Chapter 383: Avarice - 2
Ren kept walking.
He did not know what was about to happen, or where exactly he was, but somewhere in his heart he knew that he didn’t want to turn around—it wouldn’t take him back to the chamber.
So he did what felt right—he advanced forward. It was hard to explain, but he could sense something... a strange kind of pull urging him further and further in a straight direction.
An insurmountable amount of gold mixed with reddish sand crunched under his boots.
’How long has it been since we started?’ he asked Blaze, perched on his shoulder.
’Twelve hours... maybe more than that,’ Blaze answered.
Ren wasn’t weak by any means, but continuous advancement across hundreds of kilometres had taken a toll on his body and mind. He felt spent.
Letting the exhaustion wash over him, he fell onto his back, staring at the sprawling inky canvas above with faint agitation.
"Don’t you feel like these stars..." Ren trailed off, unwilling to finish his thought. It sounded absurd.
’Yeah, they are,’ Blaze replied without needing further explanation.
The stars felt closer—closer than they ever had in Blaze’s thousand years of life. It seemed as though if Ren spread his wings and flew without stopping, he might even touch one.
Or burn to death.
"Where the hell am I?" Ren straightened, sitting cross-legged as Blaze hopped down.
’...I’ve never heard of a place like this,’ Blaze admitted, clearly unsettled.
Ren recalled the system’s announcement when this trial began—The Forgotten Land of Gold—and he was certain this place was tied to the God of Land, Geb.
"What an unassuming name for a god," Ren muttered. Looking around, he concluded this place was akin to the Nightshade Sanctum.
It was a trial from a god, but not in a dungeon or tower scraping the heavens... rather, in a vast desert.
Now that he was alone, his thoughts scattered. Most of the pantheon had their trials within Ellora’s Veil.
Weird. Gods, sharing a single place to bestow their blessings on humanity... surely they could’ve done better. Or maybe they had. He was standing in a place even Blaze, who was ancient, had never known existed.
"Well, gods came to be way before me," Blaze remarked matter-of-factly.
"Geb, Neptune, Svarog, Aine, Hera, Ellora, Falkor—" Ren listed, "Erebus and Azra."
He pulled a water canteen from his Spatial Void, gulped it down greedily, then offered some to the black cat.
"The pantheon I never knew about," Ren admitted. He’d come to terms with the fact that there were more of these supreme beings than just Ellora.
"Smokeball... you once said Falkor was an acquaintance of yours, remember?" Ren asked, recalling the night they crossed the ocean in a stolen boat from Prowler’s Cove.
’He... was. Things change a lot in an eon, I guess—’ Blaze paused, realizing Ren wanted more.
’You know what I was? Lemme tell you. I was a creation that was supposed to be a god... a god of dragons. The only abomination dragon to ever exist. A weapon forged to eradicate phoenixes and anything not divine, anything standing in the path of dragons. But I scared my own kin. Falkor helped me seal myself away, but—’
Blaze fell silent.
Ren was surprised. It was easy to forget, given Blaze’s carefree manner, that he was an ancient abomination.
Ren pieced together fragments in his mind. Many questions remained, but some things were becoming clear—Falkor, Klashier, Ignisara. They were connected.
He remembered the vision after his last breakthrough, where his rogue form was hunted by Ignisara and her clan. A battlefield.
How did one go from that to friendship? And where did Falkor fit into all this? If both clans had sought to create a god, were there two candidates for godhood from the dragon clan?
Falkor had succeeded.
"Well... I think I’ve pieced something together, but I don’t know if you’d like it," Ren said, rubbing his temple.
Blaze caught on quickly. ’That Falkor betrayed me.’
Ren stared at the cat in front of him, struggling to reconcile it with the being he’d seen in his revelation.
’You’re not the only one. I think so too,’ Blaze began. ’When I was born to be a god, Falkor was nowhere near my level. He was like a friend... the first I ever made. When I was hunted, he proposed that I split myself into two—soul and shell. After that, he cast me away... and then he walked the path to godhood.’
It made sense. Blaze had known the truth for some time, but speaking it aloud was different.
Klashier had been betrayed by his first friend.
"Sounds rough. How’d Ignisara die? She was the one about to cross the threshold and claim a place in the pantheon for the Phoenix Clan," Ren asked. "Was she killed by Falkor too, or did he plot something there as well?"
Blaze blinked, almost insulted. ’Talk about dumb and crass. If she died after me, then I wouldn’t have known where her remains rest... and if Falkor had killed her when I was alive, I’d have ripped the bastard apart.’
That made sense. Ren nodded—until Blaze added something that froze him in place.
’Ignisara killed herself.’
It was then...the sand hissed, the ground shuddered, and a screech rang from somewhere afar, as if trying to interrupt the revelation. Ren was immediately on his feet, unsheathing the sword Aron had given him. Over the horizon behind him, a sand dune exploded.
From it emerged a grotesque monstrosity that only vaguely resembled an annelidic creature—and that was where the similarities ended.
Just the head of the gigantic worm was as large as a three-story building, while its body remained buried deep under the bloody sand. Its face was a grotesque amalgamation of eyes in various shapes and sizes, its entire body riddled with soft, translucent flesh.
It slithered out of its burrow and screeched again. The sound was deafening—and then, another of its kin burst from the ground, this one slightly smaller.
’I just knew...how could I have a conversation without being interrupted,’ Ren mumbled his curse. From there on, all hell broke loose.