Sylver Seeker Book 8
Chapter 3 (294) - Be Leaf
They didn’t need a lot of space to move through the tunnel, Sylver was on his back and had his robe do the walking for him, and he had Nels and her body shade laying on its back right next to him.
The shade inside the [Black Mass] knew what to do by this point without being reminded, and with Sylver’s connection to Mora he wasn’t in any danger of veering off course.
After a certain point he lost the sense he was being observed, but he waited another hour before was comfortable speaking to Nels.
In a very old and foreign language, and a little bit in code and innuendo just to be safe.
And for fun.
He told Nels what he was “planning” on doing, and the silence after he finished explaining himself to her wasn’t a good sign.
Which was unfortunate, because he needed very direct involvement from her for his “plan” to work.
He would go as far as to say that if Nels didn’t want to help him, then there was no point attempting it, he’d have to move onto plan B, which was still in the process of being cobbled together.
Without Chrys or Edmund to help, in Edmund’s case completely resolve the problem, Sylver was going to have to get creative, which was going to be incredibly unpleasant for everyone involved.
“I don’t like it, but I can’t think of any alternative,” Nels said.
Sylver had enough control over himself not to sigh with relief, but he could see that to Nels the shift in his voice was the equivalent of someone else doing a backflip and yelling in joy.
“We’re not in any kind of rush… And look… I know people who don’t fold, and that woman is a folder if I’ve ever seen one,” Sylver said.
“I’m glad we’re on the same page that this is a gamble,” Nels said.
“You can’t out think someone who isn’t acting rationally,” Sylver countered.
“Well, you’re the expert on dealing with irrational people,” Nels said.
In the mumbly soft almost sing-song-like language they were talking to each other in, he struggled to figure out if what she’d just said was a jab. He decided it wasn’t, he was, in fact, the closest thing the Ibis had to an expert on dealing with irrational people.
The secret to Sylver’s success was killing everyone who wasn’t willing to talk and was even slightly a threat or an inconvenience. Quite a few arch-mages struggled with that for some reason.
“I am wide open to any and all alternatives. There’s no bad ideas here, throw whatever you have on the wall and if it sticks, we’ll go with that. This is in no way, shape, or form how I want to settle this,” Sylver offered.
Nels gave him a look, and he got the sense she couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
“What if you summon a demon, and let it loose?” Nels tried.
Sylver thought about it. And tried to find the joke nestled in the words she chose to use.
“To show them that if they can’t handle that, they more than can’t handle the one underground?” Sylver asked.
“They don’t understand what they’re dealing with. Maybe they need to see it on a small scale so it’s real for them,” Nels said.
Sylver clicked his tongue. He’d done something similar in the past, and if memory served him right, it had a one in two success rate… And the one success was only arguable a success…
“I think the one that showed up froze up the way it did because it sensed the one below. A stronger demon might get to it before they even notice it’s around. We’d be cutting our own throats,” Sylver thought out loud.
“You could make a deal with it. Tell it to stay above ground, and to only kill, and absolutely nothing else,” Nels offered.
“On top of everything else, it would take too long. A demon strong enough to do the kind of damage for them to learn a lesson from it, that’s not something I can summon overnight,” Sylver said.
“What about your two golems? Ria and the other one?” Nels asked.
In terms of belongings, not counting the things in [Bound Bones] and [Still Water], Sylver had a dagger, a small bag of tin for emergencies, Ria’s fragments were in a book shaped container near his back right next to SAM, and in a separate [Black Mass] container, Nels’ body parts were arranged to take up as little volume as possible.
“She isn’t dead, but she isn’t getting any better. At this rate something will happen with the other one before Ria,” Sylver said.
He wasn’t worried per se, Ria was not the first person he knew that destroyed themselves by accident in such a way that he could do little but keep their corpse clean while he waited for something to happen.
If she got better on her own, great.
If not, as long as she wasn’t “dead” dead, over a long enough period of time he always ended up finding someone who knew something he didn’t and fixed what he couldn’t.
“Magic doesn’t work on her, right? Get a piece of her, and slingshot it through the heart,” Nels said.
Sylver chuckled at the idea of killing a demon lord like that.
But then he thought about it…
She was immune to real abyss magic, whatever weird demon magic the demon lord had would have would still be within the realm of abyss magic, in theory there wasn’t any reason it couldn’t work...
“We’ll call that plan G,” Sylver said.
“Really?” Nels asked.
“I told you, all ideas are welcome,” Sylver answered.
