Chapter 283: Land Under |
Sylver Seeker Book 7
Chapter 17 (283) - Land Under
It hadn’t really occurred to anyone, but if before the float-boat didn’t leave a trail, now it left a giant tunnel behind it.
The problem with that was that on the ground and walls of the tunnel, there were small holes all over the place, most were around the size of a human, some were as small as mice, and one was bigger than the float-boat.
Bigger doesn’t always necessarily mean stronger, but as a rule of thumb, if something is so big that it’s impossible to miss, it either gets attacked and killed by someone since it’s easy to track and follow, or it’s so powerful that everything that sees or senses it runs away.
It had fur on its back, claws the length and width of two story houses, and given the smooth trail it left behind, it likely had a tail it used to hide its footprints.
It was wounded, the otherwise white snow was discoloured with a faint yellow fluid on the right side of the tunnel, it reacted to Sylver’s [Dead Dominion] but for some reason he decided to leave the fluid alone. He didn’t even send a shade down the tunnel to see the creature that had dug it; it wasn’t worth the risk of it perceiving the observation as an attack or an attempt to track it.
Once the float-boat had started moving again, and Kalok had explained the overall plan to everyone, the residents of Velrod and a few smaller towns felt a sense of relief, and let their guard down. Children who got bored started wandering around the float-boat, men and women stopped whispering and started to talk, and when the first string was plucked on somebody’s lute, all sense of danger seemed to disappear.
The dead silence that followed the float-boat getting close enough to the other tunnel to see it was harrowing. Parents clutched their children so tightly a few yelped in pain loud enough for Sylver to hear, men kept their previously stored away pickaxes and tools in their hands to use as weapons, and everyone sat with their backs to the walls of their individual rooms, as if that would somehow change something if they were attacked by a creature too powerful for Sylver, Mora, and Nels to handle.
Or a large turtle…
Faust had planned to do something with the blood he found underneath Tuli, the shell was cracked open so it could rain inside her… The dragon powered a Ki barrier, its magic was closer to mana then Ki, but even if Faust couldn’t sense the magic in the blood there were more than a couple of dark elves that would notice something was wrong…
And because they aren’t local, they might assume blood raining from the sky was normal…
Could the blood harm Tuli? It wasn’t poisonous, it acted against positive magic, but in theory even if it soaked into her flesh, or got into her veins, her size alone would dilute it to the point the blood’s effect would be negligible…
He needed to either teleport to Tuli to see for himself, have Edmund fly over there and check, or talk to Chrys so she could pass along a message to them…
People struggling with their magic not functioning, Sylver didn’t care about. His people struggling with their magic not functioning, he cared about a lot.
Problem was, he’d had plenty of time to think and conduct experiments on the aforementioned blood, and the closest he got to a solution was the magical equivalent of an umbrella.
Presumably the blood was limited in quantity, so eventually it will end up flowing down into lakes, rivers, and then into the seas and oceans, and then the fish should handle it…
But that would take too long…
What’s wrong with an umbrella? Chrys, Lola, Zelvash, Bruno, not Faust, who else… Salgok, Yeva, Ciege…
Normally Sylver would have just given Lola the framework for the “umbrella” and let her handle it.
The problem was, the “umbrella” consisted of figuring out the specific wavelength a person’s positive mana had, and creating something to convert a portion of the positive mana into a very specific negative mana wavelength.
Sylver could do it fairly easily, but Sylver had a slightly keener sense when it came to negative mana than Lola did.
Or Nels for that matter.
This thing needed to be accurate to the millimeter, Nels for all her extraordinary talents for positive mana, was somewhere in the 10 centimeter range when it came to negative mana, Lola as a high elf would be lucky to be in the 50 meter range in comparison.
Bruno maybe could manage it, he certainly had enough practice in dark magic that there was a good chance he was on a similar level to Sylver, but this umbrella wouldn’t work if he was close enough, it either worked, or it didn’t.
On top of that, the umbrella wasn’t a one and done, it would last three, maybe four, days before the tiny amount of heat the mana being channeled through it would slowly melt the framework until it stopped working.
But because this needed negative mana, an organic component was unavoidable, at least not without asking Lola to buy fist sized diamonds for every person who needed an umbrella.
