360 - The Weight of 50000 Corpses [Sturmblitz] (Patreon)

Making her way into the grove, Zel noticed a wide array of bone statues all around, many placed particularly to let certain herbs climb up them or to support other trees. Outside the shrine’s pillar boundary, two distinctly different pillars poked just barely above the grass, their inner construction intricate to a seemingly unnecessary extent, whereas their surface was plain white. She knew, from speaking with Victor, that it was to be a kind of ritual gate for summoning various servitors stationed at the shrine, ones that couldn’t just be transported inside storage artifacts. A footpath of blackstone squares led up to the shrine, starting at the unfinished gate. It took until she was no more than fifteen meters away, having crossed the shrine's inner boundary, before Victor’s body moved to face her. His face was obscured by a smooth mask of black material — its strange, semi-reflective luster betrayed its composite blackstone-dragonbone construction. Just the fact of the mask’s existence merited questions, but it would wait until after the truly important ones.

From beyond the mask’s three eyeholes, Koschei stared back at her. A sarcastic, impish chuckle came from him, before he set down his strange tools and fully turned around where he sat. Then, he waited, unsettlingly tracking her with his gaze as she closed the distance. With each step, a feeling welled up in her chest — it was much akin to the sort of numb exasperation one feels after spilling a full pot of tea or finding a serious mess that needs to be cleaned.

“Different mask,” she said.

“Different purpose,” Koschei replied. “Lasts longer. More practical for this use.”

“How long?” she sighed, squatting down within hand’s reach of him. She still had to look down.

“Seventeen days. Intermittently. The mask’s limit is roughly six hours within a day, in forty-two minute intervals. You have already deduced the reason, I presume.”

“Eberheim shook him,” she stated matter-of-factly. It was the most obvious conclusion, one she had arrived at without any great deliberation.

Koschei nodded: “The burden of so many anguished souls — it weighs too heavy for one so young.”

Zel completed the thought: “So he brings you out to ease the burden.

“In a manner of speaking. I am but-” Koschei started.

Zel cut him off: “A remnant, I know. You insist upon repeating it so often I am starting to doubt whether it is true.”

Another chuckle. This one, a touch melancholy.

“This mask — as it is now — it amplifies what little there is of me,” he tapped on the mask. With each tap, antediluvian glyphs made themselves known on its surface, only to fade just as quickly. “It makes a… Logic automaton of me of sorts. A servitor, perhaps. There are moments I feel not too far from real. But an echo can only repeat itself ad infinitum. The I you speak to is even less real than that which Zefaris spoke to before Eberheim. Such is the price for allowing it to function for this long..”

Koschei spoke matter-of-factly, without any sadness for the state of his being.

“Take the mask off, I wish to speak with my disciple, not a glorified mnemograph recording,” Zel ordered just as matter-of-factly.

“That is not a choice I can make,” Koschei shrugged. “I may oversee the shrine, the shaping of blackstone and devilbone for continued construction, and I may read the texts within reach to be properly comprehended later. I can’t even change how I work the materials if something goes wrong, just pick up a new piece. There is a sequence. I execute it. If it doesn’t go as planned, return to zero. Hell, my early logic automatons were more flexible than this…”

He gestured to two piles off to the side. One was of blackstone, the other of dragonbone. Both were various components and icons with small but noticeable flaws. Several of these were tiny statuettes of people. With the gesture, Koschei also moved Victor’s body far enough to reveal hundreds of similar tiny figures covering the workbench and the altars behind it, at the base of the shrine.

“I cannot even make us walk far from this spot. At most I can stretch in place.”

“You are well aware of the fact this is not right. Not just mentally, but for cultivation,” Zelsys stated flatly once more. 

“Oh, this is all but pouring fertilizer onto a pile of corpses, waiting for a heart demon to sprout. I know. Victor knows. Yet here we are,” said the echo of a dead king, shrugging once more.

“There was no such reaction after Borea. Either Eberheim was the last straw, or it was different,” Zel voiced her thought process as it occurred. She understood the young man’s state, but she didn’t intend to let him wallow and rot like this. Even if she had to beat it out of him, if it came down to that. Or, perhaps, a crystal-clear reminder that the Order was still out there would work better. She would see.

Despite his supposedly lessened state, Koschei responded with remarkable clarity of thought: “It was the latter. The destruction wreaked in Borea was great, and many were killed. However, the vast majority of those in the destroyed sections of the city managed to evacuate. The fallen who did not count among the conspirators died through coincidence — and many who were buried in the rubble of their own homes simply crawled out of it. By comparison, Eberheim was…”

“An intentional mass slaughter.”

Koschei nodded.

Zel thought for a moment, then reached out and grabbed the mask using the eyeholes. Its thickness allowed for this without the risk of poking the wearer’s eyes. She hoped it would just come off if she gave a strong enough thought impulse, and at first it seemed to, but a split-second later she felt it grip the redhead’s face all over again.

“I’m afraid Victor had no intention of allowing the mask to be removed from him when he put his safety measures in place. Or rather, he did not consider the possibility. I fear there may not be a non-destructive method of removing it from the outside,” Koschei said.

“Oh, I am certain there is.”

Zel let go, rising to her feet. She held out her hand, and two Thundergods grasped the Oculus, winding around the staff.