-
-
Ch148-Tea Or Death
-
-
“It’s a bit like… Imagine that you’re reading a book and… and…” Chrys trailed off as she attempted to figure out how to continue with the metaphor.
“Is what you see in the future affected by other clairvoyants?” Sylver asked, after a couple of seconds had passed, during which Chrys only managed to say “and” over and over again.
“It is, yes. The more effect the clairvoyant has on the world, the greater the interference they create,” Chrys answered.
“Does you seeing the future affect the future? Have you ever seen the exact same future twice?” Sylver asked.
Chrys closed her eyes and didn’t say anything for a while.
“No. The fact that I’ve seen the future changes it,” she answered.
“What’s your range like? Can you see a day into the future? A month? A year? 10 years?” Sylver asked as Chrys answered quicker this time.
“I have multiple skills for it but the further I look the more interference there is. After two months I can’t see anything clearly enough to understand it. But I’ve glimpsed as far as 12 years once. They took my arms and legs away by that point,” Chrys explained, with a sickening casualness that Sylver decided to play along with.
He sighed as he stood up from his pillow, and stretched his left leg out until it popped.
“The machine below us. What does it do exactly?” Sylver asked, as he looked down at the bracelet on his hand, and touched a couple of the buttons on it, but it didn’t do anything.
“You can think of the way I see the future to be flipping ahead in a book. I don’t choose the page I end up on, other than that it’s after the page I was currently reading. The machine reaches out from the page I flipped ahead to, and forces me to read the pages before and after that page,” Chrys explained, with a slight amount of emphasis on the “forces” part.
“So it amplifies it…” Sylver said, mostly to himself.
“Other clairvoyants also use it to compare their predictions against,” Chrys added.
One of the tablets around Chrys made a beeping noise, and she reached over and picked it up to stare at it. Sylver once again felt a wave of primal energy pass through him and hoped the odd numbness he felt in his left side wasn’t indicative of anything.
“You think my clairvoyancy is useless,” Chrys mumbled while she tapped something out on the tablet in her hand.
“I think all clairvoyancy is useless,” Sylver explained but didn’t garner any reaction from Chrys.
“Not useless useless, but… What you do is essentially take an educated guess at what could happen in the future. It’s just an extrapolation of the present, not to mention the fact that other clairvoyants influence it and get in the way,” Sylver explained, as Chrys focused on whatever it was she was doing and peeked into the future three more times before she nodded for Sylver to continue.
“The future is malleable, and what ends up happening is that the future that the clairvoyant with the more powerful friends predicted, is the one that comes to pass. More honestly, I simply don’t trust it. I’ve been burned far too many times because I listened to someone’s prediction, sometimes literally,” Sylver explained.
Chrys put her tablet back into the circle of tablets and crossed her legs and sat up straighter on her pillow.
“And yet you trust Kass’ predictions,” Chrys said.
“I trust him to find a book. An object that should just be sitting in place,” Sylver explained and saw Chrys’ shoulders shift slightly.
“I already know you’re not going to tell me why the book is so important… But can we leave when you get it? I know you’re waiting for the- no, never mind, the probability of success is abysmal if you don’t wait for the Dark Year…” Chrys said, initially somewhat hopeful at the prospect of escaping, but then she went back to quietly mumbling to herself.
“How much do you know? About who I am, I mean?” Sylver asked, and felt Chrys’ soul retract into herself slightly.
“That’s a hard question to answer. The conversation we’re having right now; I’ve already had it over 200 times. You’re guarded against me, you won’t tell me your real name, or what exactly your plan is. I know you’re not an elf, I know you’re not a high elf, but I know you’re not one of the Serpents either. I know you’re not doing this because you’re attracted to me, I know that you just don’t answer, instead of lying,” Chrys explained and looked more and more afraid with each sentence.
“I know you’re hoping I’ll be able to help you find somebody, all while knowing there’s no chance I’ll find them. But… how do I explain this? I know that if I trust in you, I’ll be freed from the machine downstairs. I can’t see the future past a certain point, I can see it clear as day on the paths where I betray you,” Chrys said, and Sylver raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean by paths?”
Chrys reached down for one of her tablets and tapped on its screen for a few seconds before she turned it over to show Sylver the images on it. It looked like a sideways tree diagram, with the top branches spreading out infinitely, and the very bottom branch stopping at only 3.
Chrys pointed her finger at the top area, where the branches kept going.
“If I call for help and tell the Garden what I know about you, they’ll kill you, and I’ll stay here, and I’ll continue seeing the future, for the rest of my life,” Chrys said, as she moved her finger across the topmost branches.
“If I do everything I can to help you, I can’t see what happens past a certain point. I’m assuming this is because you’re going to shut down the machine before coming to get me, but it could just as easily mean you killed me so quickly that I didn’t even realize what happened… Or because I helped you something catastrophic happens, and I end up dead… It’s a win-win either way for me,” Chrys explained, as she dragged her finger across the lowest, and shortest branch.
