Ignite the Sun
Chapter 61: Purification

Chapter 61: Purification

"Is it safe to grab now?" Calen asked.

"Yes, you can take it now, but be careful not to break it." Martha warned.

He picked up the sphere - it was cold to touch, almost freezing, yet there was no condensation on the glass. It took some focus, but he began to recreate the process of feeling the source oasis, adding an additional step of destroying the corruption.

Calen had to maintain a delicate balance between slowly burning away the blight and reinforcing the unknown divine power inside without replacing it.

His progress was slow, painfully so - every second took away from his reserves of power, putting him on the clock. The worst part was that he couldn’t stop and continue after a breather like he did with the oasis, if he paused for even a second the Blight would spread again undoing all his progress.

The only saving grace was that the amount of energy needed here was several times lower than that for the druidic implement.

Still, the process would take a while.

***

By the five minute mark he was covered in sweat and shaking - his reserves were almost non-existent at this point, but so was the Blight.

The orb was now filled with brilliant purple energy, the only remaining trace of the corruption were occasional dark spots, but those were slowly disappearing as well.

Feeling that his strength was waning, Calen sent out a one last wave of cleansing flame inside the glass, hoping it would be enough to destroy the remaining Blight.

He managed to safely set the sphere down before falling to his knees from exhaustion, but he didn’t take his eyes away from the energy inside.

Everyone held their breath as they watched whether the energy would become corrupted again. When after a few seconds nothing changed, they all exhaled in relief.

’I’m far away from being able to cleanse corrupted creatures after all.’ Calen thought as he slowly stood up.

Joel and Martha were already studying the orb, making notes and testing the energy with various tools.

"We have good news and not-so-good news." Joel announced. "Which one do you want first?"

"The good one, obviously." Isara answered.

"It is indeed a divine power, and we can easily use it to protect the entire city from any further Blightborn infiltration."

"What’s the bad news then?" Cassian crossed his arms.

"I didn’t say bad, just not great-"

"We can’t determine what they domain the power belongs two." Martha cut in. "While it indeed originated in our world, it was separated from it for so long that none of our measurement tools work on it."

Calen frowned.

"Can’t we just use a method of elimination? There are only six domains, and we can exclude over half of them."

She gave him an incredulous look.

"Where did you hear there were only six domains? That’s idiotic "

"Now now M, you know the knowledge of how domains work was severely restricted in the times of Sun Kingdom." Joel stepped in.

Martha rolled her eyes, but began explaining:

"The six that you thought were all of the domains are what we call crown domains - a specific subset of them which had a deity for a prolonged period of time, cementing the domain in human minds. There are however countless other, smaller domains that either never had a god, or they died too quickly."

"So because we have so many possibilities, it’s impossible to tell without specialised tools." Joel summarised. "We could show it to Lady Sylara, she might know what it is"

"I think it’s rather unlikely that she would know."

"Why?"

"Because in order for this power to be so far removed from our world, it would have to be separated millennia ago, even our dear Guardian isn’t so old."

"Hmmm, good point..."

Elita looked alternatingly at both scientists.

"Excuse me, but how are you planning to use this energy without knowing what it actually does?"

"We do know what it does." Calen pointed out. "We just don’t know what is it exactly, which isn’t necessary for what we’re planning to do."

Isara nodded.

"Do you remember the altar from the temple Ellie?" When her friend nodded she continued. "Cal used the flame on it, but it would have worked with any type of divine energy - we just have to reverse that design and integrate it into the main array of the city."

Martha looked slightly impressed for once.

"You already have a design in mind? Good, it’ll save us some time."

"What are we supposed to do? We don’t know magic." Cassian questioned.

Joel grinned.

"Well, it just so happens there’s some physical work to be done in the place we’ll be installing the new enchantment - you two can go ahead and prepare it for our arrival."

"... we’ll be doing manual labour? I’m afraid I won’t be too much of a help with moving stuff." Elira stated.

