Sacrifice Mage

Chapter 251 (B3: 78): Icon

I gasped back to hell. If this agony, this livid torture eating through every bit of my being, an integral experience of eternal damnation, then I wasn’t sure what was. I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, could only feel unendurable agony writhing through every single cell of my body.“Stay still,” someone said. The female voice was vaguely familiar, sounding like it was underwater in my injured ears.

Slowly, ever so slowly, awareness shifted away from agony. I realized I was being healed, that there were a couple of people nearby kneeling next to me and working on whatever terrible condition I was in. Dim sights of a few people moving around, vague murmurs, smells that flitted in and out of my nose… that was all I could get with my limited senses.

I wished I could have asked them how bad it was, but I couldn’t talk. As far as I knew, I didn’t even a mouth to talk with just then. My thoughts started to spiral a bit. The calming hand on my head helped.

Maybe it was a blessing I couldn’t move my head enough to look at my body. Whatever I’d see would no doubt just cause my pain-focused thoughts to spiral that much more.

It took a while before I could even reroute my mind into thinking about anything beyond just my painful existence. I realized that I should be grateful that I was being healed. Flesh was knitting back together, new cells were taking the place of the destroyed ones, tendons were reattaching to bones, which themselves were being slowly reconstructed…

I needed to stop thinking about my body. Why couldn’t I have regained consciousness after the healing was done and complete?

“Focus on the world, Cultist Moreland,” the healer said. “On your friends, on your accomplishments, on everything… on everything you believe in.”

She was right. Maybe I could focus on anything me. Maybe I could take the time to see how the last remnants of the Beyond was raining all around us. The cosmic sky had broken into a rain of dark dots and tiny, starry glimmers. But everything else that had been summoned remained.

I felt like I had stopped the Vaunted and her plans, but much of its effects were still visible. The Nether Vein’s manifestation still remained. Walls made of that strange metal, floors like iron grates, the darkness that felt like it came inherent with the Nether Vein now.

They were all still there. Still present. A reminder that things wouldn’t be fixed so easily.

Even the summoned god wasn’t gone. It seemed Arl was right. My Aspect of Sacrifice couldn’t destroy the infinite.

Although, that didn’t mean it was free. The glowing golden power was re-manifesting, but Councillor Wargrog had risen high into the air to create some kind of translucent black box around it. But even from where I lay on the ground, I could tell he was merely containing it.

He couldn’t destroy a divine manifestation either.

Hmm…

I wondered if that scar on the world was still there—that permanent, crystallized energy blast from where Starburst had met the Vaunted’s comet. Could I Sacrifice that too, at one point?

“You did well, Ross,” Hamsik said, coming to stand by my recovering body. “You’ve done more than enough.”

I hadn’t regained enough of my ability to nod or even reply. Pretty sure I still didn’t have a mouth yet. But I tried to send a look of gratitude all the same.

“You…”

The Vaunted’s voice growled through the air like that of a dying panther. My mind went on high alert, but I immediately set on edge because even in that anger, the weakness was all too evident.

Plus, she wasn’t rising either, which confirmed that she was in about as terrible condition as I was in.

“Stay quiet, fool,” Hamsik said. He left my side, probably to stand over wherever she was lying. There probably wasn’t much of a need to bind her down. Not if she was as weak, as , as her voice sounded. “You’ve done more than enough. That you’re not dead already is more mercy than you deserve.”

The Vaunted ignored Hamsik’s words, trying to speak anyway.

“You…”

Somehow, it almost felt like it was directed at me, even though I had no way of being sure. I couldn’t see her looking at me. There was no way to tell if she could see at all any longer. Thankfully, I rediscovered my voice as my larynx was healed back up with the combination of the external healing and the work of Reverence Everlife.

“Me,” I said. Unlike her, my voice was growing stronger as I recovered. “Which one of us won in the end, Vaunted?”

“Ross,” Hamsik warned. “Take it easy.”

He hadn’t been in the fight. Pits, he hadn’t even been inside the fake-Beyond like I had been. Otherwise, he’d have known how hard it was to .

“You…” the vaunted eventually said.

“That’s right,” I said. “.”

“…to… end this…”

I blinked. Finally, I could actually close my eyes. It had been an incredible experience to have eyes to see but no eyelids to stop seeing. Strength wasn’t returning as fast, though, nor did I feel particularly inclined to grant mercy to whatever state my enemy had placed herself in.

That changed when I finally gained enough strength—and reconstructed my skeleton, nerves, and musculature enough—to move my neck.

Another gasp. She had become an abomination. All her limbs save the right arm had been blown apart, bloody stumps sticking out of flesh that had been frozen over. Her chest was caved in, molten metal pooling and sizzling her innards even as her burning ice tried to fight against it. That she was still alive through her current torturous state was unbelievable.

Maybe I did need to end this. Even if the others clearly saw no need to do so. None of the healers were close. None of the other cultists had even entered the temple. Hamsik was scaring everyone else from getting closer with little glares.

