Chapter 387: The One Who Roused a Thousand Armies With a Single Horn

The team battle began.

When Loki stood up, every fire in the hall of False Flames and empty cups shrank at once, then flared wildly upward.

The False Flames burned diligently, yet gave off no heat at all.

They were a room full of guests hired to feign joy—laughing with all their might, none willing to be the first to leave.

At the other end of the hall, a door opened out of thin air.

"Let's go."

Beyond the door stood a circle of standing stones.

Lichen grew over the stones, which stood shoulder to shoulder around a central bonfire.

A pot hung over the fire, its contents bubbling away.

The scent was actually real: beef, barley, and a hint of charred onion.

Smoke rose from the exact center of the stone circle, drifting up into the roofless night sky.

Lillian felt a flicker of confusion.

The fire in Loki's hall was fake, the cups were empty, and only severed heads hung from the dome.

Here, the fire was real, the pot was real, the smoke was real, and even the firewood beneath the pot had been solidly split.

"Their fire is real."

Loki spoke from beside her, sounding almost envious.

"Which makes it easier to burn."

Five people stood within the stone circle.

The large man furthest inside had a grizzled beard. He leaned on an absurdly thick wooden club with one hand and rested the other on the rim of the pot: the war god, The Dagda.

To his left stood a bare-chested young man.

Before he even moved, his eyes had begun to contort—one sinking deep into his skull, the other bulging outward. The Mad Dog, Cu Chulainn.

To his right was a man holding a spear, a sling draped over his shoulder: the sun god, Lugh.

At the other side of the fire stood a red-haired woman, cupping a small cluster of flames in her hands. Brigid.

The last figure stood in the shadows at the very edge of the stone circle.

Ravens perched on her. One, two, five, over a dozen. The Morrigan.

Loki stood between two standing stones and closed his eyes.

He began to chant the honorific name of a Virtuoso, and the entire stone circle trembled.

"He who gallops across trackless wastes, whose hooves strike in time with the wind."

A wind from no clear direction seeped in through every crack in the stones.

"He who once roused a thousand armies with a single horn."

The False Flame above Lillian's head flickered.

From impossibly far away, she heard horns blowing—the unified blast of a thousand armies just before a charge.

"He whose blood has sealed the saddle, whose bones have formed the bow, leaving only the sound of hooves to hunt the world forever."

The moment the honorific name ended, the divine projections above everyone at Loki's table simultaneously flared.

The Virtuoso whose name had been chanted bestowed a sliver of "gaze" upon their table.

Lillian felt Skadi's blizzard surge massively within her.

Controlling the blizzard used to be exhausting; now, the snow rose on its own with just a single thought.

It was not just her. The chains on Fenrir snapped louder, pinging outward link by link.

The ether on Tyr's solitary hand grew so dense it practically dripped.

Freyja set down her dish.

Behind Hela's half-dead face, cold air leaked through the crack in the gates of the Underworld far more fiercely than before.

Inside the stone circle, The Dagda lowered his hand from the rim of the pot.

"You chanted for that one."

Loki smiled at him.

"You recognized it."

"Of course I recognized it."

The Dagda slammed his wooden club into the ground. The earth shuddered, and the flames slanted half an inch.

"You came today to eat us gatekeepers."

Loki spread his hands.

"That sounds far too harsh. We only came for a meal."

He stepped back outside the stone circle, raised a hand, and made an inviting gesture.

"Everyone. While it's hot."

..................

The Celtic table was wiped out very quickly.

So quickly that Lillian felt their earlier death matches had been entirely superfluous.

The divine names they held—The Dagda, Cu Chulainn, Lugh, Brigid, and The Morrigan—fell like flags being uprooted one by one.

One after another, they tumbled into Loki's cup.

Loki held the cup, catching them unhurriedly.

With each one that fell in, his loose coat of ether thickened by a fraction.

Lillian received a sliver: the raven flock's vision, parsed from The Morrigan's name.

By the time they returned to the hall of severed heads, the wine had already been poured, and Loki had reclaimed the head seat.

"A beautiful fight tonight."

He glanced around the room.

"I know what you all want to ask."

"Fenrir wants to ask why I didn't leave one more for him to bite."

