Chapter 776: Contrary to Common Sense
“Nearly ten minutes,” Celine said, the relief in her shared consciousness unmistakable. “Nothing seems to have happened.”
“Unfortunate.” Alethea’s tone had flattened considerably from its earlier anticipation. “He really does have good luck.”
“I don’t want to rely on chance. Please choose a safer method next time.”
“Let’s leave what’s done alone.” Alethea redirected. “Place your bets: how long does the king stay in before he comes out? The standing record for a common person—even in the Land of Dawn trials—is under fifteen minutes.”
“Witches don’t do meaningfully better,” Celine said. “Endurance in the Divine Land has nothing to do with magic power. Even in the Union, the relic was monitored by groups of ordinary people in rotation. That said—” she paused to consider— “given his age and temperament, he should surface soon.”
In everything she had read, warriors who had faced demons on an actual battlefield persisted longer in the Divine Land, witch or common person alike. The record belonged to Lady Alice, who had held for almost two hours. A king who had never once drawn a weapon in battle would, logically, be closer to the bottom of that range.
“Or maybe he’ll want to stay.” Alethea sounded more tired of the joke than amused by it. “It is remarkable, after all, the first time.”
“Then he’ll exhaust himself and fall unconscious.” Celine stopped, then looked at Pasha. “Did you forget to tell him that part?”
“A brief coma won’t hurt him.” Pasha’s tentacles moved in the unhurried way they did when she’d already decided something. “And frankly, an unpleasant ending to a first visit might reduce his appetite for returning alone. Which suits everyone.”
“So you… didn’t forget.”
Pasha did not answer directly. “Sometimes leaving certain things unspoken serves better than explaining. None of us would want to feel constrained every time we explored the Divine Land.”
A pause in the shared current of their thoughts. Then Alethea, slowly: “Now I understand why Lady Natalia chose you as one of the candidates for the Three Chairs.”
Celine agreed, though she kept it to herself. Alethea would never have managed this—the tactical omission, the longer view, the understanding that a small embarrassment between allies was healable while terror was not. Pasha had chosen the gentler injury.
Time passed.
Celine found her tentacles tightening.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “He’s still seated.”
“Apparently with no problems.” Pasha glanced at the motionless king. “He seems, as ever, to be full of surprises.”
“New record for a common person.” Alethea raised her main tentacle in something that functioned like a shrug. “Should I say congratulations?”
Celine said nothing. She was watching Roland’s posture, the steadiness of his breathing, the way his eyes moved behind closed lids—and she felt something she had not felt in a long time. Not alarm exactly. Something closer to the sensation before an alarm.
The waiting confirmed it.
Another fifteen minutes. Thirty total. He had not moved. Celine’s awareness of each passing second became involuntary and precise—over a century of experience had calibrated her shell’s internal rhythms to something more exact than any clock. Forty-five minutes. An ordinary person—someone neither warrior nor Extraordinary—should have been wrung dry by now. The Divine Land consumed energy faster than any other activity she knew of; even trained soldiers and veteran witches felt the drain within the hour.
She had read every record she could find. Forty-five minutes for a man like this was not possible.
Was there an accident inside? Something we couldn’t see from out here?
Wendy stepped forward, reaching toward Roland—and Pasha’s tentacle blocked her path gently but without negotiation.
“If you get too close to the relic, you’ll be pulled in as well.”
“Then let me go in and bring him back!”
“Even if you enter, you can’t reach him. Multiple people summoned simultaneously see entirely separate Divine Lands. You would be alone with your own.”
In her peripheral awareness—that layered perception the original carriers had developed over decades—Celine caught a particular quality of tension from the other side of the room. The hidden witch, the one who had stayed wrapped in her ability throughout: she was moving. Something had come out of a pocket. Based on what Phyllis had reported, it was likely one of Neverwinter’s unique weapons.
She conveyed this to Pasha without words.
Pasha moved. A careful extension of tentacles wrapped around Roland’s shoulders, lifted him, and drew him back toward Wendy with the deliberate slowness of someone handling something valuable. It was not ideal. But the situation had reached the edge of what could be managed through patience, and a conflict here—between Nightingale and the ancient witches, in this dark hall, with the relic still active—would set back everything.
The God’s Stone box closed over the crystal.
Roland opened his eyes.
“Your Majesty—” Wendy was there immediately, steadying him as he straightened his legs.
“Nothing’s wrong.” He pressed his palms against his knees and stretched. “I’m fine.” He considered. “I met the alien creatures guarding the other two relics. Tried to talk to them. They didn’t understand me.”
Celine’s shock arrived before she could contain it. “Wait—you said you met the demon and…”
“And a large eye. It seemed to live in something that moves underwater—a vessel, maybe—though I couldn’t be certain.” Roland rolled his shoulders. “Hard to classify.”
Through the tentacle-link, she felt the impact of that information hit Alethea like cold water hitting a hot stone. Among all the survivors, Alethea held the endurance record—almost an hour in the Divine Land, drawn from her years with the Blessed Army. But that hour had come in the Divine Land’s quiet version, when nothing appeared in the paintings. The presence of the demon or the unknown guardian doubled the rate of energy drain. That was how it worked. Everyone who had come back from that experience had said the same thing.
He had both of them in the same session. Both at once. And he held for forty-five minutes.
“What happened then?” Pasha asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. Black tentacles appeared in both paintings and attacked the creatures. They were powerful enough to drive both of them back—it took only a few minutes. The demon escaped through the frame. The eye retreated into the water and the painting went dark.”
Celine stood very still.
He had encountered both alien guardians simultaneously. Had not fled or lost consciousness. Had remained long enough afterward to consider going looking for the Divine Land’s edges.
And some unknown force with black tentacles—something that had appeared without warning and driven off entities strong enough to terrorize the ancient witches who documented the Divine Land—had apparently protected him.
She could explain the energy drain, the disorientation, the tentacle visions. She could not explain what he had just described. Even the most liberal interpretation of the historical records produced nothing that matched it.
Her mind settled, with slow reluctance, on a guess.
Is this man’s mental power comparable to Lady Alice’s? To the Head of the Three Chairs herself?
If so—and he seemed entirely unaware of it—that changed certain calculations.
Roland was already stretching his arms, glancing around the hall with an expression of mild practical curiosity. “Anyway—thank you for pulling me out. I was considering whether the Divine Land had outer edges, but it would have taken too long to find out on foot.”
Three ancient witches. A silence that lasted, in terms of their shared awareness, longer than any silence since they had merged into their shells.
Then Pasha: “Ahem. Of course. Would you like to continue exploring the relic?”
“Not today.” Roland shook his head. “There are only four paintings. Another look won’t change what I’ve learned. Show me to the central carrier.”