745 - The Rite Stuff
The spiral stairs beneath the altar seemed to lead downward without end.
Lex knew that wasn’t the case, that their number only seemed notable because of a combination of exhaustion and the feeble light from his horn being unable to illuminate more than a few steps in front of him. After all, Akna had made no mention of the stairs’ collective length when describing this place to him, suggesting that she hadn’t found their number to be noteworthy. But the impression of their interminability lingered no matter how much rationality insisted that it was only an illusion.
As it was, Lex could only descend the stairs at a sedate pace, struggling to maintain his balance. The steps hugged the wall of whatever pit they were heading down into, and while they were smooth and even, they weren’t very wide. Worse, there was no railing on their edge, which meant that if he lost his balance and pitched over the side, the Night Mare’s prohibition against her followers harming each other would likely do nothing to arrest his fall.
Such a thing wouldn’t be fatal; he had a thaumaturgical spell prepared that would let him float downward as gently as a feather. But while that would prevent him from being killed, the last thing Lex wanted to do was waste any magic that he could otherwise preserve. That, and avoid giving the Keeper any further indications of just how weakened he truly was.
“Before we begin, I was hoping that you would indulge my curiosity,” came the Keeper’s voice. In the fluorescent glow of his horn, Lex could just make out the opaque sphere that the Keeper apparently kept around himself at all times; whereas he was reduced to taking the stairs one at a time, desperately trying to make his snail’s pace seem blithely disinterested rather than beleaguered, the Shrine’s caretaker was simply floating straight down.
When Lex gave a noncommittal grunt – the very most he could give, since speaking while walking was more than he was capable of at the moment – the Keeper continued. “You seemed surprised before, when I said that the power Her Dark Majesty had given unto you was known as the Charismata. By what name do you refer to it?”
Lex came to a halt, giving an annoyed sigh before turning to glare at the hovering darkness. “What does it matter?”
“As I said, I am simply looking to indulge my curiosity.” Although it was impossible to be sure, it sounded as though the Keeper’s voice was slightly closer now, something which made Lex tense. If that thing enveloped him in its globe of darkness again, he’d have no choice but to use his feather-fall spell and step over the edge. Trying to navigate downward without being able to see simply wasn’t possible for him in his current condition. “I wish to know how Our Lady of the Night’s gifts are referred to by others of her faith.”
Snorting as much at the Keeper’s endless litany of titles for the Night Mare as much as the trite reason the talking skull gave, Lex answered only because it seemed like the quickest way to bring the conversation to an end. “I call it ‘divine authority.’”
He half-expected the Keeper to burst out laughing at that, but instead the skull fell silent for a moment before replying. “An interesting designation,” admitted the Keeper at last. “But one that perhaps places too much emphasis on Her gift’s power over magical beasts. To continue our conversation from earlier, Akna made it sound as though you have not used the Charismata in any other manner. Is that true?”
Gritting his teeth at the resurrection of that particular topic, Lex didn’t bother answering, instead starting back down the stairs in stony silence.
But rather than acknowledge that the discussion was over, the Keeper kept speaking, descending in time to match Lex’s slow progress. “While forcing obedience from those creatures which fall under Her godly purview, and investing them with near-limitless varieties of wondrous abilities, is indeed a mighty boon, it falls far short of what the Charismata can truly do. For as I stated previously, the gift you have been given is nothing less than the ability to reshape certain aspects of the world around you through nothing more than force of will. Hence the name Charismata.”
I know how it functions, you garrulous corpse! But Lex wasn’t able to give voice to his inward snarl, concentrating on keeping his hooves moving in even motions. Even his breathing needed to be kept carefully regulated, knowing that the burn in his muscles would only grow worse if he didn’t continue taking slow and steady breaths.
Apparently taking his guest’s silence as a bidding to continue, the Keeper kept talking. “One of the less dramatic, but no less important, aspects of the Charismata is that, as power begets power, it can create lesser imbuements of the Dark Tyrant’s divine might. For instance, the holy symbol woven around your leg.”
Just glancing down at the wire wrapped above his hoof almost made Lex trip. Fortunately, the Keeper didn’t seem to notice. “By all appearances, it is little more than a length of metal pressed to your flesh. And yet, it serves as far more than that, being nothing less than a physical representation of Her holy power made manifest in the mortal realm. Such is the difference between a genuine holy symbol, and a mere length of wire.”
Again, the Keeper’s voice seemed closer now than it had been previously. “That difference is now one that you are capable of bridging. As one chosen to bear such a strong aspect of Her essence, you may use the Charismata to designate – or expel – Her divine grace from a suitable receptacle. Nor are you limited to such unsubtle icons of her faith; a weapon that you consecrate in the guise of one of her Umbral Regalia can be made more potent for it. A vial of water can be likewise imbued. Even a place such as this is not beyond what you can symbolically claim in Her name.”
