Sylver Seeker Book 8
Chapter 2 (293) - Be Witched
Now that he had a plan, or at least something that could theoretically be a synonym for a plan, Sylver had calmed down somewhat.
And chose not to dwell on his many many shortcomings that showed themselves during what could have been a very informative conversation.
Regardless of everything else, as the only adult in the room it was his responsibility to keep things civil, and on track, blaming that woman for anything would be like blaming a dog for vomiting on the carpet.
From a certain angle, sure, she didn’t know who Sylver was to treat his word as the highest truth to ever exist when it came to demons, and he no longer had a proven track record that stretched further than the existence of her country, possibly even her continent, and she was being advised by people that couldn’t see the depth of the gaping chasm in their knowledge, but…
It was a fucking stupid situation.
In the past he wouldn’t have even bothered talking to her after he saw the demon lord, he would have told her to leave, and would have put a hole in her skull if she even seemed to hesitate to drop everything and leave.
This was a demon lord.
The Ibis had permanently sealed up realms because of a single demon lord, these things could kill gods, and while Sylver wasn’t particularly fond of Eira’s gods, it would cause massive problems if too many of them died too fast.
Forget the gods, demon lords in the past stopped their planets from spinning, floods, earthquakes, winters that lasted for generations, poisoned the air and water, and the key word in everything was that all of it was irreversible...
This wasn’t just something he read about in old dusty books like everyone else, Sylver heard it straight from the mouths of people who witnessed everything firsthand. People who lived through the gravity in their realm suddenly doing a 180.
Admittedly, some demon lords weren’t as bad as others, but the best case scenario was all out war that threatened to wipe out humanity, forget finding Ibis members at that point, just surviving would be a challenge.
The group to bring back the float-boat consisted of Sylver, Nels, Prune, Allson, and Figment.
Allson’s presence was self explanatory, he was the only one who knew how to operate the float-boat, Prune was here because she volunteered to lead the expedition, and Figment was picked to help Allson with the adjustments that Nels was going to calculate.
Sylver was responsible to keep everyone safe until they reached Halost, and because his magic was the most suitable for it, he was also the one responsible for getting everyone to the float-boat through the snow.
After a bit of trial and error, he ended up using [Black Mass] to push a tendril through the snow and then expand it, similar to how Mora did it, but not as fast or elegant.
Instead of just sealing the tunnel up with regular snow, he sealed the tunnel behind them with a white mushroom that would prevent the tunnel from collapsing behind them in case they needed to quickly get back to Merol.
Unlike Mora Syvler couldn’t just push through, [Black Mass] had a good range, but even the [Black Mass] infused with a [Common] shade it didn’t have enough strength on its own to make a tunnel fast enough. So the group walked for a bit, then had to stop before walking for a bit more.
On top of having to stop for the [Black Mass] to make the tunnel, they also had to stop and dig down quite deeply so Prune could check the ground for landmarks to make sure they were going in the right direction.
The original tunnel they had come through had collapsed in on itself and it was easier to make a new one rather than wasting time trying to retrace their steps. There was a fair bit of open space higher up, the snow had settled and created a gap between itself and the ice sheet ceiling, but aside from Prune needing to check the ground, Sylver was worried about monsters hiding in ambush near the surface.
For some reason [Advanced Water Manipulation] was very limp wristed with the snow here, he could sense and control it, but rather than doing it by funneling his mana into the [Advanced Water Manipulation] channel within him, he got a better result manipulating the snow and ice manually when he needed to.
“It’s nice when it’s quiet like this,” Prune whispered.
“Yeah,” Sylver answered.
Even with the thing with the float-boat he had in mind, the core problem was that there was a demon lord, in a cage, physically present in Eira.
Just thinking about it was worse than having his teeth pulled out with pliers…
Key or no key, if someone or something put their mind to it, just a scratch on a single artifact would be enough to make it deteriorate given enough time.
The more he consulted with the books he’d read of this continent’s recent history, the more he was worried that the High King didn’t have anybody capable of actually dealing with this. The last demon lord they encountered was defeated by the first [Hero] that showed up to kill it… Which either meant they got a really good [Hero] on the first try, which was unlikely, or the demon lord was barely strong enough to call itself a demon lord.
