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Chapter 559: The Serpent’s Gold

Walking through the curtain of darkness felt to Leon like walking into a freezing pool—which was remarkable since, as a seventh-tier mage, it wasn’t often that Leon was bothered enough by such things to even notice them. It wasn’t debilitating, but it was uncomfortable and more than enough to amplify his disquieted feelings.

What amplified those feelings even more was Leon’s immediate realization that he was alone—Gaius and Maia were nowhere to be seen.

His heart rate spiking in panic, Leon turned around, his eyes wide and staring into the abyssal void as he searched for two, yet seeing nothing.

“Gaius!” Leon called out, his voice seeming muted, almost as if he were buried in a pile of blankets. No reply came, and he quickly began to reach for his connection with Maia. It was still there, so he felt some comfort, but he couldn’t get a read on where she might be.

[Maia…] Leon whispered through the connection, but again, he received no response.

‘Shit…’ Leon thought to himself as he forced himself to calm down and evaluate the situation. This might just be a function of the darkness curtain, and maybe Gaius and Maia would be there when he got to the other side…

As this thought passed through his head, Leon realized that, in his haste to look around, he’d completely disoriented himself. The abyssal void he found himself in was completely black—he could still see his body somehow, so it wasn’t like everything was shrouded in darkness, but his surroundings were so devoid of color and shape that he felt like he stood upon an invisible platform floating in empty space. When he tried to project his magic senses to try and get an idea of where he was, his surroundings felt much less than empty, however; they felt thick and syrupy, and he couldn’t push his magic power out any further than about ten feet.

[Nestor, Xaphan,] Leon called out into his soul realm, [What’s going on, where am I?]

Nestor responded first, the speed with which his reply came betraying the fact that he was probably watching Leon this whole time.

[You’re in a liminal space,] the dead man replied. [It’s a transition between one place to another. Think of it like a tunnel that you walk through, but only connected to normal space at either end.]

[… Huh?] Leon grunted, not quite understanding the answer—or at least, not having confidence in his interpretation of Nestor’s explanation. It sounded almost like he was being teleported…

[You’re being teleported,] Xaphan said. [The ghost is just being needlessly pompous and verbose.]

[You’d know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?] Nestor shot back, and Leon kind of hated it, but he found himself agreeing with Nestor on that one.

Before the two long-term residents of his soul realm could descend into juvenile bickering that wouldn’t help anyone, Leon interrupted.

[Is this something I ought to be nervous about? Is this a threat?]

[Of course it’s a threat,] Xaphan said, his tone sounding dismissive and almost incredulous, as if Leon had asked what color the sky was or something equally obvious. [However, it’s not an active one. From what I can tell, if you wanted to, you could turn around and make your way out the way you came.]

[Yes,] Nestor agreed. [There’s no threat here from the limin—from the teleportation tunnel, I suppose I ought to call it… However, you’re heading into the unknown, and that’s always threatening. If someone has control over the enchantment that controls this teleportation, then they could also do some pretty terrible things to you if they knew what they were doing, but I can’t imagine anyone—]

As if deliberately cutting Nestor off, from roughly behind Leon came a titanic beam of light that stretched from the furthest depths of this abyssal void and reached all the way up to the highest heavens. Leon felt an ungodly amount of magic power within, and the chilly interior of this teleportation tunnel began to rapidly heat up. At first, the temperature became mild and pleasant, and then in the space of a second or two, started to get relatively hot, and then even hotter.

[I think that’s all the motivation I need to get moving,] Leon said as he turned in the opposite direction of the beam of light and began to run. He had no idea how much hotter that beam of light would make the tunnel, or what else it might be doing to the tunnel, but he wasn’t keen on finding out. Already, after only about five steps, the heat in the tunnel almost became unbearable, but then, Leon’s surroundings bent and distorted and began to grow brighter…

And he burst out of the curtain of darkness into a blazingly bright room that seared his eyes and forced him to squeeze them shut until he could direct a little bit of magic into them to soothe the pain and decrease his light sensitivity that had, since he’d just been underground and in the void, been turned up quite high.

