While this was an impressive speed, thanks to how many trenches and battlefields they had to avoid, walk around, or simply walk through, the distance on Celeste's minimap wasn't really that much.
The capital of Rosenburg was apparently named after one of Kelllwan's saints, and yet it wasn't looking that saintly. Instead, the entire place looked like it was falling apart. While this might be the closest thing Permersland had to a capital, it was practically falling apart, especially surrounded by the multitudes of trenches.
Whatever might have counted as a wall at some point had been destroyed a long time ago, and while there were some stumps left, the wall seemed to have been torn down almost to a ritualistic degree.
"What do you guys think?" Celeste finally asked, stopping a bit outside the city, wanting to at least have a plan before heading into what could be potentially hostile territory.
"FEET HURT!" One of the goblins, Celeste still couldn't tell them apart, cried as if its feet had about to fall off.
"Yeah, Spaf feet hurt!" The other goblin, which had to be Spif, agreed.
Celeste rubbed the bridge of her nose. "And why do your feet hurt?" She asked, instantly regretting asking the question.
"Well, Spif say feet hurt after walking for at least one thousand kilometres. And then Spaf say that I just use Spaf's feet, so me walk on Spaf feet all the way here, but now Spaf feet also hurt." The goblin said confidently, and Celeste looked at the little creature, only to realise that the goblin was, in fact, standing on the other goblin's feet.
Celeste wasn't sure how to respond to something like this, and not for the first time, she was reminded of teaching first graders when interacting with the goblins.
Luckily, Riez was more than happy to interrupt. "Stupid! Then just walk on Spif feet! They no hurt since you walk on Spaf feet!" She said, giving them both a smack to the back of the head.
"Ahhhh", They both said in unison, as if it was the solution to their problems. With little more input, they changed places, clearly very happy with this arrangement.
"Okay, are we all settled? Nobody else having sore feet?" Celeste asked, and as Jasmine raised her hand, the Architect of Reality truly considered taking a break from the game. However, a simple "Yes?" managed to slip through her lips.
"Oh, I just wanted to pitch an idea to get inside the capital," Jasmine said, and Celeste couldn't help but consider that The Scribe had put up her hand just to mess with her.
"Perfect. What do you propose?" Asked Celeste, calming down just a tad when she saw the smirk that Jasmine was desperately trying to hide.
"Honestly, let us just walk inside. As far as I can tell, the number of people is practically non-existent. If we disguise ourselves as Imperial soldiers from the army we just annihilated, then we could probably get whatever information we wanted." Jasmine explained, while looking between Riez and Celeste.
"DIPS ON BEING FROM THE INQUISITION!" Riez was practically jumping out of her own boots to get the role.
Celeste cleared her throat. "While it is a good idea, I think you are forgetting our two goblin friends. I don't think that any Imperial army would hire goblins."
Riez smirked. "Oh, I can handle that. The Deception Domain is really powerful, and illusions are technically under its purview, so I could just make them look like recruits that would be hired into the army," She said, and with a wave of her hand, Spif and Spaf suddenly became much taller and went from lanky goblin frames to bulked-up Norsemen with incredible beards.
"TADAH!" Riez declared proudly. Celeste took a deep breath. The pair of goblins had been turned into a parody of masculinity, their abs having abs, while they seemed to strain against the illusionary clothing that really didn't cover that much of their bodies. Despite Riez being the one to conjure the outfit.
"I am blaming you if this goes wrong," Celeste said in her most even tone she could manage, while looking at Riez.
"Why? I don't see you making anything to help us out." The little Anarchist said, wiggling her eyebrows.
With a sigh, Celeste started constructing. Fifteen minutes later, each of them had an outfit that matched the ones that Celeste had seen during the battle. She had to guess a little bit for the outfit that Riez was supposed to wear, but it wasn't too bad. What took the longest, however, was Jasmine's imperial wizard outfit. That woman was simply not meant to wear a restrictive uniform that relied on buttons to keep it closed. Only by enhancing each button with various runes of strengthening would she be able to wear a uniform that didn't try to use its buttons as ranged projectiles. Unfortunately, the use of runes interfered with Jasmine's spellcasting, making her unable to cast anything. The solution was making a mithril corset that was practically moulded to Jasmine's body, which could then be used as a base for the uniform.