More strength returned, and my intentions evolved. Slowly, I got up.

There were protests from others. The healers counselled me to keep lying back. Hamsik shot one of his glares at me, despite praising me moments ago.

They had good reason to warn me. My eye twitched, my muscles spasming. I had lost my mace somewhere, finally. I missed it more than I thought I would. But first, I had a certain business I needed to take care of.

“Ross,” Hamsik warned.

“I’m alright, Hamsik,” I said. It was hard to believe I already sounded normal. Then again, the churning power within me, within my twin mana cores and everything of the Weave I had unlocked—and everything the Weave I had touched on—had given me the kind of power and potential I couldn’t just squander. “I have a job to do.”

“You’ve done enough. Let the rest of us handle what’s left. There’s not much…”

His voice faded as he looked up. I did the same. Beneath us, the Vaunted laughed weakly.

The Councillor wasn’t having much luck in containing the manifestation of a god. His box of smoky, glassy blackness was cracking. Eternity. That was what Arl had said. That was what the Vaunted had summoned.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I recalled the warning from Shubratha. .

That was why she was laughing, through the unrivalled agony, through her own imminent death. However much I’d have liked to think I had stopped her, she had left her mark. Nothing any of us did would ever truly remove it. Probably just like that fractured energy over the destroyed volcanic side-event.

But even then, Arl said I wasn’t without options. All he had said that wasn’t going to work on something that was boundless. Sure, I could have tried setting Conditionality in such a way as to endlessly keep Sacrificing that bit of the summoned fake-god.

Did I want to do that, though? Did I want to forever be filled up with so much energy it made my hair set afire, made me inhale and exhale pure radiance, forced me to watch every single motion forevermore because even the slightest miscalculated touch would cause the mountainside to collapse?

Or did I want to complete a different sort of power?

. Arl had said to remember that.

Now, who else had said something similar…

“Why are you smiling like that?” Hamsik asked.

“Just wanted to say thank you,” I said.

“Now? What in the world for?”

“For reminding me of the power I need to stop this.”

He looked at me quizzically, but I ignored him because he’d see soon enough. Instead, I turned to the misshapen mess that was the still-alive Vaunted.

“Don’t die,” I said. For all that she looked horribly deformed and agonized, I found it hard to summon sympathy for someone who had unleashed this over Ring Four. “Because I’m going to prove you wrong. Again.”

I rose straight up. There were shouts and warnings, and Hamsik even reached out like he was going to haul me back to the ground personally, but I was too fast for them all.

In moments, I was next to Councillor Wargrog.

“You can release it, Councillor,” I said.

His eyes widened as he saw me, his long beard ruffling as he turned in my direction. “Mage Moreland! You rise already.”

“Literally.”

He blinked. “What do you intend to do?”

“What did intend, Councillor? Because you’ve probably figured out that you can’t stop this yourself by now, haven’t you?”

His voice darkened. “I’m afraid my assessments suggest none of us can truly it.”

“Right. That’s what I thought. So let me try an alternative.”

“Which is?”

I didn’t blame his scepticism. Even after everything I had done, even after I had been the one to finally end the Vaunted’s idiocy, I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking I could stop a god. For real.

Which was why I going to try and stop this manifestation any longer.

“I think even a remnant of a god isn’t something we can just destroy,” I said. “You might not believe me, but the real god manifest for a…” I wasn’t sure I could call it a since time had been frozen. “Well, he manifested. And—”

“If the god of the sun had been here in truth, then this city would no longer be standing, Mage Moreland.”

Wargrog said it with absolute certainty. Again, I didn’t really blame him.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “But anyway, I learned something that I only just realized. We can’t end something that’s eternal. The best we can do is harness it.”

“” His frown grew sharper. “Was that not the Vaunted’s plan? To harness the gods’ power? And look what she did—the manifestation of the Beyond itself. I don’t know if we can ever heal the marks it has left on the land.”

“Me neither, but we have to try.” I looked squarely at Wargrog. “We’ve come this far, Councillor. You’ve trusted me to handle this up till now. Can you trust me one more time, please?”

His gaze was critical for a moment. I couldn’t recall if I had ever seen him this serious. Then again, I had never seen him this involved either. It was always Se-Vigilance on the frontlines, or Lassikhio if things got overly violent. I wondered if this was his stressed face.

Wargrog sighed heavily, beard ruffling enough to bare almost the entirety of his tusks. “I’ve been leaving it all for the younger ones for over a decade now. This is no time for me to start throwing myself headfirst into things. Age hasn’t been kind.” Yet, his following smile kind. “You’re right, Mage Moreland. You’ve gone above and beyond what even Escinca could ever have hoped, than even your old master, Kostis.”

He nodded at me. There was the go-ahead I needed. Smiling back at him to show my confidence, my determination, and my gratitude, I turned to the manifestation of a god again.

