CHAPTER 286: TRUE SENSE (& ADDENDUM POLL)

As the sigils eclipsed the sun, thick ropes of mana poured out from the literally sky-high staff. It was vastly more power than had been fed into any of the Hierophant’s prior spells, and it felt as though every drop of energy was being squeezed from the weapon for one final play.

Nuralie had already disappeared, Varrin’s sword was ready as he prepared to charge, and flames danced across Xim’s knuckles. Tavio was balancing on one of the Cleric’s beefy shoulders at this point, since her hands were no longer large enough to serve as an easy platform. His halberd was at the ready, his body suffused with a subtle, pale-yellow glow.

I prepared to open the Closet portal again. Even if it spat us out into the midst of the mile of burning forest, we’d have to brave the rotting fire to keep this thing from using whatever this final trump card was. Given the size of its prior attacks, I didn’t have high hopes that it was the type of thing we could tank without losing Krimsim in the process.

I tossed the staff another identify, but it still came back as Hierophant of the Abductor: Whippomorph, Grade 34. However this thing worked, its true body was attached to the staff in some way. Unless it was the staff, which was a possibility. I was disappointed its Grade hadn’t dropped after we’d eliminated all of the heads, but the power it got from those sacrifices was apparently more durable than that.

Just as I was about to cut our group a new war path through space and time, the nearby air shuddered, and a calm voice spoke to us. It was vast, dark, and tranquil, like an untouched underground lake.

“Let us speak to one another,” it said.

I was momentarily taken aback by the unexpected suggestion. Glancing around, I saw that the birds that had survived Explosion! had backed off and were now circling. I shot questioning looks at my allies, who eyed me warily in return. I decided to take the initiative and looked back towards the distant staff.

“You want to talk?” I asked, speaking at a normal volume. If the thing could have a chat from two miles away, I doubted it needed me to shout.

“Indeed,” said the distant Hierophant. “Your defense of this settlement is vigorous, and I have expended enough resources in pursuit of its capture. We can come to an accord.”

Tavio scowled at the Hierophant’s words. I caught his eye, trying to see if he’d prefer to handle this himself. We were in Litta after all, and I was in no way an Imperial diplomat. He gave me a brief shake of the head and gestured for me to continue, so I followed his lead and put on my negotiation hat. It was a metaphorical hat, sadly, not a real one.

“First, stop feeding mana into those sigils,” I said. “Second, have all of your minions cease their assault on Krimsim and withdraw.”

The rivers of mana pouring into the glyphs in the sky above the staff slowed and then halted. Behind me, the far-off sounds of battle began to fade.

“It has been done,” said the Hierophant.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re listening.”

The air shuddered and shifted before the voice responded. “Grant me this city so that I can make a nest of it, and I will end my march northward. This is a generous offer, as it requires me to sacrifice much in order to sustain myself here.”

“What of the people in the city?” I asked.

“They are a part of it, and must be given over to me. Else, I cannot endure this land.”

Obviously, that wasn’t going to fly. “Why don’t you return to wherever you came from?” I asked. “Surely it’s more fitting for your needs.”

“I cannot,” it answered. “A greater beast than I has claimed the Forest’s center. Its territory is ever expanding, and all who encroach upon it are… perverted.”

“What’s this beast look like?” I asked. I didn’t expect to like what I heard.

“I do not know,” said the Hierophant. “The flocks I have sent to investigate are turned, and the messages they send to me are deceptive; unreliable. I have seen a hundred forms, all different, none true.”

“When you say turned–”

“It does not matter,” said the Hierophant, cutting me off. “I will not go back. My offer stands.”

Grotto looped Tavio into our psychic comms. Technically, it was within the major’s power to sacrifice everyone in the city to keep the Hierophant from advancing. His orders had said as much. Even so, the man wasn’t going to condemn an entire city to its death, or worse.

“We cannot allow you to execute the people in the city,” I said. “That term is unacceptable.”

The sigils over the staff pulsed.

“They will die one way or another,” said the Hierophant. “Your strength is admirable, but I am willing to pay greatly to scour you from my path. Your choice is to stand aside and celebrate your victory for halting me here, or to die alongside everything else, filled with regret and knowing that I will continue northward in pursuit of what I need.”

I wondered what the empire’s stance on this kind of ultimatum was. Tavio let me know their policy was to universally reject them. By voicing its threat, the Hierophant had just made its offer much more difficult for the empire to accept.

