Ares' outrage was so genuine and over-the-top that it was hard not to crack a smile.
Even Merlin, who is usually so suspicious and guarded, couldn't help the twitch at the corner of his mouth. He kept sneaking glances at Ian, baffled.
"..."
Ian was utterly speechless.
Sure, he'd managed to glean some information from this exchange, but this was nowhere near the revelation he was hoping for. Selling intellectual property? What was this, some kind of magical medieval version of copyrighting Tang poetry?
"You're not seriously telling me you've been standing guard here all this time just because of that, are you?" Ian finally asked, unable to hold back. Honestly, this sounded like one of his own scams.
"Hah. As if."
To Ian's mild relief, Ares wasn't quite as brain-dead as he'd feared. The god wasn't some rich fool's son, "I'm guarding something else entirely. Your tomb is just incidental."
His tone was vague, almost dismissive, and he didn't elaborate. Whether that was because even "Medivh" wasn't permitted to know, or because Merlin was standing there as an outsider, Ian couldn't tell.
"Wait, this is an actual tomb?"
Ian latched onto that detail, blinking in surprise.
"I really… died?"
He stared at the towering, broken figure of Ares seated upon his throne, but the War God only gave him a withering, skeletal sneer instead of a real answer.
"Don't ask me. I'm just a corpse. I can't untangle your convoluted schemes… oh, right. Athena told me not to talk to you."
"She said you're dangerous with words. That you manipulate people with them."
And with that, Ares simply closed his eyes. He seemed to revert to an ancient, lifeless corpse, still seated, still emanating a suffocating presence despite his dried, withered flesh clinging tightly to bone.
"Hey, come on. Don't listen to Athena, she probably just had garlic breath that day. Let's talk for a few more minutes! I'll even pay you in premium-grade intellectual property rights!"
Ian tried in vain to coax the War God into opening his eyes again.
No luck.
Ares ignored him completely, still as a corpse. Well… technically, he was already dead.
"Damn it."
Ian sighed and lifted his gaze toward the looming palace floating above them. Bathed in ghostly light, the ancient structure hovered amidst shadows, radiating a crushing, awe-inspiring aura.
One look and you could tell it had cost a fortune to build.
"Guess I'll just have to check it out myself."
With a flick of his wand, Ian conjured a staircase spiraling upward toward the hovering palace. He took a step, then glanced back, only to find Merlin rooted to the spot like his feet had grown into the ground.
The wizard king wasn't moving an inch. He wasn't even looking at Ian anymore; he was scanning the surroundings in desperation, searching for the vanished bridge, though even his prophetic powers cranked to their limits couldn't locate an escape route.
"Come on."
Ian called back over his shoulder, impatience creeping into his voice.
Merlin remained rooted to the spot, unmoving as a mountain.
"I have no interest in grave robbing. I don't like grave robbing."
The sheer force of his survival instinct was almost admirable.
"..."
Ian felt a headache coming on.
"Just think of it as me inviting you over to my place," Ian said, trying to coax him. He had planned on using Merlin to help identify any hidden wards or protective enchantments. There was no way he'd let the legendary wizard loiter outside alone.
It was a bit shameless, sure. But being careful was careful.
"Who in their right mind invites someone into their own tomb as a guest…" Merlin's eye twitched again. This level of 'hospitality' was so absurd that it nearly broke his composure.
"Really, I might even have a banquet set up in there, waiting for any daring tomb raiders to sit down and drink and feast. You have no idea how generous I am!" Ian tried to bluff his way through.
But Merlin stood his ground, utterly unmoved.
There was no helping it.
"You know," Ian said darkly, lowering his voice, "Ares, the God of War, just loves to eat people. The moment I walk away, he's bound to devour you and restore his strength."
If that wasn't a threat, what was? In truth, Ian couldn't order the god around.
But Merlin didn't know that.
And judging by the effect, it worked beautifully. Merlin cast a wary glance up at Ares's colossal, unmoving frame, and the next second he simply… appeared at Ian's side.
Ian couldn't even see how he moved. One moment he was standing there; the next, he wasn't.
"I've already found what I came for," Merlin muttered, sighing in resignation. His tone revealed the real reason he was reluctant to move forward. The admission surprised Ian.
"What?" Ian asked quickly.
But before Merlin could respond, as they ascended the staircase side by side, a thunderous voice rolled across the air.
"One step, one bow. Walk the Path of the Dead, halve your sins, guard your soul."
The booming proclamation shook the entire realm. Who would have guessed the God of War was such a dramatic show-off?
Ian knew it, this guy had never gone dormant at all! He'd just been waiting for the perfect moment to speak.
Rolling his eyes so hard it hurt, Ian shouted back, "Bow my ass! Maybe you should start worrying about where your own soul went!"
The throne truly held only a corpse.
The god's spirit was nowhere to be found.
"Run, Archmage."
Ian bolted, sprinting up the stairs at full speed. In no time, he reached the palace gates, as if afraid that lingering even a second longer would have Ares proclaiming something ridiculous like, 'Even with one hand, I could still lift your tomb and crush you.'
Honestly, if he wasn't so utterly exasperated, Ian wouldn't have wasted his breath bantering with a divine corpse.
So disrespectful.
"It's not cold here, though."
Ian glanced around. The two of them had reached the front of the palace, venturing deep into the "clouds of shadow." Darkness stretched endlessly in every direction around the structure.
Countless gray-black mists churned and swirled. Only here, immersed within them, could one see how the shadows shifted, gathering, dispersing, coalescing into all manner of grotesque forms.
Some resembled swarms of curled-up black moths, their wings still littered with shredded scraps of parchment. Others looked like rotting Western dragons, their scales oozing pitch-black mist.
The most horrifying were the shadows vaguely shaped like humans. They were frozen in poses of agonized struggle, their translucent flesh revealing skeletons partially devoured, gnawed away to near nothing.
"This is way too… creepy." Ian struggled to accept such a sanity-shattering scene.
"They… no, it…" Merlin's breath quickened. His gaze swept over the shadows, his pupils contracting violently as he fixed them with unblinking intensity.
"It's a Silence Wraith!" His voice trembled with disbelief and awe.
Ian raised an eyebrow.
"A Silence Wraith?"
The name was familiar, yet the shadows blanketing the sky here dwarfed anything he had ever seen. The Silence Wraiths he had encountered before were not this massive!
And Ian noticed something telling: Merlin had corrected himself. He said it, not them. Singular.
"The Silence Wraith is an extremely mysterious creature. It feeds on memory and history. The weak devour memories; the strong distort history… But something this colossal, I can hardly imagine what kind of history could sustain it!" Merlin's eyes brimmed with awe and apprehension.
He turned sharply, staring straight at Ian.
"What did you do?"
The Wizard King's calm composure vanished. Merlin's concern for his own safety was gone; he was utterly shaken. There was no doubt in his mind that the person before him had somehow allowed the Silence Wraith to twist a profoundly important piece of history.
The larger the history, the more powerful the Wraith it could feed on. And now… Merlin could not even fathom what history this colossal Wraith had consumed and warped.
(To Be Continued…)
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