Path of the King - Chapter 12 (Patreon)

The mountaintop was dark in a way few places could be in this age of glass and harnessed lightning. Clouds blanketed the sky, pearlescent white like balls of cotton fluff by day and dark and brooding by night. They hid the sliver of tonight’s moon from view and blotted out what little remained of the carpet of stars that had once filled the sky in days long since past. 

And in that inky blackness, Gáe Bolg danced, and I with it. I could see little but shapes, the occasional flicker of red across the spear’s blade doing nothing to illuminate anything but itself. The ground beneath my feet was treacherous, bits of loose gravel and smooth rock made slick by winds blowing off the ocean ready to turn a single misstep into a punishing fall, but each step I took was solid and certain.

A brisk breeze blew towards the ocean, cool even at the height of summer, but my body didn’t seem to register the cold. I spun and lunged, striking out at phantom foes and dodging their strikes in turn. The familiarity of the motions was soothing, and Gáe Bolg’s weight and soft thrum of bloodlust felt as reassuring as a warm woolen blanket. The spear felt alive in my grip, guiding my well-practiced forms towards brutal, violent efficiency. 

I’d dozed fitfully for a few hours, but eventually insomnia and nerves had dragged me from my sleeping bag and then out of the cave entirely. I’d meant to just walk around a bit, stretch my legs before going back to sleep, but instead I’d found myself with Gáe Bolg in hand running through spear forms. 

I should have been exhausted. It had been a very long day preceded by a very long and busy week. I should have been asleep. I needed to be awake and in top form in just a few hours. But how could I sleep now? Every time I thought of the coming day my gut clenched and my heart sped up in my chest, my body unsure whether I should be afraid or eager. 

And so, as I did whenever I couldn’t sleep, I trained and I planned, reviewing my plans for the coming day. 

Even under the best of circumstances, summoning a god was no easy task. That was typically a good thing––outside of a few particularly unstable or zealous individuals, most of the supernatural world went to great pains to stop heretic gods from manifesting outside their legends whenever possible. After all, they tended to be nothing less than living disasters, warping the world around them with their mere presence. Unless they were quickly contained, a single heretic god in the wrong place could kill millions completely unintentionally before a Campione or True Magician came to deal with it. 

Unfortunately, that also meant that there were very few resources available on the topic, even in a library as old and broad as my family’s. The handful of books I’d found that touched on interacting with heretic gods still locked in their legends tended to approach it only tangentially; accounts of cleaning up the wreckage of cults after their summoned god was slain, methods of determining if a specific god is attempting to break out of their legend, and academic analysis of the Domain of Immortality and if it could be used as a method of reaching the Root. 

My past memories weren’t much help either. I could only remember one case of someone summoning a heretic god, and that had been a ritual overseen by a Campione and requiring more than a dozen magic users with powerful bloodlines and innate abilities, most of whom had died or been driven insane in the process. 

That had initially taken some of the wind out of my sails, but ultimately I had been undeterred. I knew it was possible and that was enough. I couldn’t do much magic myself, but I was confident in my ability to figure things out. 

And it wasn’t like I was starting from nothing. I didn’t have a spell or ritual to do the job, but there was a lot you could learn from observation. 

The location was definitely important. I didn’t have any power of my own to burn, so I needed somewhere with enough mana that I could cover any spellcasting requirements with formalcraft. Additionally, I didn’t think that it was a coincidence that every confirmed summoning had taken place in a location significant to the summoned god––shrines, temples, sacred springs, and so on. I wasn’t sure that was necessarily a requirement, but I personally thought it worked for a similar reason that heroic spirits summoned in the country of their origin would be more powerful than if they had been summoned elsewhere. The location gave additional strength to the ritual, making it possible for even mortal magi and lesser spell casters to manage great feats. 

Secondly, the choice of god was possibly even more important. Most gods were happy living out their existence within their legends. Perhaps it was possible to lure such a god from their legend, but it was much, much harder than reaching out a hand to one already trying to rebel against theirs. Conveniently, I had managed to find magecraft designed to probe at the edges of the Domain of Immortality and determine just that. It wasn’t the most reliable magecraft, especially after I’d been forced to rework it as a formalcraft ritual, but it did seem to work. Mostly. 

This was made even more difficult because not just any god would do. I needed a god that I, not even a magus, could have a chance to defeat somehow. I was confident that if a path to victory existed, I could find it with enough preparation and planning, but with some gods that was easier said than done. That meant most monstrous gods were right out––there was only so much I could do against something like the biblical Behemoth or Jörmungandr. Ideally I needed a god with a well known weakness, an Achilles heel I could exploit.

