Titan King: Ascension of the Giant Chapter 1724: Gathering of the Apex

"His Eminence Leonidas bestows upon Queen Elara ten cities of other worlds, in congratulation of Her Majesty's glorious ascension to the throne, her grasp of Authority, her rule over the Stoneheart Horde."

"His Eminence Arthas bestows upon Queen Elara ten cities of other worlds, in congratulation of Her Majesty's glorious ascension to the throne, her grasp of Authority, her rule over the Stoneheart Horde."

"His Eminence Alexander bestows upon Queen Elara ten cities of other worlds, in congratulation of Her Majesty's glorious ascension to the throne, her grasp of Authority, her rule over the Stoneheart Horde."

"…"

Following the Deputy Commander, the whole crowd of demigod uncles of the Champions Alliance sent out their embassies and processions in turn, laying congratulatory gifts before Elara. After them came the Saint Gran Council, the Order of the Dandelion, the Death-Soul Race, the Mother of the Mycelium—every outside power in alliance with the Stoneheart Horde offering congratulations, and even Mondusath, the Great Dragon King of Light, sent along a handsome gift. Later still came the moment for the Stoneheart Horde's various race-representatives, along with city-lords and lords from every quarter, to present their gifts and their loyalty—a long roll of guests, telling out the splendor of the Stoneheart Horde's recent years, a hymn to the new sovereign, and glory come home to roost.

The celebration went on, but the one presiding had changed from Orion to Elara.

—

Blackstone City. The Wishing Tree, dense with branch and leaf.

While the Stoneheart Horde was still holding its new-sovereign celebration, Orion met, beneath the Wishing Tree, a great figure come from the Abyss.

"Orion, this is the Chieftain of our Death-Soul Race—Delor." Delor: of the five highest castes at the very front of the Death-Soul Race, and as Chieftain, granted the name Delor by right.

Orion looked Delor over—imperial robe, sharp-cut features, the mystery and depth running through the lines of that face beyond what chisel and adze could describe. The left eye like a bright moon, the right like a great sun, set into an upright body cast in dark gold; no one to be trifled with at a glance, and Orion was full of curiosity about him.

"Death-Soul Fiend, I've seen your avatar. He's already raised a field in the black fog and carved out a safe zone. When the ten-year term is up and the divine shelter monolith descends, I'll help you open the teleport undercurrent between the Abyss and Titanion." Delor spoke, his voice like thunder splitting the sky, like churning magma, keenness laced with weight, and through the words ran an all-but-imperceptible quality like a decree, irresistible. At first Orion took it for a trick of his own perception, then realized fast it was no trick but fact—the decree-pressure he'd caught was Delor's inborn dominion, as this sovereign, over every soul of the Death-Soul Race.

"Can you talk like a normal person? Can you rein in that foul Abyssal World stench of rot and ferment off you, and spare me the line about it being some glorious killing-aura forged from the blood and bone of the defeated?" Before Orion could speak, Commander Thresh had clapped a hand over his nose, putting on a face of disgust.

"Rot? Ferment?" Delor shifted his gaze, fixed Thresh, and shook his head, finding Commander a bit of a wet blanket. "Thresh, you're an old thing yourself. The stale and the aged your flesh gives off—is it any less foul than the rot of the Abyssal World? That mouth of yours stinks past bearing, same as ever."

Plainly Delor and Commander were old acquaintances, on decent terms; otherwise they'd not have fallen to mutual disgust the moment they met.

"Just the one of you came from the Death-Soul Race? Those undying old things not afraid you'll fall out here?" Commander gave a light snort, taking Delor's riposte in stride. Thresh knew well that Delor was nothing like Kaidric; as a sovereign of his race, the man could brook no slander, no slight.

"They won't wake from sleep until a Divine Mantle shows itself—the elders' time runs shorter with every drop spent. Besides, my Death-Soul Race turns out talent without end. Kill the one of me and a second power no lesser than me appears at once. And I think he'd do nicely." Delor drew his gaze back and set it on Orion once more.

Orion's pupils contracted; he said nothing. The Commander and Kaidric at his side, hearing it, went wide-eyed instead and stared at Delor in plain astonishment, unable to imagine such incredible words coming out of Delor's mouth.

