The Ascension of the Celestial Priest

30; The Forbidden Religion.

After Lukas collected himself and made sure the corpses were burnt to their very bones, he walked together with his team across the floating ashes, with soot covering their footsteps left behind on the cobbled floor. The small motes of light on their shoulders offered very little light inside the empty hall. The only evidence left behind of the past desperate battle was the heavy stinging air and the blistering stains that decorated the hall like tokens of death.

"We have finally arrived" Lukas muttered to himself. The adjacent room which was meant to be their last stop slowly creaked as they pushed its heavy door doors further open. Inside revealed a high circular hall, its vertical length half of the hall they came from but its ceiling so high that even the materialized orb of light couldn't shed its brilliance even if it tried.

And they could tell it was meant to be divine and beautiful, with gilded decorations and long altar candle stands now filled with dust and cobwebs, placed a few meters from each. On the curved wall were the very same statues they witnessed in the previous hall but now all of them were in a state in worship, with their knees bent and their grotesque heads bowed.

They immediately felt as if they had stepped into a hallowed ground and when their eyes followed they could behold it. A huge 10 feet tall bare male statue wreathed in flowing robes stood at the front of the hall. It was in a much larger scale with its majestic wings that fully shadowed over its bowed subjects, and its hands outstretched towards them almost as if it beckoned them to its embrace. With its eyes still streaked with tears and an orb above that shimmered in a soft purple radiance, all of them felt as if they were in presence of an ancient god and a sudden silence settled upon them in front of the statue's sacredness.

"A Daendric prince…" Renesme softly breathed.

Mira violently reacted. "Did you just say a Daendric prince?"

Geoff frowned while Lukas clueless asked.

"What is a Daendric prince?"

Mira glanced at Renesme before she turned to the looming statue. "An old religion long decreed forbidden to practice. Any heritage of it, banished from history with only a few remaining records speaking of its woes and warning against those who worship them."

"It has been decreed illegal for thousands of years now but it seems some traces still bled through time. The Ancient Knowledge spoke of them as the Old Gods, The 7 Daendric Princes of Darkness. Their followers have raised countless mayhem of chaos and blood in the past that it left a lasting scar in the yonder Continent of Lush. None shall dare follow the princes of Darkness lest the whole world burn in vengeance and clamor for annihilation to descend." declared Renesme.

Lukas's heart chilled when he heard the tone of finality in Renesme's voice. "Representative Malten did say that this graveyard in the years past used to be a stronghold of the crazy cultists…"

Mira shook her head." If it became known a statue of a Daendric prince exists under the catacombs of Golden City, the implications would run far and wide…"

"They are universally hated," Geoff added "countless of legends of woe and tales of avarice have spawned throughout the years. Telling of the price the old ones had to pay to stop such blight form spreading. Even years later, a breath of such rumors is enough send people to madness."

In the midst of their banter, none of them noticed Rexsi, silently transfigured on the same spot looking at the imminent statue with a strange look on his face.

Lukas raised his orb even higher, shedding more light on the welcoming visage of the carefully sculptured effigy.

"So which Daendric prince is this?" Lukas asked.

"By its wings, and the mark of eternal tears, this must be a Daendric Prince of Shadows and Sorrows, The Last Respite of the Unfulfilled, The Holy Patron of Mercy, and the Absolver of The Perpetually Pained."

"No wonder it is called The Graveyard of Sorrows."Geoff muttered under his breath.

"The Perpetually Pained?" Lukas raised his eyebrows.

"Meaning he blessed those who were forever cursed in pain and suffering." Mira explained.

Lukas blinked. "Well that doesn't sound so bad..."

Renesme's eyes twinkled as she added. "If you believe in cutting someone's life short in face of pain as the path of redemption. The followers of this Daendric prince were once seen as Miracle Workers and Blessed healers but in truth, if they ever met someone's who fate could not be redeemed even with magic, they silently took their lives fervently believing they showed mercy should they have lived a life of suffering instead."

"Oh!" Lukas wished he could take back his words.

"The legends say it took many years for people to realize but by then countless of lives deemed terminal by their judgment fell under their gracing hands, all until they were finally purged and their religion banned from the sands of time."

Geoff humored Lukas as he patted his shoulders. "But don't worry. The Daendric religion has waned for such a long time with truths and rumors all mixed in. No one can tell what is real from the lies anymore."

Rexsi snapped from his lasting reverie before he brought them back to what they had aimed to do in the first place. "Let's search around. If there is no sign of danger and nothing of value we might as well call it early and be gone. I am craving for a piece of sunlight right about now"

They all agreed before they slowly branched out in different directions. The Circular hall was wide enough, with a lot of space to cover. Lukas went on the right side of the hall, together with Rexsi, while Geoff and Mira went on the opposite side; leaving Renesme heading straight for the statue, her jade eyes still lingering on the marbled face of grief.

The direction Lukas and Rexsi went, placed them directly on path with a certain pile hidden under the shadows of a statue of satyr. At its bent knees laid a heap of various artifacts from shields, swords and staves all rusted and covered in dust; a physical collection of all the adventurers that had ever ventured in the deadly catacombs brought together in one massive heap.