The robe and [Black Mass] carried them through the small tunnel in silence for a while.
The only source of sound was the [Black Mass] inflating itself to compress the snow and make room, and the little noises Nels made as she breathed.
“There is going to be an unprecedented attack in twelve years time. Nothing other than a demon powered barrier will suffice,” Nels said.
“Hmm?” Sylver asked.
“The girl. She said twelve years. What if she was rounding down?” Nels asked.
A very common problem with people who possessed magically enhanced memories, or in Nels’ case, a natural memory so solid she could clearly remember details from her own birth, was that they sometimes forgot not everyone had access to every single thing they’d ever seen or heard.
“I’m lost,” Sylver said.
“The girl,” Nels managed to make the foreign word for “girl” sound like a slur, “she said that the reason she needs the demon powered barrier is the unprecedented attack in twelve years time. What if she was rounding down?” Nels asked.
Thought out loud is probably a more apt description.
“What would she be rounding down or up from where she’d end up at twelve years?” Sylver asked.
“She would round down from twelve years and eight months. The next real summer solstice is what I was trying to get to,” Nels said.
Sylver sat up and instead of slowing down his robe sliced through the snow so the back of his head didn’t scrape against the ceiling.
He laid back down a few seconds after that.
“You think she can see the Sun Demon? But you wouldn’t… Oh, that fucking-” Sylver used a very rude word to refer to Countess Camilla, but as crass and disgusting as it was, Nels didn’t say it, but she didn’t disagree.
“From her perspective, what else could or would protect her?” Nels asked.
“Certainly not the High King… So she can’t trust any of the other nobles… The only people on her side would be the temples… I hate it, but it fits,” Sylver said.
It’s impossible to argue with an irrational person.
But it’s still better than arguing with a rational person, who was right.
The Sun Demon was going to burn a hole in Eira with the powers of the suns. To what extent it was going to concentrate the light was hard to say, but a barrier to defend against concentrated sunlight…
Even theoretically it wasn’t possible.
Because of the Gellman constant the size of the base for the barrier would have to be three times the barrier’s diameter, it’d be useless, like trying to grab a handful of burning hot coal with fireproof fingerless gloves.
And it would need to protect the people inside from things other than just the infrared light, even if they managed to survive the heat, the electricity coming down through the concentrated sunlight would fry everyone’s brains from the inside out
And that’s not mentioning what that much energy moving around would do to the mana around the city, fuck a city, protecting just a building was impossible.
Without a demon to bend the laws of magic…
A demon lord… It just doesn’t work.
And there was no alternative, this was a fight against a fundamental law of magic, she needed a demon, or a god, nothing else would cut it...
Sylver breathed out a long sigh.
“Why is the High King working with the Sun Demon?” Nels asked.
He gave the question the thinking it deserved.
“I don’t know. Since you knew about it, the Sun Demon was around before the High King became the High King. He could just be a puppet,” Sylver offered.
“Could be. Or the Sun Demon is the source of the High King’s power,” Nels said.
“Hmm… You said dwarves found a way to use the Sun Demon’s power. And you don’t know where the tools ended up. What if the High King is the descendent of whoever had the tools? Or a dwarf that disguised himself to appear human to throw people who knew about him off his trail?” Sylver asked.
After a fair bit of back and forth of “could be this, but could be that,” both of them gave up on piecing this puzzle together while most of the pieces were missing. They didn’t like the answers they were getting.
Plus, for all they knew, Nels was wrong, and Countess Camilla was just your average paranoid clairvoyant losing her mind over a one in a trillion trillion chance of a big rock falling from the sky.
That was a lot easier to solve than concentrated sunlight, even as he was now Edmund could probably handle it in a couple of days.
They reached the Needle Fog Forest about five kilometers earlier than they should have.
What’s more, when they dug down to the ground, they found that the trees weren’t buried under the snow. Branches that appeared thin and normally would have snapped out of the way under Sylver’s weight turned out to be strong enough to halt his fall. They might as well have been made of metal for how hard it was to cut through them.
The hole that Sylver eventually made to push his way down through the foliage had completely closed a few seconds after he landed on the wet ground.
It was night time, which meant that this deep below the snow even the faint moonlight that managed to get through the ice sheet and the snow couldn’t have reached this far down, but the air itself seemed to be illuminating the ground and bare tree trunks.
Sylver walked over to the nearest tree and placed his hand flat against it.