“I see…” Sylver said, as Chrys removed the image and set the tablet back down.
“I uh… Don’t rush this. I can wait for however long it takes, just get me out of here,” Chrys pleaded quietly.
“And in 9 days, when there’s a blackout?” Sylver asked.
“That was if you said no. I’ve waited my whole life for this, I can wait another couple months,” Chrys explained.
Sylver stared at her for a while and felt a small part of him die inside.
As an old undead Lich, sometimes caring about people and their problems was difficult to the point it was impossible. Sylver wanted to care, he knew he should care, but they were all so small, and temporary.
Kings and their starving kingdoms, men and women who should have known better, people who seemed to think that all of Eira revolved around them, [Hero]s that were ready to do “whatever it takes” to achieve their goals.
It was all so tiresome.
There’s only so many times a person can force two warring kingdoms to make peace, only so many times he can reverse the effect of a curse that could have been easily prevented, only so many times someone can stop a [Hero] from summoning a demon lord to save a loved one.
What made it all the worse was that Sylver couldn’t even really blame any of them. He felt no anger, no matter how moronic and preventable a situation was, everyone did what they could with the information and tools they had. He didn’t hate them, but he didn’t care about them either.
But living as a completely emotionless husk of an undead didn’t sit well with Sylver, no matter how many times he had attempted it. It was…
Boring…
So boring that his options were to kill himself and end his boredom, or go back to caring about people and things. And while there might have been a point where Sylver would have chosen the former, he’d learned to enjoy the latter a long time ago, and wasn’t going to stop.
He would care about what he wanted to care about, and everything else would have to pray to their god, it didn’t get in between him and the things and people he cared about. Even if it was stupid and irrational, it was still infinitely better than the alternative.
It didn’t sound right whenever he said it out loud, but unlife really wasn’t worth unliving without love.
Ancient lich or not.
Sylver ran his hands over his bald and shiny scalp and looked around the nearly empty room.
There was a lot he wanted to say to Chrys, that everything was going to be alright, that he’d get her out no matter what, that she was safe now that he was here.
But when Sylver made a promise to one of his, he kept his word.
And as much as Sylver cared about Chrys and her freedom and future, Edmund came first. Sylver had emotions, sometimes he had more than he wanted, but that didn’t mean he was controlled by them. They advised him, they never ordered.
“So what now? Laven said you were going to determine how best to put me to use,” Sylver asked, as Chrys picked up a different tablet and started looking for something.
Chrys quietly tapped away at her tablet.
“I’m going to defer my decision. And hopefully, neither of us will be here by the time anyone has a problem with that. Your situation is unusual, to say the least. I’ve looked through the records, you are quite literally the first person who managed to make Ladon’s Wyvern surrender by just threatening it,” Chrys explained, as she continued to do something on her tablet.
“Rouge said 3 men managed to make it surrender without a fight?” Sylver asked.
“Yes, but they offered it one of their skills, or in Myrol’s case, he offered his family blade. You are the first in being able to threaten it into surrendering. The Wyvern isn’t weak; it has defeated 5 climbers at the same time in the past. You’re infamous, but at the same time famous, that should be enough to stop Flowers from complaining...” Chrys explained as she put her tablet down.
“While we’re on that subject, why is it that some of the monsters were alive, while others were fake?” Sylver asked.
Given that he was still wary of saying something that would reveal that he was from another realm, Chrys was the only person he could ask.
“They have a way to grow monsters. For food, entertainment, experience, and for experiments,” Chrys explained, and Sylver saw that she stopped herself from using her hand to touch her scar-covered stomach.
“So they have a machine that can make monsters… Is it possible for me to see it?” Sylver asked.
Even if Chrys had managed to hide the cold water like splash of fear in her eyes, Sylver felt it in her soul.
“You need about 4 years of training before being allowed inside. If you really need to see it, I don’t mind wai-”
“No, no, no, I was curious that’s all. Look… I can’t predict how long it’s going to take, but we have a deal Chrys. My word is my bond. And the circumstances under which I would break my word are so few and far between that they might as well not exist,” Sylver explained and did his best to sound as confident as he wanted to feel.
“When Kass tells you where the book is, I’m going to pass along all the help I can give you. After that, I’m going to incapacitate myself. It will cripple the Garden’s clairvoyants, but I don’t know how long it will take them to bring me back,” Chrys explained.
Sylver mulled over the words over for a couple of seconds.
“By incapacitated you mean…” Sylver asked carefully.
“Does it matter? You’re going to have to rip out half of my internal organs to get me out of here anyway, whatever damage I do to myself will pale in comparison to that,” Chrys said, and Sylver couldn’t help but agree.
When they shook hands, Sylver had sent a pulse of mana through her and found that…
There was very little Chrys inside Chrys.
Not counting her head, there was maybe enough of the real her to fill 3 buckets. Sylver already had thoughts as to how to keep her alive during their escape, and for however long it took him to get back to Eira, but as far as solutions went, it wasn’t perfect.