Even if Sylver found the money, made everyone an umbrella, what would be the point of it? The only person who needed an umbrella was Chrys, and this umbrella would be local, it wouldn’t help her with the thing Sylver needed from her, which was long range communication.
The things Sylver knew about clairvoyancy and how it worked wasn’t enough for him to even know if it was possible to help Chrys with the effect the blood presumably had on her magic.
He asked Nels, and while this did fall into her area of expertise, because the blood itself used what they both agreed was a form of dark magic, it was up to Sylver to find a solution.
At most Nels could tell him if his theories would work for Chrys.
The only thing they came up with that sounded right from both their sides was to have Chrys channel her clairvoyancy through the earth, and create bridges for her to use so her magic can cross ley lines.
Only problem with that is that the bridges would need guards, and neither of them were sure about how much mana or maintenance a bridge would require, and to make matters worse both of them knew about these kinds of bridges, but had never seen one in person, and had assumed the other knew how to make one from scratch.
“What’s that noise?” Kalok whispered as he speed tiptoed all the way from what would have been the captain’s quarters if this were a real boat.
“There’s three large monsters fighting behind that wall of snow over there,” Sylver said with a gesture towards the left from where he was sprawled out on the deck’s floor like a doll a child had thrown away.
He was almost fully formed on the inside right now, he’d used everything he had to repair the organ responsible for keeping what he called blood having enough pressure to reach all the nooks and crannies of his torso and limbs.
The system didn’t seem to be sure on its definition of “alive” because even though Sylver was technically as organically stable and functional as he usually was, it only stopped lowering his HP when he started moving his blood around.
It was probably a coincidence, but that just so happened to be the one thing he couldn’t handle with just mana and skill, he needed an organ that he wasn’t manually moving around to do it for him.
The “organ” was normally the size of an apple, but because he had to use scraps and chunks of bones as opposed to a single solid organized mass, the “organ” ended up being bigger than his head.
“How much longer?” Kalok asked.
“Lostal said at this pace six more hours. So we’ll get there at the dead of the night,” Sylver answered.
He hadn’t been able to send shades to scout ahead by having them move along the ice’s surface, because they were now too far away from the hole they’d been able to use, and so far neither he nor the shades had been able to find so much as a pinhole to reach the surface through.
Because of that, Sylver couldn’t really tell if the ice sheet was getting thinner or thicker the further they traveled.
Kalok stood silently in the same spot for well over ten minutes when Sylver had almost fallen asleep.
“How long do you plan to stay in Merol?” Kalok asked.
“However many days it takes for Klara to see a healer. Why?” Sylver asked.
“Without active guards and people like us coming in giant waves, Merol is likely not safe from thieves and the like. I wanted to ask if you would be willing to stay in the city for a while, to keep these people safe, and if we’re told to go elsewhere, to escort us there,” Kalok said.
Sylver thought about it.
“Would you mind giving us a minute to talk it over?” Sylver asked with a glance towards Nels.
Kalok nodded at them, and walked back into what would be the captain’s quarters on a regular boat, but on the float-boat, was a room full of twitching crystals, and a small sleeping bag near the door.
Nels waited until the door was closed before she wrapped herself and Sylver in a sound isolating barrier.
“Hypothetical. Ed doesn’t come, and there’s no word from your clairvoyant. And for one reason or another you don’t trust your waystone to get to Tuli,” Nels said.
“Well… Would you be comfortable with me stitching you together, and hiring a healer to do the finishing touches?” Sylver asked.
“When was the last time you worked on living tissue?” Nels asked.
“A couple weeks ago,” Sylver said.
“Was the person still alive by the end?” Nels asked, in jest, but also genuinely because from her perspective Sylver always shoved the living over to Edmund and was as out of practice as a person could get.
“They were. Look, Mora has a thread that’s finer than silk, I’ll fix my hands so they have the dexterity for this, depending on the healer the scar will be thinner than a hair… How about I personally operate on Klara so you can see the end result and decide if it’s good enough from that?” Sylver asked.
Nels thought about it for a while.
Sylver spoke as he saw her eyebrows twitch.
“What could I possibly do that Edmund couldn’t fix in an afternoon?” Sylver offered.
