The Storm King

Chapter 550: A Bit of a Problem

[This is definitely some kind of blood ritual,] Xaphan whispered to Leon as they watched a couple hundred marines set about removing the corpses from the ruined square around the serpent colossus.

[You’re sure about that?] Leon asked as the scowl that had perpetually marred his face since arriving at this grisly scene deepened.

[I seem to recall you saying multiple times to me in the past that you didn’t have much knowledge of blood rituals,] Leon stated, though his tone was casual and not particularly accusative.

Leon sighed deeply as he turned his eyes toward the massive serpent statue in the center of the ruined square. He and his squad had been here for long enough that the sun had started to rise, and not long after their arrival, he’d sent word back to Sigebert detailing what they’d found. Not long after, the Fleet Legate arrived to personally witness what Leon had found, and he’d brought half a marine battalion with him. Even still, despite working for several hours, not even half of the bodies had been cut down, leaving the serpent statue still covered in dozens of corpses nailed to its exterior.

The whole thing gave Leon the creeps beyond the sheer visceral revulsion of seeing hundreds, perhaps even a few thousand people so murdered and mutilated.

And yet, Leon could sense very little magic in their surroundings that could be considered notable. With so many mages running around, hauling tools and bodies or securing the surroundings to keep the ruin safe from predators and any potential Islander attacks, the ambient magic in the air had certainly gone up, but Leon couldn’t detect any enchantments in the ruins, any traces of magic power flowing through the rubble, or even any magic seeping into the serpent idol in the center of the square.

As far as he could tell, the ruins were completely mundane, absent any noticeable enchantment or magical augmentation.

[Can you sense anything else here?] Leon asked Xaphan, hoping that the demon could provide any other insights that he was missing. Without much else to go on, Leon feared that this would be nothing more than a grisly sideshow, devoid of meaning. But all of this had to have been set up for a reason, he couldn’t imagine that Jormun—and he couldn’t believe that anyone but Jormun could’ve done this—would’ve gone to all this trouble for no reason.

Or at least, he didn’t want to believe that all of this had been meaningless. Whether it be power or perhaps related to what Leon believed to be Jormun’s intent—releasing the mythical Serpent of the legend he’d relayed to Leon—Leon didn’t want to believe that someone had done all of this for no practical reason.

But now, seeing what Jormun had seemingly done—and Leon had no doubt in his mind that this was Jormun’s handiwork, despite a lack of conclusive evidence—Leon found himself revisiting that rumor.

[I can’t sense anything in particular,] Xaphan admitted as he answered Leon’s question, [but that’s not to say there was nothing magical here. Surely you realize just how quickly magic will dissipate into the environment when an enchantment has been destroyed or erased.]

[I do, but if this was to be a sacrifice, why erase the enchantment?]

[There could many reasons, too many to say for certain…] Xaphan began to list out those that he felt most likely, but Leon stopped paying attention as he tried to contemplate the problem. He remembered again Jormun’s story of the sealed Serpent beneath the Isles, and he wondered for not the first time how true that story was.

After a few minutes, during which Xaphan realized Leon wasn’t paying attention and just went quiet, Leon started making his way through the veritable forest of strung-up corpses that had yet to be cut down, eventually arriving at the statue of the coiled serpent. He didn’t have much room to inspect it with how packed the square was with bodies, but he didn’t need much room, he simply moved an errant leg of one of the victims a few inches to the side and pressed his hand to the cold stone of the statue.

He almost immediately pulled his hand back in shock at how bone-chillingly cold the stone was, but he managed to hold on just long enough for his magic power to enter the statue and probe around, searching for anything of note before Leon had to pull his hand back, his skin turning red as it fought off the profound cold of the statue. Leon scrunched his face up in confusion and concentration, for he could find no trace of magic power within the statue that would betray the presence of hidden enchantments or anything of the like, and yet the statue was still somehow cold enough to be too uncomfortable for his seventh-tier hands to bear for long.

