The Stonehearted Knight-Chapter 424: Much needed answers (2)

’She talks as if overcoming obstacles placed by the gods is that easy to do,’ Hex thought while listening to Medina. She skimmed through her challenges, downplaying them to luck and help from others. While that might be true, there was no denying it must have pushed her to the brink, and then over the limits Fate placed upon her. That too, without considering the childhood she had had.

"I am not telling you all this to gain sympathy or to justify the means I employed by the end of my life," Medina said. "This information is key to understanding the deities and the threat they pose to our world and lives."

"They are gone. Their wills waiting to be usurped by others vying to gain as many divinity crystals as possible," Hex countered. "Even if their wills are fused with the majority of life in the world."

"Are they gone?" Medina countered with a raised brow. Her gaze filled him with discomfort, for they implied what he suspected.

"They...They aren’t?" He asked, his heart sinking.

"Deities are the first rulers of this world. And knew Laws and Rules long before anyone else even sensed them. Even when in decline, they took measures to leave a chance of resurrection behind. This so-called End of Ages – you do know about it by now, don’t you? – is something they laid the seed of."

"The deities? Not the Divine Lord?" According to the text he browsed through, and the content of the Diary and the Scroll, he assumed the Divine Lord to be behind every major event occurring in the world.

"The Divine Lord has been vying for the Godking’s throne since it existed. He used every opportunity he perceived. Yes, He is driving the world toward that point but the point existed due to the unwillingness of the deities to fade out of existence."

"Is he really Wrixia’s little brother?" Hex asked. He looked around to ensure the barrier still held because he was inquiring about an existence he still couldn’t wrap his mind around.

"He is."

Short and direct.

"Who were the parents?" He knew Wrixia wasn’t created by the Godking. It just appeared during the creation of the world. At first, he had assumed the tree was created by chance, but the way the stories emphasized that the Godking didn’t create the Old One, he suspected much more to be behind the existence.

His mother fell silent for a bit. To his shock, he realized she was inspecting her Veil of Death, ensuring it still held as before. She smiled sheepishly – it wasn’t something he had seen her doing...ever.

"They don’t have parents in the normal sense," she started to explain. "They were created during a conflict between the Primordials: the blazing Phoenix and the Freezing Dragon."

"Who were they?!" Hex exclaimed in shock. The Godking wasn’t the first to create everything?

"They existed inside the Void. The first two. The only two. Nothing is known about them, for they ceased to exist even before the Godking came to be. It is said the Godking ventured into the Void to learn about them, which He wrote in the first Scroll of Writing, a copy of which exists inside the High Temple."

Apparently, the Godking used the majority of the Second Age and part of the Third Age to search for clues about those primordials. How Medina came to read the first scroll, she didn’t say. Hex sensed she skilfully skirted around that, which implied she used less than moral means to do so. He didn’t force it.

"Their existence and their clashes against each other produced wounds, blood, and ripped-off flesh, out of which the Godking appeared. At first, without sentience. Only when the Phoenix turned into the sun and the Dragon into the moon, did he start to gain His own Will, prompting him to create something between the two: the world.

But as the world was created with energy and remnants of those two, life appeared, without the Godking Willing it, the first of which is the Old One, or the first tree named later Wrixia. The Divine Lord appeared alongside it, only a step slower."

It was a lot to digest. The secrets behind the rich history of the world and all life fascinated Hex, yet worried him. The constraint on time, which was running out judging from the trembling barrier, he couldn’t mull over each word. It would take time. But a few things struck him.

"Did the Godking create the Method to rival the power of the Primordials?"

"Yes," Medina said, a bright smile blossoming on her face. "You guessed it right. The Godking, like all the other deities, realized He too was running out of power. Slower, as His power exceeded all others, but it was indeed happening to Him too. His powers, however, didn’t recover as much through humans as He had hoped. So, what started off as curiosity became His obsession. And His fall." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

She glanced at the barrier.

"One more question for today. That old bastard is sweeping through His domain. A few minutes more and He will discover the abnormality."

There was a lot to ask. So much remained shrouded in mystery and secrets. But he zoned in on the one thing that bothered him ever since his first visit to the library.

"Did you marry into the Godric clan to gain their bloodline? And am I...the son of that family?"

Her eyes answered his question before her mouth did.

"Smart as I believe myself to be, I can’t rival the primordial powers. Creating a new Godking would be impossible without the blueprint to build on. And that bloodline gave me exactly that. So, yes. And yes, in a way, you are one of the two last heirs of the Godking’s family."

"The Crown Prince is still alive?! Or his heir?" Hex realized at once who the other heir was. That much he could infer. He hadn’t expected the Crown Prince to have continued his bloodline. The empire had been destroyed. And his master had lived in solitude in Grindeston.

"He is alive, only, he isn’t called the Crown Prince anymore. Now, he is the leader of the Paladins."