Nels’ eyebrows returned to their usual latitude.
“That’s true… You said cracked ribs, how wide of an incision do you think you’ll need to make?” Nels asked.
“Two centimeters inside the bellybutton... Good point… If Merol is as dangerous and overcrowded as Kalok says it is, I’ll go to a bad area, and either find someone who was recently stabbed, or someone will try to assault me, and I’ll stab them and stitch it close?” Sylver said.
“Don’t do that, you might get arrested. Let's assume you stitch me back into one piece, everything works and is fine, what do we do after that?” Nels asked.
“I’ll need to get new guild tags at the adventurer’s guild, so that could take a couple of days… You’ll need food so that’s another day at a minimum… Tailor, alchemist, blacksmith, I need new maps too… You’re fine with using a pre-made staff, right?” Sylver asked.
“I would prefer something from that trading city. Torg was it?” Nels asked.
“Torg, yeah… Regarding my, and by extension, your finances, my people and I are temporarily asset rich, but cash poor… Actually, we might be asset poor too, I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain there’s less than twenty gold in my adventurer’s guild account,” Sylver said.
He didn’t even need to look in her direction to see Nels smirking.
“As long as I have a staff and something to cover myself with, I don’t need the rest. We can hunt and forage as we go. Actually, I want one of your daggers. So, staff, robe, and your dagger,” Nels said.
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Sylver looked through the four daggers he had left, and picked the one that had the fewest scratches and chips on its blade. He waited for the float-boat to stop moving for a moment to use [Still Water] on a small puddle of water hovering in the air, and stored the dagger inside.
“Healing potions. At least a barrel,” Sylver said, more to himself, than Nels.
“I don’t need a healing potion. My…” Nels’ voice trailed off as she tried to say what she wanted to say without saying something she didn’t want Sylver to know.
“Half a barrel then, just in case” Sylver said as if she’d explained herself.
She looked at him.
“I realize to you it isn’t a big deal, but I was… I am…”
Odd as it was to say, there was something mildly exciting to see Nels at a loss for words. Like a normally elegant cat slipping and falling over.
Having been undead in one form or another far longer than he’d ever been “alive,” the concept of a body, or in this case, the body, being sacred and irreplaceable was a foreign concept to Sylver.
“Alright then, keep your secrets… If I am as poor as I think I am, being part of a group might be for the best,” Sylver said.
“Can’t you just go on an adventure and earn money that way?” Nels asked.
“First of all, they’re called quests, second of all, there’s a limitation to what I’m willing to do with you nearby, and most importantly, given the state of things, I’m not completely sure the adventurer’s guild will be functional in that way in Merol,” Sylver said.
“If nothing else, since this float-boat was made on Countess Camilla’s request, sticking around will at very least get us an introduction,” Nels said.
“I didn’t even think of that… You know, if they are told to relocate elsewhere, we could ask them to hire others on credit, and then have those people escort us to Torg,” Sylver thought out loud.
Traveling on Will would be faster, but given his current condition, and frankly speaking his future condition since it was very unlikely he was going to find everything he needed in Merol, having someone around to fight off a second [Little King] would be for the best.
In a real serious fight Nels was significantly closer to a liability, than she was to an asset, and if there are monsters roaming around that managed to corner both Sylver and Mora, then the chances of Nels fighting it off on her own were close to zero.
Not to mention the Redcaps were somewhere nearby.
Having decided on a course of action, Sylver talked to Kalok and they had a conversation that used the words “if” and “in the event of” so many times that the word and phrase started to lose meaning in Sylver’s mind.
But they managed to reach an agreement, shook on it, and barely ten minutes after they were finished, Sylver was informed by Spring that there were two mages standing in the float-boat’s path.
They were both dressed in egg-white robes, with scarves wrapped around their mouths and heads underneath their hoods, so the only thing visible were their eyes.
As the float-boat got closer, Sylver could see them himself, and saw that they were both women.
The wolves pulling the float-boat slowed, and it slowly reached a full stop in the air.
Kalok decided now was a good moment to inform Sylver that he’d been told through the cans that Merol was sending someone to meet them, and that Kalok had been given a password to tell them when they met.
