Algernon Black

(Chapter 70) Violence's End

The band of first years used their own hues of magic to light up the dark tunnels. It cast an array of colors onto the jagged cave walls and close above stalagmites.

Algernon stationed himself at the back of the group where he could inadvertently follow Lucy's every step without anyone noticing, though that didn't work on the most perceptive first year.

"Thinking anything interesting, Algernon?" Pecilia accused, striding beside him with arms crossed.

Her condemnation didn't go lost on him. "No."

"You know, if you're going to keep this up you're going to need to lie better." Pecilia scuffed. "And get a better poker face."

Algernon's shoulders sank but he kept his expression and tone emotionless. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" Pecilia spurred with more surliness than usual. "Then you won't mind if I go have a chat with little Lahue over there?" She didn't wait for a reply before starting forward only stopping by Algernon's hand on her arm.

"Pecilia." Algernon pleaded, trying to find the right words. The ones he himself still didn't have. "Just..." He trailed off glancing over to Lucy, and it told Pecilia everything she already knew. The things Algernon was just about figuring out for himself.

Pecilia jerked her arm away, disgusted by these men's lack of manors. "Don't touch me," She scathed. "And keep away from her with whatever sliver of humanity you have," Pecilia looked Algernon up and down, rightfully accusing him and finishing her tirade when she added, "You sad little cold boy."

Pecilia marched ahead as Algernon watched her join Lucy and Freya. He worried about what she might say but held back, knowing that interfering would be the exact thing that turned her threat into action.

"How much longer do you think until we reach the center?" Pecilia asked, her arms and mood still crossed.

"Some time or less." Freya chimed, munching on another treat.

Pecilia softly glared at Freya. "You're really not cute."  The end of the insult suddenly reverberated deep into a part of the cave they couldn't yet see and Lucy chased the diminishing cute around the last bend of the tunnel to the center of the mountain.

The very last echoes of Pecilia's words bounced around the huge hollowed-out center of the cave. The rounded walls were so high she couldn't see the top but sunlight illuminated the dirt red rock by reflecting through a small steady waterfall falling from some unseen point in the ceiling onto a four-pointed star of the gods. Each end of the star was tilted to trickle water into the open palms of the most magnificent monuments of the four gods Lucy had ever beheld. Carved so high they were the height of small mountains themselves, the stone gods faced one another, and the rest of the waterfall fell through the center of the star. The group was mesmerized to say the least and climbed the small steps of the circle platform to gawp up at the deities. A small pool formed at their feet from where a crack in their palms leaked water. Lucy looked down to her reflection where she could see the goddess of light staring up at her. 

The goddess' mass of round curls was adorned with a crown made from the sun, and her calm stare looked like a mother putting a child to bed. Lucy just about reached the height of her ankle and wholeheartedly knew they could only be forged by a vessel of the gods.

"I read that this was the last place man ever met with the gods," Jasper elucidated from the god of destruction's feet, his voice not echoing as Pecilia's had but sucked into the waterfall. "Maybe they just never left."

The entire group would have agreed with him if they had their sense of self back. The monuments were so lifelike and built to flawless perfection that if they came alive at that moment none would be surprised. Lucy was the first to turn from the gods to notice the one human-sized statue they had all overlooked. Knelt on the floor with his back bent and arms stretched behind him to receive the endless geyser of water was a man wearing a king's crown. Water poured over him, and Lucy knelt down to his level. His eyes stared straight ahead like he was accepting this burden with all his strength. She had never seen struggle so clearly expressed in the features of any man as she did in the stone statute and though he seemed so vulnerable, so human, so unlike the legend of the man turned to god, Lucy knew she was looking at King Leviathan. And for the first time, she wasn't seeing an interpretation of the last good king, she was seeing the real him as authentically as if the king had cast himself in plaster then knelt beneath the waterfall where his stone stature protected one thing from the endless fall of water, a rock tablet with carved words that Lucy had to squint to read. But some voice, other than her own mixed with her inner dialogue and came to say,