Sacrifice Mage-Chapter 8: Siphon

It was sad I didn’t have pockets to stuff my hands in. I had to resort to crossing my arms.
Normally, I didn’t have issues dealing with bullies. It wasn’t that I was big or threatening or had an aggressive aura or something along those lines. But in normal society, knowing what to say and where to be at the right times meant confrontations against people who were simply belligerent weren’t hard to navigate.
That changed when said person held a legitimate grievance and wasn’t just throwing their weight around or being stupid some other way. This vampire looked like an unfortunate case of the latter.
“Speaking of deserving, aren’t you a vampire?” I asked. “What’s someone like you doing in a
sun
cult?”
That made his brows twitch some more. His very carefully tended brows. Like seriously, those eyebrows were very stylized. “I’m a half-Scarseeker. We don’t tend to fear the sun.” He briefly glanced up. “Not that it’s much of a problem on Ephemeroth.”
Oh right. I kept forgetting that I wanted to ask about the sun. Or the lack thereof, to be precise.
Hamsik was still staring at me with unveiled disdain. “You think you can just come in here and join the cult just like that?”
“I think letting me join your merry little band is the least of what I deserved after you shot me in the head.”
“That’s right. I
did
shoot you. Maybe I should finish the job…”
Alright, that had gone from disdain to just a straight-up threat. But I wasn’t about to back down. “Maybe you should rethink that idea.” I spread my arms. “I’m not tied to a stake this time.”
Hamsik’s eyes flashed. His mouth twisted. I still couldn’t tell why he was acting this way, and the fact that I wasn’t backing down
didn’t
make him escalate the situation was strange.
“Uh…” Aurier sounded and looked more stressed than either me or the vampire. “I’m going to go call the Elder. There’s a good reason Ross is part of the cult.” His words were fading as he dashed off back into the temple. “He took care of those…”
Hamsik ignored the younger cultist entirely, his scarlet eyes sticking to me like glue. “You don’t know the first
thing
about being in the Cult of the Sun.”
“Well… I know you’ve got a penchant for human sacrifices.”
Another twist of the mouth. “See, that’s exactly what I mean.” He reeled in his anger all of a sudden, his eyes taking on a colder cast. I wasn’t sure I liked that. It made him look more nefarious than emotional. “You know what, you need a lesson. Come with me.”
He turned to leave, but I stood my ground. “What’s wrong, too afraid to suck out my blood in public? You might not be afraid of the sun but guess you’re still a scaredy-cat.”
I could tell I was really starting to piss him off because the way he bared his fangs actually made my spine shiver. Like he’d love nothing better than to rip my throat out.
“I was going to show you what the cult is all about,” Hamsik said with an incredibly controlled voice. “Unless you’re going to admit you just joined us because of your own ends and you couldn’t care less about us.” For the first time, he actually grinned, like he had discovered something real. “Don’t worry, I won’t take you into any alleys. Your blood probably tastes like piss anyway.”
Well, he had me there. Did I truly care about this whole cult operation? I figured it would be difficult for any sane person to care about an establishment that was okay with kidnapping people from other worlds just to ritually murder them for
their
own ends.
Plus, I had been waiting for Elder Escinca to give me a proper crash course about everything. If only the damn bloodsucker hadn’t interrupted me poking Aurier about my ritual sacrifice too.
“I won’t lie, I’m not exactly enthused about being a part of an institution that kills innocent people,” I said. “But lead on, why don’t you. Let’s see what kind of excuses you’ve got for me.”
Another scowling twist on Hamsik’s face. I really was getting to him, but he didn’t retort because it was true.
“Just follow,” he spat. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
I begged to differ, but I gave him some peace. Antagonizing him needlessly wasn’t going to help, asshole though he did seem.
We headed out into the neighbourhood. Out into Zairgon. The path Hamsik took me on curved up what felt like a short hill, with no houses on either side to obscure the view. This allowed me to get my first proper glimpse at the rest of the city.
Not that I saw much. The higher I looked, the blurrier things became as if there was a veil of smoke obscuring my vision.
I did get a good look at what felt like the next level of the city. Not that far above our neighbourhood, taller buildings jutted out of the gloom. Their architecture was a lot more solid than what my surroundings exhibited. Brick and mortar, slate roofs, structures that were built to last and displayed proper lighting.
The lower section of the upper level was blocked from sight by a sturdy wall, probably about twenty feet tall. Great. Block the higher levels with smoke, and block the lower one with a wall. Why was there so much segregation in this city?
“Let me guess,” I said. “We’re on the lowest level of Zairgon.”
Hamsik was walking a few feet ahead of me, and he didn’t turn even when responding. “Ring Four. That’s where we are right now. Most of Zairgon is in Rings Three and Two.”