He needed his workshop, he needed Lola, he needed a competent healer, and above all else, he needed somewhere safe to keep her while she recovered.
Once they left the Garden, there was no coming back.
“He’s going to give you the information in a sealed letter. 5 seconds before you unseal it, I’m going to put the Garden’s clairvoyancy based defenses out of commission. Because if I don’t, the Garden will immediately try to kill you. Only open it when you’re ready to find the book, and if you can, save me,” Chrys explained calmly.
Even if her soul was more or less weeping with fear.
“Alright… I’m… I’m sorry if things don’t turn out the way you hoped,” Sylver said, as Chrys just silently nodded along.
A downside of being alive long enough to see the consequences of your actions is that you learned just how harmful even a comforting lie could be. It led to doubt, which led to mistrust, which led to hesitation, which eventually showed its ugly face at a critical moment.
A small amount of liquid piled up on Chrys’ left eye, even as her face remained completely blank.
“I don’t want to die,” Chrys whispered as if afraid Sylver would hear the words.
“I…”
Sylver felt his arm almost go numb from the sudden pressure around it.
“I’m staying with her,” Ria said sternly into Sylver’s ear.
“No, we’re going to need your help, staying here won’t do her any good,” Spring told Ria before Sylver even had a chance to respond.
“She’s a child! We can’t just leave her-”
“Do you think just because he isn’t screaming and shouting he isn’t as angry as you are? We know what we’re doing, Ria. This isn’t how you help her. This is surgery, you have to suck up whatever it is you feel, and cut her open,” Spring argued, better than Sylver would have.
“What did you just do?” Chrys asked, with a genuinely puzzled look on her face, and a matching reaction in her soul.
“What do you mean?” Sylver asked, after a few seconds of silence, as Ria refrained from saying anything.
“Just now. Whatever you were doing before was creating interference, but I could still see what you were doing in the next 10 seconds. You were going to say “I know,” but you didn’t, what did you do?” Chrys asked as Sylver felt Ria flow down his arm into his hand.
Sylver lifted the liquid gold creature so Chrys could see her.
“Where did you get this much Mangolium?” Chrys asked.
“In the dungeon that exploded. I found her, and she saved me and showed me the way out. Her name is Ria,” Sylver explained, as Ria extended a short metallic tendril out towards Chrys.
Chrys reached out with her finger towards the metal and looked even more confused than before as they touched.
“No wonder you’ve got 4 points of deviations, you have a piece of Mangolium that can actually think and make suggestions that pushed you further and further away from the median prediction. I’m Chrysanthemum, Chrys for short, it’s very nice to meet you, Ria,” Chrys said, and sort of shook/wagged her finger along with Ria’s tendril.
“You have my word we’ll save you Chrys,” Ria swore, and under different circumstances, Sylver would have flung her at a wall for doing that.
Sylver was fairly certain he didn’t react with his face or body language, but Chrys knew.
Sylver chose not to voice the fact that the meaning of the word “save” could be interpreted in different ways, because he didn’t want to have to say it, and because both he and Chrys knew Ria would immediately make the situation worse than it already was.
To her credit, Chrys knew exactly what to say.
“Thank you. You can’t stay with me, he’ll need your help, they’ll find you and dismantle you if you stay here, I won’t be able to hide or protect you,” Chrys explained, even as she reluctantly pulled her hand away from the warm liquid metal.
“No, I can-”
Chrys interrupted with a single fake sob and spoke before Ria could.
“Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is, you can help me by helping him,” Chrys explained, as tears leaked out of both of her eyes.
Sylver could tell she was over exaggerating.
Or, more accurately, she was pretending to over exaggerate, when this was how she actually felt on the inside. She was a frightened child that had no choice but to grow up or die, but she was still a child.
“Fine,” Ria said quietly, as she slithered back into Sylver’s sleeve, and wrapped herself snuggly around his bicep.
It took Chrys a couple of moments to compose herself again, her left eye was red, while her right remained crystal clear white. She used the collar of her shirt to wipe them before she spoke.
“The house I’ve put you in is as close to the Tower as I could find. The magical interference should make any kind of drones and other surveillance equipment ineffective, but I can’t say for certain you’ll be free to do whatever you want…” Chrys explained, as one of the tablets near her pillow made a sound, and she glanced over at it.
“Alright… I’ll be fine, be careful, don’t worry about me and… thank you. In case there won’t be time for me to say it,” Chrys explained.
In case you have to kill me. Sylver added to himself, as he straightened his back.
He was taller than Chrys, but now that he’s had a chance to get a closer look at her, she wasn’t supposed to be this tall. Her shoulders were the wrong shape for how long her arms were, but there was no point asking about it.
Uncertain as to what to say, Sylver simply nodded. Chrys reached down for a different tablet, and in a few taps, Sylver teleported away.
*
*
*
The Flower area was…
There wasn’t really a good word to describe it.
