Chapter 930 - Coming in handy

The stab was too precise and too fast, from too close, Sofia’s mana heart had no time to move, and nothing strong to protect it. The scimitar pierced through it, shattering its delicate crystalline structure, and yet, it stubbornly stayed in one piece, protected by Sofia’s venerable physique.

Standing in Sofia’s close aura that Henry did not get the luxury of a second move, his body collapsed into a pile of bone dust, his skull and mana heart landing on top like two rocks.

There was an awkward silence, as both the skeletons suffered from the debilitating pain that came with this realm’s healing, and tried to act like it was nothing.

“Well… Quite the situation I find myself in, huh…” Henry said first. Whatever regenerated of his skeleton, Sofia kept turning to more dust. 

“What could possibly have possessed you to do that?” She asked, her boot on top of Henry’s skull.

“Threatening me with a good time, are ya? Could ya kindly finish me off already? We need to get this door opened.”

More than mildly confused, Sofia obliged, stomping his mana heart into bits.

A red flash erupted from the broken heart, and similarly, the thumbprint grooves in the door started glowing red from the bottom up.

Is it actually opening?

At the same time that the door started to open, the scattered bits of Henry’s mana heart started to gather on the ground. Sofia grabbed Henry’s weapons and jumped back. Under her eyes, the crushed mana heart reformed, flying up into the air, and slowly started to regrow the pirate, bone by bone, slightly more twisted and malformed than before.

Once his skull was regrown, the rest of the healing was accompanied by screams of unbearable agony.

And then it stopped. Henry fell to the ground, lying in the dust of his own previous body.

“Aah… Fuck… Leviathan’s prick… Worse every time…”

Henry struggled to sit up, looking heavily exhausted.

“What’s with that look? Can ya toss me things back?”

“You tried to kill me.”

“Well? Ya got me didn’t ya? One of us had to kill the other, only way to unlock the damn thing. Ya’d have suffered a lot less than I did, ya know? Let’s get on with it.”

“What if I actually died?”

“Didn’t ya just see what that means with yar own damn eyes? Not a good time, if ya couldn’t tell. Inside’s certain to need two blokes as well, see anyone else to help me?”

“... Could have warned me.”

Henry laughed, “Pirate says, ‘let me kill ya once to unlock the door’. Ya gonna accept that? T’was my mistake for failin’, suffered the consequences, ya don’t have to keep rubbin’ it in.”

After waiting for the pain of healing to stop, Sofia threw his weapons back to Henry. “Just so we’re clear, another move like this and you’ll be resting with the fishes.”

“Now ya’re talkin’ like a real sailor! And in case it wasn’t clear, once ya fully fall in there, not even the Admiral can save ya.”

“Are there actually people who fell into the sea like this?”

“More than we’d like… Lot more than we’d like…”

Entering the ruins, Sofia immediately felt a strange sense of familiarity. Beyond the details, like the fact that the door had closed behind them, or that the main room extended far beyond  what could possibly fit in the narrow stone pillar they had entered through, there was a recurring pattern in the ruins: hands. Interlocking hands, everywhere.

Is that a copy of wherever Eltiel found that strange hand summon of hers?

“Are the ruins always like that?” Sofia asked.

“No. There are only two things they all have in common: danger, and riches. Everything I like.”

“Hmm… The walls here are quite intricate but I don’t see a way out,” Sofia commented, her phalanges running along the hand patterns on the walls and pillars.

“Ya leave that part to me, matey, just be ready to blast with these pyrotechnics of yers.”

 “I’m always ready for that, as you’ve seen. Any chance these are based on real world places?”

“If they are then the real world’s fucked beyond measure so ya better pray they ain’t.”

All while continuing the idle chit chat, Henry was walking along the sides of the long room, observing the walls, and seemingly randomly plucking a few strings of his violin.

What a strange place… The graveyard nymphs aren’t managing to even show up… The spirit plane equivalent outside already felt unstable but it’s much worse here. I might actually get scrambled like an egg if I try to teleport through that.

“Right here,” Henry called out from further away.

“Found something already?”

“It’s just here. See if ya can see it.”

All I see is more hands…

“Caw!”

Crowie flew up from Sofia’s shoulder, landing sideways on a nearby pillar, his talons gripping the hand patterns.

“Ya little birdie found it first eh.”

“Ah! Six fingers… A hand with two thumbs? Doesn’t look like it’s connected to anything, though. No magic from there.”

