>>5749942You step forward, and crane your neck to read over his shoulder, and our lower-ranked companions do likewise from further back. The writing is archaic, the noble Draconic form of the True Script, but you have read some of this before. Still, it is a struggle to parse the meaning, until the Heretic helps you:
“What the Dark Gods offer us as the boons is… Not Unlike the pact magic of a demon. However, while a demon’s power is quite finite, and the boons it can offer are limited and require a rite of possession, a Dark Gods is a mightier and… Erm… Holier thing.”
You narrow your eyes. You understand that the Heretic regards demonology as key to understanding the nature of the Dark Gods Below and Beyond. The view is (naturally) heretical in traditionalist circles, for the Dark Gods are an entire separate, purer class of being from the Lesser Darknesses of the Hellish Realms. He now walks carefully that thin line between outright sacrilege and the fervent respect your kind regularly show your creators… But then, you ARE asking to undermine and bypass their will, to some extent.
“A Dark God’s holy champion is given not the whole power of a God, nor bound so tightly as to become their vessel—we mere mortal CANNOT bear such power, concentrated within our small bodies. Even a demigod would struggle! Rather, a small portion of the Dark God is placed within us—in YOU, Dragonborn—and your natural magical energies are attuned more closely to a realm beyond our own. You are made not a vessel, but a PORTAL of sorts, through which the energies of another plane can flow, slowly, at a rate commensurate to your own natural energies. As the portal grows within you, this can expand BEYOND your own energies, and you can channel and manipulate them to achieve specific effects. The spells and magical effects of a specific Dark God reflect their own will helping to ‘pre-shape’ the flow of energy into digestible, ready-to-utilize ‘packages’, even as the words and gestures serve like a release valve.”
“And in the absence of a Dark God’s approval, and assistance?” you ask, dreading the answer.
“The energy still flows, but it is unmanageable, wild, chaotic… For a mortal. Perhaps even for a demigod. Only a being of purest magic, native to realms beyond this one, can properly direct it. Luckily, the Dark Gods have not cursed you so. Rather, they seem to have simply allowed that portal to the Power Beyond to shrink, to begin to seal and heal.”
“But there is something I can do about this, you say? To rectify it, to maintain the flow?”
The Heretic nods slowly, confirming this, and taps the passage again, before explaining.
