Chapter Text
Libra sighed, furrowing his brow. Another failure. This was what, the 32nd time? His tools were beginning to fail him again, he would need to get replacements soon. Metal creaked and groaned under his hands, paintbrushes scattered across the table and trembling as he rose.
The creature wrapped his hand around his staff, fingers slipping into the comfortable grooves that had been formed in the metal after using it for so long. Thump. Thump. Hard steel hitting wood. Clop. Clop. His hooves trotting along with the pace of his staff. Libra winced slightly, his steps failing for a moment as his legs cramped, having to grip onto his staff for a moment before returning to normal, albeit staying wary.
With some effort, he stretched, his muscles sore and aching from remaining still for so long. Yet his hands hurt for an entirely different reason. They had been used to try to paint and work so precisely, testing new patterns for so long that it felt like they hurt down to his bones. He grimaced, trying to stretch his fingers as much as he could. Libra cursed at himself, mumbling about how he should have known to take breaks more often. Working this much would only hurt his work more.
But, there wasn’t anything he could do about it now, so he simply sighed and walked to his door, opening it and breathing in the air, trying to get the stench of paint and chalk out of his nostrils. His eyes wandered the landscape as he stepped outside of his lab, his breathing evening out as he escapes the fog of smells. He had settled within a field, near the woods, but not so near as to invite wolves and the such to get close. A church of the Golden Order sat on the horizon, near enough so Libra may trek over now and again, but not so close as to arouse suspicion. He needed a study of pure gold, and the church was the best access to it without doing it himself.
Could he do it himself? Perhaps. But, he had never quite been one for faith, and he preferred to use the time that could have been used on that on his alchemy instead. Perhaps he could be a sorcerer, but magic caused a bad taste in his mouth. Dealing with souls and the stars just simply didn’t appeal to him, and he had seen the “star seeds,” or whatever they called those abominations.
And so, he started his trek. The feeling of his hooves crushing the grass, wind brushing through his fur and around his horns, his staff jolting slightly in his hands whenever he hit the ground with it. The metal was beginning to warm back up as he approached the church, and so he sighed, wrapping his cloak around himself. It was quite annoying to have to transform each time, but he didn’t quite want to risk visitors disturbing his experiments. Not only was it rather annoying to have to deal with questions, they tended to exit in one way or another, usually not quite alive.
Finally, after having walked for a few hours, the man(?) approached the church, ducking inside with a small nod to those he passed. Thankfully, Libra had managed to keep track of the time properly, so the priests were performing a demonstration. A small pang of pity rang through Libra seeing the poor men in the front, knowing that their fate was unavoidable at this point. He knew though, it was better them than him. He did still need an example, after all.
The demonstration finally began, and Libra watched the show. For some reason, this time, he noticed that all of the holy incantations seemed to do with rings. The discus, the three rings they threw, the rings of light that were said to be from Radagon. Even when they demonstrated their Litany, it was an arc. Perhaps he should work on seeing if the shape of a spell affected whether or not it could create that gold. . . Libra nodded his head, considering what he might be able to do to work on when he gets back.
After the sermon, Libra returned to the lab. Sighing as he released the magic that disguised him, he hung up his cloak and stretched out. The lab was just as stuffy as before, but now he didn’t have to worry about being so shrunk down, so uncomfortable in his own body. It was necessary, of course, but god he wished he didn’t have to. People tended to only speak to him in that form though, even those who knew what he was.
But Libra didn’t have time to dwell upon that. He had work to do.
Carefully, he pushed the materials he had used to the side, moving the tools to their correct places as he considers how to proceed. He had been there when the Hornsent were banished, and though he wasn’t very familiar with their culture, he somewhat remembered their holy magicks being arcs and rings as well. Perhaps there was something there. . .
There had been some success beforehand. Little flashes of gold here and there, often directed at him rather than where he was aiming to send them. But Libra knew that they weren’t what he was looking for. They were always coming from a higher power, often from the Greater Will. He wanted to create his own gold, his own power and Order. These gods will have one more thing taken away, and he would be the one to do it.
Of course, it’s not like creating this power on his own was very easy. Libra had been trying for what, 25 years? 75? He had lost track, he was around for a Long while, and he hadn’t actually documented when he first tried this alchemy, a fact he cursed nowadays. Some progress had been made in this progress of course, but there was very little else.
Now though. . . . Maybe this discovery of how important arcs are with things associated with the holy would bring him closer. So, he painted, and painted and painted, trying to figure out what the rings have to do with it. There were so many different calculations to try, but none of them seemed to work.
A few months later, Libra collapsed, sighing. Perhaps if he had enough energy, he would cry. He had tried almost everything he could, stayed cooped up in his lab with all his tools experimenting for weeks on end to no results. Not even a spark. Holy seemed to be connected to worship, but the worship of the ancient dragon proves worship doesn’t necessarily bring holy forth. Perhaps it would be a worship of the Greater Will and things associated with it, but whenever Libra tried to consider it, he always remembered the Hornsent, with a worship of the Crucible, not the Greater Will.