"Him? Orion? A giant, as king of our Death-Soul Race? Delor, have you lost your mind?" Kaidric was beside himself—not that he had anything against Orion, but the thing Delor proposed struck him as too much a child's game.

"I haven't lost my mind. And you heard me right." Delor shot Kaidric a glance, his face all iron that won't make steel. "You don't want it—well, others wouldn't even be willing." Delor looked to Orion again, his eyes full of hope.

"Sorry. I own myself a member of the Death-Soul Race, but I've no interest in leading a crowd of kin I don't know toward prosperity. Too much trouble, too tangled a web of favors—I'm afraid I couldn't help wiping out everyone I took a dislike to." Orion shook his head. On the matter of identity, he owned the giant bloodline the more—it was the people he'd grown up in from childhood, the one he felt the deeper bond with.

"See? The thing you hold supremely noble isn't worth a copper to the next man." The hope drained clean out of Delor's eyes; he lost his taste for the subject of handing over his seat. "Let's talk of something we're all keen on instead—say, how to fish out that Sovereign of the Boundless Expanse." Delor split into a grin, a fire-hot heat flickering through his eyes and gone.

"Wait a little. There's another friend about to arrive." Orion nodded, but didn't take up Delor's thread.

"A friend—of the same kind as you?"

"Mm."

Getting that affirmation from Orion, Delor showed nothing and chose silence. If a great thing was to be done, best to wait for the full muster.

And just as they fell silent one after another, ripples of rule rolled out in rings beneath the Wishing Tree, and a deep-blue magic mirror went from transparent to solid in the space of a breath.

"The virtual invading the real—an Ascendant Plane of the Void in truth. The Realm Barrier runs thick; even a Demigod Artifact couldn't easily break it. I'd stake anything this world has bred more than one Divine Mantle." The newcomer's figure had yet to appear, but the voice came drifting out of the magic mirror.

Just as every eye fixed on the mirror, a being stepped out of it—half-transparent all over, both eyes blazing with dazzling divine light, a vast nine-colored magic ring borne at its back—and swept its gaze over them all.

"Faenor, current Speaker of the Saint Gran Council. An honor to meet you all." Faenor introduced himself, and Delor placed him in an instant.

"Heh. So it's you, junior. I took it for some old hand come in person, putting on so grand a show." Delor drew back his appraising look and lost interest in Faenor.

"Elders, both—a long parting, and I trust you've kept well." In the face of the Death-Soul Race Chieftain's slight, Faenor minded not at all; in Delor's eyes he truly did count as a junior. Many years back, Faenor had followed his own mentor to the Abyss to call on Delor, and wandered the Death-Soul Race's lands a while.

"Same as ever—asleep, and looking none too likely to wake." Commander shrugged; an elder to Faenor as well, he handled it easily.

"More or less. Sleep, wake, wake, sleep." Delor didn't so much as look at Faenor, but went on attending to Orion—this newly joined kinsman pleased his eye more and more.

"Right—where's that old thing of your house? So many years without sight of him. Dead?" As if some friend had come to mind, Delor put the question lightly.

"My master's lifespan ran out. He folded himself into the Mage-God Tower ahead of time." Speaking of his own master, the calm of Faenor's mood stirred with a faint ripple.

"Too old, after all." Hearing word of a friend's passing, Delor's face moved at last. He bowed his head—no telling whether in silent mourning or in memory.

"Folded himself into the Mage-God Tower—he means to walk the road of a whole realm turning god? You're what he's pinned it on?" Faenor's master, Commander Thresh knew as well, and at once he recalled a stretch of discussion with the old friend, a notion much like this one among it.

"My master said my gift outran his—that I could bring him immortality." Faenor pressed his palms together, eyes lightly shut, the nine-colored magic ring at his back glinting and turning slow, like a god.

"He had a fine sense of his own measure. Your gift's higher, your strength greater, your flesh younger—you can hold out till that day comes." Delor lifted his head, stepping out of the mourning, and regarded the shut-eyed Faenor with open appreciation. This young man before him had once cleared the Death-Soul Race's proving-grounds, and beaten that generation's strongest prodigy of the Death-Soul Race besides.