The temperature, at least, had stabilized.

Leon didn’t immediately open his eyes once the dull pain died down. Instead, he projected his magic senses now that the void wasn’t pressing in on him from all sides, and to his delight, he found he could project his magic power without issues again. He wasted no time letting his magic senses try and fill the place he now found himself.

He was immediately stunned by what his magic senses sent back to him. Instead of the dark, bleak, grey and black granite that he’d been expecting that would’ve matched the temple’s exterior, he instead found himself in an immaculately lit and appointed domed chamber, and one that was quite large—the ceiling was easily five hundred feet tall, and the circular chamber had a radius of about a thousand feet. The floor was white marble so finely polished it was almost as reflective as water, the walls looked like smooth silver, and the shallow domed ceiling looked like it was made of gold. Etched upon the surface of the dome were countless intricately-detailed serpents who were slithering toward the dome’s center, while in the very center of the room was a golden pillar made of a mass of golden serpentine statues that looked like they were frozen in the midst of climbing and writhing over one another to reach the top, almost identical to the serpent reliefs adorning the columns of the temple’s exterior portico.

The center of the central pillar over which all of the serpents were slithering, however, wasn’t polished granite, it was an immense golden colossus of a muscular, yet androgenous humanoid figure with a spear in their right hand, their left hand raised up against the ceiling like this colossus was holding up the dome. Their head, like the statues outside, was not human, but serpentine in shape, with a long ivory horn extending backward from the colossus’ forehead toward their uncannily long, scaled neck.

The eyes of this colossus were made of shining emeralds, each one at least as large as Leon’s torso, and they glowed with magical light. It might’ve also been a trick of the light or the uncanny way the colossus had been built, but Leon felt like those eyes were boring straight into him, peeling away his every layer and divining every secret of his being.

Curiously, Leon wasn’t able to see the source of the white light that filled the room. Nothing save for the colossus’ emerald eyes gave off any light, and yet everything was perfectly well-lit, at least as far as Leon’s magic senses could tell.

There was nothing else of note in the immense chamber, at least by cursory examination. No furniture, no fancy decorations adorning the walls, just a vast, otherwise empty chamber. He made sure to keep his magic senses at least partially directed at the massive serpent-man statue, though, as the last colossus he’d run into like this—the Thunderbird colossus outside of Nestor’s lab—had tossed immensely powerful lightning at him.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see Gaius or Maia. Neither were present in the chamber, but Leon was at least a little relieved to feel his connection with Maia was still there, even if his quick attempts to contact her went without response.

“You know, I wasn’t exactly expecting this,” came Jormun’s disembodied voice echoing throughout the chamber. Leon was already wearing his armor, but his blade suddenly appeared in his hand as he assumed an aggressive stance and sent his power surging through his body. The room was already inundated with his magic senses which told him that Jormun wasn’t in the room, but Leon’s eyes snapped open and he scanned the room just in case. However, if Jormun was in the room with him, then Leon wasn’t able to perceive him.

It seemed that the pirate could see him, however, for a moment later, he continued with an amused tone.

“Was that reaction just for me, or did I startle you? I won’t deny that I’d be flattered immensely if you were that passionate to speak with me one-on-one again…”

Leon scowled behind his helmet and shouted, “Where are you!”

“Still here,” Jormun replied. “Why? Do you rue your decision not to come back to my place? Looking to fix that mistake? I mean, I wouldn’t blame you, I’m quite the catch, if I do say so myself, but unfortunately, I have work I need to get to today.”

“What work are you referring to?” Leon demanded to know as he started to slowly wander around the chamber, quietly looking for anything that might resemble a door or enchantment control console. Unfortunately, it seemed like going back wasn’t much of an option since the dark curtain that he’d walked out of had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the curved silver wall. So, if Leon was going to get his bearings and try to figure out a way forward, then he’d have to buy himself some time. It seemed like Jormun had some control over this place, though Leon was still getting a grasp on just what kind of a temple this was and what that control could mean, but if Leon could keep him talking, then he might be able to learn something about the temple while also distracting Jormun long enough for Leon to find something useful.

