I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 443: The Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline Bears the Imprints of the Ruhe Great Gods

Lamp in hand, Oran boarded a small boat, still half in a daze.

Through the night the boat climbed the waterfall, pressing forward against current and gravity alike.

Past the midpoint of the waterfall, the shadows of man and boat vanished together from the mortal world.

The upper half of the peak was the Sky Miracle Garden, long since parted from the mortal world to form a realm all its own. Half a mountain, it seemed, hung suspended among the sky's sea of clouds.

The boat's journey ended with a soft knock against the shore.

Oran stepped down from the boat and into a sea of silver flowers. Whispers drifted up from among the blossoms, faint as talk in a dream, murmurs that made one drowsy just to hear.

"An apostle... an apostle..."

"He wishes to become a god."

"The Tower Spirit Mysteries..."

Lamps beyond counting spread out into a field of stars. Ornate lighthouses towered up within the city, and Lamp Spirits of every color roosted and conversed all through it.

Oran gazed at this Kingdom of God without so much as blinking.

However many times he looked upon it, the place still struck him as simply too beautiful.

In a castle hall steeped in the style of the Land of Sunrise, a deity draped in silver divine robes and a woman in a long golden gown were waiting for him.

"God Iva! Golden Queen!"

Oran bowed to the two of them, dipping his head twice, and only then straightened and lifted his gaze. "I have returned."

God Iva and his wife, the Golden Queen, nodded together, then bade Oran rise.

"Oran, take that seat there!"

In a hall that belonged to gods, they had even set out a seat for Oran, so that he might sit below them as he spoke.

The favor was almost more than Oran could bear, yet he took the seat all the same, and took it with the utmost care.

Only then did he lay the whole of it before God Iva, the journey to Suinhor and the audience with the Scarlet Goddess, recounted in such detail that not a single point was left out.

"God Iva, this time we did not win an outright success."

"Yet neither did the Scarlet Goddess refuse us. She set forth but a single demand."

God Iva asked, "And what demand was that?"

Oran laid out the details of that moment with care. "The Scarlet Goddess demands that we obtain the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline, and that the carving serve as the ritual medium of the Contract of the Gods..."

The coming of the Age of Gods was inevitable now, and the old division of the lands of faith no longer suited the present.

Every nation needed the strength of every extraordinary profession. Even Suinhor had been left no choice but to welcome in the Witch Spirits, the Contract Lawyers, the Alchemists, and the Tower Keepers. Anyone could see the necessity of sealing the Contract of the Gods.

Yet to the gods of the mortal world, that necessity did not weigh the same for all.

Some felt it with burning urgency. Others felt it could wait a while longer.

And if the Contract of the Gods could be signed soon, no Divine System stood to gain more than the one Iva and Oran belonged to.

What the Alchemists and Tower Keepers lent to civilization, the power of Alchemy and of the Alchemy Towers, was something no civilization could do without. It was power enough to transform a nation before one's very eyes.

Yet most of the time they could only huddle within the Land of Sunrise, wary of the other gods, never daring to press outward and expand.

The Land of Sunrise was prosperous, but its territory was small, and its people could hardly be called many.

The moment the Contract of the Gods was signed, the reach of God Iva's believers, of the Alchemists and of Alchemy itself, would spread swiftly across the whole of the known world.

So no one prized the sealing of the Contract of the Gods more than the line of the Desire Divine System, and no one pressed for it more keenly. After them came the line of the Knowledge Divine System, who hoped to help God Asai wake as soon as they could.

When he had finished, the Queen seated at the head of the hall spoke up to ask.

"It was the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline that you heard?"

"That is what the Scarlet Goddess demands?"

The moment the Golden Queen heard that name, something surfaced in her memory. She had seen this very thing within the Barter Dream of the Lake Nymphs.

A single brief line of introduction was all she had glimpsed of it, and even that had nearly been enough to lose her to the curse.

The Golden Queen glanced at God Iva. Her look seemed to ask whether that thing did not lie in the hands of the spirits.

And a thing so dangerous... how could an apostle be sent to fetch it?

Oran nodded. "It is, Your Majesty."

Then he turned to God Iva once more. The Golden Queen's eyes had told him that this was an answer only the god could give.

"God, what is the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline in truth?"