He had left out Ring One, curiously.
“And I’m guessing the higher you go, the higher the Rings,” I said.
Hamsik nodded. “That wall there is cordoning off Ring Three. Beyond that, you get to Ring Two, and so on.”
We were soon passing though more populated sections of Ring Four, and the difference between my local area and the higher Ring I had just seen was even starker now. Even the few people I saw gave off that vibe. Like the previous day, I didn’t see many inhabitants, suspecting most were off at work or something.
But the few people I did see lingering were often dirty and listless, usually old or overly young, all dressed in drab rags and dirty clothes. They looked like they missed more meals than they ate. Baths and showers, I suspected, were a luxury here.
“Why is there a wall?” I asked. “Especially when it’s not even outside the city itself. You have an entire neighbourhood, like a whole Ring out—”
I stopped speaking as I realized.
Hamsik had noticed my wandering gaze, and then he nodded when I shut up. “They don’t really consider Ring Four a part of Zairgon.”
“Yeah… I’m starting to see that. What I don’t see is
why
.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. the violation.
Damn vampire took his sweet time answering. We had walked for almost another ten minutes, reaching a street at the end of which a middle-aged woman was trying to move large sacks full of who knew what all on her lonesome.
“It’s because they can’t make it,” Hamsik said. For all that he had been rather antagonistic earlier, he now sounded strangely sad. “The people here are Pathless. Most have no Paths at all, and the few who do… well, they’re often meagre. Mundane. Things acquired through simple jobs. Not worth proper consideration.”
“I have no frame of reference to figure out what’s a mundane Path and what isn’t.”
“Just look up, you idiot.”
“What?”
“
Look up
.”
I frowned at him, then did so. All I saw the was the navy sky, a handful of dark clouds scuttling across the dusky expanse and blotting out the stars. The red dwarf star that passed for a sun on this world was slowly wheeling overhead. It was so odd to see the sun and the stars at the same time. Although, calling that red blot a sun was being very generous.
“How does your world even function when your sun is like
that?
” I asked. “Your whole planet should be out of alignment, no clouds, no seas, no
atmosphere
—”
“Icons,” Hamsik said. “The seas, the clouds. That’s what they are. Very powerful Icons. Some are even Insignias. That’s what keeps Ephemeroth and the other worlds functioning.”
“
Other
worlds?”
Hamsik ignored my question, which was annoying, but I supposed it was tangential.
“The
point
is the state of our very world,” Hamsik said. “The Banished Gods are, as the name might suggest,
gone
. Long ago, when they still thrived in their divine realms, Paths manifested everywhere, to nearly everybody, and not just any old Path. Paths of magic. Paths of true power and potential. Paths to
immortality
.”
“Immortality huh? Does your version of immortality insure you against getting shot in the head?”
“You’re one annoying crud, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry, but me being annoying is the
least
you deserve.”
He made a gesture I was absolutely sure was as rude as flipping me off would be back at home, then continued talking. “That’s what we’re struggling against. When you don’t have the right Path, people stop seeing you as… people.”
“People. But not you?”
“Not
us
. That’s what the cult is about. Look around you. Do you think any of these people have the means to get out of the situation they’re in? Do you think they can make something of themselves?”
There was no need to look around. I had seen enough of the misery of this place. Ring Four wasn’t a place where people lived, it was where they eked out a meagre existence, if at all. And I had only been here for a day. How much hadn’t I seen yet?
And where did that place me, someone who actually did possess a proper Path? I wasn’t lying. The distinction between what made a Path good or bad escaped me. But I had a strong feeling that Path of a Newborn Star was something most people here would sacrifice their actual newborns to get a hold of.
Hamsik had walked over to the lady. She had greeted him, and then turned the same greeting to me as well. Well, not
me
specifically. It was my robes she really greeted.
“Ah, please,” she said, wringing her hands together in a strangely apologetic manner. “You young men from the cult don’t need to trouble yourselves with little old me.” Her voice was so parched,
I
was starting to feel thirsty. “I’m sure you have much better things to do…”
“This is no trouble,” Hamsik murmured. “Let me take some of these.”
He lifted one large sack on each of his shoulders and began walking off in the direction the woman had gone. Did he even know her destination to just be plodding off with her possessions? Actually, that made me curious what even was in these sacks that she seemed so desperate to move.
“You can’t just join the cult and do as you please,” Hamsik said as he passed me. “Because I won’t stand for it.”
Unlike the woman, he wasn’t having trouble moving around the sacks. Oh yes, his Power definitely had to be well higher than Iron I. Because when I tried, just the one sack felt almost as heavy as a refrigerator. Come to think of it, they were just as big too.