The beast sighed and scratched his head, cursing every god he knew. He would create his own gold, but it all felt like a convoluted riddle with no answers that didn’t lead deeper in. The God of Rot was at least somewhat simple, the Rot came from him, and infected others, sometimes creating an heir. But gold was so incredibly convoluted and difficult to decipher, it felt like Libra was running in circles.
Eventually though, he got up. Perhaps a walk would do him good. Not towards the church, of course. It was a deep night now, and Libra felt the woods calling to him. And so, he began to walk. Then he began to run. Then sprint on all fours, grinning and allowing himself to burn off all of the stress, all of the annoyance that he had been caused. His sheer speed caused the leaves to shudder when he ran by, as he was completely lost in the pure joy of running. He didn’t have to worry for a moment, he didn’t have to care about his formulas.
But once he stopped, he looked around and found that he didn’t know where he was. He had a general idea of where he had come from, pretty sure he could find his way back if need be, but he hadn’t been here before. It was a village, with some still-smoldering flames, but it still looked incredibly old.
The flames were a strange yellow with red and orange highlights, oddly enough it reminded him of the gold he had been studying so much . . . . But it looked like the village itself had been burned almost to the ground. There were some stone homes here and there, but even within those, there were just hideous corpses that seemed to be clutching at their eyes. Something tickled at the back of his mind, telling him that he’d heard of something like this before, about that strange everburning flame. . . For the life of him though, he couldn’t figure out what it was. And so, he kept exploring this strange place.
Libra was far too big to fit through most of the doors, and he had left his cloak at his lab, so there was no real way to properly explore the homes that hadn’t been burnt to the ground, sparse as they may be. Along the way, he encountered more and more of that strange flame, which he made careful steps to avoid. Even if it was just a normal fire with a strange color, he wasn’t particularly fond of having his fur singed.
The further he explored though, the more flames that seemed to appear.. . Especially close to one section of town, where the flames seemed to absolutely cover the ground. Normally, Libra would have simply called it here, but for some reason he simply could not refuse his curiosity. The flames tried to lick at his fur as he approached the “hotspot”, as it were.
Once he got close, Libra saw a path through the flames. The area had seemed completely impassable earlier, almost completely covered in that yellow flame. But now, he could almost see a path through, footholds almost perfectly the shape of his hooves. How strange though, he hadn’t seen them before, and he had rather good eyesight. . .
But he just couldn’t seem to care enough about it. There was a small heat at the back of his brain, and the flames near his hooves continued to lick at him, singing his fur, but all Libra could think about was seeing what was at the center of the flames. Strange voices were chanting in the back of his mind, in words that Libra couldn’t know but understood despite that, understanding that they were telling him to approach.
And so, he did. His hooves made little noise as he stepped on the burnt grass, the path feeling as if it was meant for him. The flames licked at him with more fervor the further he approached, burning up the fur on his legs, inciting the heat in his brain to burn hotter and hotter. The chanting was almost deafening now, but the forest was silent. And Libra couldn’t feel anything but that pure curiosity to see what was at the center of the flames.
When Libra approached the center, he saw something within. A strange, sagging orb, looking like an overripe grape. The interesting thing was, there were so many large fingerprints all over.
In Libra’s hands, it looked so delicious, and all he could think of was eating that grape. The voices were urging him to eat it, and so he simply opened his maw, and devoured it. . .
And was in turn consumed by madness. Pure, blind rage filled Libra. There was nothing he wanted more than to just simply DESTROY. He charged at all the remaining buildings, yelling as he broke through the walls with nothing but anger. His horns felt like they were about to snap off whenever he battered at the walls, but Libra simply didn’t care. He needed to raze this place off the map.
The flames seemed to be even brighter than before, almost blinding. He couldn’t escape them, he could always see them. He tried to destroy them, rip them up, hit them. It did nothing, his body burned as it tried to staunch these blasted flames. There was pain all over, everywhere there was that burning, that smell of his own singed fur.
But there wasn’t just the burning. He could SEE. There were eyes he knew shouldn’t be. He tried to claw them out, clawing at his back so he wouldn’t have to see these flames anymore. He didn’t WANT to see.
. . . Then, Libra awoke. He was lying in a pile of stones, and he hurt all over. One of his horns had been chipped, his whole body hurt, but that wasn’t even the thing that concerned him. The eyes that he had seen from before, that had blinded him, were still there. He could see the stones underneath him, and he groaned. He might have been able to chalk it all up to a dream, perhaps even that the buildings had been destroyed when he got there.
Unfortunately, everything had happened, and now Libra got to deal with the consequences. Thankfully, this place had been dead for a while, so there wasn’t really anyone who would miss the things that he had destroyed. Stones were scattered everywhere, bits of the old corpses hiding within them broken across the town.
For a while, all Libra did was simply wander through the woods. His muscles still ached, his horns hurt, but he only had a vague idea of where his lab was. So, he wandered throughout the woods. Eventually, he found his way back to the lab and headed inside, collapsing upon his bed and falling asleep.