Surviving The Fourth Calamity

Hill hesitated for a moment before he grasped Lynn's meaning.

In Toril, with its myriad deities and powers, the chaos was terrifying. With so many incidents in The North over the past two years, he was extremely cautious about getting involved and paid hardly any attention to the troubles elsewhere.

What Lynn must have been referring to was Sambia, near the Meteor Sea in the southeastern corner of the Ferun Great Land, which was simply too far away for Hill to concern himself with.

In fact, it was because he knew that no matter what games the deities played, Toril would still exist for at least another hundred years. As for the civilians who suffered because of the squabbles between these deities, Hill could not even guarantee the safety of those around him.

He had heard about those issues, and that was all he could do - just another helpless sigh.

But Lynn was different from Hill; he paid close attention to anything that could affect the survival of Toril.

Indeed, that incident had put the entire world on alert against Suren.

In the year 73, a high priest of the Shadow Souls from Shaer infiltrated Yehong City, where the Church of the All Gods held absolute supremacy, to search for a Divine Artifact called "A Thousand Petals in One Night." There, he clashed fiercely with the Suren Church.

Unexpectedly, under Suren's instructions, her church abandoned resistance, allowing Shaer's high priest to successfully steal "A Thousand Petals in One Night."

This directly led to another of Shaer's priestesses using the artifact to summon the Shadow Storm in year 74, which not only completely destroyed the capital of Sambia but also nearly turned the whole of Toril into nothingness.

During that time, Hill was busy with the affair of the Dragon Egg; once he had heard of the event, that was the end of it.

In his impression, Toril faced existential threats periodically; it wasn't worth his concern.

It's no wonder that even though Shaer noticed that an avatar of Suren had come to Hill's side, she merely inquired about Suren's intentions, rather than taking direct action.

Hill had thought that Shaer was too preoccupied with plotting against Mystra to care about these matters, but could it be that she owed her sister a favor?

Leaving aside whether the world would end or not, that "A Thousand Petals in One Night," a high-grade artifact of the Shadow Series, was indeed very useful to Shaer.

The artifact would make her unstoppable in the Shadow Realm.

No one knew Suren's motives. For an observer like Hill, the only significance of this matter was that it allowed a church known as the Crescent Covenant to sprout anew after being eradicated by the Suren Church long ago.

The Suren Church had already destroyed nearly all records related to the Crescent Heresy and the Crescent Covenant, but Suren's inexplicable noninterference allowed many to pick up the theory that "Suren and Shaer are actually the same deity representing different aspects."

The destruction of a national capital means the death of countless innocents; it was only someone like Lynn who would consider this, while others might be more concerned with whether this newly reborn sect would be destroyed once again, just like Hill.

It would demand a reevaluation of many things, such as whether Shaer and Suren could truly never coexist.

If Suren were to start making concessions to Shaer on certain matters, nobody knew whether the sisters would end up joining forces in the end.

Hill lowered his head and said no more. Although he could understand Lynn's hatred for the Goddess of the Silvermoon, he was completely unable to empathize with the feeling.

He was like an ordinary person on a business trip in a war-torn area, primarily concerned with the safety of himself, family, and friends; misfortunes that befell others were met only with brief lamentations, nothing more.

"As long as she is willing to take action, that's good," Lynn muttered. "It at least proves that her leniency is only toward her twin sister and not because she has grown sympathetic to darkness."

Hill glanced at Lynn and realized that he truly believed it.

This was the meaning of the 'Genesis Twin Moons.' The Toril people could tolerate the one bright and one dark of the sisters but could never accept both succumbing to darkness.

Perhaps they also understood that, though AO was the Creator God, it was these sisters who were the source of light and earth, the symbol of Primordial Power, never to truly fall.

Hill touched his ring, changing the subject. "They were all very obedient this time. I thought you'd have to stay down there for a long time to get them all sorted out!"

Lynn looked up and smiled. "Hill, that's a legendary Priest armed with Divine Artifacts ascending from a cataclysm.

For the Toril people, to have a place to escape such a terrible disaster is incredibly rare.

They will cherish it and will not risk being expelled,

In the past, when faced with the possibility of a city's destruction due to a clash between deities, apart from the most devout followers who might receive protection from powerful Temples, everyone else was left to fend for themselves.

The followers of Miliel were rather fortunate since our main god may not be of much use, but his temple is always next to the Temple of Knowledge.

Hill, I've spent centuries in the Silvermoon Alliance, and I had to seek refuge in the temple five or six times.

So, at times, I too feel that the common people of Toril suffer too much...

Elves do not interact with non-Professionals or even Low-level Professionals — I once thought they were just too arrogant but soon understood why after leaving there.