[There was something here,] Leon whispered half to himself and half to Xaphan. [There’s no other explanation I can think of. Something used to be here, some kind of power, but this blood sacrifice must’ve… I don’t know, released it or something.]

[Did you sense something specific, or is that just speculation?]

[A bit of both,] Leon replied as he rubbed his fingers together to bring a little bit of warmth back into them, quickly filling Xaphan in on the cold he felt as he did so.

[It was cold, yet you felt no magic power?]

[Yes…]

[Perhaps it was something… divine? Or maybe a better word would be Primal?]

[What do you mean?]

Xaphan didn’t say anything more for a few long seconds. Leon could practically feel his hesitation and reluctance to speak again as if those emotions were his own.

[I… I’m not sure,] the demon finally growled, shame pouring out of him in such a torrent as he admitted his ignorance that Leon could feel it through their contract. [This might be… something that the sparkly pigeon might be better at explaining, but… well, let me put it to you like this. During the process of Apotheosis, you’ll slowly start to generate and use divine power, or Primal power, whatever you might want to call it. You can think of it like a tremendously more potent form of magic, or maybe a purer form. I used it when I was at my peak, but now it’s been so long since I tasted of such power that I’ve almost forgotten what it felt like it…

[Anyway, this power is extremely rare; even in the strongest beings in the universe, they’ll only generate about one part of divine power for every ten thousand parts of magic power. But beyond its potency and rarity, it’s also almost nigh-undetectable on its own. It’ll usually create magic power as it dilutes and dissipates in the environment—so I suppose ‘concentrated magic power’ might be a better way to put it, rather than pure or potent—which allows it to be detected by proxy, but divine power itself cannot be detected without using divine power in turn.]

Leon nodded as he started walking back out of the square, ignoring the questioning looks and occasional actual questions he got from the marines as he went, his attention fully focused on his conversation with hid demonic partner. [So, there was power in that moon stone back in Nestor’s lab that I couldn’t perceive?]

Leon nodded again. That made some degree of sense, Nestor had told him that, during his inspection of the stone after the Clan first acquired it, his initial hypothesis was that the moon stone had come into contact with a Universe Fragment before he and the Thunderbird clarified that it had actually been ‘touched’ by a Primal God.

Leon sighed as that realization crossed his mind, while a muted feeling that he was in way over his head started to cause his stomach to sink to his knees. But after taking a deep breath, Leon battered that feeling down; it wouldn’t help, and he wasn’t about to just let Jormun finish whatever he was going to do. This wasn’t something he could just ignore, nor was it someone else’s problem. It would take two months minimum for the Bull Kingdom to send someone else if reinforcements were requested, and Leon couldn’t imagine that they’d arrive in time. At the very least, Leon didn’t want to risk it.

He was the most powerful person now actively opposing Jormun, and that made this his responsibility to fix—at least in part, for there were others in positions of power in the task force, as well.

Glancing around, he saw Sigebert busy directing the marines as they moved the bodies into a nearby mass grave, and Gaius not too far away. He began walking over, but he only went a few steps when he paused. He’d decided to pulse his magic senses to check up on his squad and saw Alix, Marcus, and Alcander a ways into the trees, keeping close enough to everything going on as to be safe, yet also maintaining a good distance from the field of death that they’d stumbled into.

Maia and Anzu, meanwhile, were just lounging around the ruins, not paying anyone too much heed. The sight of so many crucified people had clearly not affected either of them in any noticeable way.

But the former three concerned Leon. Alix was hunched over and looked to be quietly sobbing in horror. Marcus and Alcander looked to be a little more put together, but Leon could also see their hands shaking and their eyes wide with shock.

Without a second thought, Leon turned toward his squad. They came before Sigebert, he could always speak with the Fleet Legate later.