The Roots and Trunk had at least some cohesion, there was a consistency to them, the Flower’s area looked like someone had picked up mansions from all over Eira and plopped them down next to each other.
Some had a small garden with flowers growing in it, some had fruit trees, some were made entirely out of metal, or cement, sandstone, wood, one looked like an enormous hide tent, another looked like someone fused a bunch of Dandy-Lyon’s together.
If not for the fact that every single one looked like it was made by a team of masters, Sylver would have thought the whole area looked like a garbage dump.
The only “consistent” thing about all the buildings was the fact that every single one reached the glass ceiling. It gave the area the appearance of a maze, there were no roofs anywhere, everything looked like a giant well-crafted pillar.
Sylver followed the floating image on his bracelet and found that his house looked like a wooden hut that had been burned down but remained standing, and was rebuilt with more burned wood. It was dark, shiny charcoal, but it wasn’t real wood.
The lawn covered in weeds outside the house was real, as was the bright green vegetation growing out of it, but the sun wasn’t its usual interfering self, it almost felt like it was twice as strong, without being twice as bright.
Sylver struggled to move his shadow around using [Deadly Darkness] if he tried to materialize a shade here, it’d burn to death in seconds.
“You’ll need to hire help from the Roots or the Trunk. For cooks you should only use Branches, they cost a lot more, but they’re worth it,” Rouge explained, as Sylver approached his house and saw her leaning against his doorframe.
Rouge looked…
Almost exactly the same as her floating illusion. Her hair was a little longer, her eyes were a little beadier, but it was so subtle it could easily have been a trick of the light.
She was dressed in her signature bright red suit, except it wasn’t anywhere near as immaculate as it was when she appeared as an illusion.
“I’ll get right on that, thank you,” Sylver said, as he crouched down to touch some of the weeds in his lawn, and added them to [Seed Store].
“I could get one of mine to recommend someone if you want. Krill is a trustworthy man, with trustworthy friends. For cooks, it comes down to personal preference, but I-”
“That won’t be necessary, but thank you for the offer,” Sylver interrupted, with a politely raised hand. Rouge got up from leaning on the doorframe and stood close enough to Sylver that some of her hair was touching him.
“You’re in a bad mood. I take it Chrysanthemum told you something you didn’t want to hear? She thinks she’s hot shit just because both of her parents are high-ranking Flowers, and that her predictions are the ones the others use to compare against. Now, you didn’t hear it from me, but Vala told me that-”
“I am grateful for the warm welcome, but I need to be alone for a while,” Sylver interrupted.
Ria had turned into something close to a scalpel, and very nearly cut through Sylver’s skin from how angry she was. After her outburst, Sylver realized that despite how she felt, sounded, and sort of looked, in some ways she was a child.
She made the promise to Chrys without any malice, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t wrong for doing so.
As Sylver tried to walk past Rouge to place his bracelet against the locking thing, she grabbed him by the back of his robe and all but yanked it.
“If she told you how you’re going to die, she lied. She-”
Only the fact that Spring reminded Sylver 4 times over that Rouge likely had some sort of connection to Demor, stopped him from saying what he wanted to say. Instead, he smiled as gently and politely as he could.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve had a very long day, I’m going to shower, and then I’m going to sleep, please excuse me,” Sylver said, as his semi limp robe pulled itself out of Rouge’s grasp, and Sylver managed to get his door open.
Rouge followed Sylver inside, and since he couldn’t shove her out of the way, he stopped her from coming any further inside by holding onto his door and used his other hand to touch the doorframe
“I’ve had a change of heart regarding what you’ve done during the Gold Giers Trials. And I know I said I would think about it, but I’d like to invite you to my home for dinner,” Rouge explained, as she tapped her bracelet against Sylver’s and both of them made a sound.
“I’m glad to hear that, but I need some time to unwind from everything,” Sylver explained and did his best to sound as exhausted as he could manage without overplaying it.
Rouge leaned towards him until her chest was pressing up against Sylver’s, and she whispered in his ear.
“I’m sure I could help with that tomorrow night,” Rouge whispered, as Sylver had to force his heart to beat slower to lower his blood pressure so that he remained cool and calm.
On Spring’s suggestion, Sylver used his other hand and slightly raised Rouge’s chin so that she looked up at Sylver.
“Why wait? I’m fairly certain the shower here is big enough for two people. And if it’s not, I’m sure we’ll find a way to squeeze into it,” Sylver purred at the woman, and could both see her cheeks reddening, even as her soul recoiled from him, and the woman’s body followed after.
She stepped out of the doorway and pretended to straighten out her jacket to give herself a moment to think and collect her thoughts.
“You’re being rather forward for a-”
Sylver didn’t hear the rest of her bullshit as the door had quietly clicked shut and he went to find something to take his mind off his repressed anger.
AnnouncementVote on TopWebFiction, if you have 10 seconds to spare!
You can read up to chapter 168 (20 chapters ahead) on my Patreon
Discord for discussions, updates, and memes.
