Inevitable Ascension

Chapter 19 - The Pinnacle of the World

Violina stared into the mirror above the basin where she washed off her blood. Though scarred and lined with thin violet tubes, her skin emanated a soft ivory glow similar to Vexia's, and the black monocle that made up her right eye now complemented an amethyst left eye. An overwhelming sense of power and satisfaction swept over her. She was immortal.

"Wow. I was really worried at first, but look at you! You're practically radiating majesty!" Lux rifled through her pack and retrieved the bottle of sleep gas they had used to sedate the dreichoden hatchlings. "That was the most horrific thing I've ever seen, but I'm absolutely on board."

"You brought—" Violina was taken aback by the sound of her voice. It now had a slight echo to it.

"It comes with the voice too?" Lux was ecstatic. "Let's go! Knock me out and cut me up!"

Violina continued with what she was going to say. "You brought knockout gas and didn't offer me any?"

Lux casually tossed the bottle into the air and caught it again with a shrug. "You didn't ask."

Violina sprayed Lux with the concoction, then dragged her onto the gilded altar of an operating table.

"The girl fears pain?" asked Vexia. "'Tis a shame, 'tis a shame. Life is pain. But when one has no life, they possess nothing." Vexia proceeded to refill the Consecrator with platinum and immortalium.

Violina estimated about five hundred platinum pieces were used with each procedure—not a bad price for living indefinitely. "So, I lost a lot of blood. Does that mean I don't need it anymore?"

"Any blood you lost was replaced with immortalium and platinum. You have no need for what is now lost, but lose what you now have and you will yet taste death. A ghastly and bittersweet flavor it carries."

Violina suddenly realized she had not been breathing—a testament to the claims Vexia had made. "So what can kill me?"

Vexia didn't look up from her work of inserting the network of tubes into Lux's neck. "The separation of your mind from your body, the separation of your blood from your veins."

Reflecting on the upcoming conflict with Kza, Violina realized the stakes had now climbed to previously unthinkable heights. When one sacrifices their life as a mortal, it is a finite sacrifice—a mere quickening of the already inevitable, and despite her dread of facing whatever might lie beyond death, Violina had been willing on many occasions to do just that to save her fellowmen. But what if she failed now? She would pay an infinite price. Was it really worth the risk?

Her memories of the horror, desperation and carnage of the far future tormented her to no end. If her options were to live forever in the hell that would soon come, or die trying to prevent it, she would choose the latter. She would pay any price to kill Kza and destroy the Second Sun.

Finishing her work and waiting for Lux to regain consciousness, Vexia cleaned the Consecrator and retrieved more immortalium. "The debt is paid and my time has come." She abruptly turned the blade on herself and punctured her neck in casual fashion, much to Violina's discomfort.

In hopes of reducing the awkwardness of just standing there and watching, Violina asked another question. "Do you know where to find the Pillar of God?"

"What a question. I shall in turn ask one of you: Can one find nothing? I have returned to the spot many times. Once a conduit of all that was Blessed, it now lies in obliteration as do they who were crushed in their fall. Apt, is it not? And yet the Condemned did not destroy that tower in its entirety, no. Just beneath the surface of the waves stood a remnant for eons idly by. And while the Condemned long ago destroyed the upper portion, God has since taken that of the lower and left it with nothing more, nothing less, nothing of anything at all."