Sylver Seeker

When Sylver reached the “surface,” the space between Tuli’s shell, and her spine and body, he was relieved beyond words that Edmund was still up and about, firing painfully bright beams of white fire at the creature trying to crawl through the ever-growing portal.

Enough of it was through now, that Sylver could see what it looked like. It had the appearance of hundreds of worms that had been skinned and then moulded into the shape of a one-armed human man. Every time Edmund’s flames scorched the skinless worms on the surface, they slithered downward and were replaced by a fresh batch of bright red gore noodles.

Aside from the occasional scream, the demon didn’t say anything, it merely continued pushing more and more of itself through the portal hovering above the black metal tree.

Sylver started running towards Edmund and the portal, and in the distance saw Faust decapitating one vampire after the next. Sylver searched around for Sophia, but he couldn’t find her.

He hoped they were merely hiding, or unconscious, as opposed to the significantly more likely outcome, and made the choice not to think about it.

The “tree” had seemingly toppled over, given that its trunk was now almost parallel to the ground, and Tuli’s spine.

As Sylver was approaching the portal, the struggling demon’s movements became slower, until it stopped moving entirely. Edmund carried on blasting it with white fire, but the demon ignored him. Its head turned, and Sylver saw that there was a glowing white orb inside the “head,” it was floating in the middle of the hollow bird cage-like collection of worms. The orb was the size of a mansion, and the texture looked like it was made out of chunks of rock and sand.

The demon focused its gaze on the small undead necromancer running towards it, but before it could do anything but see him, it felt something inside of it snap into place.

It wasn’t a gentle snapping either, this wasn’t the snap of a lock closing, easily opened again with a simple twist of the key, this was the violent and unreversible snap of a vault that can only be opened from the inside.

The demon then made the noise Sylver normally associated with a pig that smelled fresh pig blood. It didn’t squeal exactly, but it was that kind of high-pitched hoarse sound, a noise that bypassed language and was pure emotion.

With a pulse, the demon tree’s metal branches began to curl, the straight and razor-sharp blades rolled into tight cones, and as the branches bunched up together, they clinked and clanked, and when the bigger branches pressed up against the smaller one, the small metal sticks snapped off and fell towards the ground.

Once he was close enough, Sylver brought his bony hands up to his mouth and shouted with as much force as he was capable of.

“DON’T LET IT GET AWAY! I NEED THE CORE!” Sylver’s amplified voice filled the entirety of Tuli’s shell, and every single creature that was capable of comprehending speech simultaneously realized that they were trapped inside with something that viewed a demon as a resource.

The metal tree groaned with effort, as the branches bunched together into a net of blunt metal. It went from being a dangerous cactus to a dull shrubbery.

As the portal began to retract, the demon’s large body lost layers upon layers of grey worms. They seemed to dissolve into the air.

Sylver felt pretty good about himself at that moment. He was about to attain a demon core, he had prevented a demon from being summoned, and although the damage to Tuli was extensive, to put it lightly, he could still feel her life force pulsing underneath his feet.

Then the sky opened.

A crack so large that all the suns could be seen through it, raw sunlight blinded Sylver and cooked his exposed bones, and did the same for every unholy bloodsucker littered throughout the “cave” that was no longer a cave.

The crack stretched from Tuli’s front left foot, down to her bottom right foot.

Fresh air rushed in with a painful loud whistle, and on both ends of the crack, unfiltered seawater violently fell from the sky and splattered against Tuli’s bare flesh.

Sylver struggled to accept that what he was seeing was happening, and using the ancient practice of denial, he chose to ignore it.

Demon first, everything else later. He repeated to himself, over, and over, and over again.

As a fellow master of the art of not looking at the thing you don’t want to see, Edmund focused solely on the demon trying to slither back into the hole it came from.

To the demon, what had once been a wide-open door, was now an unstoppable guillotine.

Except it wasn’t trying to crawl back into its hole…

It had gone limp, and the only part of it that was moving was the “hand.” It lifted the many-fingered appendage towards the crack in Tuli’s shell, towards the sky, and as the skinned worms gathered together, they formed a single finger.

Sylver followed the finger with his eyes, and from where he was standing, he could see clear as day that the finger was pointing at one of the moons.

A disk of heated metal flew at the hand, and in a single controlled motion, sliced clean through the part that could be interpreted as the wrist. The worms that made up the hand became hysterical and wriggled around as they slowly floated toward the ground, dissolving into the air.

When Sylver reached the portal, the sphere had shrunk to half the size of the demon’s width, every time it pushed itself into the portal, thick layers of worm skin were peeled off.

He raised his arms towards it, and as he brought his hands together, the portal followed suit and shrunk.

