Lucien stepped forward, the straight disposition of his eyebrows and mouth contorting to a more exaggerated, tense state.
"You... you can't be serious. We can't go back home?"
His eyelids were violently twitching, the refraction of a tear glistening as it trailed down along his cheek.
Soon, like the opening of a dam, Liora's previously detached expression turned to one of solemnity, the pooling of her tears forming its own rapids that tugged on the integrity of Rowan's soul, a blue, dark sensation oozing from his sternum.
"No... this can't be real..." she cried, bringing her hands up to her face to cover her eyes and bits of her mouth.
Kaia's fire was diminished, her eyes relaxed as she simply looked down, her lower lip caught between her teeth, a trail of blood originating from her canine teeth.
Elias turned his head away, tiny droplets of water hanging in the air where his eyes were from the sudden shift in force.
Rowan was the only one who stood unimpeded, his focus of attention on the king.
"I understand how you lot must feel, and I offer my deepest condolences. However, I assure you that you may yet return to your homelands."
The four heroes all turned to the king, eyes wide with gratuitous expression as their one stiffened bodies received a second breath, throwing themselves forward to inch closer and closer to the king.
"How," Lucien inquired, raising open palms to accentuate his questioning.
"While the Gods have given us the minimum number of runes for a Tenth Sigil, it is said that a portal opened by the Gods themselves would allow the heroes home's refuge, the door back home only opened once the hero's duty is fulfilled." The king explained, his eyes closed and mouth wide as he smiled through his speech.
"The hero's duty?" Lucien asked, his eyebrows grubbed with anxiety.
The king stepped forward, laying his hand on Lucien's shoulder.
"To restore balance to the Way."
Wait, that sounds familiar!
A couple of them tried but failed to withhold a small gasp of laughter, the air clawing its way from their lungs.
Hah, so the others also know about Star Wars.
Lucien—his demeanor still calm—simply looked on with scrutiny, backing up a couple paces and diminishing contact with Viral.
"And how exactly are we supposed to do that," Lucien followed up with, his eyes vying for some type of answer, "if you didn't notice, we're just a group of teenagers or young adults. What is it that makes us different?"
The king opened his eyes, his fingers relaxing as he again stepped forward, closing the distance between the two.
"It is prophesized that the heroes are the only quadra-resonants in existence, wielding four of the seven Ways individually."
All five of the heroes let out an audible gasp, the king's words a thundering bellow in the most arduous of stormy nights.
Like the crashing of cymbals eviscerating your eardrums and echoing a hollow ring in your disorientation, the surrounding environment entered a wave motion, solid objects blurring together to form abstract delusions of the mind.
This is it! This is my isekai!
"Okay, and how do we know which 'Ways' we have?" asked Kaia, her left hand raised with a resounding pump as her skin stretched and wore, her veins almost tearing their way out and walking away.
"Yes, that is what I was about to get into," Viral replied, raising his arm to direct a forward motion with his pointer finger, "you see, it'll take a little bit of time to procure a resonance matrix due to how... stretched thin our supply of gauging devices is, but you heroes can receive grimoires right now."
As promptly as the king spoke, a man ventured from the halls with a cloaked device in tow.
The machine was bulky, towering the person carrying it by cart by several shoulders, with four legs that stood five feet apart respectively.
While the size of the thing was already grounds for astonishment, what most stood out was the same feeling of tiny needles coyly tacking away at the skin, the tingling dulling Rowan's senses to such a degree that the light taps of his heartbeat turned into violent thuds.
Touching his hand to his chest, it felt as if his ribcage would erupt, a sledgehammer timing its strikes with the battering of his heart.
No, it wasn't fair to say that he felt his heart pounding because his senses were dulled—there was a genuine horror felt in the thing's presence, like solid death's cold embrace.
The man brought the machine in front of them, the waving black cover succumbing to gravity and laying still. The king laid his hand on the cover, gripping it tightly as a 'swoosh' swished through the air.
Rowan opened his eyes even further as his jaw hung freely, the feeling of a tall skyscraper enervating all animation in his joints as a dark shadow loomed over him.
There was a large chasm built of a golden material, the many different weaving paths creating the illusion of a full sphere. With this came small engravements in varying abstract fractals along the metal.
The constitution of a single engraving encompassed what seemed to be millions of smaller engravements, Rowan's mind unable to properly process all the information as he perused the designs deeper.
However, the space between each interwoven stretch of metal revealed something even more grandeur as it hardly struggled to peek through.
There stood—or rather, floated—a large, radiant crystal ball. Somehow, the ball was positioned directly in the middle of the chasm with no railing to support it against its own weight, giving it a sluggish inertia.
The same feeling of dread that Rowan had originally felt being amplified to its maximum intensity as he looked on at the source.
He believed this feeling to be arcana, but why was it this crystal ball had so much of it?
"This is what this world refers to as a god glass, vestiges of their heavenly decree." The king explained, tapping on one of the many strips of metal covering the ball.
The ball thrummed in response, shifting back from the impulse ever so slightly.
"And this is what grants all the inhabitants of this world their grimoires, conduits of the Way. Now, may each of you heroes step forward to receive your grimoires?" the king asked, his eyes in pursuit of the first person to come forth.
