Chapter 813 (1/2)

“Sir, the Oracle is moving. Heading ashore. Toward us.”

Platton looked sharply up at his second-in-command. “You’re sure?”

“Positive,” The man said. He seemed to hesitate, then say. “There’s… nothing else to see around here. There’s just us in the surrounding areas. We sent the scouts out as far as they could go in eight hours, but found nothing but dead Wights and empty caves.”

Even now, Platton struggled to understand what exactly was going on. Had the strange formation that Randidly created truly eradicated the Wights? It was horrifying. It was somewhat emasculating that a decades-long war could be solved in an afternoon.

But there was no option but to believe when he had witnessed the thing first hand.

Sighing, Platton waved his hand in the air. “And the forces under Sir Ghosthound…?”

“Still largely out of commission. Io sent over a runner that they were… handling the feedback from something. Since then, they’ve been huddled together. From what we can see, about half are unconscious. The rest look like they’ve been double marching on no sleep. But they’ve just been standing there.”

Platton grunted. Typical. Randidly has cloistered himself away and someone far beyond Platton’s ability to deal with was rushing toward their current location.

Yet despite how Platton knew he should be feeling, the corners of his mouth were turning upward. They had won. Despite what the abrupt approach of the Oracle might mean, they had won. The Wights were defeated. Maybe just for the short term until they recovered from this setback. And maybe in just a small area; who knows what the area of the strange ritual ended up being. Randidly had been very vague about the details.

But they had won.

“Fuck yea,” Platton quietly murmured.

His second, who had been about to leave the room, paused. “Did you say something, sir?”

Platton flushed. “We have work to do. Let’s get to it; begin preparations to receive the Oracle.”

*****

Allica looked at Rejt’s back after Randidly left. Both were slowing beginning to treat their wounds. “You knew the whole time he was the Progenitor?”

Rejt flashed a smile and continued to bandage his shoulder. “Of course not. But it is not good for our god to know all our secrets. This way, he will not underestimate us going forward.”

Pursing her lips, Allica said, “...this way he won’t have a firm grasp on reality, you mean.”

“Ah, the vicissitudes of godhood,” Rejt remarked with genuine fondness. Then he shook his head. “But Randidly must learn to dress the part. As it is… he is always barefoot. Is being a god truly so hard that he cannot even find time to visit a cobbler?”

Allica opened her mouth to reply but was stopped as a dull rumble through the cave system around them. Following that, there was a second of silence as Allica and Rejt looked at each other with worry in their eyes. If the fighting above had reached the point that it was hurting the structure of the caves…

For all their strength, a ton of stone being dropped on them would be overkill for a total burial.

But then Randidly flickered into being next to them. “Quickly, come here. It’s time to move on. This place… well. It’s being used to fuel the transition.”

Before either could make sense of that statement, a strange bubble appeared around Allica and Rejt. It was mostly translucent, but at the edges, it seemed to have a blue tint that colored the air around them.

Randidly stood at the center of the bubble with Rejt and Allica, his eyes a luminous emerald as the bubble launched itself upward straight into the thick cave walls. Rather than busting through with physical force, it seemed that the bubble annihilated the walls directly; they didn’t even leave a trail of ash in their wake as they shot up toward the surface.

When they tunneled up to the ground level of the lowest Land, the sky was covered in thick clouds that rumbled ominously as the setting sun painted them burnt orange. A chilly wind was blowing across the badlands, pulling tumbleweeds and many of the tents used for houses by those not in the upper echelon of the Procession.

Randidly grunted. “Now comes the fucking hard part. God, moving sucks.”

He closed his eyes even as the bubble that they were floating in slowed to a crawl below the rumbling clouds. Allica opened her mouth to ask a question but thought better of it. It seemed that Randidly was otherwise occupied. So she turned to face Rejt and found him prodding the bubble with a spear.

“Fucking stop that,” Allica hissed. “What if it pops?”

“Hmph, you expect I would prod a second time without testing it first? Impossible.” Rejt replied with a sorrowful shake of the head. As if to demonstrate his point, he pressed the spear against the bubble and forced the bubble to extend with remarkable elasticity to cover the blade of the spear thrust out through it. Aside from the area affected, it stayed perfectly robust.

Again, Allica shut her mouth. This time with enough force that her teeth clicked together. For all Rejt’s capability, he was remarkably careless sometimes.

Then Allica’s gaze was caught on something zooming up to their position: more bubbles.