Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 648: Worth of a Sacrifice

“I won’t let you.”

Orion blinked open his eyes. The pain that he’d been feeling moments before had all gone, replaced only with the pleasant and familiar sensation of wind gracing his cheek across windy plains. Remembering what he was doing, he sat up and looked around. Rather than a battlefield ravaged by his powerful foe, he saw a dreary landscape unfold before him.

As far as the eye could see, there was gray, dead grass. It somehow looked worse than when winter came—blacker, like it’d been burnt away with fire. There was the undeniable stench of corruption in the air, almost like rotting flesh. At the far end of his vision, he saw a golden tree that he’d visited once before.

The Tree of Being.

Fear and nervousness took hold of him as he realized what the implications of his vision were. Had he finally greeted death? Was this horrifying world the afterlife? Was there to be some sort of punishment for his sins? He had tried to outweigh what he’d done with virtue, protecting his family so ardently… but perhaps some things simply couldn’t be outweighed.

“You think too much,” said that voice he’d heard earlier. “It’s rather like how I speak too much.”

The voice was hoarse, almost as if it was an old man’s barely clinging to life. But there was something familiar about it, and Orion rose to his feet. He started to walk toward the tree, already having some inkling as to what he might be going to greet. When he crested the hill that the Tree of Being sprouted from, he saw a great serpent, divested of all that had made it glorious.

Lindon the silver serpent, god of minds, dreams, and consciousness. He laid there, descaled. He’d never had a solid body, but every apparition he’d shown them had been one of some considerable glory. This, by contrast, looked like it was dying. It looked far worse than Vasquer ever had, even when she’d been trapped underground for so long. Even when she’d actually died.

But those silver eyes trained themselves on his figure at the top of the hill, and that hoarse voice pierced his mind once again. “Hello, Orion.”

Orion braced himself uneasily. Given what he’d just fought, he couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t some further machination of Gerechtigkeit. Whether on the physical realm or the mental one, he would fight to the bitter end.

“If you’d like to punch me a few times to relieve your rage, feel free. But I’ve gone through great lengths to make sure that your end isn’t bitter, despite how hard you fought me.” He heard a great sigh from the wounded Lindon. “I had hoped you would react to my warning altogether differently than you did. But, given the limited resources I had at my disposal, it worked out as best as I could have hoped.”

“What do you speak of?” Orion called out, his voice echoing powerfully through this realm.

“That feeling of impending doom. The notion that death was coming. It wasn’t some supernatural intuition that your time for retribution was coming—it was my attempt at a warning.”

hardened in

the Gilderwatchers… he brought them together, isolated my being, and used the Melding I’m capable of creating to birth the monster that you killed. It was a vast compression of my will into that single

I killed it?”

“Even snakes die when their head is cut off. They might writhe for a while, but they’re functionally dead. You killed that silver warrior, Orion. You needed no aid from the Fruit of Being. You saved Blackgard. You rallied against fear, and in so

recalled that final wound piercing his

idly? Even as we speak, I suspect she’s scooping you up and making sure you don’t expire. Your extraordinary constitution will take care of the rest. But we speak of things left to happen, and

fading?” Orion

countless millennia studying my technique to warp the mind, too, and it showed. I held out as long as I

tale has been taken without authorization; if

after remembering what’d happened to Vasquer,

bluntly. “The knight that appeared today was a manifestation of the wish the two siblings shared, back when they were Griffin and Sophia, comrades in abuse at Sandelabara. The perfect knight, come to save them both. He dreamed of a poetic reunion with his lost sibling, where he ends the cycle his way and realizes the path laid out for both of them. Defeating it… I will not ever say that anything could suffice as vengeance for the death of Vasquer, but I will say that Gerechtigkeit surely rages at its death. You denied him

said nothing, but he accepted that situation internally. It aligned with how Sophia had reacted as he’d been guarding

me as the fodder for this perfect knight’s creation. In so doing, he has supplanted me within the Gilderwatchers. He exists in them as I existed in them. Simultaneously, he’s attempting to destroy the White Planes, which would unbind them from the treaty suppressing

of unease at that. “What of the

relief flavoring his tone. “The only reason I was able to enter your mind is because your hand was cut off your body. Still, it would be entirely impractical to expect you to be able

Catching movement, his eyes danced to the side. There, very distantly, he saw

I spent lifetimes protecting simply… end. But given the danger to all

keeping an easy eye on distant ground.

would be a near-impossible task. How do you reinforce that which is essentially impregnable? I use that word, yet the fact that it falls before Gerechtigkeit’s power suggests it does still have room for improvement. If it is

a greater extent, giving yourself and your siblings the capacity to fight back against and neutralize

“Is