"Now hold on, you still haven't really told us what grimoires are," Elias responded, the humor in his tone and expression forcing a little laugh to escape Rowan's mouth.
"Yeah, why do I have to step near that death trap?" Kaia added on, her pointer finger aimed at the glistening 'god sphere,' the surrounding shroom of aura resonating from it a deep 'hrmmmm.'
"I know I've been asking a lot of you, heroes, but this is absolutely necessary not only to your future success, but your survival in this world as well. If you still find yourself uncomfortable with coming near the device, then let me demonstrate its function."
The king twisted around to the opposite direction, his fists balled as he made his way to the god sphere.
With each passing step, the thrumming of the ball shifted its pitch and intensity. At first, it'd had a simple hum, the sound a pleasant one. But as the king got within just a few paces of the sphere, its hum transformed into a low shrill.
Unwavering, Viral stuck out his right arm, his fingers spread and palm open.
Rowan's eyes burned with white-hot pain as the room instantly lit up in a bright light, the spontaneity of such a stimulus retiring his ability to react.
As Rowan just barely followed suit and covered his eyes with both hands, the deep ache that had made itself home behind his eyes was one he tried to rub out, hoping to at least alleviate the time it would take for his eyes to adjust.
But the surging discomfort diminished as quickly as it had sprouted, the ambient light evaporating into smaller, more manageable units of luminosity that floated out and about in the air.
Rowan rubbed his eyes one more time, half-expecting the residual pains to be rubbed out like an irritant caught in your eyelashes, but decided out of curiosity to peek through his right hand along his original prime focus.
"What?" yelled the five of them heroes, all of them tilting their heads up with folded arms leaning back behind themselves as they looked on at the scene playing out just ahead of them.
There was a bright light yet, its illumination even greater than the original blast that had discombobulated Rowan.
However, it was confined to a smaller space, bearing a small, thin line that extended from the king's chest to the closest end of the sphere, almost like that of a tether.
"You come before me again, feeble human?"
Rowan jutted back so far that he almost fell on his back, the deep growl a cruel surprise to his ears.
With each passing word the sphere grumbled, its surrounding light pulsed in intensity.
"Yes, your heavenly eminence. I seek your continued guidance, hopefully to aid the uninitiated in this room."
The sphere's pulses slowed, its low grumbles so resonant they rumbled the ground.
"Hm... I wonder... how about no? You and your ancestors have already resolved to make me service only the royal family, rotting away in a room as I wait for your next of kin. After a thousand years or so, it gets sickening. As such, I will not respond to anything you request of me unless it's absolutely necessary."
The king's eye twitched, a forced smile on his face as he stationed himself on one knee, tilting his head down.
"Oh, Great One, had I known you felt such offense, I would've motioned for your appeasement ages ago. What is it you seek?"
The sphere laid still, its pulses slowing to resemble that of a heartbeat.
"Hah, as long as you understand how much you need me. At which case, I implore you to put me next to the throne at all times, never to be removed."
The king stayed silent for a couple seconds, his face unmoving.
"It is done," Viral responded, a smile on his face.
Suddenly, the thread tethering the king and the sphere lit up, small orbs of energy sizzling out into the air as the light dissipated into the abyss.
"As you heroes can see, the sphere will do you no harm. It is perfectly safe to speak to it," the king remarked as he propped himself up with his right arm, stepping back from the sphere and turning back towards them.
"Now then, who shall go first?"
Flagging his open palms with his fingers to motion a 'come,' Lucien was the first to step up, his chest unnaturally puffed out.
"I will do it."
The king stepped past Lucien, patting him on the shoulder.
"Great, then do as I showed and raise your hand forth."
The king took refuge in the same line as the other heroes, all of them drawing their attention towards Lucien's silent approach by an invisible force of gravity.
"Ah, a hero. Has that time already come?" the sphere stated, the same tether beginning to form between itself and Lucien.
"What is this?" Lucien inquired, eyes wide with confusion and lips trembling.
"Ah, you're referencing this little patch of light connecting us? This is a soul thread, the thing that allows the human body to interact with the Way."
"A soul thread?" Lucien remarked as he reached out to touch the soul thread, his nose wrinkled by the rigid expression on his face.
"Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that—"
"Ahhhh!"
An electrical surge came over Lucien as the putrid scent of burnt flesh encumbered Rowan's sense of smell, the resultant shock lighting up the entire throne room.
"What did I say? Humans aren't meant to physically interact with their soul. Pulling on your soul thread would be like trying to directly yank a nerve out of your body—only worse because it screams back at you."
Lucien was bubbling at the mouth, his eyes white and limbs loose as he laid on his stomach. Seeing him in such a sorry state was a little bit of a hard watch, that was for sure.
"Hah, this one's a funny one. I think I like him!" the god sphere said with sarcasm, its pulsing lights even brighter than usual.
Vrrrmmmm!
Suddenly, another bright light began to coalesce at the still-unconscious Lucien's hip, floating in the air in a weirdly square shape.
"Hm, that's an interesting grimoire," the god sphere spoke, the tether between the two dissipating into the atmosphere.