To his mana it felt like it was a real tree but [Chloromancy] and [Novice Chloromancy] didn’t see it, or any of the trees, leaves, or the plants on the ground, he might as well had been standing in a desert as far as his system given plant magic was concerned.
Similarly [Advanced Water Manipulation] and [Advanced Earth Manipulation] informed him of the presence of both, but wouldn’t allow him to move so much as a droplet or a pebble.
Sylver had the shade Nels’ head was attached to walk over to him, and he wrapped his arm around its shoulder.
“My name is Sylver Sezari! I am an undead [Necromancer] and [Swamp Lord]! I’ve come to speak to you about the large wooden boat you’ve taken possession of! I am only here to talk! I have no intention of causing anyone here any harm!” Sylver yelled while turning in a circle as he tried to feel a reaction in something through his mana and his soul sense.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
[Daphnaeae - Fledging Laurel Scout - 53] [HP: 10,000 – 100%] [MP: 10,000 – 100%] [Stamina: 92,000 – 100%] [Corpse – N/A] [Soul – N/A]
He heard a gasp directly behind him, but waited a few seconds before he slowly turned towards it.
A few seconds prior the tree trunks were all spread out, he could see quite far between them.
But in the direction he heard the gasp and felt [Arcane Insight] react to blocking and reversing an attempt to see his status, there was now a dense wall of tree trunks.
And as Sylver looked around in the other three directions, he found that they were all also walls of wood. They were trapped, the only way out was up or down.
“Have you ever heard of “Daphnaeae?” It sounds familiar,” Sylver asked.
There wasn’t any point in trying to whisper, and if they spoke in a foreign language the Daphnaeae might take it the wrong way.
“Laural tree spirits. They’re a couple steps above alseids. They’re an old race,” Nels explained.
He searched his mind to match the familiar name with at least a vague idea of what he was dealing with, but nothing came.
“The leaves of laurel trees are used as bay leaves,” Nels said.
“Bay leaves,” Sylver repeated to himself.
“Someone on your left just tried to see my status. [Fog Laurel Witch] level 233. High health, low stamina, high mana, likely uses her health to supplement her mana,” Nels said.
“Hmm…” Sylver said.
They waited quietly for something to happen, for someone to speak or show themselves.
When nobody did, Sylver took off his robe, everything underneath, as well as his shoes, had a shade hold and carry everything a short distance away from him.
He then picked up Nels’ head from the shade her head was glued to.
He was as naked and as unarmed as he was capable of being without removing his skin and his arms.
When that didn’t achieve anything, he handed Nels to a different summoned shade, and made a show of holding his hand in the air. He made a long shallow cut down his palm, down his wrist and another one down the back of his forearm.
The liquid that oozed out of the wounds was the consistency of cold honey and such a dark purple that it was almost more fair to just call the colour “black.” But it in no way could be perceived as “red.”
He felt a breeze run along his body, and saw that there was now a path through the tall wall of tree trunks, about wide enough for him to walk without his shoulders scraping against the sides of the trees.
Nels’ body parts, Ria, and SAM were all in a single [Black Mass] suitcase, he carried it in his left hand, and wished he’d had the foresight to leave it with Morana, or the foresight to bring Morana with him to guard it.
Thankfully the path remained open as he walked towards it with the suitcase in hand.
Nels was being carried by a female shade, that Spring had undressed down to nothing, and as Sylver and the shade walked in a single file line, he saw that Nels was being very careful to keep her eyes up towards the tree leaf ceiling.
“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” he said.
“I wasn’t ready,” Nels mumbled.
“Then prepare yourself. You’re about to see about fifty to sixty nude women sitting cross legged without any concept of modesty,” Sylver said.
The curved path they were following started to zig zag, until they reached a curtain made up of leaves.
“Oh! It’s the leaf they put in soup!” Sylver said as he touched the curtain and looked at one of the leaves it was made from.
“What did you think I meant when I said they’re used as bay leaves?” Nels asked.
“I don’t know. I heard “bay” so I thought it was something used on ships,” Sylver said, as he let go of the leaf, and took Nels’ head from the shade.
“Are you ready?” Sylver asked.
“No, but let's go,” Nels answered.
The distance the portals moved them wasn’t as much as Sylver thought it was going to move them, maybe four kilometers, somewhere around there, the only thing he had to go off was his connection to Mora, it was good for direction, but distance was just a guess.
He stepped through the curtain and walked into a circular wooden hut, the wood was smooth like it had been sanded, and a single solid piece, like it had grown around a large cylinder that had been removed.