"Why did the Scarlet Goddess say that this tablet needs no power at all to bind the gods?"

Oran truly was curious. Even now he had not managed to make sense of it.

What could make the gods hold a single stone tablet in such regard? How could it carry the power to bind the gods of the mortal world?

God Iva pondered a moment, then told Oran, "At the dawn of the First Era, when nothing had yet begun."

"There was none of the life that exists now, no light of Wisdom, no beautiful Dreams."

"Then the Creator made the Divine King of Wisdom, and at last this world held the light of Wisdom. The Divine King fathered sons, and their bloodline was named The Royal Bloodline."

Only then did Oran understand what The Royal Bloodline truly meant.

God Iva did not speak quickly. His tone carried little feeling, yet the words themselves still left the listener shaken.

Every word of his telling, every name and every title, was bound to greatness and to antiquity, and spoke of the most ancient holiness, of the very beginning of myth.

"In that time the Creator, the Divine King of Wisdom, and the first generation of the Most Ancient Race dwelt together upon God-Given Island. That was the God-Given Age."

"When the sons of the Divine King came of age, the Divine King of Wisdom bestowed the Wisdom Authority upon them, and granted the Ruhe Imprint to The Royal Bloodline."

"Only from that day could the Wisdom Seeds truly be called Wisdom Seeds. Only then did they receive from the Divine King the Power of Ability."

"And the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline is that very scene, set down by the first generation of the Most Ancient Race."

"Within the Creator's Domain!"

"Within the palace of the Divine King of Wisdom!"

God Iva lowered his gaze. "That carving is the symbol of the Divine King of Wisdom, and the symbol of the Divine King's sons. To the Wisdom Seeds it is the beginning of all things."

"Had the Divine King not bestowed Ability, nothing that came after would ever have been."

"And to the Wisdom Myths, it is their own faith and their own forebears."

"The supreme royal authority of Wisdom cannot be deceived. Though it lay no bond upon you, to dare deceive it is to deceive yourself, and to deceive fate."

This was the first time Oran had heard the myths of the First Era, the first time he had learned the origin of the Wisdom Seeds and of Ability. So none of that power had come from nothing after all.

It flowed from the Creator. It flowed from the grace of the Divine King of Wisdom.

God Iva had left out the most crucial pieces. The Divine King's name, the identity of the Creator, the identity of the Divine King's sons.

But Oran understood. The great beings of that primordial age were not to be mentioned lightly, not even by name.

Even so, it was enough. What he had heard let Oran grasp at last what the Scarlet Goddess had meant, and the deepest doubt in his heart came undone.

"So the carving truly can serve as the medium," Oran said. "Then we need only find it, and we may invite the gods to seal the contract."

Iva shook his head. "There is no need to search for the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline. It lies already in the hands of the spirits, and they have placed it within the Barter Dream of the Lake Nymphs."

"The spirits wish to trade it for the Yinsai Epic, or for the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo. The last part of the Yinsai Epic was set down only once Lord Polo gave his final consent. It tells of Lord Polo and Queen Star, and to the spirit race it carries the weight of a holy relic."

"As for the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo, that was carved by Lord Polo's own hand. Little wonder the spirit race should want it back."

Oran did not even have the chance to ask who the saint might be before Iva continued. "However, put the Yinsai Epic from your mind. That Saint's Chapter can never be obtained."

"The only thing that might yet be won should be the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo."

Polik knew this as well. That was why, speaking with Sukob, he had never so much as raised the Yinsai Epic as a choice.

Oran repeated the name. "The Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo?"

"That should be in the hands of Xiao, or else of Asai," God Iva said. "In Xiao's, more likely."

"He was the last to hold the Sky Temple before the God-Forsaken Era came."

Oran frowned. "If it lies in the hands of the God of Original Sin, then it will not be easily won."

God Iva told Oran that none of this was so simple.

"And Xiao holds far more than the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo. The saint's final chapter is in his hands as well, the chapter that preserves the last Bone Book the saint ever wrote. It records the scene of the saint's audience with the Creator."

"The Scarlet Goddess Vivien likely wants back more than the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline. What she truly wishes to reclaim is the saint's final chapter."

That chapter had once been enshrined upon the lighthouse of The Island of Mist, guiding every student of the Temple of Truth on the way to the island.

