Divine Apostasy Book 12 - Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Ruwen considered for a few seconds and then strode over to the large concave dish.  He placed a hand on it and tried to detect anything out of the ordinary. He dropped his hand and frowned.

“Why?” Ruwen asked.

“Why what?” Overlord replied.

Ruwen pointed at the dish. “Why did this appear now? Purgatory has only existed for a short time so it’s possible this capability was always here, but the incorporation of the Zealot’s angel formations across its surface makes me think those shapes are fundamental to the dish’s operation.”

“That’s what we thought,” Overlord said. “It’s why I suggested it’s an amplifier.”

“But those angel formations did more than amplify magic,” Ruwen whispered thoughtfully.

Ruwen stepped away and spoke into the air. “Closest leprechaun.”

Nothing happened.

“Are you okay?” Overlord asked.

Ruwen held up a finger. “That’s because it was already pointed there. Now watch.” He turned back to the dish. “Up.”

The dish swiveled upward, pointing directly into the sky.

“Are you kidding,” Overlord mumbled.

This time Ruwen sent the request mentally. Master Pine.

The dish swung down and to the left.

Overlord, Ruwen sent.

The dish rotated in a blur, stopping when it pointed at Overlord’s face.

“Hey!” Overlord yelped as he teleported to the right thirty feet. The dish followed him.

Ruwen laughed and tried a few more variations. “Sixty degrees clockwise—nearest enemy—2 o’clock.”

The dish spun at the speed of thought with perfect accuracy. Ruwen grinned and looked at the surrounding trees.

“Thank you for this,” Ruwen said. “It’s incredibly valuable to aim my mental retaliation. I’m always worried someone will kill themselves by accidently brushing my mind.”

“I don’t think something like that is ever an accident,” Overlord said.

“That’s true,” Ruwen replied. “I guess what I mean is I can control my reaction to it now.”

“Control is always valuable,” Sivart agreed.

“Alright, this was a pleasant surprise, although I’m a little worried about what this place is now. Both the Death and Dark Tower avatars seemed impressed with this place so maybe its more special than I thought. Can you ask Prythus and the other guardians to keep an eye out for anything weird.”

“You mean weirder than a mental domain that bridges the space between your mind and the outside world?” Sivart asked.

“Or twenty-nine golden angelic Step Masters guarding this mountain?” Overlord continued.

“Or—” Sivart started but stopped when the dish swiveled to point at his face.

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Sivart said quickly.

Overlord opened his mouth, and the dish swung to aim at him. He quickly shut it.

Ruwen patted the dish. “This is the best thing to happen today.”

Overlord glared at the dish and then glanced around at the surrounding forest. “When the bully leaves we’re going to talk.”

Ruwen laughed and reset the dish to point at the sky. He didn’t want to accidentally break the leprechaun’s connection to the Material Realm when Ruwen was learning so much from the fight.

Leaving Purgatory with a thought, Ruwen faced the fifth leprechaun, who still bore a smug expression, confident his tier nine card attack Mind Storm would destroy Ruwen.

Ruwen dismissed Last Breath. An instant later his mental defenses reflected the Mind Storm attack. Instead of dissolving the leprechaun’s mind, Ruwen’s new control funneled the retaliation into the sky.

A bolt of lightning as thick as Ruwen’s body lanced upward, igniting the air. The resulting crack of thunder leveled the surroundings in a hundred-foot circle. The shockwave vaporized the leprechaun. Two smaller bodies appeared but before they could recombine, six tornados materialized, churning the air and hurling the fallen trees into the air as the twisters circled Ruwen.

The swirling stones, branches, and water turned the area into a blender and the leprechaun was destroyed again, resulting in four bodies, then eight, then sixteen.

Hail sliced through the maelstrom and struck the earth like siege bolts. The shattered ice fragments joined the other debris, circling around Ruwen in a vortex of destruction.

Ruwen studied the effects in shock. This new ability to direct mental attacks not only amplified the effect but kept some of the properties of the original attack.

Ten seconds later everything disappeared suddenly. Where the leprechaun had stood only a puddle of water remained. No, not water, miniature leprechauns, each the height of a strand of hair. A quick calculation revealed the puddle consisted of almost eighty-two hundred leprechauns.

Ruwen didn’t waste any more time. Using Harmony and his Sacral chakra he located the threads that connected the leprechaun and the items. Clumsily he examined them but lacked the precision required to carefully unravel the intertwined threads. Worse, his current level of Harmony didn’t possess the strength to cut them.

As the hair-sized leprechauns recombined, Ruwen opened his Void Band and retrieved his lute. He swiftly adjusted the pegs, turning them by precise millimeters to accommodate the quartertones required for the leprechaun’s Creation Realm music. Strumming the lute he frowned at the resulting notes. The frets interfered with his attempt at creating the correct tones.

