Before the poor Eleonore could even begin to recover from the slew of news that altered her view of the world one after the other, a menacing vampire in skin tight crimson robes appeared out of nowhere. She was holding a sickly-looking young girl by the back of her neck like a stray cat, quickly letting said girl go, crashing face first against the floor.
“H- Help, she’s gonna kill me,” the girl cried out with a raspy voice, raising a trembling hand, her face firmly planted in the ground.
Marina rolled her eyes, “Hope, everyone. Don’t let appearances fool you, she might look like a kid but she’s actually…” The vampire queen stopped, briefly looking at Zerei and Ihuarah, “Well she’s not that young. Can’t really call her old either for the average age of this room, heh. You can resolve everything without me now, right? Come visit me at my place sometime, hmm? Catch ya later!”
With a playful wave of her fingers, the vampire queen was gone again, leaving the room in a short awkward silence before the ‘kid’ pretending to be dying on the ground flipped herself around, looking left and right. “She’s gone? Phew… I really thought I was done for,” Hope sighed in relief, closing her eyes as she lay on the floor, “Why… Why is nobody saying anything?”
“If Marina left her here she should not be too dangerous, right?” Sofia asked Astelia.
“She would never put us in danger for no reason,” Astelia answered with a nod.
“I can never think about the word god the same way…” Eleonore mumbled.
“You get used to it,” Astelia told her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey what’s that supposed to mean?!” Hope cried out, “I’m doing my best out here, you know…”
“Maybe get off my floor first, yes?” Zerei suggested.
“I… I can’t,” the god lying on the ground answered, looking to the side, “I’m a bit too weak, at the moment.”
“Shall I help you up?” Ihuarah offered, taking a step toward Hope.
“Ah! No, no! Don’t touch me! It’s dangerous!”
Sofia stepped up and grabbed Hope’s arm, pulling her up. The goddess struggled a bit at first, “Aaaah! Didn’t you hear me?! It’s– Wait, you’re fine?”
Woah, that’s strange…
“I am, but you’re right, the others really shouldn’t touch you,” Sofia noted, helping Hope stand straight up. “I have complete immunity to negative effects so whatever is going on doesn’t affect me. But… What’s this, how did this even happen? The weird mana is even piercing through my anti-magic dragon scale.”
“Definitely some kind of curse, yes,” Zerei noted from the side, “Sneaky one, but it is rather visible now that it is trying to spread to you, Sofia.”
Since Hope couldn’t actually stand up, Sofia helped her sit down on a bone chair, before letting her go, and watching all the cursed mana that had accumulated in her arm get slowly devoured by the Philosopher’s stone.
“Thank you,” Hope said from the chair, finally getting a proper look at all the people in the room, “This is uh… The bone city, right?”
“You can call it that,” Sofia answered, “more importantly, this is the one your followers came to abduct with an entire army,” she said, pointing at Eleonore.
Hope seemed rather uncomfortable on her bone chair. To begin with she had the appearance of a child in her pre-teens, with unkempt frizzy pure white hair, sickly pale skin and very pronounced dark circles under her eyes, wearing oversized pink pajamas. She looked like she was about to pass out any moment. Still, she managed to answer, fully slouched back in the chair. “An army? Uuuugh… Sorry about that. My followers can be a bit overzealous at times… It’s… Genuinely a difficult time. Let me explain…”
Hope spent the next fifteen minutes struggling through her dizziness to squeeze out an explanation of the current situation from her point of view. What happened, in short, was that she got injured while coming down to the physical plane to protect the Laudell theocracy against the latest Phageid attack. The injury had messed up with her essence somehow leading to her current state and stranding her weakened on the physical plane, and her saint possessing divination powers had divined Eleonore as being the solution, hence the portrait in possession of the army.
As for the army marching toward Ser’Extra, that was her ‘followers’ acting by themselves on her behalf, as she, by her own accord, rarely gave them any guidance or orders at all.
It sounds more like they are the ones ordering her around, even…
“Can I help without being an Oracle?” Eleonore asked at the end of the explanations, having had time to digest the shock of the strange situation.
“No!” Hope firmly denied, shaking her head, “Too too dangerous! My saint who has my essence is the only person who the weird mana isn’t trying to eat.”