"The work you’ll be doing is more... engaging than just cleaning some place, you’ll see when you get there."

"Ask Alison to take you to the Fool’s tomb, she’ll know what you’re supposed to do there." Martha added.

Cassian nodded.

"Alright, let’s see what this is all about Ellie."

The two of them said their goodbyes and left the room to find Alison.

"We’ll have to wait until they’re done before we start implementing the design, so in the meantime how about you show us the one you’ve found in the temple?" Joel proposed.

"Alright, but this will take a while..."

Isara grabbed a loose piece of charcoal and started drawing the intricate net of runes on a clean sheet of paper.

***

"Out so soon?" Alison asked with a raised eyebrow.

"They’re doing magic stuff, so we’re not needed and they given us another task." Elira explained.

"You’re supposed to guide us somewhere called Fool’s tomb?" Cassian clarified.

Alison sighed.

"Of course, they can’t get their application for cleaning that place approved so they get outsiders to do it... fine, but we’ll need help since I can’t be in two places at the same time." She gave a small smile. "I guess Maya won’t finish my paperwork after all."

She took out a small stone with a single rune carved into it and rubbed its surface - the rune lit up, and nothing else happend.

"Okay now we wait, Maya should get here in half an hour."

"Sooo... what is this Fool’s tomb?" Elira asked.

"It’s a crypt where the founder of this city is buried - the last unused space directly connected to the main array."

"And I assume the reason it’s unused is why we’re going there?" Cassian guessed.

"Correct. The space was built as an all-encompassing catacomb system, but the city stopped using it after a few decades due to magic leakage from the array and its effects."

"Effects?" Elita tilted her heads.

Cassian sighed.

"Undead - high ambient magic can reanimate a corpse, it’s the same principle that enables necromancy."

Elita shivered - necromancers were the stuff of horrors, malicious wizards who command an immortal army of soldiers who can’t feel pain or exhaustion.

Seeing her reaction Cassian quickly added:

"The ones we’ll be facing will be nothing like necromancer’s minions, bodies raised passively aren’t usually even aggressive at first, the only reason we have to get rid of them is because they still could be dangerous to an unsuspecting civilians."

"Well put." Alison agreed. "Ideally we would like to fix the leakage, because the underground space is really large and being able to freely use it would be a huge boon, but It’ll be fine if you just kill all the undead."

"How much of them is in there?"

"We don’t know for sure since no one goes in there anymore, but the crypts were reserved for the important people, so not two many - couple dozens at most."

Cassian narrowed his eyes.

"That sounds fairly easy to deal with - which begs a question why haven’t you done it yet."

"It’s because of the Fool himself."

"How is a guy who died thousands of years ago a problem?"

"The Fool was a powerful archmage who loved tricks and jokes, just like his name suggests - before he died he made sure his tomb is rigged with all kinds of traps that would dissuade any potential grave robbers. These... tricks of his are the reason we’re hesitant to send anyone in there."

"So we have to be careful to not step into any deadly traps? Great..."

Alison shook her head with a smile.

"None of them are even slightly dangerous, just very annoying; A bubble that traps you and brings you back to entrance, teleportation to a random corridor on the same floor, walls appearing right in front of you - stuff like that."

"So it will be trial and error?"

"Not necessarily." Elira said. "Are the traps marked in any way?"

"Yes, but they use a set of symbols we don’t know and weren’t able to decipher."

The alchemist kneeled and drew something in the dirt.

"Like this?"

Alison’s eyes widened.

"Exactly! How did you know? Can you read them?"

"Traps in pre Sun Kingdom societies were often marked with alchemical symbols, it was meant to minimise the amount of people who could could understand the symbols."

"Wouldn’t you want to avoid anyone beside you knowing about the traps?" Cassian questioned.

"Well yes, but it’s better to leave something in case you forget about a trap, especially if it’s lethal."

Alison chuckled.

"It seems like the old goats from the lab chose two most qualified people by a complete coincidence."