[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 42: The Hidden One

“Listen,” Volquist said, “everybody knows you don’t cross War. If you’re here, then that means you’re out for revenge.”

“I did come with somebody else,” Sam said, as he saw a glowing spark of light from Raiko’s arrival. “Speak of the devil.”

The silence that radiated from the crystal was filled with a frigid dread.

“Hey Sam.” Raiko gave him a lopsided grin, then lifted a brow at the surrounding emptiness. “You appear to be… stranded?”

“Two Incarnates? No. Nope. Uh-uh. If you’re an Incarnate of War, then the other must be—”

“An Incarnate of Dream,” Raiko answered blithely. “And who would you be, that’s so fearful of us? Or perhaps, just War.”

“You know what?” Volquist said, his voice quavering just slightly. “I know how this goes. I’m not dumb. How about we go back to you freeing me from this crystal and killing me?”

Raiko laughed darkly.

“Why?” Sam asked, thoroughly confused by this point.

“Because if Dream is here, then I’m more fucked than I thought,” Volquist hissed for Sam’s ears alone. “At least you’ll just kill me. I don’t want to imagine what sort of horrors Dream has in store for me betraying her most belo—oh, here they come, hello nightmares.”

Volquist lapsed into a deeply uncomfortable silence.

“What’s he doing?” Komachi asked.

“Torturing himself,” Sam said. He turned to the crystal. “You know, as fun as this all is, I’m not going to kill you unless you give me a reason to. And from where I’m standing, killing a man—”

“God,” Volquist corrected.

Sam raised a brow at the small crystal prison of this “god” and said, “Sure. As I was saying, killing somebody trapped in a prison doesn’t seem very sporting.”

“That’s it?” Volquist said, unable to keep the edge of hysterics from his voice. “You aren’t going to kill me just because it’s not ‘sporting’? Nothing about the unfairness of killing a god bound with chains and unable to fight back?”

“Not really, no,” Sam answered. “If you want me to kill you after I release you, sure. That seems more fitting.”

“Volquist, you’re the only one suggesting it,” Raiko pointed out. “The murdering a prisoner, that is.”

Though Sam couldn’t see the god’s eyes, or even his face, he nevertheless had the unmistakable sensation that he was weighing Sam to the ounce. “You’re serious,” Volquist whispered. “I could be lying to you, saying anything just to get out so I can have my powers back and then kill you in a very humorous and ironic way.”

Sam snorted. “You haven’t done a very good job of that then, have you?”

“That’s not my fault!” Volquist wailed. “You’re the insane one! Both of you! Neither of you want anything.”

“And how would you know that?”

“It’s a god thing, you wouldn’t understand. Neither of you have the typical wishes for power or wealth that are usually so easy to exploit. Oh, you—” This, he directed at Sam. “—want power, but you want it on your terms, no hand-holding allowed. Like a psychopath. And you, young lady, you just… want something called a Haman. I don’t even know what that is, and you wouldn’t accept it if I could give it to you anyway, because you’d doubt the truth of whatever this Haman was.”

“Neither of us need a god for power or wealth,” Raiko said. “We can absolutely achieve it ourselves. That being said, an ally…. Wait, did you just say….”

She stared off into the distance. That wasn’t a good look. Her hand rested on something small beside her katana. A stuffed doll of an animal?

Even Komachi eyed her nervously.

“Raiko?” Sam asked, waving a hand in front of her glazed expression. He turned back to Volquist’s crystal. “All right, well, she’s out of it. So, let’s cut to the chase, yeah? We’re both in a hurry. There’s a big ass ogre that wants to eat me and it knows where I am, roughly at least.”

“And you want me to make it go away.” Volquist reasoned.

“No,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I swear you weren’t even listening to yourself a moment ago. Where would the fun be in that?”

“Then what do you want to know?” the god asked testily.

“Can you lie to us?”

“Would be pretty easy to lie about that and say ‘no’, wouldn’t it? But before we go getting all metaphysical, no. While bound within this prison, I cannot do anything that is not true, either through simple lies or by magic or deific powers.”

“All right,” Sam said, hefting the jewel in his palm, “how did you get trapped in here to begin with, and why are you so flustered that Raiko and I are here? We don’t know who you are.” He looked at Raiko to confirm this, but she still looked a touch shell-shocked.

Komachi wove around her legs, getting caught up in the kimono multiple times, trying to be an affectionate cat. Sam still couldn’t see the floor, so it was odd seeing her walk on nothing at all.

“That is… rather embarrassing,” Volquist admitted. “Wouldn’t you rather riches and power and glory and tons of women and/or men as your preferences desire?”

“Answer the question.”

“You try being cooped up for millennia, reliving your past mistakes every hour of every day in a damned cage that only the weakest of the weak can access, but—oh and here’s the kicker—nobody can survive! So even my most devout of followers are powerless to help me.”

“I caught about a tenth of that,” Sam said.

Volquist sighed and in the gloam that surrounded them, the crystal seemed to shed more light. “The Dark Vault,” he explained, “is meant as a prison. All Vaults are meant to keep something in got it? Well, this particular prison is well suited to keeping me here.

“That Warden you defeated? The one with the ruby red eyes? Those were the keys to my cell. But unless you were at least a Second Order Legend, you’d never be able to pierce its defenses. And you wouldn’t be able to reach a Second Order Legend by staying in the First Layer, anyway. The mana’s far too thin here.”