Next, I’d determined that what I wanted to do wasn’t really to summon a god in the typical sense of the word, but more just send it an invitation and roll out the red carpet. Summoning a god implied that you were dragging it out of its legend and forcefully bringing it to you, something I was far, far from strong enough to manage of my accord. I was pretty sure that was what Voban had tried to do in the story and why it had taken so many resources. 

Ideally, I wanted the god itself to provide most of the power needed to manifest in the World. I just needed to give it a nudge in the right direction, to convince a god already close to becoming a heretic god that now was the time and here was the place. Not only would that make all of this possible with my resources, but it would also weaken it when things inevitably turned violent. 

I did have some concerns that doing so might negate the purpose of my killing a heretic god, but I was pretty sure I was in the clear. It wasn’t well known but I’d confirmed that, like I remembered, a Campione who killed an already weakened god wouldn’t gain any Authorities from it, nor would killing a heretic god already crippled by a Campione make one a campione. However, it did seem as though as long as I didn’t get any help from an existence on the level of a heretic god––basically just another god, a Campione, or a True Magician––and wasn’t part of an army working in tandem to bring the god down, I was in the clear. 

Finally, I needed something to bridge the gap between me and the god I was trying to ‘summon’ and to help convince it to actually show up. The location contributed to that, but I needed more. Every artifact, religious symbol, and offering I prepared improved my odds of success, so it was better to go overboard if possible. 

It had taken years, but I was finally ready. It was exhilarating. Tonight, I trained as a mortal man. Tomorrow, a living god. There was no alternative worth considering. 

I rose with the sun. It was still dark inside the cave when I woke up, only a bare glow of orange sunrise trickling in through the opening in the ceiling. I’d managed to get a few hours of sleep––not as much as I would have wanted but more than I’d counted on––but the weight of the coming day left me awake and clear headed in an instant. I stretched and ate breakfast in the dim light of an electric lantern, then got back to work.

The inside of the cave had transformed since I’d arrived. A makeshift altar of stacked stones stood at the center of the cave directly beneath the opening in the ceiling, the bottom few fully submerged in the shallow pool. A cloth was draped over the large, flat stone that made up the altar's top, bumps beneath it revealing where I’d placed the multitude of artifacts I’d bought, stolen, or made myself for today’s ritual. 

On one side of the cave, away from the entrance where the ceiling was highest, I’d set up a wooden table ladened with empty plates and mugs and a matching chair. A large cooler––one of the heavier things I’d carried up the day before––and two small wooden kegs stood beside it at the ready. Several carpets covered the floor and strings of crystals and beads hung from crevices in the jagged ceiling. 

I’d left some of the walls bare––especially the places where you could still see signs of carvings and paint left behind by the cave’s previous users––but the rest I’d hung with more rugs and tapestries done in bright colors. They made the room seem slightly smaller, but much cozier and more welcoming. They were also good for hiding things that would look out of place in my makeshift shrine.

Scattered around the room were stones ranging of various sizes, some as small as coins while others looked more like small boulders. All were carved with runes, some intended as prayers to the god I was summoning while others had more magical applications. 

It had taken a lot of time, money, and effort to prepare all of this, and even more to transport it all to this remote rocky cliffside. I’d done some of it myself, and bought, commissioned, or stole the rest. 

I was glad my parents didn’t pay all that much attention to just what ‘mundane goods’ I was spending their money on.

As the sun slowly crept higher in the sky, I made my final preparations. Anything that didn’t belong in the cave––mostly my camping equipment––was brought outside and put away. I laid out a small feast on the table––roasted meats, fish, loaves of bread, cheese, jam, and honey––and filled the mugs with mead. I didn’t eat or drink any of it myself, snacking intermittently on a bag of trailmix. Gáe Bolg I tucked out of sight behind a tapestry, invisible to the naked eye but easily accessible. 

It wasn’t all traditional, but it was close. More importantly, it looked like what a modern human might imagine when they thought of a norse feast and religious ceremony. The combined belief of humanity was a powerful force, even in a world that still lingered in the age of the gods. An already manifested god in the World or Netherworld would be unaffected, but changes in myths and legends changed the gods those myths and legends had originally inspired. 

Sometimes that manifested in new names and Authorities––the legendary queen of the Amazons Hippolyta becoming Lancelot du Lac in her service to the King of the End––but other times it was subtler, new quirks and visual details. Hopefully that same effect would make my offerings seem more appropriate. 

I began my makeshift ritual when the sun first peaked through the opening in the roof. I wore some of the clothing I’d taken from home––embroidered linen, some white and some dyed in bright yellows, oranges, and reds––and over it I’d added fine furs and a pendant of carved whalebone that tingled with magic against my fingers. That had been a lucky break, one of my last thefts just a few months ago, though apparently I hadn’t been quite as stealthy as I thought I had been. At my belt hung what looked like a sheathed knife, only the wrapped handle visible. 