Sylver held his palm a few centimeters away from Kalok’s mouth, and amplified his voice as he shouted into his hand.
“FLASH” Kalok yelled.
The two women mages flinched as the sound reached them with far too much volume.
“The one on the right shouted “thunder.”” Spring said from the shadow under Sylver’s feet.
“TURN,” Kalok yelled.
“Focus,” Spring said from the floor.
“Alright, it’s them,” Kalok said as Sylver took his hand away.
The woman that had stayed quiet lifted her arm and from this angle it looked like she pulled a curtain out of her way. She disappeared as she walked through the empty space, and a man dressed in a dark grey fur cloak stepped out through it.
The man was human, and was a level 350 [Warrior] named Halost, and the woman was a level 80 [Apprentice Mage] elf named Prune.
According to them Merol was trapped underneath the ice, keyword being trapped, because alongside being nigh impenetrable, the ice also completely blocked all forms of teleportation their mages have attempted.
Through the cans, and other runners, they said the ice was like a giant rectangular umbrella, it got thinner the further away it got from the Moaning Heights mountain range, as far as they knew at this moment, it reached all the way to the Sinis Sea, and Torg.
Neither Sylver nor Nels were particularly surprised by this news, they had both hoped this was a more local thing, but at the very least Merol knew about cracks, fissures, and holes in the ice, so they weren’t completely “trapped” underneath.
But with teleportation being blocked, the difficulty of traversing through the ice, and how far away the nearest openings were, the situation was just short of catastrophic.
They didn’t say it, but Sylver got the distinct sense that going to Merol might not be the best idea, and he could tell Kalok was thinking the same thing, but in both cases it wasn’t as if they had a better alternative to go to at this moment.
The thing that caught Sylver more than anything was how huge the sheet of ice sounded to be, the distance between Torg and the Sinis Sea was almost a whole continent, where did that much water come from? Even if the entire Moaning Heights mountain range was made out of solid ice, there wouldn’t be enough ice to cover such a giant area, not even a tenth, where did all this ice come from?
But that didn’t make Sylver feel any better, maybe on some level it was nice to hear that he didn’t seem to be the cause of this specific calamity, but if it reached the Sinis Sea then Tuli was very likely affected... At the moment Sylver would have to trust that Faust would figure out a way to keep everyone safe, and if it reached as far as Arda, Lola would handle it.
Kalok talked about the Redcaps to Prune while she checked on the wounded, she mainly purified some of the older bandages Sylver had to use, and Sylver heard the very specific words he least of all wanted to hear when it came to the Redcaps.
Red skulls.
That wasn’t the kind of thing Redcaps could figure out on their own through trial and error, they had a leader, and their leader was being given knowledge by their ancestor’s spirits.
Having said that, from Prune’s descriptions the Redcaps weren’t just mindlessly kidnapping humans to bleed them, they stole tools, grain,even seeds, they sounded less and less like a group of organized zealots and more like a country pillaging for resources.
There was still a chance these weren’t Redcaps with a spirit guided leader. However small that chance may be.
Halost sat on the very tip of the float-boat, Sylver could sense the man using layers upon layers of skills and perks to scout ahead, something on his belt was also leaking mana all over the place that it was the magical equivalent of having someone blow smoke directly into your face.
For some reason Sylver felt on edge around the man, he even went as far as to tie the [Black Mass] suitcase with Nels’ body onto Mora’s back, and didn’t let her head be further than a meter away from him the entire time Halost was on board.
Sylver didn’t quite jump when Prune spoke in his direction, but amidst staring at Halost without directly looking at him, Prune’s steady but oddly loud voice almost caught him off guard.
“Kalok said you’re a mage, where did you study?” Prune asked.
Sylver was holding Nels by the sides of her face, so he felt her cheeks harden as she grinned in his hands.
“I started as an apprentice and was self-taught afterwards,” Sylver answered.
He felt a reaction from Halost’s soul, chances were the man was trying to read Sylver to see if he was lying.
“Have you been to Merol before?” Prune asked.
She had this odd tone of someone who was so accustomed to talking from a position of power that she couldn’t remember how to talk like a normal person, like she was a school teacher and Sylver was one of her students.
Given the supposed condition of Merol, she and Halost likely had the same responsibilities and authority as the guards would have had. Probably more.