Realistically, the best thing to do was tell a Dragon about it.
But Sylver couldn’t just send someone over to where he knew a family of Dragons lived and had them politely inform their retainers that if they would be so kind there was an uppity demon running amok in a distant land that would eventually reach theirs.
In theory… the temple of Ra might have someone high enough on the totem pole to have a god nudge things in their favour, they might even know how to work the cage without breaking it open…
In practice…
What he was planning on doing would buy him some time, but as for a permanent solution…
Put a seal on it, and hope the thing holds out long enough for… Between the three of us, Edmund is the obvious choice, but even for him, a demon lord…
Maybe this is one of the weaker ones?
The sort armed with mind magic, even as I am now I could just walk up to it, get it in a headlock and suffocate it.
I mean, why would anybody capable of trapping a demon lord, that’s actually powerful, use it for something as simple and easy as a barrier?
They couldn’t have built the cage overnight, so if time wasn’t a serious factor, why not use the artifacts to just channel the mana in the earth, or connect it to a ley line, or just gather up sunlight?
As a rule of thumb, something this big and serious wouldn’t be done just for the fun of it, there was a reason.
It wasn’t always a great reason, but there was always a reason.
The rest of the journey was done in silence, [Black Mass] made the tunnel, Sylver sealed it behind them as they walked with a mushroom, Prune jumped down a hole to touch the ground below to make sure they were on the right path, and Allson and Figment did their best not to fall behind.
Although the distance was rather short because of how slow they were moving, it was starting to get dark by the time the group reached the float boat.
The [Black Mass] tendril opened the tunnel and slithered into Sylver’s robe, and just as Prune was about to step out into the open, Sylver grabbed her by the back of the robe and pulled her back. She immediately walked away from the opening, and pushed both Allson and Figment behind her.
Sylver walked forward one half step at a time, with his hand stretched out towards the float-boat sitting in the middle of the large open area.
There was something there, but he couldn’t feel it properly to say anything else.
A pair of shades materialized in front of Sylver, and boldly walked forward towards the float-boat.
There was a tiny puff of steam a short distance away from the two shades where something had touched the hardened snow for a split second, after which both of the shades were sliced into 8 neat pieces.
“Halost is under a spell,” Sylver whispered.
“What do we do?” Prune asked quietly.
“I could… Is his sword enchanted?” Sylver asked.
“It’s very enchanted,” Prune answered.
“Nevermind then. He didn’t try to attack us, even though he almost certainly knows we’re here, so the spell has him attacking anything that enters the open area… I doubt he was overpowered, so it must have been placed on him slowly so he wouldn’t notice it. It probably has a very light grip on him,” Sylver said, more to himself than anyone else.
Somewhat ironically given the reason he came here, Sylver summoned an explosive into his hands, and used a blob of [Black Mass] to replace the trigger mechanism.
[Mirage] created a perfect mirror copy of Lostal, with the idea that if the spell on Halost interpreted what was about to happen as a direct attack, it would make him see Lostal as the source of the attack, as opposed to Sylver.
He had the Lostal copy run with all the speed it could muster, which oddly enough was about the speed Sylver himself could run if he really put his mind to it. “Fast” but not when it’s compared to a level 350 [Warrior].
Even though he had the [Black Mass] blob itself be on the lookout, and he himself was actively watching for it, both of them missed it, Halost was just too fast, and the explosion came a fraction of a second too slow.
But the explosion itself wasn’t the point, the sound was, and while the snow all around them blunted some of it, Halost was luckily close enough to it that the loud noise was enough to snap him out of the spell.
He stood in the shadow of the float-boat, and looked around at his surroundings while very slowly opening and closing his eyes, like a dog that had just been startled awake.
Sylver was pretty sure it worked, but so as not to get eviscerated by an enchanted sword, he had Spring materialize in the tunnel, and put a drop of his blood on the shade’s finger.
Halost moved his hand to his sheaved sword as Spring approached him, he backed away as Spring extended his hand and wet finger towards his face, and only stayed as he was when he noticed Prune in the tunnel.
The moment Sylver’s blood made contact with Halost’s forehead, the thin magical veil on his head lost against the prickly dark magic in the blood.