With that done, the two goblins in disguise, Celeste dressed herself in the uniform of an army leader, Riez as a badly disguised inquisitor, and Jasmine as a mage who looked like she was about to burst out of the traditional mage uniform, the gang set out to the capital.
The trip wasn't long, though the now gruff voices of complaint from the massive hulking mountains of muscle that were Spif and Spaf were hard to get used to.
"Sooo, why didn't you do that earlier?" Celeste asked, while trying to take the front of the little procession they had going, only for Riez to try to walk in the front.
"What? Oh! You mean disguising them?" She asked with a shrug. "Well, for one, it is not a power I picked, and the cost is fairly high, so I am effectively spending four Energy on keeping them this way until I don't want them to be like this anymore. Not really that efficient, though the illusion is so complete that nobody has any chance of seeing through it... Well, maybe Raffael Moordet, but that man can go suck a hole through a block of concrete."
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Celeste opened her mouth, about to ask about the nature of that expression, but decided to focus the conversation. "So, how much Energy do you actually have access to?"
"Oh, five, so I still have one Energy left." The little anarchist said with a shrug.
Celeste blinked at this. "What? You only have one Energy left? That is nowhere near enough! What are you doing? We might have to fight our way in or out of this city, and you don't wanna get caught out and die early." She admonished, giving the intern a stern look, the same one she would usually give to her misbehaving students.
Riez sighed and shrugged again. "Yeah, well, what is done is done. Besides, I can't even see any people in there. We will be fine!"
Celeste opened her mouth to argue the point, but realised that Riez wasn't the right person to do it with. Had it been Jasper, she could probably have argued the point a bit more.
They continued their walk, and within the hour they passed into the city. The moment they passed the invisible border, it was like a weighted blanket wrapped around them. The world grew thick with suppression, and even the illusions that Riez had made wavered for a moment.
Jasmine audibly gasped for air, and Celeste couldn't determine if it was due to the strange field that was all over the city or due to her tightening the corset too tightly. Since The Scribe wasn't complaining to her, Celeste would assume that it was due to the field all over the city.
Despite this field, they continued their way deeper into the city. The houses were fairly strange, with tiled roofs and half-timbering in the walls. The styles clashed in Celeste's eyes, and yet, it wasn't as bad as the way that most of the houses had been destroyed. Large sections of the walls were missing in multiple places. There were quite a few houses that were little more than a stubbornly standing corner, and the roads seemed made of mostly rubble and not stone hewn by countless feet, which Celeste could feel underneath all the rock.
"I am goeng to puke", Jasmine grumbled, and she did look quite queezy.
Celeste nodded slowly, looking at The Scribe with her enhanced vision for any illness, thanks to her Health Domain. Identifying the problem was actually quite easy. The woman was dying of old age. Not rapidly, but the blanket over the city was suppressing the divine gift that Jasper had enhanced the first Scribe with.
"Yeah, you have about twenty-four hours inside this area... The blessing of The Scribe is being torn apart by this place." The Architect of Reality said softly, placing a hand on Jasmine's shoulder.
"So we only have 24 hours to fix this problem? Gods, we are going to really do our best here." Riez beamed, clearly delighted by the fact that she now had an excuse to make impulsive decisions.
Celeste gave Riez a confused look. "What? No! Why would we even entertain doing something like that? For one, we could just leave Jasmine outside the barrier and do this on our own, but more importantly, I think that I could just strengthen the original blessing. It is honestly a shame that we haven't done that before." She said, turning around and pulling Jasmine by the arm towards the outskirts of the city.
Riez was standing behind, opening her mouth before closing it again. "Fine," She mumbled.
When they reached the edge of town once more, where the suppressive field had appeared, they were blocked by a barrier. It felt like jelly as they pushed through, though no matter how hard they pushed, they couldn't get through it.
