The Third Gate: Chapter Sixty-Four (Patreon)

The Cult of the Primes did not have many allies in this world. 

Their churches were scattered through only a few of the lands that tolerated them, and otherwise held to the wild lands, where they could hide their communes. Even then, most shunned them. In Delitone, the cult was forced to operate in a heavily reduced capacity, since it was too close to Mossford, to the enemy’s territory.

The First Spear, Leader of the First Decanus contemplated this, hate in his heart, as he took the boat to the Crysite. Not that he thought he knew anything that the Praetor or the Consul didn’t, but it was always important to think.

It was only natural that they would be banned from the home of their great enemy, the Godkiller, the Undying King, the Analyst. The great enemy had told his four – perhaps soon to be five – servants to scour them from the land, making Thornfront, Dragontooth, and Suntorch completely uninhabitable to them, and the City of Sin only permitted them due to the rebellion of the Avatar. 

Another of their great enemies, the Time Prince, tried his best to keep Daocheng and its territories clean of the cult, but he was only one man, no matter how powerful, and Central Daocheng was already the second largest nation in the world. When one factored in the fact that the Time Prince also had to keep Tianzhu, Feng Chui, Zhauzhe, and Jiangju clean, which made up half again as much area as Central Daocheng did? It gave them some purchase outside of Central Daocheng, and west of the Jiangju mountains, where the Storm King and Time Prince’s powers came to an end, they could operate freely.

The hypocrisy of Daocheng and its territories was enough to make the First Spear want to choke on his soup. By all rights, that entire eastern half of the continent should support them. The very philosophy of might makes right should make it so that the Primes were unsealed. 

The tolerance of Elohi and Kijani allowed some small number of their churches to take root, but the indoctrination of the masses, with their histories, mathematics, mass magical teachings, and more made it hard to do anything, and the watchful eyes of the Sun and Moon Liars upon them stopped the cult from being able to whisk away recruits their communes. It left them seen as little more than madmen, raving about truths that the populace thought were lies.

When it came to the erstwhile apprentice of their great enemy, the Death Queen Vivian, the First Spear wasn’t sure. She allowed some few churches to take root in her land, and didn’t pay as much attention to the populace, allowing them to spirit away those who showed enough loyalty. But the Death Queen’s mood was mercurial, and she’d once rooted up nearly every church in her lands in a fit of rage. Now she seemed determined to keep them around, just to spite their enemy. Not an ally, but not an enemy.

The Cataclysm’s claimed lands were almost entirely uninhabitable, and had no government to speak of, but while the Headsman seemed unable to care about anything at all, the government there operated completely independently, and had refused to let them take root in the Obsidian Forest.

At least Tower-City was consistent in their apathy. The Space King’s right and left hands, the Wardsmith and the Keeper, were both completely involved in their own projects, with little enough care for politics or power, and the Space King herself had refused to raise her hand against them, and the First Spear had been told that if he should find herself in her Tower, there were certain small ways that could be opened to him, a gift from perhaps the only non-hypocritical power in the world. 

Though, Aergarde wasn’t too hypocritical, at least when it came to the traitorous magi. The Fortress Tom, as well as the Mover of the Spheres, were both more invested in turning their power to rivaling the swift growth demonstrated by Elohi and then Kijani, Mossford, the Redsummer Isles, Vinopae, and others, a proof that might meant right. As a result, he allowed some of their cult compounds to remain, so long as their research was contributed to him, even if he disagreed with them. It was perhaps the most dangerous place where they operated – Tom was watchful enough that any recruits couldn’t visit a secret compound, which led to that branch being almost entirely independent. 

Fortunately, even though Saare and Vinopae – the countries of The Living Wall and The Farmer – were less open to the Cult than their Magi master Tom was, their Occultists were young. Too young to have the vigil of the Knowledge King or their great enemy, and thus didn’t keep too close an eye on them. 

When it came to the countries owned by independent yet settled Occultists, like the Kraken Liege’s Redsummer Isles, the Beggar Luminary’s Hallowed Orrery, the Ocean Lord’s Pelagic Metropolis, or any of the five dozen others, it was an even split. Almost all of them were too young to know why their enemies the cult from their lands, but they had been raised in a world of soft lies and comforting deceptions, and thus been brainwashed. Most were like Saare and Vinopae, allowing the Cult to have a few churches, but not truly to operate freely. 

“First Spear!” came the voice of the First Spear’s second in command, snapping him out of his musings. He banged his fist to his chest. 

“Yes, Second Spear?” 

“We are approaching the border. It is time.” 

First Spear nodded and removed a bottle of glowing silver pills from his pocket. He tapped one out, then passed the bottle to the Second Spear, who did the same before leaving to find the rest of the Decanus. 

He stared into the glimmering, almost opalescent silver of the pill, and let a touch of doubt spark in his chest. These spirit-disintegration pills were powerful magic. If the Analyst captured them alive, it would give them a way out. If they died, the pill’s magic would rend apart their spirits, preventing them from leaving any echoes. No ghosts. No psychometric impressions. Not even the Time Prince and Analyst working together could fish something from nothing at all, and this would leave them as nothing. 