-
-
Ch148-Tea Or Death
-
-
“It’s a bit like… Imagine that you’re reading a book and… and…” Chrys trailed off as she attempted to figure out how to continue with the metaphor.
“Is what you see in the future affected by other clairvoyants?” Sylver asked, after a couple of seconds had passed, during which Chrys only managed to say “and” over and over again.
“It is, yes. The more effect the clairvoyant has on the world, the greater the interference they create,” Chrys answered.
“Does you seeing the future affect the future? Have you ever seen the exact same future twice?” Sylver asked.
Chrys closed her eyes and didn’t say anything for a while.
“No. The fact that I’ve seen the future changes it,” she answered.
“What’s your range like? Can you see a day into the future? A month? A year? 10 years?” Sylver asked as Chrys answered quicker this time.
“I have multiple skills for it but the further I look the more interference there is. After two months I can’t see anything clearly enough to understand it. But I’ve glimpsed as far as 12 years once. They took my arms and legs away by that point,” Chrys explained, with a sickening casualness that Sylver decided to play along with.
He sighed as he stood up from his pillow, and stretched his left leg out until it popped.
“The machine below us. What does it do exactly?” Sylver asked, as he looked down at the bracelet on his hand, and touched a couple of the buttons on it, but it didn’t do anything.
“You can think of the way I see the future to be flipping ahead in a book. I don’t choose the page I end up on, other than that it’s after the page I was currently reading. The machine reaches out from the page I flipped ahead to, and forces me to read the pages before and after that page,” Chrys explained, with a slight amount of emphasis on the “forces” part.
“So it amplifies it…” Sylver said, mostly to himself.
“Other clairvoyants also use it to compare their predictions against,” Chrys added.
One of the tablets around Chrys made a beeping noise, and she reached over and picked it up to stare at it. Sylver once again felt a wave of primal energy pass through him and hoped the odd numbness he felt in his left side wasn’t indicative of anything.
“You think my clairvoyancy is useless,” Chrys mumbled while she tapped something out on the tablet in her hand.
“I think all clairvoyancy is useless,” Sylver explained but didn’t garner any reaction from Chrys.
“Not useless useless, but… What you do is essentially take an educated guess at what could happen in the future. It’s just an extrapolation of the present, not to mention the fact that other clairvoyants influence it and get in the way,” Sylver explained, as Chrys focused on whatever it was she was doing and peeked into the future three more times before she nodded for Sylver to continue.
“The future is malleable, and what ends up happening is that the future that the clairvoyant with the more powerful friends predicted, is the one that comes to pass. More honestly, I simply don’t trust it. I’ve been burned far too many times because I listened to someone’s prediction, sometimes literally,” Sylver explained.
Chrys put her tablet back into the circle of tablets and crossed her legs and sat up straighter on her pillow.
“And yet you trust Kass’ predictions,” Chrys said.
“I trust him to find a book. An object that should just be sitting in place,” Sylver explained and saw Chrys’ shoulders shift slightly.
“I already know you’re not going to tell me why the book is so important… But can we leave when you get it? I know you’re waiting for the- no, never mind, the probability of success is abysmal if you don’t wait for the Dark Year…” Chrys said, initially somewhat hopeful at the prospect of escaping, but then she went back to quietly mumbling to herself.
“How much do you know? About who I am, I mean?” Sylver asked, and felt Chrys’ soul retract into herself slightly.
“That’s a hard question to answer. The conversation we’re having right now; I’ve already had it over 200 times. You’re guarded against me, you won’t tell me your real name, or what exactly your plan is. I know you’re not an elf, I know you’re not a high elf, but I know you’re not one of the Serpents either. I know you’re not doing this because you’re attracted to me, I know that you just don’t answer, instead of lying,” Chrys explained and looked more and more afraid with each sentence.
“I know you’re hoping I’ll be able to help you find somebody, all while knowing there’s no chance I’ll find them. But… how do I explain this? I know that if I trust in you, I’ll be freed from the machine downstairs. I can’t see the future past a certain point, I can see it clear as day on the paths where I betray you,” Chrys said, and Sylver raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean by paths?”
Chrys reached down for one of her tablets and tapped on its screen for a few seconds before she turned it over to show Sylver the images on it. It looked like a sideways tree diagram, with the top branches spreading out infinitely, and the very bottom branch stopping at only 3.
Chrys pointed her finger at the top area, where the branches kept going.
“If I call for help and tell the Garden what I know about you, they’ll kill you, and I’ll stay here, and I’ll continue seeing the future, for the rest of my life,” Chrys said, as she moved her finger across the topmost branches.
“If I do everything I can to help you, I can’t see what happens past a certain point. I’m assuming this is because you’re going to shut down the machine before coming to get me, but it could just as easily mean you killed me so quickly that I didn’t even realize what happened… Or because I helped you something catastrophic happens, and I end up dead… It’s a win-win either way for me,” Chrys explained, as she dragged her finger across the lowest, and shortest branch.