Riez tried to hide her, having decided to at least follow Jasmine and Celeste to the edge of town. "Oh no... welp, I guess we need to figure out why this is happening." She said with overly dramatic sadness.
Celeste shook her head. "Have you forgotten that we are gods? I mean, it is fine and all if you have, but we quite literally hold the power of the world in our hands." With that, The Architect of Reality accessed her Journeying Domain and paid an outrageous 3 Energy to journey through the barrier, as if it wasn't there, taking Jasmine with her.
The goddess gasped for air when they stepped out on the other side. That had cost more than she had expected, and the last time she had been exposed to such a power was when she had fought against Raffael Moordet to save Jasmine.
"Are you grand?" Jasmine asked, looking much better than she had just a couple of seconds ago.
Celeste nodded and collected herself with a more intentional deep breath. "Yeah, that is a high-level magic suppression field. Divine powers can bypass it, but it costs a lot more to cast anything. I had expected to use 2 Energy at most, but that field pulled an extra one from me."
Jasmine opened her mouth, about to ask what Energy was, but she decided against it. She had a vague understanding of how the gods used it, but there was no need to get an explanation of something she couldn't understand anyway.
Riez looked on from the other side of the barrier as Celeste placed the palm of her hand against the forehead of The Scribe and started to pour some Worship into the other woman.
Moments later, Celeste gave an angry stomp on the ground as she was confronted with a pop-up.
Text from image:
You are trying to modify another god's chosen
This other god is: Y?????O????U????
Error, please stand by
"I swear, compared to how much time they have spent on this system, there is constantly something wrong with it," Celeste muttered, starting to get a little bit frustrated about the number of errors even such a simple interaction like this was making.
However, the world didn't freeze, so she took a deep breath and tried again, only to be met with the same pop-up yet again. She pulled back, waited a full minute, which was exactly a minute, something she knew very well thanks to her Time Domain, before trying again. This time, she was met with a new pop-up.
Text from image:
You are trying to modify your chosen
Your Domains have changed since the last time you infused this chosen. You have a couple of choices.
- Stop your progress, and choose not to enhance the chosen.
- Replace the powers from your previous Domains with powers matching in strength from your current Domains (cost 2 Worship)
- Add powers chosen by the system AI to your chosen's current powerset, maintaining all previous powers (cost 10 Worship)
- Add custom powers designed by you to your chosen's current powerset, while maintaining all previous powers (cost variable, though no lower than 10 Worship)
Thinking for a moment, Celeste knew that she didn't really have much of a choice here. Picking option 4 was the only real thing that allowed her to ensure that she would give a power that would be able to sustain this blessing even in a suppressive field.
With her choice made, she was given the option to input a new power for each of her Domains. It took some time and a bit of brainstorming between Riez, herself and Jasmine, but finally she was happy with the result.
Text from image:
Powers of The Scribe
This is an inherited title that can only be passed on willingly.
- Endurance + Death + Time - The Scribe is immortal, they will never die from wear and tear, nor age. Should they be killed to a point where no recovery is possible, time will rewind to the point where they were last fully healed.
- Knowledge - The Scribe will only be known by this name by any mortal. None may know their real name, other than their descendants and any future and previous Scribe.
- Magic - The Scribe has exclusive access to the spell school known as Initiate of the Prismatic Veil. They are automatically considered an Archmage of this school of magic.
- Tinkering - The Scribe's magic is not affected by runes they wear, and runes in general do not affect them.
- Health - The Scribe can never become ill, poisoned or misfigured. Any such injury or attack will heal instantly.
- Journeying - Walls and wards cannot stop The Scribe in their travels. They are the creator of the veil, and as such, no veil will stand in their way.
Cost: 15 Worship
Fifteen Worship was a lot. In fact, it was almost double the number of points that Jasper had spent to create The Scribe to begin with. Even so, Celeste was happy. More importantly, so was Jasmine, and as she stepped back into the city, she didn't even vince. It was like she hadn't even noticed any change in the world.