CH80

Ben immediately pulled Thera back into the woods before she could do anything.

“What are you doing?” She asked as he tugged her away. “Look at that, we’re almost done.”

“Thera that is 100% what people on earth would call a boss battle. I’d bet money we’re going to have to fight those six statues and the giant snake. It seems so on the nose I’m surprised we aren’t getting background music right now.” He could tell from far away that the statues were wrapped up in powerful enchantments, the same kind that filled the wall surrounding the trial. As much as he wanted to take a closer look and see how they compared to the ones on the outside, he also didn’t want to die.

Thera looked at him as he rambled on. “Okay, I understood about half of that. I can see why you think we’d need to fight the statues, but at the very least I don’t think we’ll need to fight the one of Anailia, it wouldn’t make sense for believers to have to fight their god.”

“Okay that tracks. Which one is Anailia then?” Ben hadn’t gotten a physical description of Theras god, and from here he doubted he’d be able to make out which was which anyway, at least until she told him what one it was. To him they all looked expressionless, their most noticeable aspects being how they were at least twice his height, and the giant swords they had on their backs.

“That’s easy, she’s the one in the middle. Maybe the rest are meant to be her guards or something?”

“That would make sense I guess… wait. The one in the middle?”

“Yeah that’s Anailia.”

“You worship a giant snake?”

“You worship a cube.”

“Touché. I just kind of figured she would resemble her race.”

“Why?” She asked him, and as he thought about it he realised he didn’t have a good answer.

“I guess I just assumed because most of the gods I can think of from my world had human forms or were at least portrayed as human.”

“Just how many gods does your world have?”

“That’s a bit of a loaded question. Let’s get back to it after we deal with this. What do you think we should do?”

”Well I don’t exactly think we can just attack immediately. If they are just statues then I don’t really want to desecrate the area when we’re this close to being done. No offence but I’m not looking to get a level of sacrilege.”

“None taken, you’ve got a point. Maybe I’m just being a bit paranoid. Still, we should at least be at the ready. Worst to worst we can try and grab the flower then book it out of there. I’ll take my wins however I can get them.”

“Works for me, I’ll at least try and be ready to prepare a spell as fast as I can if you can help take some of the load off of my staff. Even with my earth magic level improving I don’t want to risk being without one if we have to fight.”

“Sounds good to me.” He took her hand and connected to her while hanging onto her staff, ready at any moment to start strengthening it as needed and repairing the sacrificial enchantments on it. With the benefit of an extra mind in his head, he suspected he would be able to make them significantly easier and faster.

With nothing else they could think to do without the risk of earning the god’s wrath should they be wrong they started walking out.

The clearing was large and they were far enough away that it would take a couple minutes to get there, but when they were about halfway all of the statues except Anailias turned their heads towards them.

“Creepy and not a good sign,” Ben muttered to Thera.

“They haven’t moved yet though. They’re just watching us.”

“I’m just saying that if we had boss music playing in the background this would be the part where it starts singing in Latin or something.”

“I still have no idea what any of that means.”

“Just that I’m feeling more and more like we’re going to be attacked.”

“Only one other part of the trial had anything that tried to fight us. It might be fine.”

“Mm.”

They ventured closer and each statue seemed to make a decision. As one, they all reached to their backs and pulled out their weapons before taking steps towards them.

“Unless you think they’ll let us run away I’m pretty sure we have to start fighting now.”

Thera didn’t give an answer, instead she responded by pulling together a spell, ripping a spear of stone from the earth and launching it at the head of the closest one.

It looked good and she was feeling confident, with her earth magic better than it had ever been and Ben to maintain her equipment she thought that taking out six statues would be simple, but in one smooth motion it took its sword and slashed the spear in half, neither of which made any contact with the statue itself.