Wargrog removed his barriers. And then recreated them in a far larger box so that I was trapped inside his prison with the god’s power burning stronger right in my face. Just like the time I had tried Sacrificing it.

It wasn’t an eye any longer. Wasn’t a skull either. I wasn’t sure I even recognized its form any longer. Just an amorphous blob of volatile energy spreading outwards.

Maybe that was what I had really Sacrificed. Maybe a big part of the Divine Essence I had offered up as tribute was the shape that this divinity was supposed to take. But that was alright. I had a new shape for it to take.

Tangentially, my mind was thrown into a recursive loop. I had been ironically bent on Sacrificing a god’s manifestation… when I had always assumed I was Sacrificing things that god. So then, who had I sent that last Sacrifice to? I had always assumed the Weave was just rewarding me for the act of giving up something that was my own, more or less.

Not that any of it mattered right at that moment. I focused. . What did I desire, beyond the simple wish to protect my home from the deleterious effects of this energy?

……

The Vaunted’s words began haunting me for whatever reason. No, for whatever reason. Her desires had burned hot and bright, had led her to a path where she had taken such desperate actions, damn the consequences. Consequences that Shubratha had warned me about.

A power that only gods could claim. A potential that the Ascendants had from us. An appeasement in the form of the selective Weave, handed out as meagre recompense in return for the enrichment of the Ascendants themselves. People who had long, long ago abandoned this world to their servants, to the survivors of the Rupture, and in the end, to us.

To me.

Intrinsically, I realized she wasn’t wrong. At a very deep level, when I looked at the matter through an overly holistic lens, she was merely trying to unlock the boundlessness of humanity. Because it was that boundlessness that the Ascendants had used to rise to the level of the gods.

Evil neighbours, Arl had claimed in that little moment of connection we had shared.

I couldn’t. She was right. I couldn’t grasp it. I had been so focused on the here and now, on the cult and my neighbourhood, on the little corner of my world assailed so often from so many directions, I had suffered from tunnel-vision.

Not that I could be blamed. So many times, it had become a question of survival. Who could think the regularity of one’s life when the stakes were so existential?

But that was what I needed now. Because even if I couldn’t think of what I wanted…

…I knew what I want.

I reached out a hand. I let my Icon manifest. A translucence sphere of gold surrounded the roiling energy, each wave of fire and light impinging on my sphere’s surface. Each hit produced another silver spike stretching outwards, as the energy slowly twisted, bent, and reshaped into the helical spirals that I had originally started my Icon with. The surface was reforming too, bright scripts scribbling themselves onto the translucent sphere.

The world started folding in. For a second, a panicked part of me believed the Councillor was closing the prison for some reason. But no, even outside the cage of dark panes, he was being dragged in too.

I closed my eyes. Hardened my will. Focused on my desire. I might have identified what I want, but that was nowhere near enough. What did I want?

A question resurfaced from the past. Almost ancient, it felt like just then.

Fuck it. I knew what I wanted, then. I knew what I . What I sought was to become more. What I hoped to be was enough to not just stop others from targeting me and mine, but to grow beyond just the limits that this diminished society could provide me. That this hollowed out could grant.

And if that meant becoming a god in the end, then fine, I’d be one.

That didn’t stop reality from crumbling into the massive spike of virulent energy frothing out where a fake-god had been. If anything, I might have made it worse.

But I refused to think of it that way. So I channelled my Aspects. A Gravity Orb formed in the exact same space that the core of energy occupied.

Adding Flare and Illumination seemed contradictory to my goal of stopping it. But that was the thing. I seeking to stop it, just as I had told the Councillor. This energy—I needed it to be , so I wasn’t going to let it diminish like everything else on Ephemeroth.

Entropy went in too. Framework created curling horns that stabbed into my Icon’s manifestation, and though I feared it would start tearing it apart, nothing of the sort happened.

Even Entropy was absorbed within.

In fact, the silver rays of my Icon grew stronger, lengthening and spiking farther. One even stabbed right into my chest to connect with my very first mana core, and through it, to my second one that spun right against the first.

The link was like a lightning bolt shooting through my soul. My vision wavered. My senses recalibrated a thousand times in a thousand milliseconds. I found myself using Ignition Charge on all my other Aspects too. This had never been about making sense of what I used. This was about me. All of me. I was channelling threads of Sacrifice, wondering if I could fit in Ritual and Leadership somehow as well.

With violent cracks, a thousand silvery white spikes speared out into the world, every single one missing my body. Going by the lack of a pained cry, it had missed the Councillor too, thankfully. And they hadn’t expanded far enough to hit Zairgon itself.

Nevertheless, the expansion had sent out a shockwave that had flung me through the air, my body twirling a few times before I righted myself.

By the time I managed to stare back at the blindingly incandescent orb of cosmic power, my vision was shaded by a blue screen. One whose words, though hard to make out with the glare, still left a powerful impression.

And now, I just needed to use an Ascension Charge.