There were five living creatures in the room, four that had souls that felt like they were easily over 300 years old, and one that at best was in its early fifties.
“Please cloth you self,” the young one sitting behind the other four said quietly.
There was a grass skirt on the floor, made out of bay leaves instead of a grass, but Sylver replaced Nels’ nude shade with a lightly clothed one, while his shadow reached up from the ground and covered him from the waist down.
All five of the women were dressed in a similar manner to one another, everything but their heads and their hands was covered in a dense mixture of leaves, grass, and vines, the polar opposite of how tree spirits usually presented themselves.
Their clothing looked a lot like the camouflage he’d seen scouts wear, although the leaves and grasses the women were wearing weren't scattered and random, they were symmetrical, with small coloured petals spread throughout the garment, almost like polka dots.
As for their heads, in the low light they almost looked like regular human women with light green paint on their face, their hair was flat and smooth like wet seaweed, and their eyes inside their heads were reflective, like mirrors, no pupils or irises, or anything.
Sylver gestured towards himself, “Sylver Sezari,” and then gestured towards Nels, “Nelson Magia.”
The young woman in the back started from her left and gestured at the women in front of her in turn.
“This Ripple. This Breeze. This Patter. This Buzz. I Hoot,” the young woman, Hoot, said.
They nodded one at a time as Hoot introduced them.
Sylver gestured down at the floor, and sat down on the pillow after all four of them nodded at him in perfect sync.
“Boat no give back. Ask trade want what,” Hoot said.
Sylver spoke slowly, and used small and simple words.
“Boat not mine. Other person boat. Question. I bring other person to talk you. Is other person safe?” Sylver asked.
Hoot translated.
It was a very soft language where if you closed your eyes and didn’t know what to listen for it sounded a lot like a flock of those birds that can mimic sounds trying to quietly outdo one another with the noises they heard inside the forest.
“He says the boat doesn’t belong to him. He wants to bring another to talk. Asked if it would be safe for them,” Hoot said.
Ripple leaned over to talk to Breeze.
“What is the point of this?” Ripple asked.
“She said not to fight them. Ask him what they would want for the boat,” Breeze responded.
Sylver tried to speak using his voice, but the current organ for that couldn’t reach a low enough octave for the sound he needed to start on. Thankfully [Mirage] had no such issue, aside from him having to make the sounds one at a time, which slowed him down quite a bit.
“The boat is one of a kind,” Sylver said.
All five of them froze up when he spoke.
And without a word or a look, four of them stood up from the pillows they were sitting on and walked to Sylver’s left, directly into and through the wall.
The only one left was Breeze. For the first time since he came in, she really looked at him.
Maybe this was Sylver applying human expressions and body language to a creature that only appeared human, but the words “bedroom eyes” came to mind, amidst several similar synonyms.
As if she was very happy to see him.
“Do you have a translation perk?” Breeze asked.
“No. Had to learn it the hard way,” Sylver answered.
It was subtle, but Breeze leaned forward on her seat, which seemed to cause the fluffy leaves on her torso to lay flat against the curves of her body.
“Is the person you want to bring also a speaker?” Breeze asked.
“It’s very unlikely. But I will translate for them,” Sylver said.
She had a warm smile on her face, almost a grin.
“Bring the person. You have our word they will not be harmed,” Breeze said, as she stood up, and all but ran towards the wall.
“Wait, wait, we’re not done,” Sylver said with an outstretched hand towards her gesturing to sit down.
“Yes,” Breeze said as she walked back to her spot and sat down.
“Are you working with… people with red hats?” Sylver asked, he couldn’t think of a better word to use, and held his hands above his head in the shape of a triangle.
All the “bedroom eyes” and warmth directed at him disappeared, like a tiny campfire that had snow fall on top of it.
“Why do you ask?” Breeze asked.
“I want to talk to them,” Sylver said.
“For what reason?” Breeze asked.
“Same reason I came to talk to you. To see if there is a way to resolve things peacefully,” Sylver said.
“What is there to resolve?” Breeze asked.
“They killed humans,” Sylver said.
She furrowed her brows for a moment.
Sylver had to sit in silence for a good thirty seconds as he checked twice that what he was about to say retained its meaning in their language.
“The humans that live in the big city to the north will want to get revenge for them. But if the red hat people have something useful, then there is a chance they will make an arrangement and there will be no fighting. I need to know if I can bring a person to negotiate with the red hat people, or only a person to negotiate with your people,” Sylver said.