“I see…” Sylver said, as Chrys removed the image and set the tablet back down.
“I uh… Don’t rush this. I can wait for however long it takes, just get me out of here,” Chrys pleaded quietly.
“And in 9 days, when there’s a blackout?” Sylver asked.
“That was if you said no. I’ve waited my whole life for this, I can wait another couple months,” Chrys explained.
Sylver stared at her for a while and felt a small part of him die inside.
As an old undead Lich, sometimes caring about people and their problems was difficult to the point it was impossible. Sylver wanted to care, he knew he should care, but they were all so small, and temporary.
Kings and their starving kingdoms, men and women who should have known better, people who seemed to think that all of Eira revolved around them, [Hero]s that were ready to do “whatever it takes” to achieve their goals.
It was all so tiresome.
There’s only so many times a person can force two warring kingdoms to make peace, only so many times he can reverse the effect of a curse that could have been easily prevented, only so many times someone can stop a [Hero] from summoning a demon lord to save a loved one.
What made it all the worse was that Sylver couldn’t even really blame any of them. He felt no anger, no matter how moronic and preventable a situation was, everyone did what they could with the information and tools they had. He didn’t hate them, but he didn’t care about them either.
But living as a completely emotionless husk of an undead didn’t sit well with Sylver, no matter how many times he had attempted it. It was…
Boring…
So boring that his options were to kill himself and end his boredom, or go back to caring about people and things. And while there might have been a point where Sylver would have chosen the former, he’d learned to enjoy the latter a long time ago, and wasn’t going to stop.
He would care about what he wanted to care about, and everything else would have to pray to their god, it didn’t get in between him and the things and people he cared about. Even if it was stupid and irrational, it was still infinitely better than the alternative.
It didn’t sound right whenever he said it out loud, but unlife really wasn’t worth unliving without love.
Ancient lich or not.
Sylver ran his hands over his bald and shiny scalp and looked around the nearly empty room.
There was a lot he wanted to say to Chrys, that everything was going to be alright, that he’d get her out no matter what, that she was safe now that he was here.
But when Sylver made a promise to one of his, he kept his word.
And as much as Sylver cared about Chrys and her freedom and future, Edmund came first. Sylver had emotions, sometimes he had more than he wanted, but that didn’t mean he was controlled by them. They advised him, they never ordered.
“So what now? Laven said you were going to determine how best to put me to use,” Sylver asked, as Chrys picked up a different tablet and started looking for something.
Chrys quietly tapped away at her tablet.
“I’m going to defer my decision. And hopefully, neither of us will be here by the time anyone has a problem with that. Your situation is unusual, to say the least. I’ve looked through the records, you are quite literally the first person who managed to make Ladon’s Wyvern surrender by just threatening it,” Chrys explained, as she continued to do something on her tablet.
“Rouge said 3 men managed to make it surrender without a fight?” Sylver asked.
“Yes, but they offered it one of their skills, or in Myrol’s case, he offered his family blade. You are the first in being able to threaten it into surrendering. The Wyvern isn’t weak; it has defeated 5 climbers at the same time in the past. You’re infamous, but at the same time famous, that should be enough to stop Flowers from complaining...” Chrys explained as she put her tablet down.
“While we’re on that subject, why is it that some of the monsters were alive, while others were fake?” Sylver asked.
Given that he was still wary of saying something that would reveal that he was from another realm, Chrys was the only person he could ask.
“They have a way to grow monsters. For food, entertainment, experience, and for experiments,” Chrys explained, and Sylver saw that she stopped herself from using her hand to touch her scar-covered stomach.
“So they have a machine that can make monsters… Is it possible for me to see it?” Sylver asked.
Even if Chrys had managed to hide the cold water like splash of fear in her eyes, Sylver felt it in her soul.
“You need about 4 years of training before being allowed inside. If you really need to see it, I don’t mind wai-”
“No, no, no, I was curious that’s all. Look… I can’t predict how long it’s going to take, but we have a deal Chrys. My word is my bond. And the circumstances under which I would break my word are so few and far between that they might as well not exist,” Sylver explained and did his best to sound as confident as he wanted to feel.
“When Kass tells you where the book is, I’m going to pass along all the help I can give you. After that, I’m going to incapacitate myself. It will cripple the Garden’s clairvoyants, but I don’t know how long it will take them to bring me back,” Chrys explained.
Sylver mulled over the words over for a couple of seconds.
“By incapacitated you mean…” Sylver asked carefully.
“Does it matter? You’re going to have to rip out half of my internal organs to get me out of here anyway, whatever damage I do to myself will pale in comparison to that,” Chrys said, and Sylver couldn’t help but agree.
When they shook hands, Sylver had sent a pulse of mana through her and found that…
There was very little Chrys inside Chrys.
Not counting her head, there was maybe enough of the real her to fill 3 buckets. Sylver already had thoughts as to how to keep her alive during their escape, and for however long it took him to get back to Eira, but as far as solutions went, it wasn’t perfect.
