The moon rose and fell another four times, finally giving way to a bright, cloudless day—the perfect weather to execute the plan to reignite the Light. Everyone in the palace had been kept in the dark. They were simply told to stay as far away from the pillar as possible. This helped to ensure that no one would detect the magic being used. Citizens of the capital were only told that a ceremony to restore the Light would be held and that they should go about their daily lives per normal.
As for citizens who lived farther out than the capital, that was where the weather came into play. Razanate worshipped the Light, and religious services were typically held in the morning and the evening. The beaming midday sun often made the Light too difficult to see at a distance on clear days—which should make it all the harder for anyone to notice it going out. The nobles of outlying domains would only need to be reassured if and only if something went wrong.
Lyse, Sidis, Egbert, and Alcede went to meet up with Seren in the depths of the Villa of Light. They brought him food and water, as he’d be stationed underground to keep an eye on the reserve through the process. It was his responsibility to keep the black stones topped up.
“Thank you very much for your participation, Seren. If all goes well, we’ll fast-track the construction of your new accommodations so that you can have all the dogs you always wanted,” Alcede assured him.
This was music to Seren’s ears. Keeping dogs was his heart’s greatest desire, but he had to wait for his own villa for that dream to become reality. “How many can I have?! Would maybe ten or so be okay?”
“You can have twenty if you’d like, so long as you take care of all of them. Servants can help you out with all the cleaning, but keep in mind that everything else falls to you.”
“Hrm... Walking more than three dogs at once would be rather hard, I think. I could have a yard for them to run around in, but taking them on longer walks would still be good. And I’ll be playing with them all day too...” Seren muttered to himself as he headed back into the cavern.
It was then time for Egbert to change clothes, as he could only revert to normal once inside the privacy of the villa. “Whew. The human body sure is uncomfortable,” he said as he rolled his right shoulder.
“Is being a dog that much better, Your Majesty?” Alcede asked, genuinely curious.
“You bet it is! I don’t deal with all these bulky clothes and gaudy decorations.”
The emperor didn’t always need to dress the part, Lyse thought, but she decided to keep that to herself. It was odd to see Razanate’s highest-ranking nobleman walk around in a poncho like a commoner. Anyone who came across him like this would never be able to tell he was the leader of the country. Sidis and Alcede must have thought the same thing, as they awkwardly chuckled to themselves and held their tongues.
The four of them finally approached the Light but stood in silence as they beheld it. This reaction was only natural, as the sight was quite a lot to take in. Fifty or so copies of the emperor stood side by side with their arms around each other’s shoulders, looking like a line of cancan dancers. There were more than a dozen Lyses now as well, all happily linked arm in arm with grown versions of Sidis’s clones for whatever reason. There were also ten or so Serens skipping along with the Egberts.
“Surely they’re duplicating far too quickly...” Lyse remarked. The atrium that housed the Light was packed like a bustling garden party with a few too many guests. Over the past several days while everyone was preparing for the ritual ahead, the clones had indeed been generating at a swifter rate than before.
“The worse the aberrations, the more they replicate,” muttered Sidis in explanation. “But, boy, would I like to be surrounded by all those Lyses...”
She didn’t exactly know how to respond to that. On one hand, she was pleased to hear that he treasured her so, but on the other, she was disgusted by the thought of him basking in her mysterious doubles. “Extinguishing the Light should make them all go away, right?”
“I can only assume so. The clones were created by the Light’s power, after all,” Alcede answered. “Now, as we discussed, that task is all yours, Miss Lyse.”
“Understood.”
Lyse stepped toward the Light of Origin with a spear clad in white crystal. Whereas the Light absorbed and destroyed black stone, white crystal was strong enough to withstand it. That was why she’d chosen a weapon reinforced with the stuff to destroy the spell circle of the current pillar. The spear gave her a little bit of extra reach—and thus safety—over a sword, as getting too close to the pillar was dangerous even for the highest-ranking members of the imperial family. Lyse thankfully had the extra protection of the Light within her, which was chiefly why she’d been assigned the job.
Alcede completed all the final checks, then gave the order, “Let us begin!”
Lyse made eye contact with Sidis, and together, they approached the pillar. About ten paces out from it, Lyse was suddenly struck by the recollection that Qatora hadn’t had the luxury of giving herself over to fear in such close proximity to the brilliant beam. There might have been a brief flash of it when she’d burst into the atrium, but that was it. As for Lyse, however, the pressure of the situation was bearing down on her with full force.