He could tell this woman wasn’t accustomed to being in this position, in being threatened, even though that wasn’t Sylver’s intention.
But she caught herself early, and because Sylver had been polite so far, she was as polite in return.
“I will show you their leader. You will need to ask her yourself,” Breeze said with a faint smile that barely showed on her face, and was completely missing in her eyes and tone.
“Can you ask her if they’re using the float-boat to keep themselves warm,” Nels said in the pause right after Breeze finished speaking.
“My companion is asking if you are using the boat as a source of warmth,” Sylver said.
Breeze sat up straighter at that.
“Why is she asking?” Breeze asked.
Sylver the question.
“Tell her I can take some parts out and build them something as good or better, and then they won’t need the boat. And in exchange we get the boat, and they heal me. Did you ask them about working for you yet?” Nels said and asked.
“I know you can’t tell because she looks like she’s smiling, but they are insanely suspicious of us right now, I was going to wait a bit before bringing that up,” Sylver said to Nels, and turned to Breeze.
“My companion says that she can create a warming… work? Tool. Warming tool, from small parts of the boat. If the only thing you need is warming, this way you have warming, and the big city will have the boat back. The only thing she wants in for the tool is to be healed,” Sylver said.
“Wait here,” Breeze said, and walked off into the wall on the left shortly after.
Sylver and Nels sat quietly in the warm wooden container.
“I never told you I was going to ask them to work for me,” Sylver said.
He didn’t bother speaking a foreign language or whispering.
“Food is going to become a problem for people on the “island” sooner, rather than later. A handful of dryads would completely resolve that. A big group would grow enough to have excesses to trade with. Plus, they could help with the other thing,” Nels said.
“That was my thought process too.. I don’t know if this is the group we want though,” Sylver said.
“Any reason in particular?” Nels asked.
“I’m getting the sense they haven’t interacted with people for a long time. That’s never a good sign,” Sylver said.
“Neither have the people on the island,” Nels said.
The dark elves weren’t unfriendly to… everyone, but…
“That’s… might be better actually… Look, one thing at a time… I should have asked, but if you make them a warmer from the parts, can you still…” do the thing I need you to do? Sylver asked.
Now that he had an inkling as to why Countess Camilla was acting the way she was, he was a little more relaxed about the situation, but only a little, it was a teaspoon compared to a swimming pool’s worth of concern.
“We’re talking about… The effect would be logarithmic, so…roughly point zero zero six two recurring percent decrease, for your purposes,” Nels said.
“Well… it’ll be hard but I think I can make due with that,” Sylver said with a slight grin. “How long would it take to build?” he asked.
“If I have hands, an hour, ninety minutes at most. If you and the shades are doing it, ten to twenty hours,” Nels said.
Sylver clicked his tongue, on top of the time aspect, Nels was extremely difficult to work with on something big, or important.
“Might make sense to have them help heal you first. I’ll ask to look through the boat so we’re absolutely certain that all the parts you need are there,” Sylver said.
Right as he said that, the wall right in front of him started to move around with a muted squeaking.
The wood leaned out of the way and revealed a thin tunnel, just tall and wide enough for Sylver to walk through it without scraping his head on the ceiling.
“Come. This way,” a voice called out from the end of the tunnel.
He couldn’t tell whose it was.
The walk through the tunnel was longer than he thought it was going to be, he counted at least three times when the distance between him and Mora increased.
The smell hit both of them shortly before they reached the curtain made of bay leaves, and while Sylver was more than ready for it because he’d known about it for a while thanks to [Dead Dominion], he felt Nels flinch when she saw it.
There was a tall tree in the middle of the dome-shaped space surrounded by snow and ice, it was somewhere between forty to fifty meters tall, and every single inch of its trunk was covered in raw exposed slick with oil meat.
Slightly higher up dead bodies hung upside down from the tree’s branches in big clumps, like rotting bananas, with blood dripping out of their torn open where their heads used to be.
The dirt around the tree was such a deep shade of red that it almost looked like there were crushed cherries spread out around the tree like a carpet.
But as Sylver looked closer, he saw something near the bottom of the tree, something that not only made him smile but really changed his day for the better.
Strangled by thin tree roots that looked like hair from this distance, were countless colourful objects, boots made of glass, green stone chest plates, and most importantly of all, masks, glasses, and helmets along with very familiar tiny metal rods.
He breathed out a small sigh of genuine relief, and with a pep in his step made his way towards the leader of the Redcaps.