He needed his workshop, he needed Lola, he needed a competent healer, and above all else, he needed somewhere safe to keep her while she recovered.
Once they left the Garden, there was no coming back.
“He’s going to give you the information in a sealed letter. 5 seconds before you unseal it, I’m going to put the Garden’s clairvoyancy based defenses out of commission. Because if I don’t, the Garden will immediately try to kill you. Only open it when you’re ready to find the book, and if you can, save me,” Chrys explained calmly.
Even if her soul was more or less weeping with fear.
“Alright… I’m… I’m sorry if things don’t turn out the way you hoped,” Sylver said, as Chrys just silently nodded along.
A downside of being alive long enough to see the consequences of your actions is that you learned just how harmful even a comforting lie could be. It led to doubt, which led to mistrust, which led to hesitation, which eventually showed its ugly face at a critical moment.
A small amount of liquid piled up on Chrys’ left eye, even as her face remained completely blank.
“I don’t want to die,” Chrys whispered as if afraid Sylver would hear the words.
“I…”
Sylver felt his arm almost go numb from the sudden pressure around it.
“I’m staying with her,” Ria said sternly into Sylver’s ear.
“No, we’re going to need your help, staying here won’t do her any good,” Spring told Ria before Sylver even had a chance to respond.
“She’s a child! We can’t just leave her-”
“Do you think just because he isn’t screaming and shouting he isn’t as angry as you are? We know what we’re doing, Ria. This isn’t how you help her. This is surgery, you have to suck up whatever it is you feel, and cut her open,” Spring argued, better than Sylver would have.
“What did you just do?” Chrys asked, with a genuinely puzzled look on her face, and a matching reaction in her soul.
“What do you mean?” Sylver asked, after a few seconds of silence, as Ria refrained from saying anything.
“Just now. Whatever you were doing before was creating interference, but I could still see what you were doing in the next 10 seconds. You were going to say “I know,” but you didn’t, what did you do?” Chrys asked as Sylver felt Ria flow down his arm into his hand.
Sylver lifted the liquid gold creature so Chrys could see her.
“Where did you get this much Mangolium?” Chrys asked.
“In the dungeon that exploded. I found her, and she saved me and showed me the way out. Her name is Ria,” Sylver explained, as Ria extended a short metallic tendril out towards Chrys.
Chrys reached out with her finger towards the metal and looked even more confused than before as they touched.
“No wonder you’ve got 4 points of deviations, you have a piece of Mangolium that can actually think and make suggestions that pushed you further and further away from the median prediction. I’m Chrysanthemum, Chrys for short, it’s very nice to meet you, Ria,” Chrys said, and sort of shook/wagged her finger along with Ria’s tendril.
“You have my word we’ll save you Chrys,” Ria swore, and under different circumstances, Sylver would have flung her at a wall for doing that.
Sylver was fairly certain he didn’t react with his face or body language, but Chrys knew.
Sylver chose not to voice the fact that the meaning of the word “save” could be interpreted in different ways, because he didn’t want to have to say it, and because both he and Chrys knew Ria would immediately make the situation worse than it already was.
To her credit, Chrys knew exactly what to say.
“Thank you. You can’t stay with me, he’ll need your help, they’ll find you and dismantle you if you stay here, I won’t be able to hide or protect you,” Chrys explained, even as she reluctantly pulled her hand away from the warm liquid metal.
“No, I can-”
Chrys interrupted with a single fake sob and spoke before Ria could.
“Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is, you can help me by helping him,” Chrys explained, as tears leaked out of both of her eyes.
Sylver could tell she was over exaggerating.
Or, more accurately, she was pretending to over exaggerate, when this was how she actually felt on the inside. She was a frightened child that had no choice but to grow up or die, but she was still a child.
“Fine,” Ria said quietly, as she slithered back into Sylver’s sleeve, and wrapped herself snuggly around his bicep.
It took Chrys a couple of moments to compose herself again, her left eye was red, while her right remained crystal clear white. She used the collar of her shirt to wipe them before she spoke.
“The house I’ve put you in is as close to the Tower as I could find. The magical interference should make any kind of drones and other surveillance equipment ineffective, but I can’t say for certain you’ll be free to do whatever you want…” Chrys explained, as one of the tablets near her pillow made a sound, and she glanced over at it.
“Alright… I’ll be fine, be careful, don’t worry about me and… thank you. In case there won’t be time for me to say it,” Chrys explained.
In case you have to kill me. Sylver added to himself, as he straightened his back.
He was taller than Chrys, but now that he’s had a chance to get a closer look at her, she wasn’t supposed to be this tall. Her shoulders were the wrong shape for how long her arms were, but there was no point asking about it.
Uncertain as to what to say, Sylver simply nodded. Chrys reached down for a different tablet, and in a few taps, Sylver teleported away.
*
*
*
The Flower area was…
There wasn’t really a good word to describe it.
