“Ya’re not half bad,” Henry commented as he walked down the sky following the falling basilisk corpse.
“I barely did anything,” Sofia answered, following him down.
“Cannot wait to see ya do somethin’ then, must be a ripe spectacle,” Henry replied, “Now we dig through this floatin’ pile o’ shit, and pray for booty.”
“Anything valuable to be found there?”
“Sometimes there is, sometimes there ain’t, ‘t will start to sink soon so we gotta be quick. How’s yarr magic sight?” Henry asked, prodding the smelly floating chunks of tendril-covered basilisk meat with his scimitar.
“Decent. But I have a better way.”
“Go on then.”
Pulling on the Basilisk’s rotten bones, Sofia pulled the floating pieces of the corpse out of the water.
Finally some bones I can work with!
Henry looks surprised at first, then impressed when Sofia’s aura turned the bones into rotating blades that transformed the body into a rain of putrid flesh. When something different fell out of the rotten mass, a bone tendril shot out to catch it. In just a few seconds, Sofia had turned the corpse into a flying mass of bones and the small shining white orb that had fallen from it.
Then, as the blood tendrils from the outer body of the basilisk had contaminated some of the bones, Sofia quickly had the infected parts detach themselves, using some of them as an umbrella to protect the rest. Then she refined what remained into a single solid block; it was less than a tenth of the Basilisk’s original bonemass, but still plenty to work with.
“Fiendish simulacrum at the awakened realm? Dominion over bones, at that. Yar sure full of surprise. No wonder ya’d be chosen as the Admiral’s next kin,” Henry genuinely praised, “and lucky to boot. Wishing orb on yar first hunt.”
“Wishing orb? This shiny thing? I thought it was just the basilisk’s core, what does it do?”
“What does it not do? It’s a wishing orb, lass, the main currency of this accursed realm. I’m feelin’ generous, so ya can have it, next one’s mine.”
“Can I wish to get the inheritance right away?”
“Keh, a wishing orb, I said, not a dreamin’ orb. D’ya got yar head screwed loose? Ya put it in yar hand, and think hard about any object ya’ve touched before, can’t be a livin’ thing but sure can be damn near anything else that ain’t above the size of a fuckin’ house. And kablam, ya got the thing.”
“Just like that?”
“Just so,” Henry confirmed, “It’ll disappear after three days, though, but that ain’t ever stopped anyone from summonin’ a barrel o’ booze.”
“Alright, since you’re generously offering…”
Sofia brought the bones to herself alongside the shining orb the size of her fist.
Looks like a big shiny pearl… There’s definitely a lot of mana in there but it’s not emitting too much aside from the glow.
Sofia grabbed the orb finding it strangely light and cold, almost freezing, gripping it tightly, she tried to visualize her scepter.
“That yar weapon? Booze woulda been better, but I get it.”
“Woah, that was almost instantaneous. It’s replicated to perfection.” Even the bell is there, she thought, lightly swinging her scepter to hear the familiar ringing.
With a part of the bone that remained, Sofia made herself a bone armor, being careful to keep it fully detached from her body, as she had not activated hers to begin with out of fear of suffering the same pain as when she had to heal earlier.
“Lookin’ good, can I get one o’ those?”
The small rowboat was now transporting two armored skeletons through the red waves.
Half an hour later, the rain was still pouring while the discussions continued. Henry lifted his helmet’s visor, “Ya know, I was thinkin’, I intended to take ya to port, but we could stop somewhere else on the way. What’d ya say?”
“And where would that be? I am sure you know, I am probably on limited time here.”
“Oh that you are, but there ain’t nobody else around who can guide ya to port as fast as I can. It won’t take long, just some old ruin to explore, so?”
“... You better take me to destination right away after that or I’m throwing you into the sea, don’t think my control over bones stops at the ones of dead basilisks.”
“Surely ya weren’t thinkin’ of making a pirate guide ya fo’ free? Am just securin’ my pay here.”
Sofia shook her head at the sudden demands of the pirate, although it seemed he was still taking it all pretty lightly. “So where is it? And who could have possibly left ruins in this inner world?”
“Where? We’re almost there, been going there since ya boarded, in fact. Ain’t a soul that ever lived there, these ruins are the dreams of the blood sea.”
“Why not explore them by yourself?”