A muffled grunt came from beneath the wolf-snout mask.

"Tyr wants to ask what right we have to eat someone else's table, when they were just guarding their own standing stones, boiling their own beef and barley, and minding their own business."

Loki smiled.

"Tyr, the moment certain rules are established, they have already calculated who must be sacrificed."

"Tonight we flip someone else's table. On another night, it'll be ours getting flipped."

"I simply want to stay one step ahead."

Tyr's solitary hand twitched, then stilled.

"Freyja doesn't want to ask anything; she just wants first pick."

Freyja licked her dish.

"Hela never asks. The dead don't pry into the affairs of the living. She only waits to clean up after this table."

Loki's gaze fell on the last seat.

"Skadi wants to ask exactly who we're desperately hoarding all this power for."

Lillian did not speak. Her hand still pressed against the needle in her cuff.

"Then I will tell you."

Loki raised his cup, swirling it toward the False Flames.

"You all know how the Ranks progress."

"Practitioner, Minor Adept, Major Adept, and one step above that, Virtuoso."

"For that step, the entire continent might not produce a single one in years."

"For you, Virtuoso is the end of the line."

"Whatever lies above it, you cannot see."

He set the cup back on his armrest.

"A Virtuoso is someone who has walked a tradition to its very end."

"The sun, the hearth, the tides, shadow—any path will do."

"You follow that road all the way to the end, step up to the furthest boundary stone, and reach out to touch it."

"Once you touch it, you become a Virtuoso."

"But that road was paved by someone else, and that boundary stone was erected by someone else."

"No matter how fast you run, it is still someone else's road."

"If you want to take another step up, you must have your own road."

"You must forge one yourself, so that your name is carved into it."

"Those who reach that step are called Masters."

The hall grew so quiet they could hear the False Flames crackling. Loki's voice lowered.

"There is only one way to forge a new tradition: sink yourself into the Abyss."

"The Abyss is a disaster, a melting pot that dissolves everything. No matter what tradition you walk, once you go in, you will be melted down all the same."

"The Abyss is also infinite possibility. It is the primordial chaos before all things were shaped."

"To become a Master, a Virtuoso must first switch to the Abyss Tradition."

"They must use that possibility to cast a new crown."

Loki's tone suddenly became incredibly light, so light it sent a chill down the spine.

"The vast majority of those who take this path melt into it completely. The outside world only knows that some Virtuoso has suddenly gone quiet."

The palm of Lillian's hand, still pressed against the needle, was slick with sweat.

"So," she said, her voice very soft.

"The power we've been hoarding for this table is being prepared for a Virtuoso looking to advance to Master."

Loki looked at her, the smile in his eyes fading slightly.

"Clever."

"The Abyss dissolves you layer by layer. But if you sink down carrying enough with you..."

Lillian's raven vision had not completely receded.

Peering through the veil, she saw an incredibly fine thread dangling beneath Loki's loose coat of ether.

The thread dropped straight down into the darkness outside the hall, connecting to some unfathomable place.

"One more thing," Loki said, his voice turning lazy once more.

"At the Celtic table tonight, if the one behind me hadn't granted us a sliver of his gaze, Fenrir might not have been able to sink his teeth into Cu Chulainn."

"That extra bit of strength in your bodies was what slipped through his fingers."

"And whatever slips through must, sooner or later, be paid back."

Loki drained his cup in a single gulp.

The False Flames in the hall bowed low in sequence, then flared up in unison.

Right amid that rise and fall, the door opened. A man stood outside.

He was absurdly tall, with white hair and shoulders that practically scraped the top of the doorframe.

He wore a tweed coat washed out to gray, its cuffs rolled up to his forearms.

On the exposed skin, old scars layered heavily over one another.

He held a book in one hand; his other hand hung empty, with large knuckles and thickly calloused fingertips.

Lillian's raven vision still hadn't completely faded. She looked at him through the veil.

The ether on this man was a boundless, chilling expanse of white.

Like moonlight on a winter night in the Highlands—wherever it shone, absolutely nothing could remain hidden.

Loki's eyes widened, the cup still in his hand.

"Old man, how did you find this place?"