The memories of Boreas appeared to him like an ocean, they were massive, but when he touched them, they were not deep and oddly empty. Something was holding him back, a barrier he had hoped would not be present, but who was he kidding, there was no way everything he wanted would be presented to him on a silver platter.
His father was smarter than that. Like any good weapon, he had placed safeguards in the memories of Boreas. Rowan would have done the same thing.
He swept his mind over the ocean of memories and received a multitude of sensations and Intents, dozens of them. He parsed through each of them and enriched himself with a deeper understanding of the god.
Although what he discovered next was surprising, he could not say it was unexpected. From the surface memories he collected, he immediately discovered that Boreas was not complete.
What he had killed was indeed Boreas, this was his Divine Spark after all, but an essential part of him had been stripped away, and he no longer had access to it. This was the case for the rest of the gods of Trion.
What was left here were more like figureheads, given enough power to make them appear strong to the rest of the universe, while their true abilities had been locked somewhere.
It was possible for his father to kill any of the gods if he wanted to and simply replace them with 'another Boreas' or 'another Kuranes,' if he wanted to. In fact, Rowan did not doubt that he might have done this more than once with some of the gods.
Boreas had been slowly growing insane inside this area that was rife with extra-dimensional energy of Destruction, and one reason he could survive for so long was his varied Intent that soothed his Spirit and purified his soul.
Since such a power was unique to Boreas, then Rowan could infer that some of the other gods might not be able to do the same. Perhaps when some of them went insane beyond any hope of recovery, his father could simply replace them. Their true core was not here.
He had come to realize that what his father valued from the gods were their powers and not their intellect. Rowan had stolen the mind of Boreas, but his true body and power were out of reach.
This caused the memories Rowan got to be just what he could skim from the surface, if he wanted to do more he would have to push through an ephemeral barrier that connected Boreas to the rest of the gods.
The best method to describe this phenomenon was that the gods of Trion were a sort of hive mind. The majority of their consciousness could not be accessed by them, and only the surface layer of their mind was their own.
Rowan did not know which fate was worse, was it to be a puppet and be unaware of it, or to be a puppet who was aware that its independence was limited, and everything it had could be taken away with a tug of the leash?
Immediately Rowan saw the similarities between the gods and Andar. Despite the fact that he had given Andar a large part of his independence at first, the truth was that before Rowan gave him his freedom, he had been the true core of that child.
Even if Andar had perished Rowan would have found ways to resurrect or collect all the benefits the boy had labored over.
This was the power of a Reflection. This was the cursed legacy of his father. The gods of Trion were simply programming casually played by his father. In many ways, he was not so different from his father, only his Will of Truth had begun to separate him from his foul legacy.
Without his Will, he would have never been able to truly see how deeply he was falling, and he might have found himself in a situation where he could no longer separate himself and the man he wished to kill.
'Focus on the reason you are here. There will be time for you to search your consciousness and rid yourself of any latent dangers hidden in your psyche.'
®
Boreas had become a High god with the deaths of countless Dominators with high levels of power who were carrying his bloodline, but the real benefits of all those deaths were not channeled to him but to his Divine Kingdom.
Rowan could see the trick that was being played here. The core of a normal god was their Divine Spark, but for Boreas, the core of his power was his missing Divine Kingdom.
His father had placed him in a vault, while he had taken his Divine Kingdom.
One of the reasons Rowan could easily kill Boreas was that he had access to his Divine Spark and did not have to fight against the Divine Kingdom of a High god; this battle had only one outcome when Boreas had been crippled in such a manner.
His Divine Kingdom still existed, but it had been taken away, and Rowan could not find it because details of where it resided were hidden deep inside the hive mind.
The hive mind could as well be called the mind of his father. Rowan was so close to the man and if he pushed further into the ocean of memories, he might be able to excavate a lot of secrets.
The idea was tempting, but he held himself back. He had his plans and he would follow, doing that act would be a direct challenge, and without more information on his foe, he would fail to succeed.
The hunter was patient. He needed an opening to gain access to this Hive mind, and perhaps the key could be found when he finished scouring through the mind of Boreas.
He could not hope to unravel the mysteries of Trion in a single move, but learning from Boreas memories would have to do.
Rowan hoped to understand the reason for the decision his father made, and he plunged deeper into the memories available to him, zipping along the tumultuous highway of the long life of a god until he reached the beginning of what he could access without plunging deeper into the hive mind of the gods.
This portion of his memories was disordered, likely because the true owner of this memory was long dead and Boreas remembered only little bits of this past life.
Rowan discovered that a greater part of Boreas's life had been spent inside the vault, and now Rowan knew the complete name for it.
The Vault of Hekaton.
Rowan shivered in excitement as he discovered the opening he was looking for. The vault was one part of a seven-part key to unlock a place of mystery that was unknown to Boreas and the rest of the Trion gods.
Hekaton was the name of his brother. This Ancient being had been born seven hundred million years ago, and for the greater part of his life, he had existed as a massive storm that stretched for more than a million miles, his presence was so vast that it reached outer space and influenced the movements of the moons.
