343 - Eberheim Aftermath [Sturmblitz] (Patreon)

As for the Hellhounds, they were split. Some were too wounded to partake in “active rest”, while others were not of a cultivator-like inclination, treating their work as just that. Nonetheless, elite soldiers that they were, they had plentiful resources to help them deal with their wounds and their exhaustion.

As for Strake Sodan, he remained interred within his war machine the entire way back and for weeks after, flickering to a fully lucid state for only a few hours each day. It was not so because the machine refused to release him, but because it was keeping him alive. Each day, buckets of animal blood were brought to him and poured over the tank, while recordings of books played to keep his mind occupied and somewhat anchored to reality.

The alchemists and craftsmen of the Newman Sect worked tirelessly, preparing elixirs and tools to separate the man and the living machine without killing either, at the governor’s official request, but it was known that the man was a friend of the sect and would not have been left to his fate either way.

Meanwhile, a tale spread of the Newman Sect’s Elder, of her grievous enlightenment in the Truth of Violence, and of the madness that knowledge brought her. She hadn’t been seen in public since the Eberheim Incident, building up a plentiful pyre of logs. To add CP-T as the accelerant, even the doors of the elder’s quarters couldn’t contain her enormous intent, to the point that many disciples collapsed from terror merely walking up the stairs to the upper floor. As such, the decision was made to temporarily relocate accommodations to other areas of the sect compound. Barely a fraction of the enormous building’s true capacity had been used until now, after all.

Lastly, to toss a hand-grenade into the pyre, the Second Elder entered and exited the elder’s quarters only once every few days, and often came out bearing numerous bites, scratches, and bruises. She insisted that nothing was wrong, and it was not far from the truth; such petty injuries healed quickly and were no different from those sustained in normal sparring.

The Elder’s direct disciple, Victor Khestun, was in a similar state. He, alongside the sect’s chef, Ozmir, had retreated far underground, to the subterranean garden in the Tree of Life Leyline Well. Ozmir returned after a few days, but Victor was nowhere to be seen. The reason was simple; as a living deity created by humans, Bishamonten required a vessel to house him, and the Oculus could not serve that purpose in the long-term. And so, after explaining himself to Ozmir, whose pet project the garden was, Victor received permission to construct the shrine in the Leyline Well. So he feverishly worked, cutting down a single of the centuries-old trees and building in accordance with the righteous god’s instruction. Afterwards, he continued working, forming a statue of Bishamonten out of wood, bone, and dragonbone. He did not try to replicate the form of Vaisravana Bishamonten of Itrian myth, despite the fact his scroll contained accurate descriptions of all Eight Guardian Deities.

The change of design was, in fact, at Bishamonten’s own request. The deity’s enormous voice, thundering with the sadness of a hundred thousand grieving widows, reverberated inside Victor’s skull: “THE ORIGINAL ‘ME’ PERISHED ALONGSIDE MY WORSHIPERS AND SHRINE GUARDIANS. IT IS ONLY RIGHT FOR THIS IDOL TO MIRROR THE FORM I TOOK AT EBERHEIM, THAT WHICH SHALL BECOME KNOWN TO THIS LAND’S MORTALS. ALREADY, I FEEL THEIR REVERENCE, FEW THOUGH THEY ARE.”

Rather than bearing a spear in one hand and khakkhara staff in the other, the statue in the Leyline Well took the shape of Kishin-Shura-Bishamonten, wielding a combination of both implements with two hands. Four more, six-segmented arms protruded from its back, having two elbows each.

And so, he worked, for days and weeks, caught in a trance of sorts.

Away from the eyes of the world, the Founder remained irrevocably engrossed in an enlightenment-induced trance, meditating and writing in a mad cycle, seeking to put into words a Truth beyond such mortal expression. Eventually, even Zefaris stopped coming and going, at Zelsys’ request. And as days passed, the sense of a ferocious beast continued to intensify. Ghostly-white serpents of Fog manifested outside her door, spontaneously from ambient Pneuma, vanishing as quickly as they appeared, as if glimmers of a theoretical world entirely composed of predatory monsters down to the most fundamental level, a world where even the specks of dirt and tiniest monads had fangs. Slowly this unearthly territory spread, filling the whole room outside the elders’ chambers and climbing up the sect’s central spire, guided upward by its special inner structure. The illusory visions within the field were all of an incredibly violent nature, but they were not exclusively of combat. It was a world of violence, where “violence” was as fundamental a law as gravity. The boundary between the sect’s grand hall and the central spire’s ground floor became increasingly more opaque. More and more, vision of the room beyond vanished and transformed into an eldritch realm of swirling fog and ferocious beasts.

Numerous disciples gathered in the great hall in front of the boundary, drawn here by this truly unearthly phenomenon.

Despite the alarm caused by this phenomenon, the sect’s most senior members vetoed any implications that something was going wrong. It was not Zefaris or anyone who had joined the sect recently, but in fact the seniors grandfathered in from the Black Horses - Ozmir and Nesgon.

For the first time since the Newman Sect’s founding, Nesgon, the Immortal Groundskeeper, in his mummy-like countenance, became visibly angry. He became angry at the mere suggestion of disturbing the elder at this moment, “just to check on her”.

“Blind fools, you have eyes but somehow I doubt you would be able to see the skeleton at Titan’s Bane…” he grumbled angrily, shaking his head. With a sigh, he visibly stifled his desire to lecture his juniors.

“Count yourselves fortunate!” Nesgon proclaimed. “In all my years, I have witnessed three epiphanies, one from each grand elder under whom I have served. Despite appearances, this is the least volatile of them all. What you witness here… Is the unfolding of our founder’s personal Truth. This is the true purpose of the central spire: to contain the manifestation without stifling it. Those of you who have eyes to see, stay here and observe. Those of you to whom this Truth speaks, allow yourselves to enter this illusory world if you dare, but know that you may die or go mad when faced with the founder’s Truth. The rest of you…”

Nesgon stomped his foot, and a tremor spread out through the air, casting many disciples to their knees.

“...Return to your training.”