Henry lightly shook his skull, pointing at the six-fingered hand with his scimitar. “Forget conventional logic here, each of these ruins are a dream ya need to unravel. Do ships in dreams need sails to move?”

“I still wouldn’t know what to do with this, do we carve out the extra finger?” Sofia asked.

“Perhaps, but destructive solutions should be attempted last,” Henry explained. Twirling his blade back into his ragged belt, he stepped forward to touch the hand, “Might jus’ be a button to pr– Ah shit!”

Henry’s phalanges touching the pillar’s hand started turning to stone.

“Cut it?” Sofia asked, a hand over Henry’s arm, which was stuck to the pillar, the petrification slowly crawling up to his wrist bones.

“No! It’s a two person place! This is a right hand, there must be a left, ya need to find and touch it, quick! If ya fail here we could get booted out!”

“Crowie, you do the rest of the left side!”

Sofia returned to the right hand side of the long room, taking on her demonic form to extend her field of view. Now that she knew what to look for, it would be much easier to notice it.

Despite that, the time-limited task proved arduous. The hand-decorated room’s patterns extended from the floor to the ceiling, with pillars, alcoves and raised trims, making it hard to look at too much of it at once.

Not here…

Nothing there either…

Sofia glanced at Henry, who was also looking around from his position, the strange petrification reaching up to his shoulderblade.

Five fingers. Right hand. Five fingers… Four fingers… Four?! No thumb! This one!

Sofia crouched down to touch the four-fingered left hand she found on the ground. She felt something strange, like a short electrical zap in her fingerbones, but nothing else, meanwhile, Henry was almost prettified up to his neck.

Is the philosopher's the issue?!

Hurriedly taking off her glove and passing it to Crowie, Sofia touched the hand again.

Her left hand started to petrify. “I’m getting turned to stone too!”

“Let it do its thing!” Henry said, while his own petrification slowly encroached upon his jaw.

When her left hand was fully turned to stone, Sofia was starting to doubt Henry’s plan, but suddenly her hand fell off, and she was free to move again. Henry’s hand fell to the ground in the same way, and the petrification dissipated from his bones in reverse.

“I am– Ugh– shocked that this worked,” Sofia commented, whincing from the pain of her regrowing left hand.

“Don’t ya sell the whale’s oil before ya kill it, still ain’t no exit or booty in sight.”

“Hmm… Now that we have our two stone hands, mine technically has one too many fingers and yours one too few, no?”

Henry looked at Sofia, “Suggesting some improvised surgery? Good thinkin’ but if yar wrong, we up for another draw of a losing hands, ya fine with that?”

“You’re down one entire body, I can deal with a hand,” Sofia answered, observing the very slightly crooked regrown bones or her new left hand. I just hope they won’t stay like this once we leave the sanctuary.

With just a little force, Sofia snapped the thumb off of her petrified bones, and tossed it to Henry.

The finger turned at a sharp angle mid air before Henry could catch it, crashing directly into the hand he was holding, fusing with it seamlessly.

“Definitely the right move,” Henry commented, looking at the fusioned hand, “Now a matter o’ findin’ what to do with those.”

Something obvious like empty hand-shaped slots the trio would have already found out. Here the trio searched, trapped in the room for almost an hour. They tried many things, and only started to understand when Crowie found an oval-ish shape that looked like a cut wrist hidden in between the spread out fingers of two hands on the right hand wall.

Sofia’s petrified hand being all bones of course did not fit the cut cross section, but it still held up by itself when placed there. Then they looked for and found a similar shape on the opposite wall. The two hands in place, nothing happened, still.

Sofia and Henry tried grabbing the hands, grabbing each other’s hands, and nothing happened, until they replicated the exact position of each of the original petrifying hand carvings’ interlocking fingers. On the right side of the room, Sofia held her own cut left hand with her right in that special way, and on the opposite side, Henry mirrored her. 

Only then did something finally happen.

The room shook, the many locked carved hands let go of each other, the walls and floor crumbled, bright white light inundating the room from the cracks. Then came the true hands. Made of living stone, crawling through the gaps, like spiders, millions of them. Before anyone could do anything, they engulfed the entire collapsing room like a tidal wave.

That felt… Like a teleportation?

The switch had been almost instant, like blinking in a dream, Sofia was alone with Crowie, inside of some kind strange stone cocoon tall enough for her to stand with her arms spread.

Weird shape… Wait, no… This is a hand again. A closed hand. With bones inside!

Sofia pried open her cage with her aura, forcing open the giant fingers.