"This mirror's the Demigod Artifact you bred? What does it do?" Praise and admiration spent, Delor finally asked the question in his heart.

"The Faenor Realm. It can cast the real into the void, and make the void take shape as the real." Faenor said it flat, but those few short words raised a vast swell in the hearts of Delor, Orion, Commander, and Kaidric.

"Make the void take shape as the real—you're joking." Kaidric, who'd been unable to get a word in all along, put the challenge—not that he was being a card, not that he was being funny, but that the function of "making the void take shape as the real" carried such weight he had to voice his doubt.

"Faenor never jokes before his elders." Hearing it, Faenor opened his eyes and came to sit beside Orion and the others. And in the very instant he sat, his half-transparent body turned from void to solid, manifesting part of a divine form. Faenor proved by fact that what he'd said was no lie, no joke at the group's expense.

"Your Saint Gran Council was eyeing the Void a long time ago, then?" After Kaidric chose to shut his mouth, Commander Thresh spoke, voicing his own guess.

"Your wisdom is beyond compare, elder. The few old hands in the council couldn't out-compete those old monsters of the Abyss and Hell, so they could only set their minds early on the Void. The Void's Ascendant Planes hide too deep; we explored for years and never could turn up the matching world-coordinates. This young friend here, though—his domain went and joined straight to the Mirage Void. Deep fortune indeed." Faenor nodded. Before he chose to breed his Demigod Artifact, the few undying old hands in the council had been pressing their views on him, breeding a "nuke" aimed squarely at the Void.

"You likely don't know, elder—Titanion was joined to the Mirage Void passively. We were played by the Cult of Four." Orion couldn't see through to the deeper purpose behind the Four Gods' move, but being played was the fact, and when you take the hit you stand up straight to it.

"Played or not, it doesn't matter. The fact is we're joined to a Void Ascendant Plane, and we've gotten the intelligence on the Divine Mantle—that's enough. As for what the future looks like and what we'll have to face, that waits till we live to see the day. With a Divine Mantle, ascending to godhood, winning immortality—what does it matter if we face the encirclement of all the gods?" Faenor spread his hands, the four-system rules of earth, fire, wind, and water coiling in his palms, his whole self turning from solid to void along with it, entering the half-transparent state, giving off an air sacred and not to be profaned.

"Tsk, tsk—the old madman's disciple through and through. Real flair of his, back in the day, for picking fights with heaven, earth, and every overlord of the Abyss. Boy, remember what you said today—don't go turning yellow when the time comes, don't go playing the head-tucked turtle." Delor was much in agreement with what Faenor had just said. He knew well what everyone would have to face down the line. But then again, if you couldn't lay hands on a Divine Mantle, you'd be treated as an ant. And an ant has to die sooner or later, so why fear a thing.

"With this in hand, we'll have to scheme it out properly. Beyond killing that Boundless Expanse Sovereign, we'll need to seize his Divine Mantle, seal off all word of Faenor, and throw everyone off the scent." Commander fixed on Faenor's half-transparent form and absently propped his chin, working at a better plan.

"How strong is the Faenor Mirror? You're certain it can manifest that Sovereign of the Boundless Expanse?" Orion, like Commander, was fixed on Faenor. The Mirage Void belonged to the Void, and the creatures here came inborn with the rules of void and dream—the hardest of all to deal with, the hardest to kill. For the real world to invade the void world, it had to be done by way of entering the dream, which cost everyone a great deal of combat ability. If the Faenor Mirror could manifest the Boundless Expanse Sovereign, then they'd have more abilities and secret arts to bring against him—easier than killing him by main force.

"So long as he's not a god, it can certainly be done. Of course, the time the Boundless Expanse Sovereign stays manifested is limited—just how long, I couldn't say for sure." Faenor drew back the cloud of rules in his hands and looked at Commander and Delor with great care; he didn't know Orion's combat strength, but he knew well the terror of Commander and Delor. For those two, even a single instant of manifestation ought to be enough. "And if some power comes to interfere while I'm manifesting him, the time runs shorter still."

Faenor turned to look at Orion. If he was a junior to Commander and Delor, then Orion was a junior to him. The way an elder looks at a junior, the gaze and the bearing are always a little different.