Sleeping Flame (8): Whispers of the Divine Throne
I broke the ice with those words and explained everything I had heard about the so-called successor. The prophet’s avatar showed no reaction of shock or speechlessness—perhaps the limits of its processing capacity prevented it. It probably hadn’t accounted for the possibility of “Odin’s successor appearing” when the spiritification spell was cast. The prophet would have only imagined someone who perfectly fit her own prophecy arriving.
“Yes. I partially lifted Veronica’s curse—the one that turns her into a horse in front of other races. If I can undo the rest of her curses on top of that, wouldn’t it effectively break the racial curse entirely?”
……Yes. That alone would be an achievement passed down for a thousand years, and a joy for our entire clan.
“It would be easier if you just told me the problems.”
When I pressed the point, the prophet’s avatar hesitated, emotion flickering across its face. It seemed every conversation like this flipped some trauma switch inside the remnant.
It is likely because the divine mana you possess closely resembles Lord Odin’s. I cannot say for certain, but it would not be far from the truth to assume the curse and the mana resonated with each other and neutralized the effect.
“What exactly is the problem?”
The method only resolves the curse on individuals…… Any children born anew will come into the world still bearing it.
Ah. Of course. If I died or disappeared, the entire method of lifting the curse would simply be severed. That was indeed a real problem. Veronica had avoided individual resolutions for exactly that reason. It was fortunate the avatar still carried that knowledge.
“How did the savior mentioned in the deviated prophecy break the racial curse?”
They petitioned the god who still lived in that era. But unlike my prophecy, that god died suddenly, and the savior never reached the sanctuary. When I went to find them, it was already after they had lost their life in their youth.
That made sense. If it had been a problem solvable by following the prophecy, the prophet herself would have done something about it while alive. I had only asked out of curiosity, as a reference.
I let out a sigh. “If the successor business is real, I thought it might be possible. But if prophecies and fates can be interfered with by humans, there’s no guarantee I’ll become the successor either, is there?”
Lord Odin…… disliked following fate. If it is his avatar, it would have appeared before a qualified individual, just as I did moments ago.
This wasn’t fucking good news at all. ‘Flipping that statement, it basically means anyone qualified could become the successor, not just me.’ I thought I was the legitimate heir to the throne, but I might have just been successor candidate D-29. What if I had to fight a battle royale against a hundred Odin knockoffs to become king of the gods? I really wished they would stop with the nonsense. I could only hope it wasn’t the case.
‘What if some psychotic thug ends up as the successor? What then?’ Since Odin hated fate, maybe he would tolerate even that. Even if the avatar tried to refuse, it would still have to hand over the seat like an old king abdicating the throne.
‘No, not throne—Divine Throne.’ Above all, it wasn’t even clear whether that avatar was still sitting on the Divine Throne. Was the seat empty while the avatar simply observed the world and appeared in the dreams of anyone worth noticing? Yet the way the avatar spoke didn’t sound like there were other candidates……
‘……Wait. Divine Throne?’
The thought hit me like a hammer to the skull. Divine Throne. Divine Throne. I had heard that word before. Odin had said it, and Yerna definitely had too.
Rustle—!
I yanked the notebook from my pocket and flipped it open. I hadn’t managed to properly record the bullshit Yerna had spouted about Odin, but I had still encrypted and written down a few key phrases. I turned the pages frantically before the flash of intuition could fade.
Found it. A recent page.
Of the gods remaining in Midgard, only fakes or losers are left. Rest easy. You are neither a puppet of the Divine Throne nor a slave to fate.
Recalling the words like déjà vu, I kicked my elite oversized brain into 3000% overdrive. Every entity whose memories I had tried to explore through Seidr had all brought up that same proper noun—Divine Throne. The Divine Throne. In other words, the seat of a god.
……Their successful creation? Nonsense. Out of the question. Impossible. There are no more empty Divine Thrones. You’re too old. An experimental subject that could overwhelm me……
Next came Yerna’s muttering. What did “empty Divine Throne” even mean? Did it mean Odin’s successor had to reach that seat of godhood? But it said every Divine Throne was already filled. Wasn’t this completely fucked?
I didn’t know. The words “fake” and “experimental subject” kept nagging at me. And what the hell did age have to do with anything? Was twenty-eight suddenly ancient? That personality-ruined old hag whose only redeeming feature was her unnaturally smooth skin had the nerve to talk about age to a fresh-faced young man like me.
