Death, Devotion, Dissonance

*****

The second vision came to Endra. Same as last time, it began with the slow materialization of the surrounding area. It was a structure of some sorts. Endra couldn't call it a building, as it lacked walls and a ceiling. It was more fitting to call it a giant art sculpture.

The architecture was similar to last time, with tall, gothic-style elements around him. But there were two distinct differences here. First, the ritualistic, almost religious way the pillars around him were arranged.

Twelve giant pillars were arranged in a circle around twelve podiums in the middle. There were flying buttress supporting them from the outer side which reminded him of the gothic architecture, but Endra was more interested in the materials these used.

If he saw correctly, the structure was fully made metal. Not just any metal, but it was exclusively made of sorbothium.

'Such excess…' he couldn't help but sigh. 'Wait… are those runes?'

Endra went closer to examine one of the pillars and sure enough, various Runes were etched onto the pillars. From a glance, Endra could tell that each pillar was decorated with different runes, with only the supporting ones looking similar. Weirdly, although Endra was well-versed in runes, he could only recognize some of them. And even those looked to be common supporting runes like: Connecting and Binding.

'Does that mean I'm in the Empress' era?'

Endra wasn't sure whether or not the age before her had Runes or not. But none of the items that come from that time had any Runes, despite having magical qualities. In the modern age, anything that used mana had to have a Rune or two etched on them. It was the easiest way to distinguish ancient items and modern-made ones.

As he was wondering, the actors of the scene slowly made their presence. Tens of thousands of figures slowly emerged next to Endra. From the blue, tentacle-like organ growing from the nape of their neck, he guessed that they were the Hivemind.

Surprisingly, their skin had a bluish tone to it, though it wasn't completely blue. It was as if blue veins were simply more prevalent in their bodies.

There were few descriptions of the Hivemind, but there weren't anything concrete. Some said they all had white hair and red eyes, while others insisted their limbs were longer than most. The only thing they agreed on was the tentacle growing from their neck.

'What are they all doing here, though?' he wondered.

It was an eerie sight. Many of the Hivemind looked exactly the same as one another, and from a simple glance, Endra could tell that there weren't any children around. There weren't even any young men or women. Everyone looked at least forty years or older. Some even looked 60, which was considerably old for Alvox.

The Hivemind wasn't really doing anything, except staring at the middle of the pillars silently. Weirdly, they all looked reluctant to be here. Not just reluctant, some even showed faces of disgust and fear.

There was one member of the Hivemind, writing something in the middle of the podiums. Curious, Endra walked over to see its contents.

'The hell is this…?'

A rather confusing line was being written on the notebook.

[A thousand sacrifices of children to summon the Sinmother. All children must not be older than a day, else the ritual shall fail.]

Out of habit, he snatched the thing away from them, and surprisingly, a copy of it appeared in his hands.

Endra shrugged and started reading.

The gist of the notebook was simple. It described the rituals to summon the Twelve Calamities upon the World. Endra heard the story before. It was said that only one place in the Hivemind's land was spared from the ever-burning green flames and that spot contained a book which described something similar.

But the rituals written here… Endra could only call them scams. Most of them required a sacrifice or some suffering to work, but they were all so illogical, he couldn't help but scoff at them all. Even the surrounding people seemingly found them distasteful.

'What's the point of this notebook then?'

The person writing the notebook finished, then threw it in the middle of the circle as if he didn't want to do anything with them. Endra could only assume it was a bad joke of some sorts.

"Let's get this over with," someone spat out.

Forgetting about the notebook, Endra focused his attention to the gathered people.

They brought in twelve bodies into the circle, sunk into a tub of ice. They had the features of the Twelve Calamities. Endra's eyes sparkled.

Twelve people manning the large pillars pulled a lever. Apparently, the flying buttresses did not just support the pillars, they supplied it with mana. Their bases started glowing with mana and Endra could feel the massive amounts of energy being shoved into the pillars. At first, only the runes on the pillars lit, but soon enough, the whole thing started emitting insane levels of power.

Before long, an ethereal, green flame appeared in the middle of the pillars and started blazing towards the sky.

Entranced, Endra tried to remember every detail of the process, thinking it could be helpful to him.

The people watching all got up in an orderly way, and started walking into the flame. However, when the first person made contact with it, he simply burnt away, joining the flaring green. Each time someone evaporated, they would turn into two different colors: green and blue.

It as a delicate process but Endra could see that the blue part would seep into the pillars, while the green part would simply become part of the flame.

As for the people, they showed no pain… or any other emotion for that matter. For these people, this burning death was business as usual.

Eyebrows crunched, Endra saw as thousands of people simply headed into their deaths in an orderly, calm fashion.

But he forced his mind to focus on the various details of this ritual. The things he was seeing had incomparable value. Surely, this whole thing was what he needed to learn to separate from Evin's body.

Since the vision showed the pre-Empress era Twelve Calamities splitting their bodies into tiny little parts, perhaps he had to bravely split apart from Evin's body?

'After that, I'd have to do this ritual?' he wondered.

He then looked at the runes etched on the pillars and diligently memorized them. As he was busying himself with his new task, eventually, everyone was disintegrated under the green barrier's effects. The flame stopped, but it didn't disappear, turning into an orb of sickly green.

The pillars, on the other hand, shone a bright blue now, and the energies of all the people inside it seemed to be gathering at their peaks.

Twelve orbs of pure blue appeared in the sky. They slowly found their ways into the Twelve bodies that were arranged on the bottom of the pillars… and the Twelve Calamities were reborn once more.