Trying again, Ruwen loosened the pegs, slipped his finger under the strings and pulled it down the neck, prying free all the frets. Quickly, he re-tuned the strings to match D-G-A-D-G-C that he believed would work best with this type of music.

Ruwen considered a moment. The leprechaun’s loom music Ruwen had heard earlier didn’t contain any chords, and he adjusted his simple song to mimic this. Plucking the first note, Harmony displayed sounds far richer and more densely packed than he’d ever created before. Clusters of vibrations gave the tones more weight.

The fifth leprechaun hadn’t wasted any time and had condensed itself into twelve bodies.

Ruwen returned to the song Revival by Bad Alchemy, using the fretless lute to create a variation of the tune he’d always considered a bit discordant. Now he glimpsed the genius in the structure and the risks Bad Alchemy had taken to push the envelope of accepted music.

The tones leapt from the modified lute, sweeping the area in front of Ruwen like a scythe. The twelve leprechauns fell to the ground, each sliced in half. The penetrating quality of the sound surprised him, but he knew experimenting needed to wait.

Ruwen wielded the lute’s music like a sword, physically raising it and swiping downward. He chopped at the threads connecting the leprechaun to its material anchors which caused the scout’s twenty-four bodies to scream with hate. They gave up recombining and rushed at Ruwen.

The anchoring threads glowed brightly and frayed from the concentrated force of the quarter-tones. The attacking leprechauns staggered, eyes wide in horror, as Ruwen snapped the first thread.

The leprechauns, moving like drunk sailors, stumbled together and reformed just three feet from Ruwen.

Another thread broke and the leprechaun’s bright green sigils faded. It dropped to its knees. "This isn't over, Feldhexe. The Ceardai remember, and the guardian awakens."

The remaining threads anchoring the fifth scout to the Material Realm broke, and the leprechaun dissolved. No explosion this time, just a slow fading.

The counter updated.

Desiccated Leprechaun Scouts (5/25)

Ruwen placed his modified lute into Inventory and used the Architect Role to reconstruct the area, including the large tree he’d destroyed for the second time. Only then did he examine the loot that had dropped.

A card, which Ruwen still couldn’t read, went into Inventory. The remaining three items looked interesting.

Name: Concept Loom

Quality: Legendary

Capacity: 10,000 Motes

Description: A handheld wooden loom carved from a single piece of driftwood from the Emerald Sea. The shimmering threads contain the expertise of Ceardai master weavers. This loom facilitates physical manifestation of abstractions.

Effect (Passive): Mote Weaving +100.

Effect (Passive): Mote Magnet – Harvest 10 motes per minute while in the Material Realm.

Effect (Triggered): Reality Weave – Once per week, transform an abstract concept into its physical counterpart. Effectiveness is based on Essence Weaving skill, mote reserves, and clarity of conceptualization.

Name: Unraveling Comb

Quality: Rare

Description: Semi-translucent loom comb containing green glyphs that float freely across the surface.

Effect (Passive): Mote Weaving +50.

Effect (Triggered): Untangle Mote – Separate motes into different colors. Effectiveness is based on Essence Weaving skill, affinities, and base concept.

Name: Ceardai Clan Resource Map

Fragment: 2 of 7

Description: A partial description of hidden Ceardai Clan treasures in their Creation Realm lands.

Ruwen combined the map fragment with the Voyager's Weave and studied the loom. He wondered if it could create cards. The leprechauns had made a big deal about them. The Unraveling Comb’s triggered effect described separating motes into different colors. He had so many questions for Io now.

Kneeling by the objects in the chest, Ruwen considered what to do with them. Whatever emotional significance they held, destroying them wouldn't serve any purpose now. He decided to leave them alone and let fate dictate their journey. He wrapped the items in a thin file of Spirit to keep them from deteriorating now that the leprechaun magic didn’t exist to protect them.

The thief debuff remained and the timer for the Vault Guardian had decreased by ten minutes for each of the banished leprechauns.

Debuff: Ceardai Clan Mark of the Thief

Vault Guardian Awakening: 44 hours 15 minutes

Ruwen considered what he'd learned from the leprechaun's strange music. The microtonal scales and complex ratios had shattered his rigid thoughts on the structure of music. Instead of stretching his old harmonies across large distances, which hadn’t worked well, he’d discovered this music could create interconnected resonance bundles that linked in a grid to exert force. The trick was visualizing the music as packets instead of continuous waves. The Destruction Realm likely had its own type of music, and he made a note to talk with Deryssa about it.

Standing, Ruwen opened the first Notification.