At this point, Pio’s team arrived to regroup with us. Madel led, with Baltae, Pio, and Guar flying behind via Telekinesis. Madel’s cape was scorched and ragged, Baltae’s armor had several holes in it where something had melted its way through, and Pio’s shield was practically scrap. Guar’s eyes shone with enough light to force me to squint, and the stout Littan was also covered in so, so much blood.

The man was immune to Bleeding, so I knew that none of it was his own.

“What is it that you need, exactly?” I asked the Hierophant. “Certainly, there weren’t a lot of people to decapitate in the Forest.”

The air shuddered again. The sigils dimmed.

“I subsist on mana, but also consume flesh,” said the Hierophant. “The former to live and the latter to grow. I can use either for both of these purposes, though it takes great quantities to sate my needs when the type of sustenance fills the role for which it was not intended.”

The Hierophant’s phrasing was strange, but I translated that to mean that if it absorbed mana to grow or ate meat to survive, it’d take a lot, whereas if it absorbed mana to survive and ate meat to grow, it’d take… probably still a lot since this thing was huge, but significantly less, presumably.

“This land’s mana is weak,” continued the Hierophant. “And I have spent much to come here. A great meal will allow me to sustain myself in this environment and restore what growth you have cost me. Once I am satisfied, I can make my nest and conserve strength for a time.”

“‘For a time’,” I said. “You would need to eat again eventually.”

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“Such is the nature of all things that live,” said the Hierophant.

“Then even if we were to accept your offer, it would only be a temporary arrangement.”

“Tribute can be paid,” said the Hierophant. “So long as reverence is shown and such offerings are sufficient in density and quantity, these lands will receive mercy in kind.”

That sounded a lot like it wanted ritual sacrifices, but if it was a matter of mana, there were things other than lives that could be sacrificed. Still, to have a giant leech of a monster sitting on the Littan borders and draining resources was a tough pill to swallow. And that was after condemning a hundred thousand people to their deaths.

Beyond that, whatever thing that had forced the Hierophant out of the Forest in the first place might emerge, forcing it to move again. Having the Hierophant settle down here was a non-starter. At best, the Littans would tolerate it until General Connatis or some other high-Level Platinum came to execute it for good. That fight might be even more destructive than the one we’d just had.

There was a brief back-and-forth between me and Tavio. Afterwards, I pinged Grotto with a few questions. If all this thing really needed was an area of sufficient mana density, we could provide that. There would be a cost, but with how the Closet was essentially a compounding growth machine, the price of creating a large area of high mana density would eventually become negligible.

Of course, then we’d have a giant Grade 34 monster sitting around and demanding things of us. Who knew how fast it would grow if given an ideal environment as well? And what if it decided we weren’t giving it enough? What happened when it wanted more?

Regardless, that solution came with its own problems, but could be a temporary fix that avoided Krimsim’s destruction. I was also willing to bet that my party could outscale this thing in time. It had a gun to a city’s head for the moment, but we’d have a lot more leeway inside the Closet, assuming it couldn’t just blow up the entire Closet.

That was probably a bad bet.

But maybe once the Hierophant was comfortable and hadn’t recently been chased from its home and placed on the edge of starvation, it would stop being such a shitstain. It wouldn’t be the first monster we’d tamed, and I doubted it would be the last.

As for how I would get it inside the Closet, I could probably open the entrance and use Shortcut to teleport it in. That was assuming it could shrink back to its 700-foot form, that I mana-shaped the fuck out of Shortcut to encompass its whole body, and that Etja threw me an assist with her soul hug.

Then again, I hadn’t strained the Closet portal to see how big I could get it. Big enough to let a young Dragon through, sure, but big enough for a staff the size of an ultra-redwood tree? I wouldn’t really know until I’d tried.

Grotto had mixed feelings about the idea. On the one hand, there’d be a high-Grade kaiju-sized monster with massive AoE skills inside the Closet. On the other hand, there’d be a high-Grade kaiju-sized monster with massive AoE skills inside the Closet that we might be able to wrangle.

Before I ran the idea by the rest of the party, I wanted Tavio’s thoughts. Again, this wasn’t my country, and I wasn’t in charge of what happened to aggressive monsters in Littan territory, nor did I want to be. Tavio considered the concept, then offered his opinion.