This time, the darkness of the globe seemed to brush against the edge of the stairs as the Keeper’s tone took on a sharper edge.
“With the proper observances, and the correct applications of the Charismata, you can make any suitable location into a shrine like this one.”
Outwardly, Lex gave no reaction to the news, trying to maintain a pretense of disinterest as he descended the staircase. But inwardly, his thoughts were beginning to race.
He’d heard something like this before.
Just before he’d left on his ill-fated trip to Las Pegasus, Fruit Crunch and his friends – the self-proclaimed Night Mare’s Knights – had presented him with a theory. They had somehow come up with the idea that the only way for would-be divine spellcasters to form a connection with the Night Mare – at least until she was able to access Equestria directly – was for someone who already bore a great deal of her power to induct them into her faith. While Severance had been sufficient to get them spirit animals, as they called the creatures the goddess had granted them, the scythe’s expulsion from Equestria had left him as the only one able to bring new adherents to the goddess’s personal attention.
Lex had found the theory skeptical at the time, performing a service for those children and a small number of eager ponies before he’d left largely as an indulgence. But with the Night Mare herself having personally confirmed it when she’d transported himself and Thermal Draft to Everglow, it meant that the Keeper was right; divine authority – or rather, the Charismata – allowed for more than he’d previously realized, even taking into account his expanded understanding of how it could empower certain creatures instead of just paralyzing them.
In fact, if that loquacious skull’s words were anything to go by, he’d barely scratched the surface of what his goddess-given power could do.
Lex was still pondering that particular revelation when he came to the bottom of the stairs at last.
Unlike the upper portions of the Shrine, or even the stairs that he’d walked down, the stonework in this area was left untouched. The unhewn walls bore no onyx insets, nor was there any sort of altar or other ornamentation that he could see. There were, however, several instances of scratches dotting the area near where he was standing. In fact, there were more than a few, and it took Lex a moment to realize that what he’d first thought was the uneven placement of natural stone was in fact such an overlapping presence of gouge marks across the ground and walls that it was impossible to tell if the bottom of the pit had ever been artificially smoothed or not.
But there was no more time to ponder that particular mystery as a new voice spoke up.
“Light,” came a soft hissing from across the chamber. “He brings light into the holy of holies, brother.”
“He dares to profane our sacred ritual, sister,” agreed a second voice, coming from the same location as the first. “For this, he must be punished.”
“Let us drag him back to the altar.” The third voice was sepulchral, coming from a different direction than the first two. “He can pay for his transgression with his life, and beg the goddess herself for forgiveness.”
“You would be wise not to make the attempt,” laughed the Keeper, his rasping voice intermittent with the clicking of his jawbone. “You would not know it, since you have been preparing the Rite after Akna returned, but this pony slew Ganas for his insolence. I doubt any of you would fare much better.”
“He slew one of the faithful?!” yelped the more feminine of the hissing voices. “Within the bounds of the Shrine?!”
“It can’t be!” echoed her brother.
“The goddess would never allow such a thing!” added the deep voice.
Lex had no doubt that the Keeper was going to speak up then, but he didn’t give him the chance. “I didn’t kill Ganas within the Shrine,” he growled. “I did so by dragging him outside of its borders and executing him there-”
“After which our guest, Lex Legis, the bearer of the Charismata, saw fit to replace Ganas with a being of greater power,” interrupted the Keeper. “As such, the Queen in Darkness herself is allowing the minor transgression of his horn to pass. I trust none of you think to gainsay the goddess’s judgment?”
A chorus of angry muttering came forth then, but no one protested the Keeper’s statement. Instead, the three owners of the voices shuffled forward...or rather, the two owners, since the giant snake – easily three times a pony’s body length – that came into view first had a head at each end of its body.
“We welcome you to the inner sanctum of the Shrine of the Starless Sky, champion of the Night Mare,” hissed one of the boa constrictor’s heads.
“We have prepared the Rite of Sublimation for you, in accordance with your will,” murmured the other.
“May you find a reward for your efforts that’s fitting in the eyes of the goddess.” Compared to the two-headed snake the last speaker was positively mundane, appearing as a cross between a grizzly bear and an oversized gorilla. Though that didn’t make the rippling muscles of its gigantic frame any less impressive.
Lex didn’t bother replying to their greetings, instead moving between them toward the center of the chamber. According to what Akna had told him, the Rite would be conducted there. In fact, it could only be conducted there, now that the Keeper’s acolytes had finished their preparations.
Stepping forward, he laid eyes on what he’d come here to find.
Directly in front of him, a fissure had been dug into the ground, as though someone had ventured into the pit they were standing in and decided that it wasn’t deep enough. But unlike the massive lacuna they now occupied, this opening in the ground was far smaller, roughly half the size of a swimming pool. Nor was it empty...
