TS5: Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Dodging back, Muras stared at Thorn for a moment and then looked at his hand, where blood dripped from his fingers. Thorn's armor was so tough that even though he had cut it, it had damaged his hand in return. Had he been using mana to reinforce his hand, this wouldn't have happened, but Thorn's alloy armor was so tough it tore his skin apart. Looking down at the gash across his leg, Thorn shook his head.

"My apologies," he said. "It's not quite fair, is it?" Seeing that Muras didn't respond, Thorn took a step back and rapidly stripped off his armor, tossing it to Stello, who stepped forward to assist him.

Once free and dressed in a simple pair of pants and a linen shirt, Thorn shook his arms as if to loosen them and lifted his fist once more.

"Get your hand taken care of and let's keep going," he said.

With a chuckle, Muras nodded and one of his retainers ran over, using a light-based spell to heal him. Flexing his fingers to make sure they were working properly, Muras took up his stance again, facing Thorn. With a flurry of punches, Thorn attacked, forcing Muras to dip and duck as he dodged backwards. Keeping up a relentless stream of attacks, Thorn's foot suddenly snapped out. As Muras moved to block it, Thorn's figure faded, and he appeared at Muras's side, his fist hammering into his opponent's ribs. Barely twisting around, Muras blocked the punch and was thrown up into the air. Though he was incredibly strong himself, Muras found it nearly impossible to resist the Titan's strength, and with an annoyed click of his tongue, Muras dodged backwards, using his footwork to maneuver through the air.

The main problem that Muras was having wasn't Thorn's strength, but rather that no move he tried worked more than once. It seemed that every time he threw an attack at Thorn, the Titan would absorb it. The next time Muras tried to use that attack, he would find Thorn instinctively blocking or avoiding it. It was a frustrating situation, and Muras soon realized that without his mana or aura, it would be next to impossible for him to beat Thorn. Just when he was considering unleashing his mana, Thorn suddenly stepped back.

"Thank you," Thorn said, bowing to Muras. "Why don't we call this fight here? I can tell that at this rate there's no way I'll be able to beat you, and I'd be happy for you to take the leadership role."

Staring at Thorn, almost as if he anticipated some sort of trick, Muras finally nodded.

"Fine," he said. "It was a good fight."

"Indeed, one of the most enjoyable fights I've had in a long time," Thorn replied.

"We should do it again sometime," Muras said.

"I would like that a lot."

With the fights decided, Thorn and his companions headed back to their accommodations. Muras had asked everyone to gather the next day for some simple training to get them used to fighting together, and Yol Barton, the fort's commander, had invited all of them to a feast that evening to celebrate their arrival. While they waited for the feast to kick off, Velin, Mina, and Corvo cornered Thorn to ask him about what had happened when he was getting his second holy blessing. No matter how much he insisted that he didn't know why the false deity had absorbed all of the light in the temple, it was clear that none of them believed him. Finally, after almost 20 minutes of badgering, he held up his hands in defeat.

"Look, I really don't know why it did that. We do have some speculations, however."

With a swirl of nanites, Eve formed in front of Thorn.

"It was my idea," she said, "to figure out a way to absorb its divinity in addition to its knowledge about how the light element works. With that knowledge, Thorn was able to achieve a complete light affinity, and absorb some divinity as an added bonus."

"So what happened?" Velin asked.

Thinking for a moment, Thorn's face grew serious. The others waited for him to speak, their eyes fixed on him.

"The first time I got the blessing," Thorn said slowly, "I noticed something. Much of what the blessing consisted of was information, memories of how the light element could be used. This is why it has the potential to increase an individual's elemental affinity."

"You mean that they're simulating enlightenment?" Mina asked.