Jormun was silent for a moment, and Leon gritted his teeth in frustration, thinking that maybe Jormun hadn’t decided to stick around to talk.

The pirate proved that immediate reaction wrong, however, when he responded with a note of incredulousness in his voice, “Did you really ask me that, Leon? Do you not know what I’m doing here? Have I overestimated your abilities or your intelligence?”

Leon paused for a moment and shrugged. “Probably,” he frankly replied. “Why don’t you explain everything you’re doing here to me like I’m only five? Should make things easier to understand…”

The sound of Jormun chuckling filled the chamber. “I don’t honestly think a five-year-old would understand what I’m doing,” he said as his guffaws died down. “But you… I think you do… I mean, I basically told you, you know?”

Leon hummed noncommittally as he quickly assessed what he’d found in the chamber so far: a whole lot of nothing. There were no enchantments he could manipulate, no command consoles to be seen, no doors, no windows, no nothing. The chamber was just… empty, save for the enormous colossus. Leon began to hesitantly approach it, but he kept himself on guard the entire time.

“Look, Leon,” Jormun said, his tone light and casual as if he and Leon were just discussing gardening or something equally inconsequential, “do you know what this place is?”

“Some kind of temple to the Serpent from that story you told me?” Leon asked.

“Right in one!” Jormun proudly declared. “This place was built during the height of civilization in these islands, when the Serpent still spoke to us! When the Serpent’s presence could be felt in every facet of my people’s lives!”

“The imagery’s a little strange,” Leon said as his eyes slowly swept over the colossus, taking in the humanoid body and long serpentine head.

“I suppose it might be, but I get the feeling that it’s something you, of all people, ought to understand and appreciate,” Jormun replied. “I mean, you carry a power in your blood, don’t you? Something passed down to you from some inhuman ancestor?”

Leon froze in shock as, once again, he checked his mental defenses and sent a quick jolt of silver-blue lightning into his brain. He did his best to ensure that his senses were clear and that there wasn’t any foreign power in his mind—or anywhere else in his body—before he responded.

“How do you know about that…?” Leon quietly asked, deciding not to deny it. His lightning was eye-catching and quite special, there was little he could do to deny his inheritance even if he were of a mind to do so. Besides, for as much thought as he’d given to trying to reject the Thunderbird Clan, he could now recognize that it was mostly just a reaction to Nestor, and to his own failings as a mage and a sense of inadequacy that had wormed its way into his head.

Or maybe it had been there all along, he wasn’t sure.

Regardless, Leon didn’t want to announce it from the rooftops, but he also still took some small amount of pride in bearing the Thunderbird’s blood; he found that right now, he didn’t want to deny it.

“The Serpent quickly identified you as soon as you showed up on these shores,” Jormun admitted. “It knows who and what you are, and it took enough interest to tell me…”

“You speak with this beast?” Leon asked, his tone skeptical as he sought confirmation.

“I do,” Jormun replied without hesitation. “Years and years ago, it appeared to me in a vision, asking me to help it to free itself. Thanks to the power it lent to me, I was able to escape the Serpent’s Rattle—what used to be the most distant of the Serpentine Isles from your Bull Kingdom—before your Penitent Paladin destroyed it, and ever since then, I’ve been faithfully serving as its vanguard. I will release this Serpent back into the world, and all will know of its glory!”

The pirate spoke with great gusto, enough that Leon could almost imagine whatever enchantment console he might be hunched over getting drenched in more and more of the man’s spit with every syllable. But even with all that energy, Leon was unconvinced.

“Forgive me for not taking you at face value,” he said as he finally came to a stop at the foot of the colossus, where hundreds of snakes of all kinds had been rendered in gold and wrapped around its legs.