And when Xiao betrayed the Temple of Truth, he carried it off, together with all of Lan's research on the Reincarnators.

Realization broke across Oran's face. "So the Scarlet Goddess's true purpose is to drive us into wresting these things back from the God of Original Sin?"

And no sooner had he said it than still more of it opened out before him.

"It is more than that."

"She is using us. She would have us help Her bring down the God of Original Sin."

Oran lifted his head and looked to God Iva.

This touched upon the struggles between gods, and it was not his place to say more.

All he could do was ask. "God Iva, what am I to do?"

Should he agree? Or refuse?

"The God of Original Sin has already sunk into slumber," God Iva told him. "It hides within the Abyss, and sustains its own power upon oaths sworn in the dark."

"To find the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo, we may have no need to make war upon it at all. It would be enough to learn where the thing lies."

"And we are not alone in this. There is another power that hungers for the tablet of The Royal Bloodline as deeply as we do."

Oran asked, "God, this power of which You speak. What is it?"

"I told you a moment ago," God Iva said. "When his sons came of age, the Divine King bestowed the Wisdom Authority upon them, and granted the Ruhe Imprint to The Royal Bloodline."

"The former was Ability and bloodline, parceled out and bestowed. The latter was the imprint that commands the Ruhe Great Gods."

"So what is graven upon The Royal Bloodline is not only the beginning of the Wisdom Ability."

"Upon that stone carving lie the Seven Seals of the Ruhe Great Gods as well."

Oran seemed not to quite take it in. Then, all at once, he shot to his feet and snapped his head up, so fast he might have wrenched his own neck apart.

Shock filled his eyes, and when he spoke, the words came stammering out.

"What?"

"Ruhe?"

"The Great Gods?"

"Which Ruhe?"

"The very one you are imagining," God Iva told him. "The seven Ruhe Great Gods who bear Ruhe Beast Island upon their backs."

Oran stood within God Iva's divine kingdom, yet his eyes had gone distant and dazed.

Somewhere beyond sense, his consciousness seemed to soar miles into the sky, looking down upon the boundless earth.

But however high it drifted, he could not find the land's end. This was a continent vast beyond all measure.

And this continent was borne up on the backs of seven beings mighty beyond describing, and their name was the Ruhe Great Gods.

He stared blankly at God Iva, and across his face a single line seemed to be written, "Is this some kind of joke?"

Had those words come from anyone who was not a Wisdom Demigod, he would never have believed them.

Oran knew that the divine races of the First Era carried the blood of gods directly in their veins. He knew they held the Power of Rituals granted by the Creator, and could craft wonders of every kind that existed nowhere but in dreams.

Only moments ago he had learned that among those divine races there was also a line called The Royal Bloodline, the direct descendants of the Divine King.

And harder to believe by far, these heirs of the Divine King's blood had held the power to command the Ruhe Great Gods themselves.

"This..." Oran tried to say something more, but in the end it all dissolved into silence.

And yet, at last, Oran understood.

The divine race truly was the divine race.

The sons of the Divine King were truly the sons of the Divine King.

He had always believed he imagined those divine races powerful enough. Time and again, reality told him otherwise. All he knew, the very limit of all he could imagine, was still far too small.

"But to hold power so great that one cannot freely master it," God Iva told Oran, "is not always a blessing."

"In the end, the power of Ruhe brought not hope, but destruction."

"And so, at the last, the Creator took back the power of Ruhe and bestowed upon the Most Ancient Race the power of miracles. From that day the Ruhe Great Gods were free, and answered to The Royal Bloodline no longer."

"Yet those seven imprints still point straight to the core of the Ruhe Great Gods' power."

"They are the emblem of their power, and the emblem of a race."

"Whoever gains the Ruhe Imprint of one of these gods of the Life Ability can receive their power, and become their kin."

"Take the Earth Witch. By sheer chance she made her way into the deepest reaches of the Mountain of Life's Origin, and there the God of Earth bestowed upon her their own power and their Ruhe Seal."

Oran grasped the meaning of it at once.

"So whoever can gather these seven imprints has as good as found seven paths to becoming a witch. The Earth Witch has already appeared, so six of them remain."

"I could go and persuade the Earth Witch. Or the Thunder Kingdom, the Yellow Sand Kingdom, and Moonlight City."