“First time,” Sylver answered.
“Do you know anyone in Merol who could confirm you are who you say you are?” Prune asked.
“I’m a registered adventurer with the adventurer’s guild, I’ll get new tags there,” Sylver answered.
“Where are you from? Originally?” Prune asked.
“A small village south-east of Arda,” Sylver said.
Once Ciege was back, Sylver had had his documents adjusted, which is to say, forged, so Ciege was a separate person from him.
“What were you doing north of the mountains?” Prune asked.
“I was visiting a friend in Pere. Then, you know-” Sylver vaguely waved his hand in the air.
“Why are you heading to Torg?” Prune asked.
“I have an item stored there that I want to collect before I travel to Arda,” Sylver answered.
Prune questioned him for an hour.
At some point he caught on that this wasn’t actually an interrogation, and that she was just an extremely direct woman and this was her attempt at small talk. He figured it out when he asked her about Merol and she answered him so clearly that it was as if he was the one interrogating her.
As he had guessed from the stiff way she spoke, she was an orphan that grew up in a dwarven temple, and given how Halost slightly relaxed when Sylver stopped being fully formal, this misunderstanding was a common occurrence with her.
He got the sense that there was… that something could happen here, but between standing guard over people, Nels being the way she was, and that it was a generally bad idea to be “involved” with government officials, he kept the conversation closer to professional than not. Or he did his best, Prune’s commanding tone was working on him, even if he didn’t want it to.
“Why are they slowing down?” Halost asked, as the undead wolves pulling the float-boat forward slowed down from a run to a walk.
“The float-boat needs to be stationary for it to clear the snow in front of it,” Sylver explained.
“How much snow will it clear?” Prune asked.
“A bit under four kilomters?” Sylver guessed.
“It’ll hit Merol. Can you get it down to 500 meters?” Prune asked.
Spring asked Allson to come to the deck, and a few moments later the lanky wizard crawled out of the hatch in the captain's quarters, Kalok walked alongside him.
“Can you lower the range of the snow squashing down to 500 meters?” Prune asked.
Allson knew the answer immediately, but he made a show of pretending to think about it.
“It would take about four days,” Allson said after a good thirty seconds of silence.
Prune turned to Halost.
“Can you stay here with him for however long he needs to make the adjustments?” Prune asked.
Halost nodded at her.
“I need Nelly to do the calculations first,” Allson added.
“How long will that take?” Prune asked.
“Ten minutes,” Nels said.
“Can you do them now?” Prune asked.
“Sure,” Nels said.
“So is Merol just 500 meters through the snow?” Sylver asked.
“No, the cleared out area is about 500 meters through the snow, Merol is another couple of kilometers further,” Prune said.
“Couldn’t we just press the snow down at an angle in that case?” Nels asked.
“What do you mean? Ohhhhh, the float-boat would make a tunnel that would intersect with the cleared out area,” Allson asked and answered his own question.
“What happens if a person gets caught up in the effect?” Prune asked.
“Have you ever stepped on a grape?” Sylver asked.
“Yes,” Prune said as if he had asked an actual question.
“That’s what would happen to a person,” Sylver clarified.
“I understand. In that case, Halost is staying here to guard it, everyone else is going to Merol, and once we make sure everyone moved away from the general area we’ll use the float-boat to make a passage for the float-boat,” Prune said.
With a plan decided on, Allson lowered the float-boat and shut it down so it wouldn’t explode while he was away, Kalok got everybody packed and ready to move within a matter of minutes, and Sylver fashioned a long sled made of ice for the people who didn’t have full mobility, either due to age or injury.
Mora used her threads like a long inflated balloon, she pushed a thin straw shaped thread as far as she could, then made the treads unwind and expand, which in turn pushed the snow and ice shards out of the way, and created a cylindrical tunnel.
Sylver adjusted the sled the wolves behind Mora were dragging so it would pat down the snow and make it flat and less slippery for the people walking behind them.
It was strangely tranquil walking through the snow, the walls and ceiling were soft and absorbed so much sound that Sylver could barely hear the footsteps of the people behind him. Soft pale light came in through the ice and surrounding snow, some of the children on the sled even fell asleep from the rocking motion it got from the wolves walking in sync.