As Sylver stepped into the open area, the air around him crackled and flickered, like he was walking through thousands of thin strands of spider webs, or was slowly pushing himself through a thin sheet of shattering glass.
It pulled at his hair and clothing, like thorn covered vines, and as Sylver lifted his hand in front of him and snapped his fingers, the entire thing melted and fell to the snowy ground with a wet sounding squelch before dissolving.
He kept his hand stretched out in front of him as he walked towards Halost, and placed his palm on the man’s forehead.
“I take it that something happened,” Halost said calmly.
His pupils were so wide his irises were basically invisible. And he spoke with a faint slur, tipsy, but not all the way drunk.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sylver asked.
The man tried to lean out of Sylver’s hand, but Sylver shook his head at him as he kept it where it was.
“Prune left me to guard the boat, maybe ten minutes ago?” Halost asked.
Sylver waved at the tunnel and waited for them to get to him.
He got an idea during that time.
“How good is your regeneration?” Sylver asked the man.
“It’s beyond good,” Halost answered.
“How much blood can you lose and live?” Sylver asked.
“I got my head cut off one time and lived,” Halost offered.
Sylver turned to look at Prune.
“He’s under a spell and it’s still in his blood. I don’t have the means to remove it, other than taking out all his blood and hoping his healing can replace it,” Sylver explained.
“Sure, he’ll be fine,” Prune said with the same calm disinterest she might use if someone asked her what she wanted for dinner.
But at this point Halost falling back under the spell was such a big threat that Sylver was fine with risking the man’s life to stop it.
He turned back to Halost.
“I’m going to make a small cut inside your elbow,” he explained.
Halost just nodded at him.
One hand firmly on the man’s forehead, Sylver took the man’s left arm and pressed his thumb down over a good spot halfway up his forearm.
“Ready?” Sylver asked.
Halost nodded at him.
Sylver dragged his thumb down the man’s skin, and left a thin clean line.
He pushed Halost’s arm up slightly so it was straight, and the speed with which blood exploded out of the cursed wound was so fast that it flew a good forty feet away from the source before it landed on the snow.
Halost for his part didn’t so much as flinch, his skin turned the sickly white colour of fresh snow, and the second Sylver saw that the last drop of affected blood had left his body, he nodded at Halost, and the now uncursed wound sealed up shut without so much as a scar.
Within the literal blink of an eye colour and texture returned to Halost’s skin.
Nels, Prune, and Figment, had all watched the spectacle without any reaction, but Allson had turned his back to stare at the tunnel they came from.
Sylver adjusted his hand on the man’s forehead.
“There’s a little bit still in there, but it shouldn’t be enough to do anything. You’ll need to see a healer when you get back,” Sylver said.
“Do you think there’s someone hiding inside?” Allson asked while pointing up at the top of the float-boat.
Sylver let go of Halost’s forehead, and wiped his hand on his robe.
“That’s not the float-boat,” Sylver said.
Instead of trying to explain it in words, he walked over to the “float-boat” and dragged his hand against the wooden hull.
Like bark curling off a burning log, thin wilted leaves with bright red markings on them curled off the surface of the float-boat.
Underneath the leaves there was snow, some marked with pink spots where the red liquid had soaked through the leaves, but as more leaves curled up and fell away it became clear that the entire thing was just a float-boat shaped snow sculpture, with a thin layer of leaves to give it the correct colour and texture.
Nobody in the party was the type to swear out loud when surprised, except Sylver, but he wasn’t surprised so there was no need for swearing, so the group just quietly looked at the giant snow structure.
Sylver scooped up some of Halost’s blood and placed it in a glass jar. He heated it up slightly to melt the snow, swirled it around for a while, and then illuminated it from the bottom using his finger.
Finally he brought the jar up to his nose and smelled it.
“Huh… You have some kind of pollen in your blood,” Sylver said towards Halost without looking away from the jar of blood.
“It must not have registered as a poison. I have perks to protect against mind magic,” Halost said.
“I think that’s why they didn’t steal your sword, or harm you in any way. Just relaxed you slightly, and stole the float-boat from under your feet,” Sylver said.
“Do you have a way to find the float-boat?” Prune asked Allson, who shook his head before she was even finished asking.
“Why not?” Prune asked.
