weirder but less pathetic than those relying primarily on faith.”

  Terry wasn’t sure yet what to think about the different kinds of gods the Blasphemer had introduced him to.

  There were those who reached the god-status via the number – and faith – of their followers, where faith was just a shorthand for the link through the channeling anchor that connected both mana and souls.

  There were others who reached it through a connection to a concept, which sounded suspiciously like the dao that Terry’s martialist acquaintances had often mentioned. Rather than relying on a soul connection to followers, their souls resonated with concepts of existence.

  The closer a concept user got to the concept’s essence, the more powerful they could become. However, that process came with risks unlike those of faith. A risk of failing to master the concept and instead being mastered by it. No concept god was entirely safe from falling to their own concept, being twisted into the concept itself instead of deriving power from it.

  Nearly all gods of the Court had eventually chosen a combined approach of fostering faith while delving into concepts. A way to overcome the limits of one while hedging against the risks of the other.

  “I just prefer a reusable item,” said Terry.

  Brynn would love studying this. I’m sure Bugsby would be interested, too.

  I wonder if a magebane like Dargones could still use Allvoice? I have no idea how this concept stuff works. It’s mana in the end, so perhaps the nullification mana makes it impossible. Then again, these are gods and they call it Allvoice. All. If it fails to work for a magebane, then that would be false advertising.

  Could they derive language impartation scrolls from this?

  Allvoice would be incredibly useful for Terry’s native realm. Research aside, he wanted to at least ensure he could let his companions learn it. For this, the necklace infusing his throat and vocal cords appeared perfect.

  Once infused, Terry was confident he could mimic the mana movement to truly make the skill his own, which he found much more preferable to permanently rely on mana infused by someone else, no matter if the process was guaranteed by the Judge or not.

  Then again, how’s this different from my new links?

  Well, I can’t recreate that with just my mana.

  Terry’s left hand traced the new dark patterns hiding underneath his armor on his right arm. He had to give it to the crafting gods. They worked quickly and their work was impressive.

  Bulgur’s entourage had awakened his shadow bangle to allow summoning the linked item directly through the shadows without losing the ability to directly guide the weave and attach it to shadows consciously.

  Aside from implementing additional anti-theft and anti-inspection protections for Terry’s storage devices, they had also given him new body inscriptions on his forearms unlike those Terry already had on his fingers and hands.

  Each of his forearms now displayed four rings of runes. One thicker and three thinner. They were completely sealed from his own mana, which was great, because this way Terry didn’t have to worry about mana type incompatibility or interference with his spellwork.

  Swen called it a body inscription wrapped as a blessing.

  While a channeling anchor is always linked to the god, a blessing doesn’t have to be. The initial power granted by the god is only to leave the mark and connect or separate it from the target’s own mana.

  Swen said a blessing might be connected to a god for further empowerment, but a proper blessing would persist in its basic form even after the god had perished.

  I’ll have to write down the details later before I forget.

  The larger rings were… strange. They were directly linked to the shadow bangle and allowed Terry to merge the item into the shadows hiding underneath the skin of his arms – a way to keep it safe from theft and damage.

  While the large rings were linked to the shadow bangle, each of the smaller rings represented a link for the shadow bangle. Only one could be active, but Terry now had the means to switch between different linked items.

  For now, Terry maintained a link with the Path of a Mage, and one with the oscillating container storing the book. A third one with his crafter’s pendant that held the oscillating container in addition to most of his valuables. A fourth one to his dimensional bag hidden inside his armor into which he placed the crafter’s pendant while he wore the Allvoice infusion device.

  His remaining two links were reserved for his most valuable equipment pieces.

  His unbreakable king spear.

  His brooch that was the source of his shadow cloak that had become the home of his tamed shadow slime Oz.

  Oz.

  Terry had noticed a change in the shadow fabric of his cloak ever since he had let Oz reside in it. He didn’t know if it was because of the shadow slime itself or simply because he never unsummoned the shadow fabric anymore, but it was changing.

  Growing more intense… I wonder what’s up with that?

  Terry pushed the question to the back of his mind. They had arrived in a training chamber guaranteed by the Order. Apparently, the lessons in defending against ‘presence’ were sensitive enough to want to avoid prying eyes and ears.

  ***