36 Henosis
Tremors shook the central parts of the slums following the explosion in the abandoned warehouse.
The brown-bearded Aeson stood in the middle of the fuming crater, having pushed his ally aside at the last moment.
The light escaping his body flickered like a wavering oil lamp, and his right arm, which had been blasted away, oozed warm blood. His breathing grew uneven, and he looked like he could collapse at any moment.
Behind him, the dark-skinned, black-haired woman named Semele had half her body scorched, and she lay on the ground, unconscious.
Jonam bit his thumb in a rare display of frustration. "Maybe I should've upped the output. No matter the era, magi of the Dawn Sorceries are absurdly robust."
"How—..." Aeson spat precious red ichor. "Why do you know... so much about our magecraft?"
His light finally gave out, and he fell on one knee, barely holding himself awake. The red-haired boy and the golden-eyed man appeared shortly afterward, taking a defensive posture in front of their injured allies.
Jonam gauged them with a glance, then smirked. He knew they were Occultists of the Astral Sorceries, meaning they posed next to no threat in a direct fight.
"How odd... to see practitioners of the Astral and Dawn Sorceries fighting so closely together. I guess it's human nature to forget history easily."
"What are you insinuating?!" The red-haired boy yelled but was quickly silenced by the golden-eyed man.
"Don't listen to him. He's a Profaner. They're all maddened blasphemers."
"I was merely voicing my thoughts." Jonam shrugged. "After all, I took part in the religious war between the Temple of Stars and the Temple of Dawn four hundred years ago. For one who has seen the atrocities committed on each side, watching you display such tight companionship is bizarre, to say the least."
"I thought the only religious order in Hierapetra was the Temple of Stars," Nysa said.
"Well, that should tell you enough about the conclusion of that war."
"Don't spout nonsense!" Aeson cried. "Our revered Goddess intervened Herself to put a stop to the war and save the remnants of the Temple of Dawn. Thanks to Her Divine Majesty, our faiths were blended into a stronger, more radiant one! A blasphemous Profaner like you who worships monstrosities has no right to judge our hurdles."
From the exchange, Nysa guessed that the Temple of Stars had won the war, but the Hallowed Sovereign prevented them from completely eradicating their religious adversaries and assimilated them instead. It explained why there was a Pontiff of Dawn alongside the Pontiff of Stars.
"Oh, yes."
A male voice echoed within the warehouse, which neither side recognized. They all simultaneously turned toward its source, hidden beneath smoke and darkness.
"To end conflict. That should be the purpose of all deities. To achieve peace and unity. To taste the delight of Henosis under our Lord's guidance!"
A man soon emerged from the cradle of obscurity, limping on one leg.
He wore a white robe covering most of his body, patterned with a ten-branched cross with a blank circle in the middle. Half his face was buried underneath a layer of pale-white feathers, while the other showed a blood-shot eye and a crazed smile.
"Lady Quinctillia," Jonam whispered, his gaze sharpening. Open hostility seeped from his expression, and his Mana flared.
Nysa nodded, having understood his cue. At last, they were facing a member of the Henosis Seekers.
One single glance at his Mana flow revealed the depth of his corruption.
Unlike most magi, he didn't seem to fight the malicious influence of the Reverse Boundary of the World but embraced it instead. In every nation barring Qeharmenod, such depravity would warrant an on-sight execution.
Nysa's shadow moved faster than the eye could follow, aborting its previous attempt to take the Temple of Stars' magi by surprise. Her priorities had changed, and killing the Henosis Seekers took precedence over fighting mere peacekeepers.
"Oh! Let us bathe in His radiant light! Not the false glimmer of a fake Dawn. No!" The zealot spread his arms. "The pale, serene sun of His Winged Grace! O Lord!"
The man's Mana turned unstable, and his body started bloating. Nysa recognized that phenomenon, feeling similar to Asteri's abrupt loss of control.
"O Primordial Seraphim! Show us the way! Cradle us in the blessed stillness of unity!"
The ground started shaking, and a cold light shimmered from the man's morphing flesh. It expulsed pale tendrils as it deflated, consuming his very being into a whirlwind of Mana and feather-sprouting plague.
"We need to move. Now!" Jonam raised his voice for the first time, grabbing Nysa by the arm. "That's no half-Dead Spirit but a full-fledged magus. The volumes of Mana involved are radically different. We're going to—"
A blade suddenly went through Jonam's neck, exiting from his mouth.
His eyes widened in shock, but before he could move another inch, a second dagger landed on his head and split his skull.
"Jonam!"
Nysa looked for the source of the attack, only to find a lone woman clothed in the same decorative garb as the Automatons.
She stared at them with a broad, petrifying smile, pale-white feathers growing on her copper skin.
A member of the Henosis Seekers was hidden amongst the Automatons! How did we miss her presence?!
"Grace us with your light, O Lord!"
Her body swelled unevenly, and her flesh imploded underneath, rising in strands of white, noxious Mana that danced alongside her ally's.
They crashed against each other while ascending beyond the warehouse's cracked ceiling, growing and expanding until they formed a gigantic ten-branched, cross-shaped pillar of pale light.
Nysa, Jonam, the Temple of Stars' magi—everything was engulfed in its radiant ascent, and the quake it birthed traveled throughout the entirety of Priene.
The buildings closest to it collapsed one after another, and even River Phanias deviated from its path, swirling in bands of vapor around its length.
For a moment, the night had turned bright, and the pitch-black moon's serene gaze was overshadowed by a light from beyond. Every magus in the Divine Capital felt its tremors, and each one of them knew what it meant.
The seed of an accursed entity was already planted in the city.
And it was growing.