Absolute spiritual destruction. 

Against their great enemies? It was needed. Because there was a good chance that Orykson would notice them, and if he did, they would die. 

But the cult had spent the centuries since the sealing of the Primes learning how to evade the eyes of the magi, and this would be a test of that on a new scale. Not just snatching the odd resource with the help of the Space King, but infiltrating the territory of their Great Enemy. He could only hope that their preparations would be enough. 

The entire First Decanus had intentionally forgone the Blessing Rites, to have their flesh scoured of the impurities of energy and be rebuilt with mana, like spirits, like the Primes themselves, just to give them the chance that they would be ignored by their great enemy.

They had spent the last five years in Delitone, working ordinary lives at the edge of Orykson’s awareness, to get his senses used to feeling their meager peak third gate spirits. 

They had cut themselves off from the contact with the leadership over a decade ago. If things had gone to plan, then the leadership should be completely hidden from the treachery of the Magi now, but despite the pain it had caused, none of the First Decanus had held firm, not breaking the secrecy, and starving themselves of the wisdom of the Praetor.

If the entire Decanus didn’t take their pills, then all of it would be for naught. 

The First Spear took a breath and swallowed the gleaming silver pill. It sank into his spirit, spinning and shedding its silver light throughout. The light faded a little, but the First Spear could still feel the pill, sitting there, waiting for him to die, or for him to choose to detonate himself.

When they passed over the boundary that was Orykson’s Title, the First Spear expected to die. 

An hour later, he was still tense. 

When they landed on Crysite, the First Spear couldn’t help but laugh. They had done it! 

This made everything, absolutely everything, worth it. When his allies in the Second through Sixth Decani arrived, they could follow the orders of the Praetor. The First Decani would hide, while their allies stirred up trouble. 

It was a principle that was key to any deception, after all. If you had someone drawing attention, then it made it easy to slip something else under the radar. And even the Magi weren’t immune to such mortal follies. After all, for all his power, Orykson was no Prime.

…

Elio, in his human form, ate a sandwich. It wasn’t a very good sandwich, but not a horrible one either. In the months that had passed from the destruction of the Idyll-Flume to now, the Isle had begun to build itself up. The small farms had recently had their first yields, and it made acquiring goods so much easier now. There still weren’t many restaurants, but at least he was no longer having to eat lesser monsters just to fill his stomach any more. 

Across from him, Idyll’s flickering spiritual form sat, doing her best to hold herself together. As a worldspirit, losing her entire world was akin to a human having a hole blown in them with a cannonball, one that had been enchanted to do the same to their spirit as well as their body. 

The Craftsman’s magic had helped hold her together, then stitched her shattered legacy, dominion, and authority into unclaimed territory, allowing her to be reborn as a Genius Loci, a spirit of the land, with her memories intact. 

But even though her mind was intact, she had still suffered damage. Holding together a physical form for more than perhaps thirty hours a week was difficult for her, and her mana-garden was an utter wreck. In the months since she’d been implanted, his sister had barely managed to chip out enough of her ungated mana to activate her dominion and authority, and she was still far, far away from being able to cast any spells. 

Elio cursed the Sage for the creation of the flume astral plane, the chain that forced Idyll and him to take such extreme measures to escape. He cursed the bird who had stayed loyal to the Sage while enslaved in spells and trapped inside of Idyll, and who’d left him with the wound he still bore in the fight after the destruction of the Idyll-Flume. And most of all, he cursed himself. If he could just form a title, he would be able to weave it into the land alongside Idyll, and help her at least be more stable. In theory, if she formed one of her own, it would also help, but she was so grievously injured that the strain of forming a title might kill her. 

Idyll raised her head, and Elio looked at her. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“I thought I felt something,” she said. “Though… No, I think it’s nothing.” 

… 

Orykson’s Wind of Resolve, his first and strongest wind, tugged gently on his spirit, and he consulted it, along with the other two winds. With Aerde’s help, he realized that a group of fifty or so revolters would be working to throw the still-forming Crysite into chaos.

Orykson could stop it… but it was exactly the kind of challenge that Elio would need to finish forming his Title, and the attacks might give a bit of challenge to the contestants he had an eye on for the Elysian Mastery Tournament, as well as his ex-apprentice.

…

The leader of the Cult of the Primes, as well as her eight strongest attendants, focused, working on their breakthroughs. The worldspirit that they’d captured from the Idyll-Flume’s destruction had given them a place where they could form a Title without the Magi noticing. 

She and the others had been stuck as peak sixth gate mages for so long, afraid to open their seventh gate, in case they’d already completed a Title without knowing, and would bring Orykson down on their heads. 

But now she had finally advanced, and become the Lady of Creation. One other had also formed a Title, Lord of Shadows, but the others needed help. She crashed her power against the others, battering them down, to help them grow. They would be needed, after all. 

The Primes must return.