While turning the question over in my mind, I spat out the thought that had risen like pure instinct.
“Why is rune magic restricted for all living beings except humans—or god races like the Bicorns? Is that a curse as well?”
Yes. It is a curse. I was told that after a certain event, Lord Odin came to desire that humans leave their records in written form.
The answer came immediately. I tapped my temple, urging my thoughts onward.
“He wanted them left in writing? So he placed a prohibition that only allows runes to activate through engraving.”
Correct. To the rune characters he bestowed upon the king of the human race, he added a prohibition that “prevents meaning from being communicated through speech.”
“……Why not simply take the characters away or forbid them entirely?”
Lord Odin did not completely remove the rune characters because he feared human society would fall into chaos.
That was exactly like the Odin I knew. The kind-hearted madman who pierced himself with a spear and hung from a tree because he didn’t want to accept humans or other races as sacrifices! The same Odin who had shown mercy in the form of curses to unicorns, Bicorns, Grani, and the rest. His methods might have been extreme, but the heart guiding those actions had never been truly evil. The Odin I had met in my dream had spoken to me as casually as a next-door neighbor.
“……Just for reference, what is the method to lift the rune curse?”
It is the same as the Bicorn curse.
“Ah, I see.”
Well, that was fine. Lifting the rune characters on top of everything else would have been serious overwork. I had no obligation to hand out that kind of benefit to strangers from another world. Since I could use them myself, it was good enough.
“But what I heard was slightly different. I was told that during her lifetime the Prophet left instructions for her kin to ‘pass down records through oral transmission.’ Why was that?”
When had that been? Right before we decided to head to Garden Island, I think. Veronica had definitely said the Bicorns had a culture of oral transmission like the Ulster folk, and that it all began with the Prophet’s words. Yet now it turned out that instruction directly contradicted the will of the god the Prophet had served.
I am sorry. That is outdated information.
It seemed the Prophet’s command to forbid written records among the Bicorns had come after this avatar’s last update. And she had probably died before completing the next hundred-year cycle. The picture was starting to come together. I slowly pieced the memory puzzle into place.
‘……The Compilation Battalion?’
The Compilation Battalion. Tabula’s organization—the ones who had been hunting Yerna. They were also the reason rune-stone research had suspiciously vanished. Those otherworld Red Guard bastards who lurked behind history like cockroaches laying eggs behind a toilet bowl!
‘Yerna, and almost certainly her enemies, are connected to this Divine Throne business.’
Odin had probably placed restrictions on the rune characters so that as humans passed stories orally the truth wouldn’t become distorted—encouraging them to leave written records. Perhaps it had been to preserve important information about the successor for future generations.
‘Did the Compilation Battalion find those written records and erase them?’ They might have used the information gained during their assassinations for their own benefit. Thinking about it that way, the “experimental subject” comment suddenly fit perfectly.
‘The Prophet must have discovered the Compilation Battalion—or its predecessor—during her lifetime and ordered her clan to stay silent.’ That felt right. If long-lived Bicorns had recorded the past using rune characters, the result would have been obvious: a 99% accurate archive of “true history” inside their sanctuary. Would the group conducting a Dongbei Project on the otherworld’s history have left something like that untouched? Hell no.
The primitive ancient Compilation Battalion and their minions would have noticed immediately and raided the Bicorn sanctuary to “Red Guard” any records of true history. There had even been a video like that among the rune stones—one where a Sadako-looking old man spoke ominously. Looking back now, that old man had probably been connected to the Compilation Battalion or one of its copies. The historical background of those stones was around the mythological era, yet the history of these otherworld Red Guards stretched back before Christ. They were some seriously ancient motherfuckers.
I don’t like republics.
‘The Bicorn sanctuary isn’t impossible to invade if someone is determined enough.’ Like that ogre professor bastard, or the giant that had suddenly appeared inside Garden Island’s barrier. The Bicorn race turned into horses in front of other creatures. As long as they left no records, they wouldn’t be purged as reactionaries. ‘Because in horse form, words don’t work.’ That turned into a terrible dad joke. I hadn’t meant for it to.
‘Anyway, I’m finally starting to understand.’