Human life is simply too fragile.

"So often, it's just a matter of leaving for ten years, and when you look back, the only thing left to see is their graves,"

His tone was filled with a lamentation of how things had changed and people had passed away. Hill blinked, suddenly reminded of a piece of information he had come across: the average lifespan of a human in Toril was about thirty years.

Even if one was an aristocrat, without personal strength, one could only possibly survive the dangers created by high-level professionals, and should deities intervene suddenly, complete annihilation was still possible.

Otherwise, why would Silvermoon City be so admirable, or Elaströ elevated to such a high status? The common people there, most of them could live to over forty years, and some could even see what old age looked like.

He felt he had picked another depressing topic.

Lynn shook his head, "It's my fault, these things have nothing to do with you, I shouldn't have spoiled your mood as well.

I've heard a bit about you from the Seraph. Being a descendant of the deities from Teraxil, you indeed should not interfere with the affairs of Toril."

Hill smiled, "Here in Toril, there's nothing much, it's just that the relationships between these deities are too complicated for me to understand, so it's best to stay out of it."

And one absolutely must not be greedy.

In the span of just a few years, he had seen so many divine artifacts in Toril!

Probably many have not seen as many as he had in these few years, even in their lifetimes of hundreds of years.

Hill suddenly remembered something and took out a piece of tattered cloth from his ring: "This... I got it while I was in Icewind Valley, and it should be a human portrait of the previous Mystra, likely a remnant from a conspiracy and betrayal that was disposed of as a useless magical curio."

"The one in Mis Zhunuo's Windsong Tower?" Lynn took it and frowned for a moment, "Sure enough, it's that one. How did the shadow souls get to Icewind Valley? Did they use a random dimensional gate?"

Lynn's thinking matched Hill's. Knowing that his magic ship was quite fast, it took half a month just to travel to and fro once from his location to the other side of the Supreme Wastes. It would take even longer to reach Icewind Valley.

And before he left, those shadow souls didn't have the slightest clue!

When Hill had acquired these things, he had made some inquiries, and that mayor had been collecting these things for at least a month.

Lynn held the portrait and pondered for a few minutes before standing up: "What they are looking for has been confirmed to be the upper scroll of the Nyscroll. The princes of Shade Soul City who failed to acquire the item will surely not keep it a secret anymore.

Now many people on the continent are searching for that victor, and many old creatures who have been hidden for thousands of years have emerged.

I'll send a message to the Harpist."

Lynn raised the fragment of the oil painting in his hand, "Do you still want this?"

"That's only useful to followers of the Goddess of Magic," Hill shook his head, "It would just clutter up my storage if I kept it. Why don't you sell it?"

Lynn laughed, "Of course, I'll definitely sell it for a good price for you!"

The words 'good price' said through gritted teeth made it clear to Hill that indeed, the deities of the Miliel faction had fallen out with Mystra, resulting in internal disputes within the Harpist, now at a stage where either they split or someone stepped out.

But the time scale of deities is different from that of humans, and it's unknown how long they would dispute before reaching a conclusion.

However, with the two subsequent falls of Mystra and the ultimate forsaking of her past beliefs, this dispute would also come to an end.

But, to embarrass Mystra while at the same time causing trouble for those folks in Shade Soul City was indeed a clever scheme, and it was what Hill had thought as well, but he could not do it himself.

After all, when he had gone to Silvermoon City, both Mystra and Elaströ had treated him kindly.

If it was only Elaströ, Hill felt that he might not have been so averse to this Goddess of Magic.

Suddenly, tremendous divine power fluctuations came from the sky in the East, and Hill couldn't help but stick his head out to look.

The silver moonlight exploded, and Suren had truly gone mad.

Had the necromancers of Santir Fortress dug up the graves of her original Holy City? It seemed plausible, as they had indeed passed by there on their way from the Supreme Wastes.

The priestesses and devotees of Suren were always very concerned with beauty, and even though their souls would become perfect and return to Suren's Divine Kingdom, they still did not like the idea of their bodies decaying, so they always used a secret method to preserve the immortality of their corpses.

The shadow canopy could indeed block the moonlight's protection from those graves.

Hill opened his mouth in awe; he saw a rare spectacle: Suren's battle mode, the furious War Goddess Celene.

A tall silver-haired female, clad in silver scale armor and wielding the April Scepter, was continuously emitting faint blue-white moonlight. With each swing of that heavy scepter, moonlight rays scythed through the shadow canopy below.

The Undead Tribe was striving to hack down the moonlight's radiance, but they were skirting around a half-circular shield of moonlight, within which was a group of female zombies with vacant expressions.