A couple of minutes later, Leon was taking a seat on a large tree root close enough to Alix to lightly clap her on the shoulder as a show of support. She was, indeed, quietly sobbing, her eyes shut tight, her hands clasped in front of her face so tightly that her knuckles were white. Leon wasn’t too forceful when he joined her, he merely wanted her to know that he was there.

Leon waited a moment for anyone to say something. He almost thought no one would, but Alcander proved him wrong.

“That… was more than tough,” he whispered. “Don’t get me wrong, Leon, I’m no stranger to seeing a great deal of death, not after what we’ve all seen and done, but…”

The large man trailed off, leaving it to Marcus to pick up the statement where he left it.

Leon didn’t interrupt them, he just wanted them to talk. He couldn’t pretend that a sight of a couple thousand people horribly murdered left him unaffected, but his entire childhood was filled with blood and death, albeit the blood of monsters and animals, not humans. At the very least, he could compartmentalize well enough that his shock and horror wasn’t quite so debilitating.

“This doesn’t change anything, though,” Alix said, her voice iron hard as her hands fell from her face a few inches. “Jormun has to die. That’s what we’ve been working toward, right?” Her deep brown eyes turned toward Leon as if she were both asking if she were correct and daring him to disagree.

“I can’t say that nothing’s changed,” Leon replied as his golden eyes met Alix’s, silently telling her not to interrupt until he’d said his piece despite seemingly disagreeing with her. “When we set out, hunting down Jormun wasn’t that big of a priority. He was a target, to be sure, but for the Bull Kingdom, and us by proxy, the mission was to bring the Serpentine Islands back under the Bull Kingdom’s suzerainty and to retrieve Prince Octavius. That was it.”

“‘Was’ it?” Marcus asked, noting Leon’s tone and his specific phrasing.

“What is he trying to do?” Alcander asked, his eyes narrowing in concern, his tone deadly serious.

“And the Fleet Legates aren’t even focusing on it. They’re too focused on the political angle, they only see the Serpentine Islands and Octavius, but… well, I can’t say that Jormun doesn’t care about them, I don’t know enough about the man, but I simply can’t shake this feeling of dread in my bones whenever I think about this thing that Jormun is trying to unleash.”

“Assuming your guess is correct,” Alix whispered, her expression of horror slowly deepening, showing Leon that while she was giving voice to skepticism, she was a little more convinced by his words than that might imply.

“Assuming that, yes,” Leon said just as quietly. He was about to continue when he saw the Thunderbird-like bird out of the corner of his eye. He froze for a moment, his instinct to inform the others dying on his tongue for reasons that he couldn’t quite fathom.

The bird alighted on a nearby tree, stared at him for several seconds, then took back off in the direction of the square.

Leon stood back up. “We’re going to get this fucker even if we have to leave the Legion behind to do it. Let them play Earl-maker here in the Isles, let them bring their Prince back to their Kingdom. Jormun has to be stopped.”

With that said, Leon walked away from them, leaving them a little clueless and flabbergasted at his sudden departure, but also giving them some space to digest his words and their own feelings about what they’d found. He followed the bird back toward the square.

He watched it soar—seemingly unnoticed, for not once did Leon ever see a head turn in its direction—over the working marines and strung-up bodies, past the corpse-covered serpent statue, and toward one of the ruins on the other side of the square. Without hesitation, Leon made his way over, eager to see what the bird had to show him.

The bird led him to one of the larger of the ruined buildings that was little more than one partially-standing wall and a pile of rubble, the remains of perhaps the most important structure in this temple complex if its size was any indication, and one that had only light Legion presence around it—most of the marines were working around the square, and the bird had led Leon to the side of the building opposite to the side that opened onto the square, giving them manner of privacy. It watched as Leon approached, its eyes narrowing like it was watching a clueless field mouse approach, but Leon couldn’t sense any power in its gaze.

He stopped a few paces shy of the bird, just at the edge of the massive pile of rubble that the bird had perched upon. He stood there in silence for a few long seconds, he and the bird simply star