"I think so," Thorn replied. "The thing is, it's all kind of random. It's almost as if they're hitting you with a fire hose of information, hoping that at least a few drops make it into your mouth. Well, due to my domain and how my divinity works, I was able to capture most of it. For our second attempt, I figured that as long as the false deity wanted to let me peek at its memories, it was worth taking as much as I could. Eve set up a spell to catalog those memories, effectively creating an archive with a sorting process that would organize the information as it came in, making it much easier to store. What we didn't anticipate is what effect that would have on the divinity attached to those memories. See, a lot of that divinity felt oddly compatible with me."

"Compatible? Do you mean like from another Titan?" Corvo asked.

"No, not a Titan, like from Hati, but not quite. Our best guess is that just like Hati isn't the only moon wolf, there must be other sun wolves like Skoll as well, many of whom have been devoured by the false deity. At the end of the day, it's really just a giant glorified god hunter whose divinity has been kept as pure as possible. It looks like the only god beasts it's consumed are those with light associated aspects, so it would make sense that if Skoll has brothers and sisters, they would have been prime candidates for being absorbed. But anyway, this is what we found. As soon as the spell kicked off, it opened the floodgates, maximizing the flow of information. Well, that pulled some of the giant god hunter's divinity with it. And it wasn't until we had been at it for almost an hour that it started to notice it was bleeding divinity to us. At that point, things got a little bit rough as it sent its will down as well."

"What do you mean by 'will'?" Velin asked, her eyes narrowing.

"The god hunters appear to be an amalgamation of different divinities, right? Well, on top of that, they have an intensely strong will. It's how they keep all of those different aspects from going haywire and self-destructing. That will is tied to the protection of the temple and of themselves. Sort of a self-preservation instinct, you might say. But there's another piece to it. There's something planted in them, controlling them. Some sort of awareness. It didn't feel like anything I had ever encountered before. On top of being overwhelmingly strong, it was also incredibly corrosive and as soon as it hit me, I nearly lost control of the spell. It took some work to keep everything from capsizing and shut the spell down. After I did, I left the room and teleported to where you all were standing. It was at that point that the lights went out."

"So we still don't know what caused the lights to go out," Mina said, biting her finger.

"Given what Thorn just said, I think I do," Velin replied. "Give me a sec."

Her eyes went blank for a moment, glowing bright green. And then an image popped up on everyone else's E.V.E. It showed an overhead view of the Temple of Man. For a moment, the image went black and then returned.

"This is what my map caught," Velin said. "If you look closely, a dozen dots disappear. Those dots are god hunters. I think the big one absorbed them all, replenishing itself because it was missing so much of its divinity."

"Is this going to cause problems for us?" Corvo asked. "I mean, the fact that Thorn now has that divinity."

"I don't think so," Eve said, shaking her head. "He already had Hati's divinity, which has almost exactly the same flavor. Now, it's just a little bit stronger. The difference between the sun wolves and the moon wolves isn't significant enough for most people to notice. So I think we should be safe. It does lead to some troubling questions, though."

"What do you mean?" Velin asked.

Instead of answering, Eve looked at Thorn and gestured for him to explain.

"Well, if that giant false deity is really just a massive god hunter and it just absorbed a whole bunch of mixed divinity, it's going to have a much harder time controlling itself. And if its will were to ever crack, the whole thing would deconstruct."

"So what you mean to say is that it's a giant bomb," Mina said. "You know, that gives me some really good ideas."

Laughing, Thorn shook his head.

"Well, it could be a bomb," he replied. "It's much more likely to be forced into operating one of its other prime directives, like growing stronger. That thing just absorbed a dozen god hunters in the blink of an eye. What would happen if that power was targeted towards the saints? As I said, its will was naturally corrosive. I didn't have any trouble with it, particularly, but I imagine many of the other saints wouldn't be immune to its coercion. If it ever goes wild, it could transform into an absolutely terrifying force. It's already incredibly strong, and the only reason that we felt comfortable swiping anything from it was that it doesn't have a true consciousness of its own.”

Pausing for a moment, Thorn gave Eve a look that was hard to decipher.