Let me organize the information the prophet’s avatar had given me.
Summary of Revelations
1. Most gods of this otherworld were wiped out by Ragnarok.
2. The curses on Bicorns and other god races were Odin’s mercy to save them from that destruction.
3. Lifting the curse on a racial scale would require power on Odin’s level.
4. According to the prophet’s prophecy it should have been resolved long ago, but the prophecy went off track.
5. Given the circumstances, a true racial-level resolution may be impossible forever.
──This is the crucial information for Veronica. Must write it down.
6. I can partially lift the Bicorn curse, but cannot solve it at the root.
7. The restriction on human rune magic exists because Odin had a specific purpose in mind.
8. The Compilation Battalion most likely ruined Odin’s plan and twisted it for their own use.
9. That is why, before and after the Great War, the Prophet secretly warned her people of the Compilation Battalion’s danger before she died.
My head throbbed like hell. Maybe it was because I had absorbed so many critical revelations in a row. There was simply too much information; forgetting any of it would be easy. Still, the important parts were shocking enough that I probably wouldn’t forget at least half.
─Tap.
I closed the notebook. The goal had crystallized. All the scattered purposes and knowledge now felt fused into one clear objective.
‘Stay wary of the Compilation Battalion while hunting for information on them.’
If I explored the sealed memories of Yerna, I should be able to get a rough outline of what those bastards were up to these days. Since she had been the one running for her life, she would know far more than I did. The new keyword—Divine Throne—was also worth looking forward to.
‘……My work here is finished.’
Question time was over. Asking about the Divine Throne now would be worse than useless. Even after hearing about the successor, the avatar’s reaction had been faint. It clearly possessed no knowledge on either subject.
‘For that, searching Odin’s or Yerna’s memories will be faster.’
Thinking that, I prepared to leave and asked one final question.
“Prophet? Lifting the Bicorn curse won’t trigger Ragnarok Season 2 for them, will it?”
My descendants and I are merely remnants of the god race, not the god race itself. The prophecy of destruction I witnessed has already been fulfilled, so it will not repeat. Should something similar occur, it would not be repetition of the past but an entirely new future.
I felt a little relieved. If I lifted the curse only for them to get hit with a “Final Destination” style death, even my mentality would shatter. Considering historical turning points like World War II or three consecutive catastrophes, it still felt too early to feel completely at ease, but at least resolution and death didn’t seem directly chained together in one sequence. That fact probably wouldn’t bring much comfort to Veronica or the other Bicorns, though.
“Is there any other important knowledge I should hear or keep in mind?”
The important knowledge I can provide has all been conveyed orally.
It seemed the avatar had run out of things to say. When you thought about it, the thing was basically a high-quality automatic responder. There must have been limits to how much the prophet could store inside it.
“There was a suspiciously ugly giant inside the barrier. You wouldn’t happen to know what that thing is, would you?”
Giant……
Loading. Loading. After thinking with that kind of feeling, the prophet’s avatar shook its head.
There is no related knowledge. I am sorry.
“No. Well, that’s fine.”
If it wasn’t even in the avatar’s hard drive, there was nothing to be done. It had probably loaded only the information necessary to form its body, like magical knowledge, and hadn’t bothered including trivial details such as the biological classification of the giant race. After five thousand years, information degradation was possible too.
I had learned everything I could learn. If necessary, I could always come back. Unlike in movies, the cave wasn’t going to collapse the moment we left.
“Then we’ll take our leave.”
I lifted the still-lying Veronica with both arms. Fire resistance had of course been applied to her as well, but I had still left her on that hot, jagged floor while we talked, so my conscience was far from comfortable.
O child of chaos who harbors great possibilities. Please return safely. I shall always wait here for the day of your next visit.
The prophet’s avatar gave a polite bow, then began dissolving into particles of light from its feet.
─Flash!
Once the avatar’s image vanished, only the stone monument remained behind. It said it would wait for the day I visited. If it wasn’t me, would it stay here for another five thousand, ten thousand years until someone else came to help?
Thinking that, I felt it was fortunate the avatar hadn’t been given a proper personality. It was merely an image that spat out memorized information in response to questions or reactions. I gazed for a moment at the past of the mythical prophet who had only ever been backstabbed by fate, feeling a touch of sadness, then offered the minimum courtesy of a bow before turning away.