Chapter 953 — The "Chosen" Amber

The Dragon God spoke with considerable seriousness, and there was not the slightest hint of jest in it—and naturally, a deity hardly had any need to joke with Amber about such a thing.

The radiant expression on Amber's face froze in an instant.

"See, I told you," Gaoyang could not help glancing at Amber and remarked offhandedly, "are you sure this whole 'Chosen of Shadow' self-image of yours isn't the result of one too many drinks?"

"No... that can't be!" Amber grew agitated at once, and even before the Dragon God she could not help raising her voice, "I really am a Chosen, I've been a Chosen for decades... I've even chatted with the Goddess, she taught me all sorts of things..."

Gaoyang felt torn between laughter and tears: "What did the Goddess teach you?"

"Tossing a wok, that sort of thing... and baking little pancakes..." Amber said at once, but barely half a sentence in her voice dropped, and grew softer and softer, "Of course it wasn't only that, of course... of course there were some really impressive things too..."

Gaoyang: "...?"

Even Gaoyang, possessor of the richest stock of nonsense in this age, found Amber's words increasingly absurd—he had never asked Amber in detail just what she had learned from that "Goddess of Shadow," and hearing it all at once now left him speechless for a good while. He was more and more convinced that Amber really had, after some severe bout of drinking, developed the delusion of being a Chosen of Shadow; after all, any normal person with even a couple of peanuts to nibble on would not have gotten that drunk...

Yet though Amber's voice was faint, the expression on her face never wavered.

"...Child, what you say is very... interesting," the Dragon God finally broke the silence as well. She looked at Amber with a peculiar expression—and what neither Gaoyang nor Virodai noticed was that her expression was not the scorn or denial of one who had heard something laughable, but carried a certain... scrutiny and observation. "But do you know? The Goddess of Shadow as I know her... could not possibly have raised any Chosen in the mortal world of this age. She cannot even reliably answer the faith of the mortal world—so do you think such a deity could possibly chat with you, or even teach you those wondrous... pieces of knowledge?"

Amber slowly widened her eyes, looking somewhat lost and at a loss; then her gaze turned to Gaoyang, and in that look there was even a trace of pleading—she still seemed very much to want to hold to the belief she had kept all along, but today she had met the most irrefutable, most powerful challenge of her life: a deity, a deity lingering in the mortal world, had told her to her face that what she had always believed in could not possibly be true.

Amber, always so cheerful, now seemed unable to be cheerful at all.

Gaoyang noticed the shift in Amber's mood. He hesitated, then patted her on the shoulder, and then suddenly frowned and looked at the Dragon God Enya: "You say the Goddess of Shadow cannot even reliably answer the faith of the mortal world?"

"The Loren Continent has countless sects, and the vast majority of mortals hold some faith—but have you ever heard of a Church of Shadow with a formed doctrine and a strict organization? Have you ever heard of Shadow cults on any scale, or Shadow priests preaching far and wide?"

Beside him, Virodai shook her head: "No—the Shadow faith has been weak and... chaotic for as long as there are historical records. It is true that there are divine responses of a shadow inclination, and that some exceptionally gifted people can, supported by their spiritual talents, perform shadow miracles akin to divine arts, but these unformed religious activities have never produced a formal church. As far as I know, the Shadow faith consists only of a few loose, secretive little sects operating in rather remote regions; their doctrines are a jumble, and many are simply swindlers' rings preying on ignorant peasants. Since the Empire's theological administration was established, we have broken up more than one such group."

At this she tilted her head slightly and glanced at Amber: "As head of the intelligence department, you should know this as well."

"I... do know," Amber said, somewhat downcast, "but that doesn't prove..."

"Because the deity gives no strong feedback, no church can form a stable and unified system of divine arts; yet the deity's weak feedback never ceases, and so the faithful, following their own understandings and even their own hallucinations, have developed doctrines of every bizarre kind, many of them riddled with contradictions. That is the present state of the Goddess of Shadow," the Dragon God said mildly. "Therefore she could not have answered you, still less elevated you to be a Chosen."

"Why is the Goddess of Shadow in such a state?" Gaoyang pressed at once—from the other's description, such a state was clearly abnormal, and abnormal or not, any intelligence concerning a deity was something he would never let slip. "And if the Goddess of Shadow cannot give strong feedback, cannot elevate a Chosen, then who exactly has Amber been believing in and communing with all this time?"

"Yes, yes," Amber immediately followed, looking at the Dragon God, and then she suddenly caught on and whipped around to Gaoyang, her face full of disbelief, "Ah, you... didn't you always refuse to believe I could contact a deity..."

Gaoyang glanced at her: "I can believe it now."

The Dragon God looked at Gaoyang and Amber. She seemed uninterested in their exchange, and merely answered Gaoyang's question offhandedly: "As for the state of the Goddess of Shadow... I do indeed know a great deal. But before I answer, I would first like to ask you: how much do you know of the secrets of the gods of the ancient age?"

"The secrets of the gods of the ancient age?" Gaoyang's heart stirred; he sensed that the other meant something by it, but kept his composure on the surface. "In what respect?"

"For instance..." the Dragon God said, unhurried, looking into Gaoyang's eyes, "there once existed a group of mighty beings called the Voyagers, who killed nearly all the gods of the civilization of that season, one million eight hundred and seventy thousand years ago..."

The whole hall fell instantly silent.

Amber's eyes went wide; Virodai sat up straight in astonishment. Both seemed to doubt that they had heard aright—that gods too could fall was something they had long known, but clearly they knew nothing of the ancient godslaying fleet and the war that had killed nearly every god.

Gaoyang's face likewise could not hide its shock—he stared fixedly at the deity seated before him, but it was not that he doubted the Dragon God's words, for he had long known of what she spoke; he simply had not expected her to say all of it so suddenly.

That the Dragon God knew of the Godslaying War... this did not in fact surprise Gaoyang, for he had long guessed that this deity had been active since the ancient age. Since the dragon race had weathered tide after tide of magic and witnessed civilization after civilization succeed one another, and stood in no ordinary relation to the "Voyagers," then the deity they worshipped must likewise have lived as many long years as the civilizations themselves.

Gods share the years of civilization—this was the rule Gaoyang and the experts under him had distilled after detailed study of how deities operated.

Yet the Dragon God had simply come out and said it, in so calm, so utterly unguarded a manner...

Gaoyang suddenly realized that this journey to Tarrande might well be one of the most correct choices he had ever made; now... at least he finally knew the exact date of that ancient Godslaying War—one million eight hundred and seventy thousand years ago.