Elysia
Chapter 36: The Price of Victory, The Seeds of Faith

In the weeks that followed the Synchronous Victory, a wave of palpable relief washed over the free kingdoms of the continent. The news, carried by swift elven couriers and jubilant mages, was of a triumph so absolute it bordered on the miraculous. Three separate forces, striking as one across vast distances, had shattered three of Malgorath’s primary strongholds in a single day. The Crimson Blight, the terrifying, frenzied plague that had been bleeding into the southern lands, receded like a dying tide, its corrupting influence withering under the decisive blow.

Celebrations erupted from the grand plazas of the Human Empire to the smallest hamlets on the coast. The names of the Four Heroes were sung in every tavern and marketplace, their deeds already woven into the fabric of legend. Kenji, the Blade of Dawn who cleansed the desert; Kaito, the Unbroken Shield who conquered the abyss; Aiko and Yui, the Twin Sages of the Peak who brought silence to the whispering mountain. They were the saviors of the age, the bright, shining hope in a long and bitter war.

Yet, in the high council chamber of the Elven capital, the mood was not one of jubilation. It was one of profound, weary, and deeply unsettled relief.

King Theron stood before the Great Scryer, its map now showing vast swathes of the south cleared of the pulsating crimson veins. The victory was real, the strategic advantage undeniable. But he and the others in this room knew the truth. They knew the cost. The reports had detailed the casualties—brave elven rangers lost in the mountain assault, skilled dwarven marines crushed in the deep, loyal human knights fallen on the desert sands. But the true price was not measured in lives lost, but in the terrifying knowledge they had gained.

“The plan was flawless,” Commander Borin stated, his gruff voice lacking its usual triumphant boom. He sounded tired. Humbled. “Her intelligence was perfect. Her strategy was absolute. We were merely the instruments.”

“Indeed,” Archmage Gideon murmured, stroking his long beard. He looked less like a master of the arcane and more like a weary scholar who had just glimpsed the edge of an infinite, terrifying library. “We wielded swords and spells. She wielded causality itself. She did not just predict the outcome; she dictated it.”

King Theron felt a chill despite the warmth of the chamber. He was a victorious king, the leader of the most successful military operation in a generation. Yet, he had never felt less in control. He felt less like a king and more like a high priest who had successfully interpreted the cryptic, terrifying will of his deity, and had been rewarded for his obedience. Their greatest victory was not their own. It was a gift. And a gift from a being like Elysia was a thing to be feared as much as cherished.

It was into this atmosphere of quiet, existential dread that a new, unforeseen complication arrived. A delegation, bearing not the banners of an allied kingdom, but the freshly created sigil of a blooming, aurora-colored lotus, requested an audience. They were the ordained priests of the burgeoning new religion: The Faith of the Aurora.

Granted an audience before the throne, the delegation was a strange mix of charismatic human priests, zealous elven converts, and even a few stern-looking dwarves who had witnessed the ‘miracles’ on the front lines. Their leader, a human priest named Elian, had eyes that burned with the fire of a true believer. He and his followers did not kneel to King Theron. They bowed their heads briefly, then turned their gaze collectively towards the direction of the World Tree.

“We have come to give thanks,” Elian proclaimed, his voice ringing with passion. “Not to the armies of the Alliance, though their bravery is commendable. Not even to the blessed Heroes, though their power is great. We have come to give thanks to the true architect of our salvation: the Silent Goddess who resides at the heart of the world, the Lady of the Aurora Palace.”

A ripple of unease went through the council.

“We have gathered the stories,” Elian continued, his voice rising. “From the survivors of Silvervein, who speak of a 'Song of Angels' that shielded them in their darkest hour. From the soldiers in the desert, who saw a fortunate wind turn the tide of battle. From all corners of the land where the blight recedes, we hear whispers of her silent grace. These are not just acts of war. They are miracles!”

He then presented their purpose, his voice resonating with unshakeable conviction. “The people’s faith is overflowing. They build shrines in their homes. They offer prayers of thanks to the forest. But this is not enough. We request, Your Majesty, as the traditional guardians of the Sacred Forest, that you grant us official recognition. We ask for your aid in establishing a formal pilgrimage route to the edge of Her domain, so that the faithful may offer proper worship and bask in her divine presence.”