The Roots and Trunk had at least some cohesion, there was a consistency to them, the Flower’s area looked like someone had picked up mansions from all over Eira and plopped them down next to each other.
Some had a small garden with flowers growing in it, some had fruit trees, some were made entirely out of metal, or cement, sandstone, wood, one looked like an enormous hide tent, another looked like someone fused a bunch of Dandy-Lyon’s together.
If not for the fact that every single one looked like it was made by a team of masters, Sylver would have thought the whole area looked like a garbage dump.
The only “consistent” thing about all the buildings was the fact that every single one reached the glass ceiling. It gave the area the appearance of a maze, there were no roofs anywhere, everything looked like a giant well-crafted pillar.
Sylver followed the floating image on his bracelet and found that his house looked like a wooden hut that had been burned down but remained standing, and was rebuilt with more burned wood. It was dark, shiny charcoal, but it wasn’t real wood.
The lawn covered in weeds outside the house was real, as was the bright green vegetation growing out of it, but the sun wasn’t its usual interfering self, it almost felt like it was twice as strong, without being twice as bright.
Sylver struggled to move his shadow around using [Deadly Darkness] if he tried to materialize a shade here, it’d burn to death in seconds.
“You’ll need to hire help from the Roots or the Trunk. For cooks you should only use Branches, they cost a lot more, but they’re worth it,” Rouge explained, as Sylver approached his house and saw her leaning against his doorframe.
Rouge looked…
Almost exactly the same as her floating illusion. Her hair was a little longer, her eyes were a little beadier, but it was so subtle it could easily have been a trick of the light.
She was dressed in her signature bright red suit, except it wasn’t anywhere near as immaculate as it was when she appeared as an illusion.
“I’ll get right on that, thank you,” Sylver said, as he crouched down to touch some of the weeds in his lawn, and added them to [Seed Store].
“I could get one of mine to recommend someone if you want. Krill is a trustworthy man, with trustworthy friends. For cooks, it comes down to personal preference, but I-”
“That won’t be necessary, but thank you for the offer,” Sylver interrupted, with a politely raised hand. Rouge got up from leaning on the doorframe and stood close enough to Sylver that some of her hair was touching him.
“You’re in a bad mood. I take it Chrysanthemum told you something you didn’t want to hear? She thinks she’s hot shit just because both of her parents are high-ranking Flowers, and that her predictions are the ones the others use to compare against. Now, you didn’t hear it from me, but Vala told me that-”
“I am grateful for the warm welcome, but I need to be alone for a while,” Sylver interrupted.
Ria had turned into something close to a scalpel, and very nearly cut through Sylver’s skin from how angry she was. After her outburst, Sylver realized that despite how she felt, sounded, and sort of looked, in some ways she was a child.
She made the promise to Chrys without any malice, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t wrong for doing so.
As Sylver tried to walk past Rouge to place his bracelet against the locking thing, she grabbed him by the back of his robe and all but yanked it.
“If she told you how you’re going to die, she lied. She-”
Only the fact that Spring reminded Sylver 4 times over that Rouge likely had some sort of connection to Demor, stopped him from saying what he wanted to say. Instead, he smiled as gently and politely as he could.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve had a very long day, I’m going to shower, and then I’m going to sleep, please excuse me,” Sylver said, as his semi limp robe pulled itself out of Rouge’s grasp, and Sylver managed to get his door open.
Rouge followed Sylver inside, and since he couldn’t shove her out of the way, he stopped her from coming any further inside by holding onto his door and used his other hand to touch the doorframe
“I’ve had a change of heart regarding what you’ve done during the Gold Giers Trials. And I know I said I would think about it, but I’d like to invite you to my home for dinner,” Rouge explained, as she tapped her bracelet against Sylver’s and both of them made a sound.
“I’m glad to hear that, but I need some time to unwind from everything,” Sylver explained and did his best to sound as exhausted as he could manage without overplaying it.
Rouge leaned towards him until her chest was pressing up against Sylver’s, and she whispered in his ear.
“I’m sure I could help with that tomorrow night,” Rouge whispered, as Sylver had to force his heart to beat slower to lower his blood pressure so that he remained cool and calm.
On Spring’s suggestion, Sylver used his other hand and slightly raised Rouge’s chin so that she looked up at Sylver.
“Why wait? I’m fairly certain the shower here is big enough for two people. And if it’s not, I’m sure we’ll find a way to squeeze into it,” Sylver purred at the woman, and could both see her cheeks reddening, even as her soul recoiled from him, and the woman’s body followed after.
She stepped out of the doorway and pretended to straighten out her jacket to give herself a moment to think and collect her thoughts.
“You’re being rather forward for a-”
Sylver didn’t hear the rest of her bullshit as the door had quietly clicked shut and he went to find something to take his mind off his repressed anger.
AnnouncementVote on TopWebFiction, if you have 10 seconds to spare!
You can read up to chapter 168 (20 chapters ahead) on my Patreon
Discord for discussions, updates, and memes.
