It ended so suddenly that Zeter thought he was dead. One moment there were howling fiends raining hellfire down on him and Damarys, the next, all was still. What made him certain that he was not dead was the fact that he still felt the awful effects of over channeling. His vision was red from crying blood and he couldn’t hear very well over the ringing in his ears.

Damarys said something but it was lost to him.

“What?” he asked, realizing he must be shouting from how Damarys reacted.

“I said he did it,” Damarys said loud enough for him to hear. “Kasyn must have repaired the master rune.”

Zeter nodded and let himself lie down fully onto the ground, exhausted.

Damarys got up as Zeter lowered his barrier spells and she approached the fiends who were landing around them and looking furious but defeated. She spoke to them but Zeter didn’t hear what was said. He didn’t care all that much, really. He was mainly focusing on remaining conscious. After a moment, several fiends approached Zeter and cast a levitation spell on him which they tethered to themselves. He rose gently into the air and they began to fly up with him. Fiends weren’t the most powerful when it came to raw magic, unless they were creating hellfire, which was why it took so many of them to carry him in this way, but he wasn’t complaining. It certainly beat how Kasyn had been carried. Looking behind him he could see Damarys being similarly carried by another group of fiends.

Before Akumu fell, Zeter had over channeled only a couple of times and it was always as part of his training to get him used to what it felt like so he could know to avoid it. In the last month alone he’d now doubled that number. If things kept going this way he would be at risk of doing some serious harm to himself. There were stories of mages who’d tried to increase their casting potential by regularly over channeling on purpose only to bleed out and die prematurely.

He didn’t pay much attention to the ground below him as they flew and he drifted in and out of consciousness, regardless of his efforts to remain awake. It came as a mild surprise when they arrived at the chapel of the Tower of Light. People were busy scrubbing away the magic circle they’d been working on, along side the rest of the fiends.

Damarys helped Zeter back up onto his feet as a small group of people broke away from their work to greet them.

“Are you two okay?” a woman at the front of the group asked, her eyes lingering on Zeter.

At least the ringing in his ears was diminished enough for him to hear alright now, but he knew he must look terrible with blood streaked all across his face.

“Been better,” he said with a weak grin, “but nothing that won’t heal with time.”

“We’ve got a few potions that might help,” she offered, pulling a vial out of her belt pouch.

“Thank you,” Zeter nodded and accepted the potion.

He drank it down in a single gulp. Immediately he felt the magic run through his head and body, removing most of the aches and pains. He still wouldn’t be able to cast magic for a while without over channeling, but at least he didn’t feel like he might collapse at any moment.

Another person approached with a shallow basin of water and a few strips of cloth. While Damarys spoke with the gathered people and explained what the rest of the city had been doing since Akumu’s fall, Zeter cleaned himself up. The cool water felt so good against his still-clammy skin that he allowed himself a few minutes of just enjoying the sensation. He couldn’t spend all day doing that, though, so at last he put the cloth and basin down and joined Damarys.

“If you’re ready,” the woman speaking with Damarys said, “I’ll take you to Kasyn. He’s still talking with the old man.”

Zeter had missed whatever part of their conversation had explained who this old man was, and he glanced at Damarys for an explanation while they followed the woman inside the chapel.

“They don’t know who he is,” Damarys whispered, “but they found him inside the attic of the chapel after Akumu fell. The fiends didn’t even know he was there, but he seems to have been part of the Tower of Light’s invasion plans.”

Over by the front of the chapel, beneath the stained glass window depicting the titular shining tower, sat Kasyn and an incredibly old man. He looked more like a skeleton with a thin covering of flesh than a real, living man. The really odd thing about him, however, was the small potted plant he was holding, occasionally plucking off a leaf and eating it.

Kasyn saw them approaching and waved for them to join him.

“May I introduce those friends of mine that I told you about,” Kasyn said. “This is Damarys and Zeter who helped disrupt the fiends plans.”

“Well met,” the old man wheezed and gave a shallow bow to each of them. “Are you the ones who will fill the heavens? It would seem my fellows have failed in that ultimate task.”

“We’re just here to help the city,” Zeter replied, unsure of what the man meant about the heavens.

“The greatest service one could do is to do as I’ve been telling your companion, Kasyn, here.”

“And that is?” Damarys asked.

“Fill the heavens,” the old man repeated with slight exasperation.

“I didn’t know they were empty,” Zeter said.

“They are empty in the most important and terrible of ways,” the old man shook his head. “Tell me, can you name one god?”

Zeter was about to scoff but then, as he thought about it, he realized he didn’t actually know any of their names. There were pantheons that he’d heard of, but now that he actually tried to recall any of their names, he found he couldn’t remember ever being told them.

“Well, there’s the one with wings, right?” Damarys tried to answer the question. “And then there’s the one with the big shield.”

“Symbols,” the old man grumbled. “Ideas, concepts, representations of what should be there but isn’t. The heavens are empty. Your Lord Akumu killed the gods but then refused to take their place, leaving us without guidance, without gods, and he’s been guarding the way to rectify his sin ever since.”

The old man began to shake and at first Zeter thought it was out of frailty, but then he saw the anger in the old man’s eyes.

“How would someone go about becoming a god?” Zeter asked in the hopes of keeping the old man focused.

