The Ivory City was populated by the followers of Sun God, and protected by two of the remaining five lords.
The west of the region belonged to the second most populous faction of the Kingdom of Hope, the followers of War, and this was where Sunny had the misfortune to find himself. He had seen the statues of War God here and there in the arena, even though they did not resemble the one he had witnessed on the strange island that a circular river flowed through.
These statues of the God of War, as well as of life, progress, technology, craft, intellect, and humanity all depicted him as a mighty warrior in heavy armor, wielding a bloodied spear and a cracked shield.
The Warriors were also led by one of the lords — a beautiful priestess of War whose name was...
Solvane. The dazzling beauty was one of the rulers of the Kingdom of Hope.
The followers of War God and Sun God seemed to be in conflict with each other, and so were the lords leading them. That was how Elyas and his family had ended up captured and brought into the arena, to serve as slaves fighting in the Trials.
The remaining two lords were neutral and of no consequence, since their factions were much smaller and wielded no real power. One resided far to the north, and the other somewhere in the east. Elyas did not know much about them, and so Sunny didn't either.
…He just knew that the five lords were, without a doubt, the eternal shackles mentioned in the description of the Undying chain. Immortal jailers created by Sun God to keep Hope imprisoned in her tower, chained… forever.
What had once been a suspicion of his now turned into a certainty. There were just too many clues, some of which he had collected before venturing into the Seed, and some that he had picked up from the young man's words.
And maybe… just maybe… that knowledge could help him gain freedom.
Wooden sword… fight for their freedom…'
Sunny shifted slightly, causing his cage to sway, and glanced at Elyas. The youth was not in a talking mood anymore and just sat quietly, staring into the darkness.
There was something, a hint of a meaning, in what he had said. Sunny tried desperately to catch that meaning, but for some reason, his thoughts kept returning to the statues of War God.
He had seen two depictions of the fearsome deity in the Kingdom of Hope. One was a warrior in heavy armor, wielding a bloodied spear and a cracked shield — both, presumably, representing warfare and battle — and the other was a woman wearing nothing but a beast hide around her waist, holding a spear in one hand and a beating human heart in another… the spear representing her dominion over war, technology, and craft perhaps, the heart representing her connection to life and humanity.
Why were these statues so different?
Sunny was still exhausted after the furious battles of the past day, his thoughts slow and feverish, as they often were these days. Frustrated, he rubbed his face, then scratched at it with sharp claws, slicing the skin apart. The pain washed the fog shrouding his mind away, allowing him to think clearly for a few minutes.
The Altar of War… that was what Solvane had called the island where the primeval statue of the Goddess of Life stood. And that was the right word — this depiction of the deity seemed much more primal, bestial… ancient.
The statue itself seemed incredibly ancient, too. Much older than the statues of the mighty warrior were… in fact, it seemed as ancient as the Red Colosseum itself, or perhaps even older. Old enough to have been created before the Kingdom of Hope was shattered and turned into the chain of floating islands by Sun God, as it was today, and would be thousands of years into the future.
Why would Hope have a monument to one of the gods in her domain? Well, the idea itself was not that strange. Gods and daemons had not been always at war, after all. In fact, the Prince of the Underworld had a shrine to the Goddess of the Black Skies, Storm God, in his very tower — despite the fact that later, she would become his mortal enemy.
So that question was not important… the important thing was that Sunny couldn't stop thinking about the statue, for some reason.
'As ancient as the Red Colosseum itself…'
Suddenly, Sunny tilted his head.
'Huh?'
The white amphitheater, and the arena it surrounded, were the derelict of the true Kingdom of Hope, as well. He had realized that fact a while back, partially from how they looked, and partially from how deep and ancient some of the shadows hiding in the corners of the dungeon felt.
In fact, Sunny suspected that the theater had not always been a battle arena. It reminded him of the giant quarry at the roots of the Hollow Mountains, where the seven heroes of the Forgotten Shore had excavated stone to build the mighty walls of their city, and the Crimson Spire itself.
Ivory City had to have been built out of something, too… so this place must have been a similar quarry, once, and had served as the source of the white stones used to construct those aerial bridges and aqueducts. Later, it had been turned into a theater, and later still, the Warmongers usurped that theater and made it into an arena, soaking the ancient stones with so much blood that they turned red.
His black eyes narrowed.
'This is it… this must be it…'
All this time, Sunny had been tormented by one paradoxical question. A question that was of utmost importance for his attempts to gain freedom.
…If this was an era where the Nightmare Spell did not exist yet, then how could Solvane put him on a leash capable of severing his connection to the Spell?
The collar was a simple piece of enchanted metal, with no lock or any other way of opening it. It was almost impossible to damage or destroy, but the enchantment itself was not very complicated… Sunny could feel that it wasn't. What it did, however, was tie him to the vast and incredibly powerful enchantments of the arena itself.
Those enchantments were harnessed by the Warmongers to maintain the cages, prevent the slaves from escaping by any means, mundane or magical, and ensure that they behaved while being transported to and, very rarely, back from the arena.
His inability to connect to the Spell almost seemed like a side effect of these measures.
But what could even interfere with the Spell, let alone accidentally?
And now, he felt as if he had found the answer! If the Red Colosseum was, indeed, not built by the Warriors, but only usurped by them, then it was indeed very clear.
…Sorcery of another daemon could. If the Demon of Desire was the original creator of the theater, then the enchantments left behind by her would probably do the job of messing with the Spell weaved from the Strings of Fate by her older sibling.
Sunny shifted, grasping the bars of the cage.
Suddenly, a powerful emotion burst in his chest, filling his muscles with renewed strength, and his mind with desperate resolve.
