The Artifact of a What Now?

The silence in the Great Cathedral was a thick, heavy blanket, suffocating the chaos of a moment before. A hundred of the Holy Kingdom’s most elite guards were frozen in place, their swords half-raised, their bodies trembling under the sheer, crushing weight of my magical presence. It was, I had to admit, a pretty effective way to shut down an argument.

Okay, holding a hundred heavily-armored paladins in place with pure, unfiltered willpower, I thought, trying to keep my breathing even. This is officially more work than I've done in my past five years of corporate life combined. My concentration is starting to wander. Are there any good noodle stands near here? I could really go for some ramen.

Alistair, still standing on the grand pulpit, stared at me, his face a mask of disbelief and rage. The fear I’d seen in his eyes a moment ago was already being burned away by the fires of his fanaticism.

“See!” he shrieked, his voice raw with fury as he pointed a trembling finger at me. “See the power of this heathen! He does not use the divine grace of the heavens! He uses the brute, overwhelming force of a monster! He holds our sacred knights hostage with his demonic power! He is the true threat to the peace of this world!”

The crowd, still pinned in place by the fringes of my aura, began to murmur. He was good. I had to give him that. He was trying to spin my show of force as proof of his own claims.

“You fools!” he roared, his voice filled with the passion of a true believer. “You think this is about simple politics? About the petty squabbles of kingdoms? You are blind! This world has grown soft, decadent, and weak under a century of this false, cloying peace! It needs a true trial! A great evil to unite it against! A Demon King to remind it of the necessity of faith and the glory of sacrifice!”

He reached under the pulpit and pulled out an object. It was a sphere, about the size of a human head, made of dozens of interlocking golden rings covered in complex, glowing runes. At its core, a shard of impossibly black crystal pulsed with a slow, malevolent light, like a dying star. It hummed with a power that made the hair on my arms stand up.

He held the artifact aloft for all to see. “This is the key! The vessel that will usher in the new age! The Chalice of Convergence!”

Oh, great, I thought. He’s got a named item. This is officially a boss fight. I hate boss fights. The cutscenes are always too long.

“You cannot comprehend my goals!” Alistair ranted, his eyes wild. “This relic does not create evil. It merely unlocks what is already there! The seal on the Demon King is a lock, and the faith of the masses is the key! This Chalice absorbs the ambient piety, the devotion, the righteous fury of a crowd like this one, and channels it directly into the seal, corroding its foundations from the inside out!”

My blood ran cold. He wasn’t just a fanatic; he was a goddamn magical engineer. He had weaponized faith itself. He was using the prayers of his own followers to power his apocalypse machine.

“And now,” he screamed, “you will all bear witness to the glorious dawn of a new age! Your fear! Your anger! Your devotion! Give it all to me!”

He activated the artifact. The black crystal at its core flared, and the golden rings began to spin. Immediately, shimmering streams of faint, golden light began to rise from the terrified, angry, and devout members of the crowd, flowing through the air like ribbons and being sucked into the Chalice. The artifact pulsed brighter and brighter, the hum growing into a deep, groaning roar.

A deep tremor shook the very foundations of the cathedral. It wasn't an earthquake. It was a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, a deep, resonant groan from the fabric of reality itself. The seal, hundreds of leagues away, was weakening.

“He's channeling the crowd's energy!” I heard Marie shout from somewhere behind me. “He's targeting the seal!”

No kidding, I thought. Are you kidding me? He’s using the power of prayer to try and cause an apocalypse? That's the most ridiculously ironic thing I've ever seen. And now I have to stop it. This day just keeps getting better.

I couldn't maintain the pressure on the guards and deal with the artifact. My brain wasn’t built for that kind of multitasking. I had to make a choice.

I let my aura holding the guards collapse. “Alright, you guys are free to go,” I said to the now-stumbling knights. “I’d recommend running. Things are about to get weird.”

As they scrambled back in confusion, I focused all my attention on Alistair and his glowing ball of bad news. I wasn't going to get into some flashy, drawn-out magical duel. That’s not my style. I needed a lazy, overpowered, and deeply insulting solution.

I raised one hand, and instead of unleashing another blast, I simply created a perfect, silent, shimmering sphere of my own golden purification magic right around the Chalice of Convergence. It was like putting a soundproof glass box over a screaming alarm clock.

The streams of faith energy that were flowing from the crowd hit the surface of my sphere and instantly dissipated into harmless, sparkling dust. The artifact, cut off from its power source, sputtered. The golden rings ground to a halt. The black crystal at its core faded back to a dull, inert shard.

Alistair stared at the now-powerless artifact in his hands, his mouth agape. His grand plan, his holy weapon, had been neutered with all the drama of me changing the channel on a television.

He looked up at me, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. He knew he had lost. But he wasn't going to be taken.

“This isn't over, heretic!” he shrieked, his voice filled with venom. He crushed a small crystal hidden in his other hand. “You have only delayed the inevitable! The world will be reborn in the crucible of a holy war!”

A flash of violet light enveloped him, and just like that, he was gone. He had used a teleportation stone. The coward.

The immediate crisis was over. The cathedral was in utter chaos. The crowd was screaming and stampeding for the exits. The guards were staring at the empty pulpit, then at me, completely unsure of what to do.

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” I heard Marie’s voice in my ear as she, Eliza, and Edgar appeared by my side. Justus was already moving to cover our retreat.

We slipped out a side door in the confusion, leaving the heart of the Holy Kingdom in turmoil. The stakes were now higher than they had ever been. We knew Alistair’s full plan: he wanted to break the seal and release Rumiri Tempest. And we knew he had a powerful, prayer-eating artifact to do it.

Great, I thought, as we hurried through the dark alleyways of Nazareth. We stopped him this time, but now he's on the run with his apocalypse-machine. And he's going to find a bigger, angrier crowd. This is going to be a long, annoying chase.

I should have just stayed in bed. I wondered if it was too late to file for unemployment in this world.