“You don’t have to,” Jormun replied. “All you need to know is that I know you’re of the Thunderbird, and so you ought to understand this concept… You see, the older myths of the Serpent—those from ages long past, thousands of years ago at the very least, possibly from as far back as before the appearance of the Central Empires—the old myths hold that the Serpent wasn’t a gigantic monster, at least not all the time. It could transform its body into that of a human at will, allowing it to rule in comfort and style. It took a great many concubines, and from those unions were born many children, children that spread its power down through the lines of the Serpentine Islanders down to this very day. I don’t think there’s a single Islander in existence who isn’t somehow descended from the Serpent…”

“So this is an allusion to that?” Leon asked, gesturing at the colossus and trusting that Jormun could see it, or at least understand what he was trying to ask.

“Yes,” Jormun replied.

“Well, you’re right, I do understand,” Leon truthfully replied. He’d seen the Thunderbird transform herself into her human form many times in his soul realm, he could completely get why worshippers of a shapeshifting snake might depict it as both human and serpent.

“Good,” Jormun drawled.

“What I don’t understand, however,” Leon continued, “is what exactly all of this is for. Is this just a place for worshippers to gather?”

“Something like that,” Jormun said, sounding like he was sighing at the same time. “This temple was built to accommodate the Serpent’s truest of followers. They were to be tested at every turn, shown their deepest and darkest fears and challenged to overcome them with their faith in the Serpent. They were supposed to reach this chamber with a newfound appreciation and veneration of the Serpent’s power, with their faith redoubled. How you arrived here so early—especially after walking through the portal after almost half a damn hour—is honestly quite mind-blowing. I mean, I figured you’d get through it quickly, but I didn’t expect you to blast through the first trial in less than a minute!”

“The two who were with me…” Leon hesitantly began.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, they’re still in their trials, I believe. It’s only been a few minutes, Leon, you can’t expect everyone to be as quick as you!”

Leon scowled again and doubled down on his inspection of the colossus. He couldn’t sense any unusual magics flowing through the gold, but he was still convinced that if there was anything to be found in this chamber, it was here. Maybe he could find something that might cancel this trial, or whatever the hells was keeping Maia from him. And Gaius, too, but the lion’s share of Leon’s concern right now was claimed by Maia.

“You know, if I’m honest, I think even the chamber is a little bamboozled, Leon,” Jormun admitted. “Normally, there’s a lot more stuff in there. I don’t think that place was ready for you to get through it so quickly… Every time that I returned to that room after completing a trial, I found food, wine, and plenty of companionship, if you know what I mean… But always, without fail, the doors to the rest of the temple would open as soon as I walked out, allowing me to roam this temple freely and to take in the majesties that the Serpent bestows upon its followers at my leisure. That no doors have opened for you… seems strange to me…”

Leon paused in his search as he contemplated Jormun’s words. Leon had only spent a little bit of time within a spatial tunnel and had a beam of light practically push him out; he hadn’t faced anything even remotely close to what he might’ve called a ‘trial’. If he had to guess, he’d say that something hadn’t wanted him in there.

Given the legends he knew of Thunderbirds striking down Horned Serpents in the Northern Vales, and of the legend that Jormun had told him of the three heroes wielding what sounded to Leon a lot like the power of the Thunderbird—he imagined that maybe the Thunderbird, or those who possessed the Thunderbird’s power, were somehow opposed to this Serpent. Maybe this Serpent had been struck down by members of the old Clan and bore a grudge, preventing anyone of his bloodline from partaking of its trials.

It made more sense to Leon the more he thought about it, but there was a small part of him that was a little sad. Some of the most fun and exhilarating things he’d ever done in his life were exploring ancient places like this and learning of the powers hidden within them. The Cradle, Xaphan’s prison, his family’s archives… There was a part of him that was greatly disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to see the powers left behind here by the Serpent, or whatever this place was built to honor.

The greater part of him, however, was instead focused on trying to find some way to either join Maia or to bring her to him. Leon wasn’t about to leave her in whatever half-baked ‘trial’ this damn place had cooked up for her.

“By the way, Leon,” Jormun continued, “I have to wonder a bit about why you’re here…”

“You’ve asked me that question before,” Leon shot back before he turned his attention briefly inward.

[I can’t make heads or tails of this thing, I can barely even sense the magic flowing through this chamber,] he said to Xaphan and