…Hope. It was hope.
He didn't think of it as poison anymore. No... it was the opposite. A most powerful antidote.
If the Spell had been created by Weather, and the enchantments interfering with it created by Hope… if all of this was the result of a clash between two types of daemonic sorcery…
Then why couldn't he, as an inheritor of a daemonic legacy, do something to resolve that clash?
Sure, Sunny knew nothing about weaving magic… but he had also not known anything about combat once, or how to live and fight in a body of an actual demon.
If there was one thing he was good at, it was learning new things.
Well… that, and lying.
And staying alive. freewebnoveℓ.com
Staring at the ghastly dungeon surrounding him with new eyes, Sunny studied its ancient stone walls, and frowned.
So… how was one supposed to start learning sorcery?
There were hours left until they were going to be taken to the arena again. Sunny stared at the walls of the dungeon intently, as though hoping to glean some secrets from the ancient stones.
But what could he see? They were just old stones. There was nothing interesting on their surface, and neither was there anything interesting beneath it.
After a while, Sunny took a deep breath and sat down again, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible in the narrow cage. Then, he shut down his senses, pushing away the presence of countless abominations surrounding him, the stench of the prison, the pain in his exhausted body… everything that distracted him from thinking.
'What do I know about sorcery?' freewebnøvel.com
That was a daunting question.
Even the word itself was deceptive. Humans of his world used it to describe any Aspect capable of dealing direct damage to the opponents, as opposed to augmenting the Awakened's combat ability — especially those that could do so from range. But that wasn't what Sunny was after.
No, what he was interested in was not the type of abilities that existed within the familiar framework of supernatural powers, but the very means used to create that framework, or at least those that existed outside the realm of Aspects.
That, to him, was true sorcery.
'But there are different kinds of such sorcery, as well… what are the ones that I've witnessed?'
Three came to mind. The first one he was familiar with the best — the spellweave, which he believed to be Weaver's own sorcery. The Spell itself was created from it, as well as all the magical items that the Spell gifted to the Awakened — Memories and Echoes. This was the magic that all humans knew, and most believed to be the only kind there is.
Sunny, however, had already learned that sorcery was not synonymous with the Spell, and that there were ways of creating magic different from spellweave.
The first of them he had witnessed inside the Echo of Saint, which had remnants of a much more primitive weave hiding beneath the usual pattern of ethereal strings before he turned her into a Shadow. Later, he encountered the same type of alien weave within the walls of the Ebony Tower.
This type of Sorcery belonged to the Prince of the Underworld, Weaver's younger sibling. The similarity between them was hard not to notice, but Sunny didn't know which of the daemons had copied which — whether Weaver perfected the sorcery created by their brother, or whether the youngest child of the Unknown had based the method of his craft on the eldest's invention.
Judging by these two types of sorcery, it was easy to imagine that all of them involved some kind of a weave. However, that conclusion would have been wrong… Sunny knew this because of the third type of magic he had encountered.
The miraculous creation of Sun God — the obsidian knife he had taken from the white altar of the Sanctuary of Noctis before leaving for the Night Temple, and was now resting, inaccessible, on the bottom of the Covetous Coffer.
The black knife had no weave hiding beneath its surface… instead, it was full of blinding radiance, as if encompassing a boundless ocean of soul essence, with a single String of Fate placed into the pristine light as it folded on itself endlessly and formed a neverending circle.
That was the sorcery of Sun God… if a deific miracle could even be called sorcery. In any case, the obsidian knife — and later, the wooden one he had used to kill Solvane — proved that one didn't have to base their magic on a weave of some sort. This was just the unique way Weaver cast his, and their brother followed.
So… Hope's sorcery might have been completely unique, too.
Trapped in the iron cage, Sunny frowned. How was he supposed to search for something that could have looked like anything?
Come to think of it… there was another type of sorcery that he had encountered. Or rather, several different ones, all united by the same method of creation: runic magic.
The first time he had seen it was underneath the ruined cathedral of the Dark City, in a small cell where a corpse wearing Weaver's mask had been chained within a broken circle. That circle was carved into the stone floor, surrounded by countless symbols that Sunny had not recognized.
The Gateway within the Crimson Spire was surrounded by a circle of runes, too… as well as the stone arch on the last level of the Ebony Tower and the one connected to it, situated in the beautiful white gazebo on the Ivory Island.
Another place where he had encountered sorcerous runes was the Night Temple… there, they had been either inscribed by someone from clan Valor, or at least found and repurposed by them.
So, basically, he was familiar with three general types of creating sorcery. One was the spellweave, as well as a version of it used by the Prince of the Underworld. The other was the divine miracles of Sun God, which he couldn't even begin to understand.
And the last one was based on the inscription of runes, and seemed to have been mostly used by humans — here in the Kingdom of Hope and on the neighboring Forgotten Shore.
'Huh…'
There was a small discrepancy, however.
'Why was the portal in the Ebony Tower created with runic magic instead of the primitive spellweave, like everything else in there?'
Was it, perhaps, because the connecting portal on the Ivory Island had been? The Prince of the Underworld had built the tower in the Sky Below long after Hope had built hers, after all. In fact, he had done so after his sister was already imprisoned, to harvest the divine flames that had destroyed her domain. It would have made sense for him to use runic magic to invade an already existing system of portals that had been based on it.
So… was Hope, perhaps, the source of runic magic? Or at least a user of it?
Sunny sighed, feeling spent and tired, then closed his eyes.
He had to sleep at least a little, to allow his body and mind some rest before tomorrow's battles.
Especially now that he had not only to survive them, but also do so while searching for any sign of hidden runes throughout the arena…