>>5528035>>5528032“No,” you tell the Novice. “These works… They will breed weakness. Bloodrise is a kingdom of and for the living. One which relies on sharp minds and strong hearts—not the cheap tricks of lesser darknesses.”
The Novice hisses, a soft scoff.
“You speak with even more self-importance than you used to, since you sold your soul to the Serpent Ascendant,” she laments. “Or is that the old soul of the LAST king speaking now? You know, the one you used ‘cheap tricks’ to affix yourself to like a magical leech?”
“You are calling me a hypocrite,” you infer.
“I think you are emotional and irrational,” she sighs, “but what else is new? No, my problem with you NOW, oh Majestic and Kingly and Oh-So-Honourable One, is that you are being WASTEFUL.”
You tap the spade of your tail upon the ground. She is… Not wrong. The depredations and poverty of the underground realms have taught your race the value of thrift. ‘Picky eaters should die and be eaten,’ as the popular aphorism goes. Using the techniques of the Necromancer feels wrong, but so does simply burning these thousand-year-old tomes of your ancestor, destroying your very legacy.
“I have an idea,” to tell the Novice.
Together, the two of you engage in your first collaborative act of divine communion. The Novice Fleshweaver once told you that, if she were ever to take up deep worship of any Dark Divinity, it would be The Baleful Beholder she would pledge her keen mind and wicked soul to. This day, the two of you light a candle, arrange the forbidden works within a mystical circle taken from one of them, and reach out to that very Dark God of Wisdom.
Once the hymn of proffered tribute is complete, nothing seems to happen… But then, the stone beneath the books rises up on either side to form a strange dome, which encloses them. When it opens a moment later, the books and scrolls are gone, and in their place is a great, staring eye. Upon the eye. It fixes upon you two, and immediately you are frozen in place—stunned, as much by the palpable sensation of the Enlightened Master’s direct attention as by shock at the drama of this appearance, so much more TANGIBLE than prior shadowed appearances.
“D-does our tribute please you, Oh Master of the Insightful Eye?” the Novice asks after a moment, shaken by the apparition and more eager to please than you have ever heard her.
The eye does not reply—as well you might expect—but it does blink again. From its pupil, which opens like an aperture, rises a familiar shape. The Nothic has returned to Bloodrise, and greets the two of you once more.
