Enix's vision shook, and he found himself back, stranded in front of the seven statues.
As he looked at their mighty statures, so domineering yet still unable to bring him harm, he couldn't help but chuckle and turn away.
As he stepped down, he noticed a peculiar detail. The crystal clear glass floor that had been brilliantly reflecting the roof had, for some reason, turned a dreadful black.
As he stepped over, he realized Veench seemed to tremble ever so gently as he gazed above at the roof.
His eyes fluttered, and remembering something that Fria had muttered, he raised his head to stare at the depiction.
And certainly, it had turned into something ignoble.
'What is this?' Enix pinched his chin. As he stared at it, and found nothing odd except that it had changed, his curiosity waned.
His head turned forward, intending to call out to Veench with a trembling heart at what he would do.
'Go–' Enix's breath halted, his body jolting a step back as he saw Veench squatting right in front of him, his nose almost brushing him. With his pupil-less eyes fixated on him; for some reason, Enix felt his white sockets could see past all facades.
"Did you... worship?" His eyes gawded straight into Enix's eyes as he questioned, irking him out.
"I mean... did you receive the worship skill?" His raspy, low and hissing voice seemed to coil around Enix.
"Yes-no... Yes, yes!" Enix withdrew back until his feet cornered against the platform.
"I see." His eyes remained unwavering from Enix's, he sat frozen while nodding, "Do you know what I see in you?"
Enix felt some seering hand latch onto his neck and barren his throat, and with difficultly, he shook his head.
"Cursed... you are accursed! You defiled the statues!" Veench's body trembled, his lips swelled out and parted, revealing his gnashing teeth.
"If not for the fear of your blood staining the purity of this chamber, and the commandment forbidding violence in front of the divines... I would've first plucked out that loathsome tongue and burned it in scorching flames and then proceeded to evaporate your repugnant blood... before chopping you apart and feeding you to starving dogs."
Enix trembled, 'He's lying... he is going to kill me.' It wasn't Enix's perception, but the terrible aura brewing behind Veench's still calm ligaments that told him so.
'What do I do? He will cut my head first thing after leaving this room... Will Gruis be fast enough to protect me... there's no way, they wouldn't be able to save me, not if they are unprepared.'
"Let us leave... I don't wish your presence to stain the divines any further." Veench stood up with a towering madness, his prescene made Enix feel like a kitty in front of a lion.
"Y-Yes." Enix stepped forward, and followed a few steps back from him.
'What is this feeling?' Enix felt something pounding his blood, making it ripple like stones raining in a pond, 'Is this... what I always read in books as... at the edge of death?'
It was a terrible sensation, so obnoxious that his head lifted from the floor and stared at Veench's back with unflinching, aloof eyes. Maybe it was his gaze, but it made Veench pause and freeze in his place.
'To play with one's life... do I regret spitting at those statues... in my desire to become Fero? I know I wouldn't have performed such an action prior last night... when I was living as Enix. So... do I fear turning into Fero now?' Enix stared at his hands.
'But if that was so... I wouldn't feel so high... high as if I was tearing through gravity's confines and soaring into the sky.'
A grin spread across his face, 'If I was Enix, I would've complied with other's will and kneeled. I would've continued to spend an eternity behind the thick shelves of the library.'
As Enix was contemplating, Veench had started to quiver like a pitiful candle placed in a storm.
His head shuffled up and down, sizing up the darkness, 'No... I-I may be mistaken... this darkness... it doesn't represent evil or rebellion.'
His eyes turned to the moon, 'That moon... it's not stained by blood... It is a drop of blood!'
Uncertainty laid its seed in his heart and his eyes moved about, 'This darkness... it's a sign of therianthropy... endless change!'
"What could all this mean?" He murmured, and fell into thought, and as he mulled in whinpers and chocking words, Enix's creased brows had began to loosen.
'I have two choices... To become Enix– return to the statues and grovel and become a sophisticated book-worm and live a let-down life, never able to look up to anyone, never able to fulfil J's or MM's wishes... never able to live like the reincarnators that I watched in anime.
'Or become Fero– to grow immoral, rebellious and debauch. To chase and screw every woman on the planet. Unable to do anything but free-load, and waste the efforts of others.' Enix paused and chuckled, 'That doesn't sound bad.'
'But as Fero hated to chose. And Enix's contempt for repetition... I refuse both proposition.' Enix burst into laughter.
And his laughter kick-started Veench, beckoning him to move while muttering, "No matter... he has still desecrated the divines." His fists clenched tight.
With a strange change of air which he lacked before entering, Enix saw the door in front of him open and Veench, as he paused and turned his head to stare at him, waiting for him.
Without fluttering, he reached him. And with a casual demeanour, and in sync, the two's foot exited the chamber.
Enix grinned, his eyes darted toward Veench and stared in awe and dread at the ghastly white aura that was stained by a pungent black behind him burst into life, and turning into a white faced maw with stained black fangs, it slammed atop Enix.
Enix's eyes fluttered shut, and his body stiffened into a log, 'Such power... it's like Fria in that moment... Over in the blink of an eye.' As Enix resigned to fate, a few morbidly long seconds began to saunter, and the screeching sound of creaking wood echoed, before a door gently nudged shut.
His bewildered eyes flapped open and his head turned to stare back, at the chamber which had closed behind him, "Haha... HAHAHAHA!"
Gruis's body trembled, his eyes shivered toward Mugam– who stood perspiring.
Their eyes flickered and a mute string of command flashed between them as Gruis creeped into some shadow, and with large strides, Mugam advanced with opened arms and voiced boisterously, "Oh Enix, did all go right?"
"Your child has committed sacrilege, duchess!" Veench snarled, his tone heavy and laborious, his earlier humbleness charred in flames.
In the meantime, while Mugam was channelling her magic in a manner Enix couldn't see or even detect, Fria charged past her and quickly embraced Enix, "What was that terrifying feeling?"
Enix patted her back gently and stared straight at Veench blatantly standing with his eyes closed, "You... accept it!" His voice seemed to bombard in the echoy hall.
A terrifying aura once again seeped out of him, but Enix, this time, could only sense the terror without actually seeing anything. 'What's this... what's he doing?'
His heart fluttered, his body screamed at him of something he was oblivious too and a wretched feeling of something bolting toward him like a thunder-bolt rendered him immobile.
But, just as something seething prickled his chest, Mugam's voice gently echoed, "Veench, your divine powers seem to be running headlessly."
A hand gently pressed down at Veench's shoulder, and as Enix saw the casual pat, the tiles beneath his feet boomed into a spider's web.
'What the...' Enix felt his heart flutter again, and suddenly, he couldn't help but realise something, 'I am nothing... any random mob of this world can cripple me at will.'
"Duchess, your child spat at the divines!" Veench's eyes didn't open; he had yet to take his hood over. His hands interlocked behind him, trembling, fearing that if he loosened them, they would massacre the boy.
Mugam's eyes quivered and her head flung toward Enix as he shrugged and muttered, "Accept it."
Mugam's eyes widened, she couldn't help but stare at him for a while before snapping out of her day-dream and turning to Veench with a smile, "Children are always funny... It seems today's session now has expired. Let's meet again another time."
Veench's brows caved down and Enix engaged in a conversation with Fria as Veench began to educate Mugam about the etiquettes of rasing a child.
Despite all... he knew he was safe now.