“Why were you imprisoned, though?” Sam pressed.

“Because I knew too much. Because gods are self-righteous bastards. Because, pick a fucking reason. It doesn’t matter why. Gods do what they want, that’s kind of their thing. Might makes right and all that bullshit.”

“If I have to keep dragging this story out of you—” Sam started to say.

“Okay, okay! Sure. Fine. You win. Congrats!” Volquist took a deep breath, which resonated within the jewel. “Do you know what you are? Either of you? As Incarnates I mean. No? Splendid. Super. Okay, here’s a crash course kids: you’re special.

“And I don’t mean ‘eating glue’ kind of special, nor do I mean ‘you have secret special blood that makes you the rightful ruler of the universe even though everything has suggested you were utterly ordinary up until this point which made all the little boys and girls think they too could be—”

“Take a breath,” Sam told him.

“What about Komachi?” his cat butted in.

“You’re a soul aeder,” Volquist answered, slightly annoyed at his tirade being interrupted. “Worse, you’re a Komachi, which means you’re even more of a soul aeder than most.”

“…Wuh?”

Volquist harrumphed loudly. “As I was saying, I’m not going to give you the full run-down on Incarnates. But the cliff notes are this: you’re a mortal who has a fragment of a Kindred’s soul, but even that’s not right. It’s like you have a resonance with a Kindred, most Incarnates never know they are one.

“If you’ve entered this place, you at least know you’re an Incarnate, even if you don’t know what it means. And that’s incredibly dangerous. Regardless of everything else, you’re mortal. If you forget to eat, you die. Don’t drink water? You die. Drink the wrong water? Believe it or not, you die. See what I’m getting at? You’re very fragile.”

“Thanks, I’m aware,” Sam said.

“The point is, you won’t be forever. If you keep to your path and seek greater power, you’ll Ascend beyond mortality. All gods have done it, even if they won’t admit they were all once mortal. Generally, gods don’t like new people joining their Pantheon, but there’s a pecking order, so they generally allow it, but you two? You’re bad news.”

“Hey, don’t forget about Komachi. I’m bad news too. Or good news? No, I’m big and bad!”

Sam could hardly wrap his head around what Volquist was saying, but he managed enough to say, “How does being an Incarnate have anything to do with that? It sounds like any other mortal out there has the same path as I do.”

“Yes,” Volquist said, “and no. Incarnates have secrets that even the gods don’t understand. You’ve got all sorts of Empyreans in the upper echelons of the hierarchy. Let’s just say that if an Incarnate makes it to godhood, they’re likely going to surpass all the gods and become an Echo of a Kindred, if not outrightly a Kindred, in their own right. I can see from the gormless stares that I’ve once-again gone over your heads.”

“Oh please,” Raiko said sharply. “Don’t presume silence for ignorance and stupidity.”

“Let me put it this way,” Volquist continued. “You becoming a god is like seeing your replacement show up at work—no, that’s not right. It’s like seeing your future boss show up at work. You could hinder them and maybe succeed in keeping them down, but if they ever rise to power… well, you’ve made a very nasty enemy.

“And if you help them, no good comes from that either. Perhaps the Incarnate fails to Ascend, then you’ve tied an anchor around your neck and all the other gods use that to punish or ostracize you. And those are the best options.”

“So that’s what happened to you,” Sam hazarded.

“Not… precisely, no.”

“Oh. I get it. You killed an Incarnate of War?”

“It’s not that simple!” Volquist took hold of himself and went on in a more level tone. “I know all about the road to hell and intentions, but I did not mean for any Incarnates to die. Only to sort of… stagnate. But, yes. Ultimately, my designs got an Incarnate ‘killed’ in the sense that they were erased from this Lesser Shardrune. Truly killing an Incarnate at that level of power is much harder, but it amounts to the same thing.

“I’m not going to beg for my life—more than I already did—but I feel you deserve to know what awaits you out there. You’re new to this Shardrune, yes? Thought so. Well, better buckle up, buttercup, because it’s only going to get worse from here. You better get used to being on your own and sleeping with a knife under your pillow.”

“I am,” Raiko said quietly.

It made all the more sense why she wanted to join Sam, a fellow Incarnate.

“What I’m trying to say, kids, is that you’re radioactive,” Volquist said. “No god wants to touch you unless it’s driving a knife into your back. Few will be bold enough to reach out, and those will expect reciprocation. Most will try to seek you out in secret, usually to kill you before you become a threat.”

The imprisoned god continued unabated. “When a new Shard gets incorporated into the Realm, it’s usually a smorgasbord for the gods. They’re out in force picking their new champions, expanding their faiths, etcetera. It’s the one time a god can truly stick it to another god outside of outright warfare.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Raiko asked suspiciously, shaking her head. “Eventually, yes, we’re above you in the hierarchy. But that’s not exactly how things stand at present. And yet, you continuously confessing your crimes while honest and decent, is quite frankly stirring some kind of irrational rage in me. You must be going somewhere with this.”

“Because for once in my long life I can’t lie,” Volquist answered. “And because, despite how lame it is to say, I feel remorse for what I did. I’ve had a thousand-odd years to think about it, and the prospect of eternity locked up in a perfect jail cell too deadly for anybody who could enter it to break me out seems fitting now that I think about it.”

“You want us to leave you here?” Sam asked.

“No,” Volquist said solemnly for once. “I want you to kill me.”