“... But why me?”
“Eheh… You’re the only compatible person around who also knows about curses.”
While Eleonore and Hope continued their discussion, which was mostly an incessant flow of questions from Eleonore’s side, under Ihuarah’s watchful gaze, Sofia, Zerei, and Astelia moved to the side to talk in private.
“This has gone a wholly different way than what I expected seeing that army at the doors of our city… Do you think we can trust her?” Sofia asked the other two.
Astelia pointed at her earrings, “I detected a single lie, and that was when she said she was doing ‘very serious work’ in her divine domain.”
“Curse has whispered me a few words in the meantime,” Zerei added, “It was mostly gushing about how interesting Hope’s affliction is, but he also mentioned that since the death of the previous Hope a few hundred years back no one has really paid any attention to the new one, no…”
“Hmm… Can we really let Eleonore be her Oracle, though?” Sofia wondered, “I suppose I can let her have the Philosopher’s stone for a bit while she gets the class just in case the divine essence ends up actually harming her, but then what?”
“I should be able to manage from there,” Zerei said, “Hope herself I cannot cure, no, her essence is messed up and I cannot access that, but I should be able to treat someone else if they get affected.”
“And then we can use sealing rituals to contain the essence,” Astelia added, “like Saria and Cinthia did for Death.”
“That should help, yes,” Zerei nodded, “But it is all Eleonore’s decision in the end, I am only a teach–”
Eleonore started shuddering and making surprised sounds out of nowhere, as the room was drowned in blinding white light.
Well it looks like the decision is made… She should have waited, we could have gotten her a better contract…
Thinking all this, Sofia hurriedly took her armguard off to go press the philosopher’s stone against Eleonore’s forehead, just in case the strange curse actually reached her.
The light soon died down, and the shining numbers above Eleonore’s head shifted in Sofia’s eyes, ticking all the way up to 199.
The aftermath of the event was solved almost strangely smoothly. The army retreated, bringing back not Eleonore, but Hope herself. They insisted that Eleonore would have to come and get properly anointed in Laudell sooner or later, but would not go against Hope’s words, who promised she was the one who would come to Ser’Extra daily for treatment by her new Oracle. Eleonore was still clueless as to how she could possibly heal Hope so far, but she seemed excited to work on it alongside her teacher.
In the end, conflict had been avoided thanks to the swift and forceful intervention of the Vampire Queen, without whom Hope would have still been rolling in pain in her bed, none the wiser to the events happening just outside of her territory.
Later, the following night.
Sitting at a small food stand in a quiet corner of the city, Sofia poured Alith a glass of wine from the Arege union.
“Oooh, smells nice. What’s the occasion, Sof? Gonna tell me why you called me here now?”
“Can I not just want to share a meal with a friend, hmm?”
Alith shook her head, lightly swirling the pink wine in her glass, “You usually don’t eat when you’re this busy.”
“I cannot hide anything from you… Well I genuinely wanted to take a break with a friend, past however long has been very chaotic, just look at today’s… whatever that was. But also…”
“Going on another adventure?” Alith guessed, before downing her glass in one shot, “count me in!”
“I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“Yeah? Who ‘d you think you’re talking to? Do I need to prepare some diving gear?”
“Stop reading my mind, will you? Yes, it’s time to go get that last ‘mirror’.”
“Wasn’t your mother due for resurrection soon?” Alith asked.
“Not quite, we thought so, but her bones are really taking a while to absorb enough mana. But before the end of the year, surely. We’ll be back by then. Even our trip to the moon didn’t take that long.”
“Anyone else coming?”
“Besides Pareth and company, you mean?” Sofia shook her head, “Just you, me, and the bones. I would love to bring more people, but it’s too dangerous without the mark, and Saria has to guard our mom.”
“Asty’s gonna be pissed.”
“I know. Can’t make her take that big a risk, though. When can you depart?”
“Ready when you are, Sof!”
“Let me pour you another glass.”
“Hey!” the merchant behind the food stall’s grill called out, “ENOUGH IS TALK, LEG BECOME COLD!” Pestle snapped, throwing chunks of grilled meat at Alith and Sofia’s faces.