Allson made a vague open handed gesture.
There weren’t any obvious giant holes in the surrounding snow that the float-boat had been moved through, no tracks or footprints on the ground either.
“Do you have a way to track the float-boat?” Prune asked.
Sylver gave it a great deal of thought, but nothing came to mind. Nels spoke shortly after he shook his head.
“If you can gather about ten kilos of sand and a wide flat surface, we’ll be able to find which direction it went,” Nels offered.
Allson almost asked “how?” but seemed to decide to try to figure it out himself before asking.
Sylver wasn’t as concerned about not knowing.
“How would that work?” he asked.
“Assuming it was the only thing that moved through the other realm, it would leave disturbances behind. Waves in a sense,” Nels said.
Allson tried to translate the oversimplified explanation in his head, whereas Sylver took it at face value and asked the obvious question.
“That’s assuming whoever took it powered it on instead of just carrying it on their back, or dragging it through the snow. No, nevermind, it’d leave “waves” behind if it was moved without being turned on, you’re right,” Sylver said and then answered his own question.
“Would someone with that much strength bother with stealing it from under Halost instead of just killing him and stealing it after that?” Nels asked.
“Maybe they were afraid it would get damaged if they fought him?” Sylver offered.
“Pollen would be dryads,” Nels said after a pause.
“I was thinking alseids,” Sylver said.
“This far from the sea?” Nels asked.
“They’re a lot more mobile than dryads. The snow and ice could have forced them to migrate. They found a lone man on their path, bewitched him, and… stole his boat?” Sylver said, but couldn’t quite see the logic in what he was saying even as he said it.
“Wooden boat. If they inhabit the wood, it would work like a moving forest for them. The majority of the metal is enchanted so it isn’t cold, how or if they figured out the mechanism to make it float is a different question, but they’d certainly be capable of moving it, even without the mechanism,” Nels said.
“What’s an ‘al-say-id’?” Prune asked.
“Basically dryads. But they’re not tied to a single tree, or a specific type of wood. They usually live in places humans don’t pass through. Maybe you call them a different name here. They’re exclusively female, look somewhat human, but kind of slender but in a stretched out tall sort of way. Hair looks like moss or long grass. Their eyes look like they’re wearing glasses with very thick lenses?” Sylver offered.
Nobody in the group said anything until Nels moved the conversation along.
“Point is, some kind of wood spirit. Having said that, if the float-boat had floated into their territory they would have given us a warning, they wouldn’t have waited,” Nels said.
“Could someone have hired them?” Prune asked.
“Spirits like this don’t really… actually, now that you’ve said it, that may be the most likely explanation... They had to have cast the spell on Halost at a good distance for him not to notice them. Probably a group of sixty working together?” Sylver asked with a look at Nels.
“If this isn’t their territory, closer to a hundred,” Nels said.
Sylver could do little but shrug his shoulders, his dealings with nature spirits were a coin flip between very friendly, and attacked on sight.
More than a few saw the undead as distant cousins and celebrated whenever he visited them. But a good chunk saw the concept of undeath as sacrilegious in the face of the natural order of the world, similar to a dam blocking a river..
“Do you need to be here to attempt the sand and flat surface thing?” Prune asked.
“Yes,” Nels answered simply.
Prune turned towards Figmant who shook his head, and then she turned towards Allson, who also shook his head.
“Do you need sand or just small grains of something solid?” Sylver asked since nobody thought to bring a sack of sand with them.
“Crushed rock would work,” Nels said after guessing what Sylver was thinking.
He dug down through the snow, and then through the frozen earth until he reached solid rock.
While he sliced it up into easy to remove chunks and stored it away in his [Still Water] portal, Allson and Figment worked on gathering a bunch of snow into a long sheet of ice, and then worked on getting it as smooth and flat as they could manage.
The enchantment on the flat surface was rudimentary to the point everyone who had any knowledge of magic was tempted to ask if this would actually do anything. But they trusted that Nels knew what she was doing, and both Allson and Figment quietly carved the sigils into the edges of the flat surface as Nels instructed.
Once it was done, the two wizards sat down on opposite ends of the circle and drip fed it mana.
Sylver’s job was to spread the powered stone as thinly and evenly as he could manage, and to then hold Nels’ head steadily above the surface so she could clearly see any reactions in the stone.