"Oh no," Velin said. "What happened?"

Looking slightly embarrassed, Eve exploded into a cloud of nanites that merged back into Thorn's armor. With a sigh, Thorn rubbed his forehead.

"That spell that Eve used? Well, in order to get it to work, she had to inject nanites into the false deity. We needed some way to control the flow of information and that seemed the best solution. You might think of it as a swap.”

“How is that even possible?" Mina asked.

"Honestly, I'm not exactly sure, but through the nanites, Eve has the ability to manipulate spell constructs," Thorn said. "You might think of it as a sort of magical hacking. Well, guess what god hunters are? Yes, they're a mess of divinity, all of different aspects, all mashed together. But guess what holds them together? An insanely complicated spell construct. In order to get our absorption spell to work, Eve had to adjust the enchantment.”

"Okay, so what's wrong?" Mina asked, staring at Thorn, "because from the tone of your voice, it's really clear that something is wrong."

"So the good news is that we'll probably be able to tell if the false deity ever changes its primary directive," Thorn said, speaking slowly. "Unfortunately, we've also lost control of those nanites. They've been absorbed into the enchantment holding the false deity together, and they seem to still be making changes."

"I'm sorry, what?" Corvo asked. "Are you telling me that Eve just injected the ability for self-improvement into that thing?"

"Yeah, unfortunately, I am. I think what probably happened is that the nanites carried a trace of my divinity, which is focused on improvement. I mean, that's my whole thing. Just like I absorbed some of its divinity that is associated with the Sun Wolves, it absorbed some of mine in the form of the nanites."

"Well, that sounds like an absolute nightmare waiting to happen," Corvo said. "I mean, honestly, I'm not surprised, but oh boy, does that sound bad.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?" Velin asked.

"Not at the moment, no. Eve is working on a solution, but unless we can reconnect with the nanites, it's going to be impossible. And they've already changed so much that it's really unlikely we'll be able to reclaim them," Thorn said. "At this point, we'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"That's not ominous at all," Mina said with a smile. "How long is this thing going to take to gain intelligence?"

Unsure of the answer to the question, Thorn shrugged.

"Eve?"

Materializing, Eve sighed.

"It's moving really slowly at this point," she said. "It could be a dozen years. It could be hundreds. I'm continuing to monitor the situation and I'll keep you all updated. But at this point, there's no way of knowing just how fast it's going to mature. As long as we don't add any more nanites, it should be a fairly slow process."

"You're not going to add more nanites, are you?" Velin asked, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Eve.

"No. That has been added to the very long list of things we will never do again," Eve said. "In my defense, most of the items on the list are Thorn’s, but I will take responsibility for this one. It seemed like a really good idea at the time."

"It was a really good idea," Thorn said, "and it worked tremendously well. We just didn't really anticipate the side effects. Magic is still a fairly mysterious thing."

"It is. That's why we call it magic." With a sigh, Velin closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. "What about this puzzle," she said. "What are the chances we're going to run into some sort of catastrophic problem here?"

"Fairly low," Thorn replied, turning to look towards the north. "I can feel it out there. It's calling to me just like the Great Forge.”

“I mean, how disappointed will everybody else be when they get there and they realize that it was literally just made for Thorn?" Mina asked, giggling.

"I don't know, but I'm excited to explore it," Corvo said.

With a smile, Thorn patted Corvo on the shoulder.

"Me too, bud. Me too."

The next few days passed quietly. After celebrating the feast with the commander, the teams rested for the night and then began to practice a few simple formations under Muras's leadership. He had them organized into different groups, arranged in a cross formation with his team at the north point, Thorn's at the east, Kitsek at the rear in the south position, Joresh on the west side, and Tolariah and her retainers in the center. After agreeing on a number of different commands that would allow them to rotate to the right and to the left, as well as swap out with the team that was in the center, Muras seemed satisfied and called all of the prime ascendants together to talk through what would happen next.