The request landed in the throne room like a thunderclap. It was a political and religious crisis of the highest order.

Saintess Annelise, who had been standing silently at the side, stepped forward, her face a mask of pained conflict. “This is heresy,” she said, her voice trembling but firm. “The power you witnessed is real, I do not deny it. But its source is unknown, its nature beyond our comprehension. To build a religion around a being who has never spoken her will, who has never asked for worship… it is a dangerous path, paved with ignorance.”

Commander Borin scoffed. “Let them worship her,” he grunted under his breath to a nearby general. “If their hymns keep her content enough to hand us more battle plans, then I’ll lead the choir myself.”

It was Archmage Gideon who articulated the true danger, his voice a grave counterpoint to the priest's passion. “You are playing with fire, Priest Elian,” he warned. “You assume this being desires your adulation. We, who have stood in her presence, have felt no such desire. She craves only one thing: tranquility. What do you think will happen when a thousand devout, noisy pilgrims march to her doorstep? Do you think she will greet them with open arms? Or will she view your 'pilgrimage' as the greatest disturbance of all, and erase it as cleanly as she erased the blight of Astor?”

The Archmage’s words hung in the air, a chilling and undeniable possibility.

King Theron was caught in an impossible position. He could not deny the truth of what the people felt. Elysia had saved them. But he also could not risk provoking the very being he was trying to appease. To denounce her would be to invite the wrath of the people and perhaps the goddess herself. To endorse this new faith would be to risk an unknowable catastrophe.

He looked at the zealous, hopeful face of the priest, and in that moment, he felt the full weight of his kingship. He had won a battle against a demon lord, only to find himself embroiled in a far more delicate and dangerous conflict: managing the faith of a god who does not want to be a god.

“Your devotion… has been heard,” King Theron said finally, choosing his words with the care of a man walking through a minefield. “The matters of faith are profound and cannot be decided in haste. The Alliance will take your request under careful consideration. For now, return to your flock. Guide them in quiet prayer, not loud procession. That, I feel, would be more pleasing to the Lady of the Forest.”

It was a masterful piece of political maneuvering, a delay tactic that was neither an acceptance nor a rejection. As the delegation departed, placated for the moment, Theron sank back into his throne, a new kind of exhaustion settling upon him. He looked out the high archways of his throne room, towards the impossibly distant peak of the World Tree.

He had offered the Ruler of Hell a child as the price for a key. He never imagined his own people would, in turn, freely offer her their souls. The nature of their relationship with the power in the north had just entered a new, far more complicated, and infinitely more dangerous phase.

While the mortal world’s leaders grappled with the new, terrifying political landscape, a very different kind of debriefing was taking place within the quiet walls of the Aurora Palace. The day after the Synchronous Victory, Elina sat by the Scrying Basin, observing the results of the Alliance's hard-won battles.

With Elysia's permission, she had tuned the basin not to the scarred, empty battlefields, but to the towns and villages on their periphery, the ones that had been cowering in the path of the Crimson Blight. She saw the celebrations. She saw soldiers returning home, embracing their families with tears of relief. She saw children, who had been hiding in cellars, now playing in sunlit streets. The palpable wave of joy and gratitude was a force all its own, a harmonious chord in the world’s song that made Elina’s own heart feel light.

She turned to Elysia, who was standing nearby, observing the child’s reactions with a neutral expression. "Look, Lady Elysia!" Elina said, her face glowing with a happiness that was not just her own, but a reflection of the thousands of lives she was watching. "We did it! They're happy because the bad things are gone."

In that moment, she used the word "we." It was an unconscious, natural inclusion. In her mind, the victory did not belong to the Alliance, nor just to Elysia. It was a shared success, a joint effort to protect their world.

Elysia registered the use of the word. A strange, unidentifiable emotion flickered deep within her, too fleeting to analyze. She looked at the cheering crowds in the basin with her usual detachment. To her, their emotional outburst was simply more "noise." But she did not dismiss Elina’s happiness. The child's positive emotional state was a key factor in maintaining the sanctuary’s tranquility.

"The immediate equation has been balanced," Elysia stated, her voice calm. "That is a logical cause for celebration among short-lived beings. Their joy is…an efficient outcome."