“What’d ya think I usually do? This one was fuckin’ hard to find and ya need two blokes just to get past the damned door!” Henry complained, “Pissed me rightly that!”
“Why not ask someone else from your crew?”
It was Henry's turn to shake his head, his skull clinking against his helmet, “Lassy… Would ya trust a pirate with a ruin full o’ riches? Think again.”
“...”
Somewhere else, on a part of the blood sea that still escaped the rain, a dodgy raft slowly drifted away from a rocky island.
Alith sat down on the raft with crossed legs, bones clanking, she stabbed her rapier between two logs and let out a long sigh.
“Paaaaah, fiiiiiinally out of this hellhole. How many harpies did we have to kill, man? That was like at least a thousand, no? Look at this, dude, I’m still covered in this stinkin’ blue blood head to toe…”
Pareth, who was looking away, gave her a quick glance before hurriedly staring at another direction.
“Ooooh?” Alith reacted, moving to lie on her side like a lounging roman emperor, “I am more to your liking like this, Sir Pareth? I should have known, you were born from a part of Sof’s soul after all, hmmhmm.”
Pareth visibly flinched while stubbornly refusing to look her way.
“No need to be shy, you won’t get the opportunity to see those bones often, you know?” she teased him, “Well… Enough of that. Are we still going in the right direction?”
Pareth tried teleporting to Sofia, and Alith watched his souls extend out of his bones before being forcefully sucked back into place, as if it had lost connection midway.
“Still the same. At least she’s not recklessly flying around, then, we’ll manage to get to her… Hopefully Bookie is with her too.”
In yet another place, on an island under a constant thunderstorm. Two tiny skeletons were fleeing from a gigantic lightning elemental.
“Aaaaaah! We not is leg, big klepra! Bokie run! Very speed! Run!!!”
They remained alive thanks to the Abereth’s arduous work, appearing near Bookie regularly to absorb the lightning attacks of the elemental.
After another while on the rowboat the rain had temporarily cleared up, and Henry, Sofia and Crowie made it to the region of the ruin. It was an atoll of rocky outcrops in the middle of nowhere surrounded by shallow waters and home to carnivorous coral reefs.
Sofia relentlessly swung her plasma-covered scepter at the coral branches that extended to attack the boat’s barrier while Henry continued to row. Some of them spewed strong jets of contaminated sea water at them which was particularly terrifying.
“Are we getting there? Your barrier’s starting to crack!”
“It’ll hold, just keep swingin’!”
Leaving a trail of charred coral in their wake, the trio made it to the one of the smaller rocky islands in the inner ring of the atoll.
“We’re there, lass, recover yar magic now, let me deal with the spitters around here, lest we be drenched upon settin’ foot ashore.”
Cancelling the piercing bolt that she had been sustaining for a while and was charring her bones even through her basilisk bone gauntlets, Sofia sat back down on the rowboat’s bench. “All yours.”
Despite benefiting from a skeleton’s infinite stamina, she was coming to understand how much more keenly such a thin ‘body’ felt the exhaustion of spellcasting’s mana drain compared to someone with proper blood and muscles for the mana to propagate through.
Henry this time used nothing fancy, he played a lively tune on his violin, and a nearby coral formation would burst into pieces at every note. By the end of his performance, the entire surrounding area was stripped of its colors. “Coast is clear, milady, time to disembark, if ya will,” Henry declared, jumping out of the rowboat and holding out a hand for Sofia.
“It’s milady, now?” She asked, grabbing his hand to step out of the wobbly boat.
“Crewmate privilege, make sure ya don’t lose it,” Henry answered with a snort, jumping out of view in a few leaps through the tall rock spires.
Sofia followed, endlessly surprised by how casual this pirate was about absolutely everything.
We’re not even tying the boat to anything?
In just a few jumps, Sofia joined Henry to a random spot on a cliff outcrop between three tall stone spires, some twenty meters above the red waves.
“Oh, illusion?” Sofia noticed immediately, feeling strange mana movements from the cliffs.
“Still runnin’ fine after so long, was worth studyin’ this brain-melter of a magic formula, huh. Let me.”
Playing a short few notes on his violin, Henry dispelled the illusion magic, revealing full columns of bloody runes engraved on the three pillars, and a closed gate right behind where they stood, bearing patterns resembling a human thumbprint.
“So this is the door that requires two peo-”
Henry’s saber pierced through Sofia’s ribs toward her mana heart.