I watched the woman carry one of the sacks on her shoulder, when I couldn’t even lift one. Well. Wasn’t that a fun realization of just where I lay on the spectrum of physical strength.
I was really going to need to raise my Power. Fast.
With a slow turn of my head, I stared at all the other sacks that were still left. I took a deep breath. Was I really going to admit defeat here? Was I going to lose to a bunch of sacks, a middle-aged woman, and a vampire with a stick up his ass?
I didn’t think so. Channelling my mana through Gravity, I reached out to the other sacks. The buzz of magical energy grew stronger inside me, and I could feel the threads threatening to emerge. I had already tried making the opposite of Infusion work, but I hadn’t really needed to before. Helping an overloaded lady felt more real than my little experiments.
“Alright Gravity,” I muttered. “I
know
you can control weight.”
I let the threads come out, let them make contact with my targets. Strands of violet energy touched the sacks. But that’s all they did. Just touch them. Before, I had seen how they wrapped around whatever I intended to Infuse, how they caged down the things I wanted to raise the weight of.
Just behind the threads, there was the sensation of flowing mass, ready to come out too. I halted it. No. That wasn’t what I needed. Instead, as the threads connected to the mass of the sacks, I focused on what had happened during the moment I had obtained Sacrifice.
I concentrated on the feeling of that connection of mana. It wasn’t an attempt to reach the mana in my core. Rather, it was just me trying to replicate that same style of connection, one that would allow me to control the direction of the flow of mass. And this time, instead of letting the purple threads turn denser and heavier, I pulled the weight of the sacks into me.
[ Affix Unlocked!
You have acquired a new Affix for your Gravity Aspect. You have unlocked the maximum number of Affixes for your Rank tier.
Affix
: Siphon
]
[ Rank Up!
Your Gravity Aspect has risen by one Rank.
Your Fervour Attribute has risen by one Rank.
Your Path of the Newborn Star has risen by one Rank.
Gravity
: Iron III
Fervour
: Iron II
Path of the Newborn Star
: Iron II
]
I grinned. There it was. Just what I had been aiming for all this while.
Unbidden came a few concerns along with the breakthrough. It hadn’t felt that difficult to unlock a new Affix, which had given me hope that I could maybe acquire more Affixes so long as I applied my Aspect the right way.
And then I had seen the restriction. Two Affixes for a rank tier. Or at least, two so long as I remained in Iron. No idea if that was true for Silver or higher tiers.
Nevertheless, it was good motivation for me to keep ranking Gravity up as much as I could.
I also wasn’t sure how Fervour was supposed to help me. It didn’t suddenly make me more zealous. But considering it was part of the Path of the Acolyte, which was what had granted me the Sacrifice Aspect, maybe it was tied to that?
“Are you joining us?” Hamsik called from further up the street. “Or are you—”
His question caught in his throat when he saw me approaching with a grin, bringing all
six
of the remaining sacks with me. The look on his face was priceless. Too bad I had left my phone on my desk, or I could have taken the perfect picture now.
I turned to the woman whose jaw had fallen open at seeing me carry everything. “Yeah don’t worry about us at all, ma’am. Let’s get you and your goods home, shall we?”
The grateful woman led the way. This time, as we walked on, I didn’t let Hamsik get ahead of me. I walked alongside him, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to rub it in his thin, overly handsome and patrician face that I was carrying more shit than he was.
“You’re going about it the wrong way,” I said.
“What?”
“All this.
Look around you
, you said. Yeah well, I’m looking and all I’m seeing is ineffectual efforts and stagnation.”
His nostrils flared. “Be careful about what you insult,
summoned
. I can kill you where you stand if you insinuate for even a second that Elder—”
“I wasn’t insulting anybody. Sheesh, aren’t vampires supposed to be cool and level-headed? Can’t you at least live up to
some
of your stereotypes?”
“You know what, I
will
kill you. As soon as we’re done here…”
“Nearly there!” the woman said in front of us.
Her sudden interjection made both me and Hamsik jump a little.
“My
point
being that it’s all well and good to help people around you like we’re doing now,” I said. “But that’s not going to change things for the better. Not really. Because what you’re doing right now? You’re alleviating the stress and worries for people who are here right now with you. What are you going to do for everyone who comes after?”
“We’re going to instil our values,” Hamsik said. “That’s what Elder Escinca is already doing. Showing them the power of working together. Of being there for each other.” He glanced at me, scarlet eyes flashing like fire. “Don’t tell me you’ve got ambitious ideas of changing things now when you haven’t even been here for more than a day.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ve got better things to do than cause societal upheaval.” I shot him a grin. He was a bastard in many ways, but he wasn’t an irredeemably evil prick. “For now, that is.”
Hamsik didn’t look very enthused.