God Has Not Descended

The Sky Temple was finished at last, but only after setback upon setback. Counting the years spent before that as well, more than a decade had gone by before it stood complete.

This hall of the divine had consumed more than half the strength of the Yinsai Kingdom, and Yesael's own heart's labor. Now it stood just as its name promised, as though it rose into the very sky.

It was a great wonder beyond imagining, a hall fit for none to dwell in but the divine, and the divine's own servants.

Yesael lifted his head, and his gaze pierced the sea of clouds to catch a single corner of the Sky Temple.

"It is finished at last."

His heart uneasy, he passed along the road that rose like a stairway into heaven.

On either flank of the mountain, colossal statues had been carved hundreds of meters tall, two kings each down on one knee, welcoming the divine being's descent.

Only the King of Yinsai, and God, might ever walk this road.

Anyone else who wished to climb had no choice but to take the smaller path running alongside it.

Now Yesael made his way up this very road, excitement and unease rising together in his chest until he could scarcely catch his breath.

He gazed up at the Sky Temple high above, longing in his eyes, and murmured under his breath, "God..."

"Do You see it? This is my gift to You."

"Like my father Redlichia before me, I worship You with all my devotion."

He stepped into the temple, and stood, full of hope, at the very center of the magnificent hall.

Inside the temple there was nothing at all, save the exquisite statue standing tall.

In the first year, the King went to the Sky Temple to listen for divine oracle. God did not come.

In the second year, Yesael knelt beneath the statue.

"God, if You have heard my prayer, then grant me a revelation, I beg You!"

"Yesael listens for Your will, and accepts every guidance and every design You lay upon my fate."

Once again the King went to the Sky Temple to listen for divine oracle. God did not come.

By the tenth year, the sun in the sky rose out of the east and went down the far side, and the stars came out in the dark.

In the darkness Yesael knelt alone within the hall, grown slowly old with the years.

"God has not come!"

In despair and helplessness Yesael looked up at the statue within the Sky Temple. It was nothing like the statue his father had carved. That one had been mysterious and warm, like the light of the stars.

This one, the statue carved by his own hands, was majestic, and towering.

"Have I truly done wrong?"

"God, if I have erred, then give me some sign of it. Or punish me."

He knelt beneath the statue, his voice choked with tears.

"Please, do not... please, do not abandon us."

At that very moment the High Priest of the Sky Temple, Schlode, stepped out suddenly and came to stand behind Yesael.

He bent low in humility, and knelt there behind him.

"My King, God has not abandoned us. He has always been here."

Yesael turned his head back. "Have you heard God's revelation again?"

Schlode gazed upon the statue, wild with fanatical fervor.

"God has granted me a divine technique. This, and this alone, is God's revelation."

"God is unwilling to descend, and the cause is the sinful people. God punished them into the Demon Abyss, and they dared to flee it without leave."

"They fled the Demon Abyss, and disturbed the very domain of God."

"Only when they are rooted out entirely, and driven back into the Demon Abyss, will God look upon us with favor again."

He had served as High Priest for many years now, and he held sway over the Sky Temple itself and the mighty city. In all but name he had become a man of power in the Yinsai Kingdom second only to the King.

His whole bearing had grown mysterious and ethereal, and even his speech had taken on the loftiness of one high above, laced with a power that could bend the hearts of those who heard it.

Again and again he made a show of being the one who received God's revelation, saying he was the priest God had chosen.

What he could least bear to accept, naturally, was any talk that God had abandoned the people of Yinsai.

If God had abandoned the people of Yinsai, then what was he, the High Priest of the Sky Temple? What was he, the one who received God's own revelation?

He could not bear it.

A guardsman came hurrying in from the God-Descended City with news from the distant sea.

"My King, the sinful people have killed the lord of Xilong City. More than half its people have been slaughtered."

"By the time... by the time..." The guardsman was overcome with grief, as though among the dead were people they had known themselves.

"By the time the priest arrived, every last one of the sinful people had already fled."

"My King, too many of our people are dead!"

The sinful people ran rampant through the sea like beasts gone mad, seizing the fishing grounds of the trilobite men, and striking at their cities.

Over these years the fusion monsters had slaughtered more sinful people than anyone could count, and yet they only spread the more.

What was more, the sinful people had grown ever more cunning and vicious, slaughtering the people of the Yinsai Kingdom as though in vengeance, until matters stood as they did today.

There were only seven fusion monsters in all, and most of those were scattered among the coastal cities, which left them ill-equipped to strike deep and hold the sinful people back.

The people of the Yinsai Kingdom grew ever less willing to venture into the distant sea. One after another they fled back to the nearer waters, or up to the cities of the mainland, and little by little they lost their hold over the far seas entirely.

Should things go on this way, the ocean itself might one day belong not to the Yinsai Kingdom at all, but to these sinful people.

A minister at his side spoke up. "Those are the very waters that lie close to the God-Given Land. Should the sinful people God once punished come to hold them..."

He did not finish aloud, but Yesael knew well enough what a devastating blow that would be to his own authority.

It was then that the High Priest, Schlode, spoke up once again with a view of his own.

"My King, it is these sinful people who have disturbed the divine being. That is why God will not descend upon the Sky City."

"If we could but drive out these sinful people before God's own eyes, God would surely see it."

Yesael turned his head toward Schlode. He had meant to say something else, but some detail caught his eye, and he suddenly asked instead,

"Schlode, why have you not aged at all?"

Schlode answered in that mysterious, spellbinding voice of his. "My King."

"It is because of the divine technique the divine has granted me, the power of the Sun Cup."

The Sun Cup at his shoulder swayed, casting a golden play of light and shadow across his body, lending him an air both mysterious and sacred.

He had not known of it at first. Only recently had he discovered the secret hidden within it.

After fusing with the Sun Cup, he had himself become some manner of living being caught halfway between plant and animal.

The Sun Cup had lengthened his lifespan, and by his own reckoning he would live well over half again as long as an ordinary trilobite man.

He had long meant to display his divine technique before the King of Wisdom, and so win for himself still greater power and recognition.

He pressed Yesael further. "My King."

"This is a divine technique, the power of the Divine Cup."

"The Sun Cup is not merely a power God granted us to perfect our wisdom ability. It is more. It is the very elevation of life itself. Only by fusing wholly with the Divine Cup can one obtain the true power the divine has granted us."

"This is a miracle granted by God Yinsai Himself. More than that, it shows that His radiance has never once left us."

Yesael's body grew older with each passing day. He was no longer as hale as he once had been, no longer able to cross the sea with ease and throw himself into battle.

At first Yesael had felt a certain revulsion at this power, gained by planting some foreign thing within one's own body. Now, though, he found his heart stirred.

"It can truly be done?"

Schlode showed him his power then, the power of his symbiosis with the Sun Cup, and the divine technique, the Realm of Illusion.

"Drink of the Sun Cup, and you shall gain divine power."

"Fuse with the Sun Cup, and you shall dwell with God."

He unleashed his illusion, and the great hall turned into an ocean, the stone floor turned into the surface of the water.

Schlode walked forward across the water, and knelt before Yesael.

"My King, look."

"This is the very power God has granted us!"

"Like the Bestowing of Power, it is a divine technique that comes from God Himself."

"You are the King of Yinsai. The power God grants belongs to you by right."

"So long as... you are willing."