A thought popped into Sylver’s head, that he wanted to shove off the metaphorical table, but it made too much sense for him to dismiss it.
There was a place he knew that had this much water, ice, snow, and cold air to form such a giant sheet of ice that engulfed almost a continent.
The only thing that didn’t make sense to him was the timing, why now?
And was the blood separate and just a coincidence, or was it part of it?
Obviously, it was possible the snow storm and ice sheet originated from something completely and totally unrelated to Sylver, it wasn’t like there was only one realm with cold weather and lots of water, there was also a chance this was a completely natural weather phenomenon due to the moon moving, but something in Sylver wouldn’t let him write off the connections he kept finding the more he thought about it.
Realistically, if someone did open a gate on purpose, aside from the death-lords, there wasn’t anything particularly dangerous in that realm. Their technology would break the moment they stepped through the gate, their magic likely wouldn’t work either, and Sylver didn’t know what their strongest fighter looked like, but he knew the High King wouldn’t lose a fight on his land.
But again, there was a chance Sylver was just making connections because he was looking for them.
As Mora opened the next tunnel, a painful sour smell flowed into the tunnel everyone was standing in, people coughed, their eyes watered, and even though Mora had instantly sealed off the tunnel the smell had glued itself onto everyone’s fur and leather.
Children woke up coughing and started screaming in pain, Prune fell down to her knees as she’d gotten a lungful from standing so close to the front.
Nels cleaned the air as best as she could, Prune moved the surrounding snow around to clean the gunk that had formed on people’s hair and beards, and Sylver used [Fog Form] to travel through Mora’s straw to see where the tunnel she had dug in the snow ended up in.
He made himself a spot to stand in the snow wall, and saw a city with the filfiest oily cloud of smog sitting right above it that he had ever seen.
Merol was shaped like a flattened cone, like Arda, tall buildings near the center, and shorter buildings the further they went to the outer walls.
Except there weren’t any walls, just a long dent in the ground where the walls had been prior to collapsing, he could see a faint shimmer on the rough edges of the rocks, likely a second barrier inside the main barrier meant to replace the walls.
Past the missing walls were such an enormous number of tents and handmade shacks that Sylver initially didn’t understand what he was looking at.
Everywhere he looked, tiny fires spat out black smoke that floated up towards the sky, reached the curved ice sheet, and gathered directly above the center of Merol.
The very top of Merol’s barrier was engulfed in the black smoke, it was so big and dense it cast a shadow on the city, like a big drop of black ink on a painting.
Mora dug a tunnel in a downward spiral, Sylver added steps as he walked down it so people didn’t slip, and by the time they reached the bottom and made an opening in the snow wall to enter the open area, a crowd had gathered.
There was a mixed bag of faces, some looked excited to see them, some seemed scared, others were sizing Sylver and Kalok up, and when Prune stepped into the metaphorical light everyone collectively looked away and dispersed as if the entertaining performance had concluded.
“Can either of you whistle?” Prune asked with barely a glance at the crowd.
“I can,” Sylver answered.
“Whistle this as loud as you can so the men at the gate hear you,” Prune said, as she pursed her lips together and quietly blew out air in a four note tune.
Sylver placed his thumb and forefinger against his lips, and directed the sound towards the guards in question.
They waited quietly for a few seconds, people inside the nearby tents poked their heads out to see who had made all that noise, but they very quickly went right back inside when they saw Prune.
“Whistle one more time, I don’t think-no, they heard you,” Prune said as the air in front of Sylver shimmered for a moment before a woman’s pale hand came out as if she were holding open a curtain.
The woman walked backwards and the curtain opened more and revealed a well lit cobblestone road.
“Kalok, stay here and double check that everyone walking through is someone you know. Halost isn’t here so Syl I’ll have to ask you to handle it if someone tries to sneak in,” Prune said.
Both Sylver and Kalok nodded at her, and slowly, one person at a time, two hundred and eighty three people including Klara and Lostal walked in, followed by Kalok, Mora, and Sylver walked in last with Spring who was holding Nels’ head in his hands wrapped in a thin cloth so he didn’t look like he was carrying a decapitated woman’s head.