Nobody other than Nels saw anything happen, to their eyes the stone dust just sat there, the flat circle wasted the mana without so much as a flicker of light to prove it was working, but all the same, Nels had a shade run a hundred meters away from the circle, and then had it move left and right one inch at a time until the angle of the direction of the waves was as accurate as it was going to get.
Nels also said that the way the waves looked, the float-boat wasn’t actually floating, and this was just the metaphorical oars dragging through the fluid in the other realm. So whoever moved it hadn’t managed to turn it on, they had the magical or physical strength to move it as it was.
Sylver used his connection to Mora to align the map he brought in the right direction, and then drew a thin line away from where they were on the map in the direction the shade was standing.
Nels then had him draw an oval circle around the line, to account for human error since the sigils weren’t carved by her hands.
“That’s the Needle Fog Forest,” Prune said with a finger pressed down on almost the dead center of the oval on the map, roughly twelve kilometers away south from where they were.
“Trying to get to alseids hiding in a forest isn’t a smart idea,” Sylver said.
“The force they’d need to drag the float-boat manually would be significant, even if there were 200 of them,” Nels countered.
“Assuming we find it, then what? We can’t move it without making it float, and if they could get Halost in under a week, they’ll get Allson in a couple of hours. No offense,” Sylver said with a gesture at the wizard.
“None take,” Allson said.
“Couldn’t you just check our heads every hour or something?” Figment asked.
“This isn’t my area of expertise. They could do something small and subtle that I wouldn’t notice. Then have him melt something important with his staff so the float-boat is stuck there. These things are tricky, even if you know what you’re dealing with, and we don’t even know what specifically we’re dealing with,,” Sylver said.
“We have druids,” Prune offered.
“I hate to say this, but I could build a new float-boat,” Allson butted in.
“We could try negotiating for it?” Sylver said.
Prune, Allson, Figment, and Halost, all turned and looked at him.
“How?” Prune asked.
“We approach them out in the open, ask to talk, and if they agree, we sit down and have a conversation,” Sylver said with a shrug.
“But it’s our float-boat, they stole it,” Allson said.
“You’re right. Let’s go contact the authorities, and-”
“I get, I get,” Allson conceded with a wave of the hand.
“Have either of you ever talked to alseids before?” Prune asked towards Nels and Sylver.
“No,” Sylver said.
“You have,” Nels corrected.
“When?” Sylver asked.
“When you helped the woman with the kid? The sick kid? With the eyes?” Nels said while Sylver just blankly looked at her and shook his head at every hint. “There were birds?” Nels said with a sigh.
Birds?
The hints all clicked together as he remembered the bird-like masks.
“I remember now, yeah. There wasn’t much talki-I know how to speak to them,” Sylver caught himself but the slight smile that almost sparkled in his eyes gave him away.
“You said they’re like dryads?” Allson asked.
Sylver talked past Allson’s question.
“Nels and I will go and try to talk to them. If they’re open to it, we’ll come to Merol and bring someone over to them to negotiate with them on Merol’s behalf,” Sylver said without looking over at Allson.
“Take Halost with you,” Prune said.
“They might interpret that as us helping him get revenge. I’m a third party, I’m not “human” by their definitions, and if it’s just us two I’m confident I can get away unscathed if they’re unwilling to talk,” Sylver said, and had the shade Nels’ head was attached to lift her head up for a moment.
The pushback of him and Nels going alone came almost entirely from Prune, Allson and Figment didn’t have a say in the matter, and Halost didn’t seem to care either way. Despite his appearance he clearly understood that the priority was the float-boat, and not getting revenge for having it stolen right from under him.
With a decision reached, they escorted Prune, Halost, Allson, and Figment back to Merol, after half an hour of waiting around they were given a large pale wood barrel of wine to give to the thieves as a gift in the hopes of lubricating negotiations.
What Sylver hadn’t said, and nobody had thought to ask, was that the nature spirits were responsible for getting Halost under their spell, but the magic that covered the fake float-boat was the work of Redcaps.
He was confident his plan A with the float-boat was going to work, but since a demon lord was involved, it would be better to have a functional plan B to E, and for that, he needed to recruit some help.