“Beneath this chapel lies a cavern wherein the full history of the heavens is told,” he said, his eyes brightening. “As a young man I heard its call and found my way into it, and thus began the Tower of Light’s efforts to right this cosmic wrong.”

“How could anyone, even someone as powerful as Akumu, kill the gods, though?” Damarys asked.

“Go down into the caves and you will learn the truth as I did.”

“I really think we should,” Kasyn said.

“Why us and not you?” Zeter asked, knowing that it was a common grifter trick to get someone else to do the dirty work just so you could swoop in later and steal the prize.

“I tried,” the old man admitted, “but the way is guarded. You need to gain access to Akumu’s castle, Nemuri no Shiro, find the four keys and the four locks and only then can you ascend.”

The old man ate another leaf from his strange plant and slouched down on the pew he and Kasyn were still sitting on.

“Come on,” Kasyn said, getting up, “he told me where to go.”

They were quiet at first as they walked away until they were out of earshot of the old man.

“Couple of questions,” Zeter said, “What does it matter if there’s no gods? Seems like things have been going alright without them. How old is that guy? And what was that plant he was nibbling on?”

“To your first question,” Kasyn began, “I don’t think we should actually do anything besides see what he was talking about. I don’t really care about there being other gods or not. As for how old he is, he told me he’d lost track of the years but by asking a few questions about what he could remember before shutting himself up in the attic here, I’d guess he’s around five hundred years old.”

“How is that possible?” Damarys asked.

“The plant,” Kasyn replied. “He said it keeps him alive, anyways. I don’t know anything else about it. He didn’t want to talk about it much, anyway. He was too focused on telling me about the cave.”

They reached a spiral staircase that led up to the second floor but rather than go up, Kasyn pressed on a patch of wall to reveal another set of spiral stairs leading down into the dark.

“Grab that torch,” Kasyn said, pointing to the wall beside Damarys where a torch sat in a bracket.

“I’ll go in front,” Zeter said as he moved passed Kasyn while Damarys lit the torch. “I’ll see better without the torch in my eyes.”

Leading the way, Zeter made his way down the steps until they reached a long, sloping hallway. The flickering torchlight behind him made it somewhat difficult for his eyes to see as far in the dark as they would normally see but he knew he couldn’t expect Kasyn and Damarys to come down here blind.

At first, the walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of worked stone but as they went deeper into the earth, the worked stones gave way to natural stone formations until they were undeniably inside a massive cave structure.

“Look at the walls,” Kasyn gasped.

Zeter did and at first he didn’t see anything besides the mineral veins but the longer he looked, the more details he could make out.

“There’s a figure here,” Kasyn pointed at a spot not far from where Zeter had been looking. “They’re stabbing another figure with a sword.”

The more they looked, the more they saw. Repeated, over and over again, were scenes of people climbing up a winding stair, reaching the heavens, and slaying the gods. They then took their place until the next group of people ascended and the cycle continued. Sometimes there were more people than gods, sometimes there were more gods than people but always the pantheons were overthrown.

“Seems a bit, I don’t know, pointless, doesn’t it?” Damarys said after what must have been the tenth such depiction of the gods being overthrown and replaced. “And why would anyone want to do this?”

“What, become a god?” Zeter laughed. “I know several dozen Sages of the Mercurial Robe who would jump at the chance.”

“But the cycle just repeats itself. They’d eventually be killed by someone else who comes to take their place, wouldn’t they?”

“I’m sure each group thinks they’ll be the exception,” Zeter said. “They all delude themselves into believing that they’ll be different. That they’ll be able to prevent or defeat whatever groups try to rise up against them.”

“And Akumu broke the cycle,” Damarys said.

“Did he?” Kasyn objected.

“I think so, look,” Damarys had moved passed them all and was furthest into the cave. She held the torch up and revealed a final depiction of a solitary warrior, overcoming the gods but then rather than being shown as reigning in the heavens, he was shown walking back down the winding stair and returning to earth, leaving the heavens empty.

Approach

Zeter stiffened, as well as Damarys and Kasyn.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“I don’t think I heard it, so much as had the thought put into my head,” Kasyn replied.

“It did almost feel like a messaging spell, but not quite,” Zeter agreed.

Come, children

“Does anything good ever come from following this sort of invitation?” Damarys asked.

“The old man told me about the voice down here,” Kasyn assured them. “He said it was harmless and would teach us what we needed to know.”

The strange voice in his head sounded friendly enough, or at least non-threatening but Zeter wouldn’t trust a voice in his head for that reason alone. He knew to be wary of the danger that may be lurking behind a smile or a friendly voice.

Not much farther down the tunnel and the cave widened out considerably, to the point that even Zeter’s eyes couldn’t see the far side of the cave.

“The air’s a lot cooler in here,” Damarys whispered, “and it’s humid.”

“There should be a lake over this way,” Kasyn pointed and began walking towards the far side.

Try as he might, Zeter couldn’t detect any magic coming from this place. That meant whatever was down here was incredibly powerful since masking magic was almost impossible. Besides Akumu, Zeter had only heard of a few archmages who had managed to conceal their magical auras.

A lake, as still as glass stretched out before them and still, Zeter couldn’t see the far side. In the depths of the water something was moving like a knot of serpents, yet for all their moving the water never so much as rippled.

Welcome, the voice said. I will teach you to become gods.