“Do it,” Sidis prompted her.
“Right.”
Lyse gripped the spear with both hands and tried to breach the beam, but the recoil of steel and stone crashing into the pillar shook her very arms. The tip of the spear was eroded away by the Light.
Hrgk...
Lyse felt sicker by the second, flexing her core in an attempt to still her churning stomach. She then dug her heels to brace for her next attack, but stabbed at the Light again to no avail. The damage she inflicted to the spell circle was superficial at best.
“Just a little more!” Sidis shouted.
She clung tighter to the spear and tried a third time, but the Light deflected most of her force back at her. Sensing that brute strength was futile, she took a moment to recover before channeling the power of her inner Light and thrusting with all her might.
“Hngraaaaa...?”
The spear sunk deeper this time, its tip making contact with the soft dirt beneath the Light. The pillar instantly dimmed, for part of its spell circle had been broken. Sidis now grabbed hold of the spear and began attacking the edge of the circle. Again, the beam became more and more translucent. Its golden hue dulled as the floating particles of light dwindled, almost like an apparition vanishing into the air.
A strange feeling welled up within Lyse. It was like she was trudging and stumbling through a dense fog, but it all suddenly lifted and she found herself back in front of her future home. The Light of Origin disappeared, revealing a ring of formulae on the ground where it had stood for centuries. The spell circle was a mere two hands in diameter—much smaller than Lyse had expected. Its arrangement, however, was spot on. It looked almost identical to the scale model they’d ignited by the beach, right down to what appeared to be the gray remains of gemstones in three key locations, which Sidis cracked open with Lyse’s spear.
The sight was a heavy burden off of Lyse’s heart. Thank goodness nothing’s there... She’d dreaded the absolute horror that would have been finding Qatora’s corpse or the shredded tatters of her uniform, but fortunately, there was nothing of the sort.
“Okay, let’s fix the spell circle!” Alcede ran over and began redrawing the lines on the ground.
Lyse had almost forgotten the whole point of this operation. As she came back to her senses, an unpleasant realization dawned on her. “Wait. They’re still here,” she said, staring at the clones—who were all staring at where the Light had been.
“How horrifying...but forget about that for now! We’ve got work to do!” Alcede hollered, spurring Sidis and Egbert to jump into action.
The three imperial men endeavored to complete the formulae, which didn’t take long with most of the framework still in place. Alcede then spent a few moments making modifications and additions. Following that, they swiftly swapped out the gemstones. All in all, the whole process took less than ten minutes.
Alcede stood up and stepped out of the circle. “Now it’s time to relight the pillar. Everybody, get into position.”
Egbert did as instructed but kept glancing over his shoulder. “You sure they’ll be all right?” he asked, creeped out by the clones staring back at him.
“I mean, all we know is that they mimic people who are connected to the Light in some form. They may just disappear when the new Light comes on. And if they don’t, well, I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” For once, Alcede didn’t have a clever plan.
“We don’t have much time anyway,” the emperor announced as he prepared himself for the ritual.
“Very well. Let’s do this!” At Alcede’s behest, the three men each grabbed a pair of gemstones and began pouring their mana into them. This was a larger version of their scale experiment at the shore, so it was even harder to pump enough magic into the circle. Lighting it would take some time.
But as they’d only just begun, Alcede yelped. “Gah!”
“What?”
“What’s wrong, Alcede?!”
Egbert and Sidis whipped around to find the duke sheepishly smiling.
“Oops. Forgot about the thing I brought to help refill the mana supply quicker. Miss Lyse, would you please fetch the big ol’ rock from my bag and huck it in the spell circle?” he asked.
The others were visibly relieved to hear nothing was wrong.
Lyse reached into the large backpack Alcede had brought along and retrieved a brilliant white rock. “Hmm? Just what kind of mineral is this?” she muttered. When she felt it cling to her hands and saw it dimly glow, she realized it was no ordinary rock.
As Alcede continued to channel his mana into the spell circle, he answered, “It’s one of the bigger crystal chunks we were able to get our hands on. When I was helping Karl with his research, we discovered that when we condensed the crystals into large pieces, they started to absorb mana. So I thought that might help us today.”
“You sure about this thing?” Sidis asked, a discernible hint of worry in his voice. Lyse was similarly unsure of the oddly glowing rock.