Within the confines of the crevice, a black substance roiled, churning and convulsing as though it were a wave on the open sea. But it clearly wasn’t water; the light from Lex’s horn cast no sheen upon its surface, nor were its undulations as smooth as a pure liquid’s would have been. If anything, it seemed almost gelatinous in its makeup, and if Lex hadn’t known better, he would have mistaken it for some sort of protoplasmic lifeform.
Except he did know better, having seen this substance before.
It looks just like what appeared around Luna when I cursed her.
But that made no sense. What he’d done to Luna – and to the other ponies whose curses he’d imbued with enough power that their presence had been temporarily visible – had been a product of his own dark magic, not the Night Mare’s power. The two were separate, so why...?
No, it didn’t matter. In all likelihood, it was just a coincidence anyway. Magical energies weren’t naturally visible, so any sort of convergence of power great enough to register to the naked eye would likely take on an unusual appearance. A simple conglomeration of a black substance was simplistic enough that it was likely how any number of such manifestations would appear. There was no reason to assume any sort of connection between his dark magic and what he was looking at now.
“You may wait upstairs,” intoned the Keeper. “I will retrieve you if I have need of you.”
Knowing the words had been intended for the talking skull’s pet monsters, Lex didn’t react, instead listening to the sound of them ascending the steps upward. It was only after they’d faded that the Keeper spoke again. “Beautiful, is it not? This is the Confluence. Although the wards protecting the Shrine prevent planar travel within its confines, it can only be called a miracle how – when the proper ceremonies are performed – this aspect of Her divine realm slips through into our world.”
“An aperture between this plane and the Night Mare’s, resulting in an area that’s coexistent between two dimensions at once,” noted Lex solemnly. Despite how impressed the Keeper was, all he could think about was how a similar breach of the barriers between worlds had brought so much death and suffering to Vanhoover, as well as other parts of his homeland.
“Indeed.” If the Keeper had picked up on his discontent, he didn’t say anything. “In this, She allows us to experience a crucible, cleaving away our weaker selves and emerging stronger for it.” The opaque globe floated upward, hovering above the liquid darkness that continued to swirl of its own accord. “If you have any final preparations you wish to make, now is the time. Once you enter the Confluence, you will not be able to leave it until the Rite is complete. Until then, I will maintain its integrity.”
Lex frowned at that, not liking that he’d be forced to rely on the unliving pony. “And if you can’t?”
Another clicking laugh came from above. “I have been performing this Rite for centuries, and in all that time I have never once mishandled it. You should be more concerned for the test you will face within. It will be intensely personal, and if you fail-”
“If I fail, then my soul will fall out of alignment with body, and be drawn to the Night Mare’s realm,” finished Lex disinterestedly. “Akna told me.”
“I suspect she made that sound more beneficial than most others have found it,” noted the Keeper. “But then, she is the only one I have ever seen who completed her test and then deliberately set her spirit apart from her body, all so that she could look for even more power in the goddess’s abode. That she succeeded, returning to her body and bringing one of the Umbral Regalia back with her, is a testament to her will.”
The amusement in the Keeper’s voice died away as it continued. “What usually happens when someone fails the Rite is that they can’t make their way back to their body before one of the denizens in Darkest Night, the goddess’s home, possesses it in their stead. If that happens, you will be unable to return, while whomever takes over your body will reshape it in accordance with their nature.”
Lex’s thoughts flashed back to the etchings on the dais at the top of the stairs, comparing them to what Spinner had predicted.
But interference from outside left his body misshapen.
For just a moment he hesitated.
Then he flung himself into the Confluence.
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Let's hope the ritual don't involve fighting.
Well, that explains the carvings from before though coupled with Spinner's words, the Rite might not end well for Lex should he fail whatever trial he's put through but given the potential benefits, I suppose it is worth the risk in Lex's mind. Though with the information on the Confluence, I can't help but wonder if the outside Spinner spoke about isn't referring to what's in the shrine or outside of it where Grisela and her group are but somewhere else...
Great.
Spork Taken Us.
11333401 Well, if it does Lex still has a number of thaumaturgical spells at his disposal, though as of right now that's pretty much all he has.
11333571 Some Googling suggests that's a movie, which I haven't seen so unfortunately I don't understand the reference.
11333485 It's clear that Lex thinks he's ready for whatever trial the Rite will put him through, though I suspect that at least some of that is because he knows that he can't afford to fail, given the situation he and the ponies with him are in. But there's something to be said for desperation making recklessness as much as a necessary burst of inner strength. Hopefully he'll make use of the latter and not the former, but given how bad off he is...well, I guess we'll find out.
As for your take on Spinner's words...who can say?
11334000
Really bad pun on Monty Python:Life Of Brian?. Im Spartacus and sos my wife.?
11334028 Ah, I thought it had something to do with the 2011 Spork movie, which I hadn't even heard of until now.