Chapter 1173 — Surprise and Consternation

The Courtyard of Defiance, cloaked deep in boundless gloom and chaos, remained as peaceful and serene as ever today—the giant stag Amorn lay motionless upon his belly among floating boulders and shattered relics of the ancient world, bathed from head to hoof in a pale, holy radiance, while Myrmina, instead of immersing herself in the neural network, silently circled him again and again without a word.

The sight was as though a ghost the size of a bell tower were drifting to and fro beside the God of Nature.

On some unknowable lap of her circuit, Amorn finally could bear it no longer and broke the silence: "Have you not circled enough?"

"I'm only afraid that the moment I jack into the network, you'll go running to the administrator and report me again," Myrmina said at last, coming to a halt and fixing the God of Nature with a fierce glare from eyes wreathed in mysterious mist. "I've finally figured it out—it's your kind, the ones who look so honest and simple every day, who are truly the most impossible to guard against once you turn nasty. I've done so much for you, and you reported me?"

"...You were having plenty of fun at cards last time..." Amorn muttered helplessly. "Even Duvalt surrendered, and you still wouldn't leave that little space of yours..."

What answered him was a sharp look from Myrmina, and then a long stretch of silence in the Courtyard of Defiance.

How long passed after that, no one could say, before Amorn's voice finally sounded again amid the gloom and chaos: "These days... time really does fly."

Myrmina watched him quietly for a few seconds. "Did it not fly before? Thousands upon thousands of years slipped away in the blink of an eye; before we could even react, the dynasties of mortals had changed one after another... so fast it left even the gods dazzled."

"That was different," Amorn said softly. "Back then, time was like a set of endlessly repeating illusions to me. The world might have been changing quickly, but none of it had anything to do with me. The tens of thousands of years I lived through were like the same day repeating over and over—a very, very long day. Now, at least, the time we live through belongs to us."

"Why have you suddenly started sighing over things like this?" Myrmina was quiet for a moment, then at last sat down beside one of the great boulders near Amorn. "Isn't it pleasant enough to sink into the neural network every day and think about nothing?"

"I was just suddenly wondering... how much longer time like this can last for us," Amorn said, his voice calm—so calm that no one could tell what he truly felt; only the white radiance that clung perpetually about him seemed to draw in a little. "You used to run off to the deepest parts of the Shadow Realm all the time. You must know how things stand over there... the edge of the Deep Realm has been rather unstable lately, hasn't it?"

"I didn't think lying here for three thousand years was purely a waste of time," Myrmina said, glancing at Amorn with some surprise, then shook her head. "The Deep Realm... it's still the same Deep Realm, holding itself in a state of half-overlap with the deep sea, neither close nor far. You know I don't dare actually approach its edge—I'd be reconnected. But I can still sense the clear echoes of mortal thought-tides arising over there, and those echoes trace out the Deep Realm's boundary. On the whole, the boundary is still fairly stable."

"That's at least some good news... You know, when that minor demon tide came seven hundred years ago, someone struck and detonated the Deep Blue Well. That mad act did stop the demon tide from spreading further, true enough, but it nearly ruptured the mapping between the Deep Realm and the upper planes. For a time that boundary blurred until it was almost gone... I truly thought the end of the world had come."

"Who wouldn't? I nearly died of fright myself back then. Such a huge Deep Blue Well—boom, and it blew. I happened to be lying at the edge of the thought-tides, watching the human mages study their arcane purification experiments, and then there was this 'wham,' and my connection to the entire material world was cut off. When I opened my eyes again, all of Gondor was gone..."

Amorn listened quietly to Myrmina's somewhat exaggerated account—one that hardly sounded like something a "goddess" would say—and only once her voice had died away did he abruptly ask: "Tell me the truth—that one who detonated the Deep Blue Well back then, it really wasn't you?"

"Why would you suspect me?" Myrmina shot Amorn a look as though he had lost his mind. "I'm the sort of god who dodges even the prayers of mortals whenever I can. Do you really think I'd go out of my way to do something that difficult, something that might drag me down with it? Especially when I was half a beat slow back then—I didn't even realize the sun's course had gone wrong..."

Amorn was not the least swayed; he simply stated his judgment quietly: "The Deep Blue Well is a source of magic power. Detonating it requires channeling an extremely powerful primordial magical energy, which makes you the most likely candidate. As for the reason... however unwilling you may be to bear your responsibilities, you are still a goddess born of mortal thought-tides. Protecting mortals is your highest instinct, and that has nothing to do with your own will."

Myrmina looked into Amorn's eyes, which seemed forged of molten crystal, and after two or three seconds of standoff she suddenly shook her head with a light laugh: "...For this one moment, I really do rather wish I were the goddess you describe—the one who took a brave step all those years ago to protect mortal civilization. But alas, the one who detonated the Deep Blue Well seven hundred-odd years ago really wasn't me."

"Truly not you?" Amorn's voice finally carried a note of surprise. "Then who was it?"

"I don't know, but many of the gods who once sheltered the Gondor Empire could have done it. You are the chief deity of the elven pantheon, and you haven't paid attention to the human world for three thousand years, so you probably don't understand the Deep Blue Well. Your impression of it... is somewhat inaccurate.

"It is indeed a powerful energy source, but it shouldn't be narrowly called a 'source of magic power.' Deep within the surging currents of the Deep Blue Well lies a vast 'network' that runs through the entire planet, with tributaries in several planes besides. It is like a complex waterway system that includes both surface rivers and underground veins. Within that intricate 'waterway network' there is not only primordial magical energy, but also the tides of the elemental world and the echoes of the Shadow Realm and the Deep Realm—even a portion of mortal thought-tides can connect with its deeper tributaries. So more than one 'Goddess of Magic' could have had a hand in the Deep Blue Well.

"The elemental gods, the Holy Light, the Blood God, even the three gods of fertility—even that blunt War God. Any of them could have detonated the Deep Blue Well, if they had a mind to."

Listening to Myrmina's account, Amorn could not help falling silent. He did not doubt this Goddess of Magic's judgment on matters concerning the Deep Blue Well, yet her answer plunged him into even deeper bewilderment. Amid his pondering, he finally broke the silence: "Whoever it was that acted back then, there is no way they walked away from that explosion unscathed..."