"Let them search for the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo."

"And at the same time, we can draw the witches in as well. Draw them into this Contract of the Gods."

The Ruhe Great Gods had no need of faith, yet the people believed in them all the same, with a fervor close to madness.

And in the mortal world today, that faith was anything but weak.

At its grandest stood the likes of the Temple of Earth and the Earth Witch, who held the whole of the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents and commanded the Mountain of Life's Origin.

At its humblest were nations like the Yellow Sand Kingdom and the Thunder Kingdom, and the scattered powers everywhere that kept faith in the great gods.

What was more, the witches, and the blind prophets who came before them, stood among the most singular of all Ability Users, and they held one more power all their own.

People called it foresight.

In truth it was no sight of the future at all. A witch's eyes could see whatever was happening in any corner of the earth.

However far away a danger stirred, they would know of it before it fully arrived, and so they seemed to wield the power of prophecy.

So long as it happened upon this continent, that power let them see it coming.

If the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo truly lay upon this continent, the witches and the prophets could find it.

But Oran had only seen the first layer of it. In truth, Iva held one design more.

God Iva rose. Down from his high throne he came, treading across the treasures strewn thick upon the floor, until he stood before Oran.

And at the last, he gave voice to that second meaning. "Did Vivien not say that the gods of the mortal world fear being bound?"

"Then let the binding sink deeper still."

"Swearing the oath before the Divine King and the sons of the First King is only the first step. After that, the seven witches of the future shall stand as witnesses and keepers of the Contract of the Gods. And in the end, the carving shall be returned to the Sky Temple."

"The witch has drawn a line in the name of the Ruhe Great Gods, that no god may strike directly upon Ruhe Beast Island. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding. Perhaps that meaning was truly there."

"If it can be done, then let it become truth."

"Let the witches become the mortal world's true overseers, its true guardians!"

The Scarlet Goddess had her own quiet designs. Polik had his calculations. And Iva now stacked one more log upon the fire, locking the Contract of the Gods shut beyond any undoing.

In the days to come, the seven witches would be as the eyes of the seven Ruhe Great Gods upon the mortal world, and its overseers as well.

Oran raised his head and looked at God Iva, struck all at once by the feeling that this god was not the god he had imagined.

After so many years of godhood, Iva was no longer the innocent he had once been, blank as an unwritten page.

God Iva's gaze was cool, yet the words he spoke to Oran were filled with power.

"The power of the gods should, perhaps, be held within proper bounds."

"Only then can the civilization of the mortal world truly flourish. Only then can the future the supreme gods await come to be."

Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents, Fort Pence

At the foot of the Mountain of Life's Origin, where the divine peak climbed up into the very clouds, there grew a divine tree. Its crown shaded half of Fort Pence, and beneath it people felt a deep and abiding safety.

It seemed that so long as this tree stood, no storm however great could ever touch this paradise, this holy land.

This was the holy land of the Snake People. It had long since ceased to be the capital of the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents, yet nothing could stem the unending stream of pilgrims who came.

They came to stand before the divine mountain the Life Sovereign had left behind, to pay homage to the Ruhe Great God.

And they bowed low before that divine tree as well, praising the name of the Earth Witch.

The Earth Witch's name was Metel. In the tongue of the Snake People, it meant paradise.

She had been born a prophet. She guarded the Temple of Life and the Mountain of Life's Origin, and she guarded the origin and the paradise of the Snake People.

Even after she became a witch, that never changed.

She kept to seclusion deep within the temple and never showed herself before the people. But today the doors of her sanctuary swung open without warning, and out she came, draped in sacred robes.

She was a woman of God's Form. Loose robes veiled a graceful figure, and with her head-covering and veil she seemed wrapped in mystery.

The moment she emerged, the people outside knelt toward her in crowds.

"Lady Witch."

"Lady Witch."

On and on the voices murmured, one after another.

Every eye upon her shone with yearning and with madness, as though the crowd beheld a deity walking the mortal world.

The Earth Witch's sway over the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents ran beyond all ordinary measure.

The Earth Witch Metel said nothing to them. She only summoned the Divine Servants of the temple and gave her instruction.

"Honored guests will arrive before long. Make ready to receive them."