As they continued to observe, the scene in the scrying basin began to shift. Elina, her senses now keenly attuned to spiritual and magical energies, noticed a new phenomenon. In the towns, in their homes, in the village squares, people were gathering. They were not celebrating now. They were kneeling. Before small, makeshift shrines decorated with blue and silver flowers, or simply on the open ground, they faced the direction of the distant World Tree and lowered their heads in reverence.

"Lady Elysia… what are they doing?" Elina asked, her head tilted in confusion. "They are not singing. But I can feel… a different kind of song. It's coming from them. And it's… it's all coming towards you."

A flicker of profound annoyance, so subtle it would have been invisible to anyone else, crossed Elysia’s face. She knew exactly what this was.

"They are praying," she explained, and the word itself seemed to taste like ash in her mouth. "It is an inefficient, unfocused broadcast of chaotic emotional energy. Hope, gratitude, fear, desperation. They are bundling it all together and aiming it at this palace."

Her dislike of worship was not born from humility. It was a matter of pure, practical tranquility. To her, the combined psychic energy of thousands of devoted minds was a constant, messy, and irritating hum. It was a spiritual static that interfered with the clean, quiet, ordered reality she had built. It was like trying to meditate next to a thousand out-of-tune radios all playing a different, sentimental song.

They seek to honor my peace, she thought with a surge of cosmic irritation, by utterly destroying it with their sentimental cacophony.

She saw this as another teachable moment, a chance to instill her own philosophy in her young ward. "This is faith, Elina," she said, her voice a tool of clinical precision. "It is a powerful force, but it is untamed, illogical, and therefore, dangerous. It is the belief in a power one does not understand. Never place your faith in something you cannot comprehend. Place it only in what you can prove. In what you can build." She gestured to the vibrant, healthy garden Elina had nurtured back to life in the conservatory. "That garden has more truth and tangible worth than all the prayers in the world."

She was about to dismiss the image, tired of the psychic noise, when she sensed it. A discordant thread in the tapestry of worship. A single, sour note hidden deep within the chorus of adoration.

Her eyes narrowed. The full force of her immense consciousness, which could perceive the life and death of galaxies, now focused on a single point in the mortal world. She adjusted the Scrying Basin, zooming past the crowds, through the walls of the Elven capital, and into the grand chamber where the leaders of the "Faith of the Aurora" were meeting. She focused on their charismatic leader, the priest named Elian.

She observed his aura. On the surface, it blazed with genuine, zealous faith. He truly believed in the "Goddess of the Aurora." But deep within his soul, almost perfectly hidden beneath the layers of his devotion, Elysia detected it. A microscopic, insidious thread of familiar corruption. It was faint, ancient, and masterfully concealed.

It was the signature of Malgorath.

In an instant, a thousand disparate data points connected in her mind, forming a new, horrifying picture. The "lucky" gemstone of the merchant guild leader she had noted weeks ago. The "energizing" ore from the Silvervein mine. The charismatic new prophet who appeared from nowhere to unite the faithful. They were all connected. They were all part of the same, grand, insidious design.

This is his true web, she realized, a cold dread far surpassing mere annoyance washing over her. The veins in the earth, the armies of monsters… they were all a distraction. A brute-force strategy to keep the mortals busy. His real web is not one of corruption, but of faith and belief.

Malgorath had not just seeded the world with corrupted resources. He had seeded it with ideas. With prophets. He had likely fanned the flames of the Aurora Cult himself, nurturing its growth in the shadow of her own actions.

Why? The strategic goal was both brilliant and terrifying. He was forging the world's newfound faith in her into a weapon to be used against her. He had created a situation with no efficient solution. If she accepted the pilgrims, her sanctuary would be forever shattered by their noisy devotion, binding her to the world's affairs. If she rejected them, she would become a cruel, capricious god in the eyes of her own followers, creating dissent and despair that Malgorath could then exploit. He was trying to turn her greatest asset—the world's awe of her power—into her greatest liability.

Elysia stared at the image of the passionate, unsuspecting priest, her expression turning from one of irritation to one of cold, dangerous, intellectual respect for her true enemy. The board was far more complex than she had thought. Nyxoria was a chaotic, predictable storm. Malgorath… Malgorath was a true grandmaster.

Clever, the Ruler of Hellthought, a new, chilling resolve forming within her. Very, very clever.