“Arlo, you are a person who makes allies of your enemies as readily as a baker makes bread from grain,” he thought to me. “It is an admirable quality. However, such bread cannot nourish when the grain is poisoned.” He nodded at the distant staff. “This creature is not some wild thing, driven by instinct and responsive to the lash and carrot. It speaks to us with intelligence. It could have chosen to approach us in peace, but it chose instead to slaughter my people. It murdered and wore the heads of hundreds of those I have taken oaths to protect, and we can only begin to guess how many others have perished in Krimsim, or how many more will continue to die from their injuries.”

Tavio paused and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he gestured broadly at the no-man’s land with his halberd. “You can witness the souls of others. Take a look around and tell me what you See.”

I furrowed my brow and focused on the spiritual essence of those nearby. Tavio and the others were brilliant and deep. The distant Hierophant was a viscous ocean. The circling birds were engorged to the point where they might burst at any moment. Beyond that…

There was a stream of spiritual essence flowing through the air.

The moment I noticed the first, I saw hundreds more, then thousands. A torrent of souls was slithering through the veil, emerging from countless corpses and trundling towards the Hierophant. All of its fallen flock was seeking a way to return to the creature.

“It ‘negotiates’ while planning its betrayal,” Tavio continued once he saw that I understood. “It worships a wicked god. It demands reverence and offerings as though it is a being worthy of idolatry. It offers us the choice of letting a hundred thousand die to save ourselves, or to simply die alongside them, as though our decision should be obvious. It is egotistical and unrepentant. There is nothing to redeem this creature.” He looked over at me with a steely gaze. “Even if I believed it would accept your offer, I cannot ask you to take such a thing into your care with a clear heart. But more importantly, I would not let you, because I am going to kill this wretched beast.”

Tavio stepped off Xim’s shoulder and fell to the ground two hundred feet below. He kicked up a cloud of carcass-ridden soil when he landed, then knelt amidst the mass grave. The glow saturating his form grew in intensity.

“There was no triple backflip!” shouted Guar. I turned at the non-sequitur to see the snow-white Littan peering into me with his spotlight eyes, which blazed from within his helm. I could feel the heat of it on my skin. “Two mountains fell, not one! The first, a remnant! The other, a finger!”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I try to clarify that when I can.” I turned to Pio. “What’s going on with him?”

“He had a revelation a month ago,” said Pio. “Now he can gain True Sense for a short time, but he does not yet have full control over what truths he senses.”

Cezil’s voice came from Madel’s back, rough and weary. “He used it to see the invisible pterodactyls.”

“And now I see you,” Guar said, before beginning to speak rapidly. “He who has been seen by a goddess and courted by her brother. One who has endeared himself to our goddess and been blessed by her child. One who speaks with nothing and is embraced by the god of…” Guar stared off into the distance, expression going slack. After a few seconds of silence, he whispered, “I can’t. It’s too vast.”

After that, he had no more truths to share.

While Guar was happening, my second instance of focus was figuring out what the fuck we were going to do.

“Plan Closet got shot down by Tavio,” I thought to my party.

“What was Plan Closet?” asked Etja.

“Was it wrangling the Hierophant?” Xim guessed.

“It was,” I replied.

“Wouldn’t have worked,” thought Xim.

“Why not?”

“The Hierophant’s not a god,” she thought back, matter-of-factly. “Your powers hold no sway over it.”

“Is Sergeant Guar okay?” Etja asked.

“He flew too close to the void,” I answered. “He’ll be fine.”

“We should develop a plan,” Varrin added. “We do not know how long this creature will wait while we debate its offer.”

“It’s not waiting,” I thought back. I sent along my vision of the thousands of spirits flowing toward the creature with a precise application of Reveal. “It’s buying time while it gathers those souls, probably so it can nuke us even harder once we refuse.”

“That’s going to take a while,” thought Xim. “They’re hardly moving at all.”

I started to comment on the abstract nature of the Spiritual plane and how motion was a poor measure of relative physical proximity, but then I remembered I was thinking at Xim and she knew all that shit. I refocused myself on the souls and saw that they were, in fact, converging much more slowly on the Hierophant. After another couple of seconds, they’d come to a complete standstill. Then, they began flowing backwards.

The Hierophant’s patience came to an end when the souls started heading towards Tavio.