"How many are coming?" a Divine Servant asked.

"Two," the Earth Witch replied.

It fell out just as she had said. The guests arrived before long, and they were two apostles.

Amid bell-song and music they entered the Temple of Life, where the witch Metel was waiting.

"Oran. Sukob," she said. "You have sought me out. What is it you want?"

As a witch, Metel had seen the two apostles' coming. But her sight reached only scenes of the mortal world. The words that passed between Oran, Sukob, and their gods lay beyond it.

Sukob and Oran exchanged a glance, and then they told the witch Metel.

"Lady Witch," Sukob said, "we would ask your help in finding something. Something of the very greatest importance."

"The thing concerns a contract the gods will soon seal among themselves," Oran added. "A contract of faith."

On the signing of the Contract of the Gods, Sukob and Oran were of one certain and unshakable mind.

Oran needed to carry God Iva's faith out to the whole of the world, and his own Tower Keepers needed to grow. Only so could he become a Divine Being in this era.

Sukob needed to wake his god, and to carry his Contract Lawyers and his legal code into every nation and every civilization, and so build the future he wanted.

Their aims might differ in places, and each had calculations of his own.

But the thing they meant to achieve, in the end, was one and the same.

To draw in more temples, more faiths of more gods, even the witches and those yet to become witches. That could only be good.

Yet the Earth Witch, hearing this speech of theirs, showed no smile.

Beneath the head-covering and the veil, her brow drew tight instead.

Metel had lived through the divine war between the God of Knowledge and Truth and the God of Original Sin, and she held no fondness for the other gods.

To her mind, those gods did as they pleased in the mortal world. Only the great gods had genuinely become the land itself, bearing countless millions of living things upon their backs, truly sheltering the civilization of the Snake People.

"This has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with the God of Earth."

"Why should I help you?"

But Sukob and Oran had settled, long before they came, on how to move the Earth Witch. And they were all but certain it would work.

They told her part of what lay within the Contract of the Gods, above all what touched the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline.

Metel heard it and echoed the words back. "The Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline?"

Like Sukob and Oran before her, she had no notion at all of what it was.

Still less could she understand what power a single stone tablet could hold to bind the gods.

"This tablet records the most ancient of secrets," Oran told Metel, "the secret of the gods and of the origin of power."

"And that secret is the very power that binds the gods of Wisdom."

"But upon this carving, born at the origin of time, born of the primordial age, there lies more than the secret of Wisdom. There lies the secret of Life as well."

Metel raised her head, and behind the veil her eyes turned to Oran.

She knew the Life he spoke of was the Life Ability, and that such a secret must surely be a secret of the gods.

Oran did not draw the moment out. The instant Metel's gaze came to rest upon him, he spoke.

"Upon that tablet are the imprints of the seven Ruhe Great Gods. The Ruhe Seals of the great gods themselves."

"Lady Witch, I believe you understand what that means."

Metel was on her feet before he had finished, her gaze locked hard upon Oran.

"Do you know what it is you are saying?"

Only after a long, long while did she sit back down.

"The imprints of all seven gods are there?"

Oran nodded. "The Seals of the Seven Gods of Ruhe."

Metel understood perfectly what that meant. Whoever held them held the seven witch paths, complete at last.

Not that possessing a Ruhe Seal meant just anyone could become a witch. No ordinary soul could ever bear power of that magnitude, nor endure the gaze of the Life Myths.

But set against the search for those fit to become witches, it was the threshold itself that mattered most, and the threshold that was hardest of all to win.

To this day, Metel had only ever won an answer from the God of Earth.

As for the other great gods, they paid her no heed at all.

And now, laid out before her, was that very threshold, ready-made.

Metel had always hoped new witches would arise, hoped that more of the Ruhe Great Gods' power might be carried into the mortal world. Now the chance had appeared before her.

Oran saw the stir in Metel's eyes, and struck while the iron was hot.

"So, Lady Witch, we ask this of you. Help us discover where the Stone Carving of Queen Star and Divine Messenger Polo truly lies. Is it even still upon Ruhe Beast Island?"

"Only then can we obtain the Stone Carving of The Royal Bloodline."

"And when that day comes, the Contract of the Gods will be sealed through the carving as its medium, with the witches and the great gods as its witnesses."