I removed the cover from the altar, revealing an eclectic mix of amulets, statuettes, and stout candles all arranged around a glass sphere the size of my head filled with bubbling blood that glowed with an inner light. One by one I lit the candles, murmuring prayers in Norwegian––the closest appropriate language I could actually understand––as I did.

Then I began to move, pacing around the altar and chanting as I did. 

Formalcraft was, despite the name, an irritatingly informal method of spellcasting. Fundamentally, it was a method of casting spells by calling on foundations laid down in ancient times that allowed even someone like me, who couldn’t produce or control magical energy, to do magic.

If you were trying to do something simple, something that had been done many, many times across milenia, and did it exactly the same way every time, it was relatively simple. Formalcraft was very good at accelerating plant growth, healing minor wounds and diseases, and the like. If you knew the steps and did them properly, you got the outcome you desired.

Past that however, things became a lot more complicated. I was confident that what I was trying to do was possible with Formalcraft. People had been worshipping gods for as long as humanity had existed, and even if those ‘rituals’ hadn’t always been intended as magical acts, they had still imprinted themselves on the World in much the same way as explicitly magical rituals. 

However most of those rituals had been intended to venerate the god in question, not summon it. Similarly, they applied to many, many, many different gods and, while I could make guesses of what exactly the cult of the god I was trying to summon had done in their worship, I didn’t actually know the exact steps and movements. Plus, unlike in a magical ritual, religious services tended to vary from person to person and day to day. 

Thus, I had to improvise and do whatever I could to weigh things in my favor. That was the purpose of all the ornamentation, the items on the altar, and even the time and location itself––a method to turn a general call into one directed at one specific deity’s legend. The core of the ritual was the sphere of blood––the combined significance of dozens of animal sacrifices mixed with my blood and blood taken from willing native donors––the fragment of comptable Dragon Bones I’d appropriated from the family vault, and some of the runestones. Everything else was just icing. 

For the first hour, nothing much seemed to happen. I moved around and around the altar, chanting and praying. I held the pendant up to the sky and periodically added more offerings of food and alcohol to the altar. I wasn’t demoralized, my mind focused on the ritual. Formalcraft was a slow process, and there were still hours until the sun reached its zenith. 

By the second hour, I began to feel a difference. The magic in the air was moving, growing thicker and gaining a particular taste that reminded me of wildflowers and clear summer days. It was subtle, but I felt my steps change millimeter by millimeter, shifting to align with the breath of the world even as I aligned the world to my needs. 

By the fourth, it was clearly noticeable, even without my recent strides in Breathing and Walking. The sun was high in the sky, a golden spear lancing through the opening in the roof and shining just to one side of the altar. It was growing hot in the cave, and the colors of the tapestries and carpets seemed more vibrant than they had when I’d first laid them out. Sweat gathered on my forehead and began to soak into my clothing, and without breaking stride I took a drink from a clay bottle hidden behind one of the tapestries, then returned it to its place on my next circle around the cave. 

I had been afraid I might miss the moment when the time finally came, but I’d been worried for nothing. I felt it when the sun reached its apex, a thrum of hot, waiting power on the air that almost made me choke on my words. I stopped mid step and turned to the middle of the cave. The sun shone down through the opening in the ceiling directly onto the center of the altar, illuminating the pale stone surface and making the blood-filled globe glow like a giant ruby. 

I grabbed the pendant by the chain and pulled it over my head, raising my fist in the air with the pendant hanging down beneath it. “Come, oh shining one!” I called, my slightly hoarse voice echoing off the walls and filling the air. “Come, oh lord of the day! Come, oh beloved sun, he whose passing heralds the coming of the end of times!” 

I took a few quick steps forward until I was at the edge of the water and knelt, one hand at the hilt of my knife and the other over my heart. “Descend oh mighty Baldr, he who could only be brought down by trickery. Descend oh beautiful Baldr, favored son of Odin! Descend oh joyous Baldr, rebel against the myths that bind you and pierce your heart and accept my offerings!”

There was a sound like a roaring bonfire and the sunlight streaming through the ceiling became a blinding bar of white fire. What was left of candles on the altar and the small statuettes turned to spreading puddles of wax and metal in an instant, bone amulets shattered, the altar itself was scoured, and the glass sphere vanished as the blood inside became a burning mist. Even the Dragon Bone––a golden shard of metal and blood left behind by a long dead heretic god of the sun––vanished, evaporating into particles of starry light.

I was forced to look away, shielding my eyes with my arm when my eyelids proved to be no barrier to the brilliance. My heart raced and blood thundered in my ears. It worked. It really worked. 

I fought to keep a bloodthirsty grin off my lips as a loud, booming laugh filled the cave.