Lukas began, "When Representative Malten said that this was a purge of countless years I never imagined that…"

"This many people had fallen to their untimely demise in these halls?" Rexsi finished his thoughts.

"Honestly it's not that surprising. Some adventures strike it rich, making a killing enough to last their lifetimes while others fall, the names meant to be forgotten. The catacombs of Golden City run deeper than most people think and so with time there must be adventurers willing to go down to its depths for a lucky strike of fortune." Rexsi said as he picked up a nearest rusted sword, twirling it in his hands.

"Can't the Adventurer's Guild put a stop into it?" Lukas asked.

Rexsi had a strange expression. "Why would they? Adventuring is a high risk high rewards profession. Think about it; by letting people venture into this place they able to keep creatures like those rats under control and they obtain countless benefits should any adventurers stumble upon some gains in these dungeons. It's a win-win situation for them."

Lukas looked at Rexsi for a while before he sighed. "To think that we would have been a part of this collection if we hadn't survived the ordeal..."

A moment of silence passed between them as Rexsi was busy trying to see if he could salvage anything useful from the rusted heap. Most of the artifacts found were ranked white, with only few of them at Silver. This indirectly meant that mostly Mortal mages with a few Earth ranked ones had walked in these parts of the halls.

A gleaming insignia caught Lukas's eyes as he also stretched his hands to uncover it. It was a huge book, lighter than he expected, covered in a thin layer of dust and cobwebs. Rexsi threw a glance at it before he said.

"It's a Grimore." giving it a more observant look he added. "It's a Divine Cathedral's Tome. Their iconic insignia are blinding even from a far."

Lukas shuffled it around his hands before he confirmed.

"It seems to be fairly new." he said before he settled it on his left hand, while attempting to open it with his right hand.

"Don't bother." Rexsi said when he noticed his efforts "you can't…..wait what?"

Lukas lifted his head. "What were you saying?" he asked, the grimore lay opened in his arms.

Rexsi gawked at him before he dropped whatever he was holding and then got near Lukas, his eyes roving all over him and the book." What happened? How did you open it?"

A little taken aback, Lukas strangely answered. "I opened it…like how you take books and just course through its pages."

Rexsi rolled his eyes. "You can't just open a grimore belong to the Divine Cathedral. It's nighly impossible thing to do. Those crazed over-zealots are prone to paranoia; all about protecting the secrets of their gods or something. Hence their grimores are always enchanted to prevent anyone other than them from being able to open them again."

Lukas was speechless. He was not even aware such a thing existed. And it can't even be blamed on him since this world he had reincarnated into had just so much knowledge and customs that the 1st level library at the Hall of Insight wasn't enough to cover; from the lore of Daendric princes to some common known rules like this.

But Lukas asked the most important question. "Why?"

"Well I don't know; you have to ask them for an answer. But wait, let me try something…"

Rexsi grabbed the opened book from Lukas's hands and in a muffled bang, the book snapped shut with such a force that Rexsi was sure his nimble fingers would been smashed if he hadn't been quick enough to retrieve them.

Not waiting for Rexsi to collect himself, Lukas returned the book into his own hands and then smoothly opened it, inwardly surprised at the ease of it.

Rexsi was just about to utter a particularly vicious word when…

"Over here" Mira's distant voice carried over to them. Giving the book a vile look while curiously glanced at Lukas, Rexsi slowly shook his head in silence before he left, leaving Lukas with puzzled questions running through his mind.

He handled the book with care, carefully shifting through the pages, hoping to understand what just happened but he was left more than disappointed. Every single page he coursed though was profoundly empty, with not even a shadow of inked Cyrillic letters upon them. Verifying that it is the same with every page, he had a piece of mind to take the grimore and solve its puzzle later but in the end he decided against it.

Just from the recent talk and the rumors he had heard, the priests of Divine cathedrals were more than enough to handle and he didn't want to enter into their cross-hairs this early into his Path of Magic. Besides, he gave the grimore one last look before he sighed again. This book might be have some kind of a rune malfunction he thought to himself, not noticing a small radiance of light that flickered over his own hanging book of spells before it disappeared, with him none the wiser.

Carefully placing the book atop the heap, he gave one last look at the mountain of artifacts before further affirming his resolve. This was a world fraught with danger in every turn, one wrong step and he might be buried, forgotten just like this ancient mass of broken dreams and unfulfilled aspirations. And by then, he couldn't even guarantee if he would be reincarnated or his death would be final. He couldn't run the risk of finding out.

He left the pile behind, the orb of light floating above him, following his every footstep. Everyone had congregated at the foot of the sacred statue staring at something hidden from his view. When he finally reached them, they automatically left a c***k and when he directed his orb closer he saw it.

It was an exquisite purple flower, growing in a c***k on the floor, its petals gently swaying in the bottom of the Daendric prince with two small leaves still attached to its stem.

"This" Renesme softly pointed at the flower, "Might be the reason why a rat king appeared in these parts of the Catacombs."

And they all glanced at each other, puzzled as to why Renesme said so.

*The Daendric religion was stolen…cough inspired by the Game of Skyrim and its lore.

*The book of Spells, Grimore and Tome all have been used under the same context. I kind of got tired of writing 'book of spells' over and over again.