Chapter 400: Argument
Laz quickly found Nora back in her lab. She had dug out several strange items and was just throwing them all into a box.
"What are you doing?" Laz asked.
"Nevermind me. Go find Celes at her Grandma’s place. She’ll tell you what’s going on." Nora quickly rushed Laz out of her lab, much to his surprise.
With no where else to go, Laz made off for Gretchen’s place, only to find someone waiting for him. It was one of the younger girls who he had met in his training several times, but whose name he couldn’t remember.
"Sir. Please follow me. The council decided on having a full meeting due to Mistresses suggestion. I think they want you there as well," the girl said before leading Laz to the main office building that also held the large council room. Normally, order wide meetings only occurred once a month and just as a general update agenda. Right now though, with the girl leading him him, Laz noticed that the entire meeting room was fill. Joan and Gia were standing guard and even Renee was present. Seeing the girl lead him in and walk away, Laz walked up to join Celes who was addressing the assembly.
"This truly is a good chance. If this works, it will be a blueprint going forward. The ritual can be used on every one of us when it comes time for our own breakthroughs," Celes argued, addressing the crowd.
"There is no guarantee it will work however. It might seem like a sure thing to you, but you must know that there is a reason that these books, spells and rituals were locked away. They might be a part of our past, but we have no reason to believe these things to be more than hocus pocus." Strangely, the one arguing with Celes was actually her Grandmother. The interesting part about it was that Gretchen seemed insistent on Celes not going through with whatever ritual she had brought up.
’And it’s for a breakthrough? So this is something she is doing for me?’ Laz asked himself as he stood next to Celes and looked out over the crowd.
The crowd had an interesting reaction to seeing Laz show up. Since they all knew that this meeting was heard for his benefit, they had wondered where he was. Without him being here, there had been many who expressed doubts about what Celes wanted to do. Now with Laz by her side though, a lot less people felt the desire to reject.
"Good boy. Since you’re here. Why don’t you explain yourself?" Gretchen then turned her attention to Laz. Of course he didn’t know anything she was talking about.
"What am I to explain exactly?" Laz shot back, feeling something not right with the way Gretchen was acting. He knew that Gretchen had always supported Celes and even pushed her to be a better leader. Gretchen was also happy about the way Celes was only now coming out of her shell recently. Therefore it didn’t make sense that Gretchen would be the one trying the hardest to stop her right now.
"Explain why you and my granddaughter think that using an ancient ritual that has never been tested would be a good idea? Best case scenario, nothing happens. Worst case, a lot of people die. Does that sound like a good idea to you?"
"And you know this because?" Laz was actually curious as to why this was coming up. If it’s never been tested, then how was Gretchen so sure of the results? That made little sense.
"It hasn’t been tested since it was banned, hundreds of years ago. We still have a copy of the transcripts from the last time it was put into practice. And those records indicated that it had almost a ninety percent fatality rate. NINETY PERCENT. Why would anyone want to risk that ever again?" The more Gretchen spoke the more Laz noticed the anger and fear within her voice. It seemed like this was really something she was against. Although Laz wasn’t going to discount the record that Gretchen was referring to, he felt that there was probably a lot of unknown information that was being left out.
Not that Laz was set on doing this ritual, in fact this was the first he had heard about it. But he also knew that there was a serious lack of time right now and spending a lot of it arguing about something like this was pointless. He needed the breakthrough or a lot of people would die. If the ritual gave him a chance, he wasn’t going to just turn away from it.
Therefore, Laz wanted to answers first.
"This ritual. How many times was it done before being banned? Did a large number of people always die? If they thought to keep the record of the ritual around, there must be some merit to it, right? If not, they would have destroyed all record of it so that no one would attempt it in the future, correct?" Laz asked Gretchen.
Celes looked over at Laz with a rather thankful smile. She had always had trouble dealing with her grandma, so knowing Laz was on her side in this was a big help. He also noticed several points that she had missed about her grandmother’s argument.
"I don’t know how many times it was done prior to the incident which claimed many of our sister’s lives, but yes. In that past, the method did work. But there was a change that occurred that lead to the tragic results from the final time. I don’t know what they were and there is no record of that. As for why they kept it? Who knows? I don’t understand the will of our ancestors but I do know that when they put the book that contained that within the forbidden archive, that was all I needed to understand. It was never meant to be used again." Gretchen revealed a bit more with this admission, the primary fact being that Celes had again been digging into the things that weren’t suppose to see the light of day, just like the control spell she had used on Laz. In fact, maybe she had come across this at the same time and it had just stayed on her mind until now.
"When did you say this accident happened?" Laz asked, wanted to check something that was tickling his mind.
"Several hundred years ago. Probably about four hundred now."
"Four hundred... let’s see... ah. Well... what exactly does the ritual entail?" Laz asked.
"Since there is no danger of the ritual working without the right runes and chants, It should be ok to say this out loud. The general idea is a group of witches form a circle and infuse some of their energy as living cultivation resources for the one making the breakthrough. The damage to them isn’t permanent as they are only suppose to give as much as they feel comfortable doing, but if the person making the breakthrough decides to keep draining them, it can cause their bodies to dry up and wither. When all of their energy is removed, they basically fall dead if there is no way to replenish it quickly," Gretchen explained, her voice a bit gentler.
"Then that explains it," Laz said as the gears in his head start turning.
"That explains what?" Wilma, who had been quiet up until now, finally spoke.
"The breakthrough of that person was doomed to fail and I’m sure the order knew that at the time. Whatever restrictions would have caused the failure should have been well known, but the order must have decided to try to ritual to defy fate. What they probably didn’t know was that at that time, the energy of the planet had all but dried up. There was enough to keep the world alive, but any more than that had already been used up. At that point, when the person tried to breakthrough, there simply wasn’t enough energy. After feeling the effects of the infusion and knowing what advancement would mean in this dried up world, they probably just kept thinking ’a little more,’ never understanding that the path forward was never going to be reached."
"You seem pretty sure of this explanation," Wilma questioned, wondering how Laz knew this as it didn’t seem like he was lying.
"I spoke to the god that was sleeping below us. He told me about what happened those many years ago, about the loss of energy in the world and what that meant to each peoples. His people were able to survive by killing off gods one after another and transferring the powers, but even that was only a stop gag method as eventually, children would no long be born with any energy. And that method they had been using for over a thousand years. But as of about five hundred years ago, even that became impossible. What little energy the god had at this point they stopped using except in an emergency. As for your people, they probably knew of the decline, but not the cause. They wanted to find a way to fight it, but in the end, there was no fighting the loss as there was no energy left to take."
"Wait... wait wait wait. You spoke to the god? The one rumored buried underneath the mountains close to here?" Wilma asked, as even Gretchen looked on in shock.
"Not in the mountains but right underneath this complex. The stones you had been digging up, they were a result of his slumber."
"If he is slumbering, then how did he talk to you?" Gretchen asked after digesting this new info.
"That’s not important at the moment. What is important is that because the energy had returned... well... he is waking up."
"Waking up? A god will be waking up like right here? Is that? Is that a good thing for us?" Celes asked, knowing already where the god was sleeping thanks to Laz.
"No. Unless we can remove those iron stakes we found, when he wakes he will going on a rampage and taking everyone he can find with him."
"But. I... he...?"
"How long do we have?" Celes asked as her grandmother tried to find the right words.
"Two days. If I can’t break through in two days... then we all might die once he gets up."