With a final grunt, Sylver clasped his hands together, and as the steam escaping from his bones tore what remained of his robe apart, and the last remaining pieces of skin and flesh were flung away, the portal gently reduced in size, and disappeared.

Mora’s threads hung loosely on Sylver’s body, weaving in and out of the tiny holes near his joints. He looked like a skeleton covered in cobwebs, which was fitting, given that that was what he was. His dark bones had streaks of gold as if they were made out of black marble. His jaw swung in the harsh wind, and only the pale thread wrapped around it stopped it from falling off completely.

With the portal closed, the demon’s body began to dissolve very quickly as if it was a sandcastle being swept away by an incoming tide.

Sylver’s legs gave out at that moment, and Spring materialized behind him and pushed Sylver’s limp body onto Ulvic. While Faust continued moping up the remaining vampires, Sylver’s wolf shade ran towards the direction Sylver could feel dense waves of mana coming from.

Edmund remained in the air, circling the spot where the portal had been, above the tightly wound and bumpy mental tree shrub.

As Sylver was helped down from the wolf, a shade materialized under each of his arms and lifted him off the ground. They carried him forwards, to where a small pearl white sphere, the size of an apple, sat embedded into the ground.

The shades lowered Sylver, and he sat on his knees and reached out toward the pearl-colored sphere.

As his bony fingers touched it, they passed through it, and as Sylver tried to pick it up, the outer layer disappeared. Out of the pale ashes, Sylver retrieved a white orb the size of a cherry.

“God fucking dammit,” he said, as he closed his fist around it.

***

“I’m telling you, I would have felt it,” Edmund repeated, as Faust returned from his hunt.

They were using pieces of bone rubble as seats, and a small campfire had been built out of wooden debris Edmund had found laying around the area. Every now and then Sylver reached into his ribcage, pulled out a shard of metal, and flicked it into the campfire.

“You were right. Perfectly cut square holes. Roughly 100 meters between each one. Same way you would go about breaking a boulder,” Faust said, as he sat down on the only available seat.

“Why would it waste its mana on breaking the shell?” Edmund asked.

“It didn’t. It only started trying to cast after the shell had been broken,” Sylver said.

“So Nautis did it by himself? If he has this kind of firepower, why are you still alive?” Edmund asked, as he reached out to Sylver’s head, and picked out the metal piece stuck on the edge of his eye socket.

“He fell for my bluff with the scythe, it’s possible he was too frightened to think clearly. Or his power is limited while he’s using that intangibility spell. And he didn’t want to risk it while I was around? Something like that?” Sylver offered.

“It could be a limitation due to the deal he made. The demon gave him the strength to break the shell, but he wasn’t allowed to use that power on anything else,” Faust said, as Sylver nodded along, but Edmund only became more annoyed.

“So Nautis broke the shell, so the demon had direct access to the moons? Wouldn’t it make more sense to kill us, and then break the shell? Or kill us and simply wait for the demon to finish being summoned,” Edmund questioned.

“What if it wasn’t Nautis? What if whoever he’s working for did it?” Sylver asked.

Edmund raised his eyebrow.

“His mysterious, nameless benefactor, that wanted to summon the Moon Demon, and provided him with all the tools, but stayed out of sight until the very last minute,” Edmund said, with an almost mocking tone of voice.

“It’s happened before. With Nautis specifically, this would be the 3rd time. The prison, then the thing with Yeva and Ciege, and now this. The pattern couldn’t be more obvious!” Sylver said with a yelp, as the last crack in his spine healed and he could finally start working on the mana channels in his torso.

“So, someone broke him out, somehow healed him from your curses, powered him up, got him in contact with a demon, helped him gather what he needed for a demon summoning, provided him with an army of vampires, and mercenaries, and then sat back and hoped for the best?” Edmund asked as Sylver rolled his eyes.

Or did the motion for someone that rolled their eyes, given that he currently didn’t have any eyes to roll.

“Again, it literally, wouldn’t be the first time. On top of that, if I weren’t here, do you think you would have been able to stop it? If Sophia came without us, would she even make it to the pyramid?” Sylver asked.

Edmund didn’t quite glare at Sylver, but they exchanged a look.

On his way down, Edmund spotted an ominous piece of rust, that turned out to be a blood-soaked book. He hid it away in a rag he found, and he was currently using it as a seat cushion.

“Could be some kind of cult,” Faust offered.

“Could be. They funnelled their resources into Nautis, and trusted that he knew what he was doing,” Sylver said.

He tried to laugh, but it was hard to laugh at someone who almost managed to drown the world. Sylver still didn’t respect Nautis, but the mere fact that he was involved in this meant he had no choice but to take him somewhat seriously.

The trio sat around quietly, with only the occasional pop from the campfire, along with a faint clink as metal bits came out of Sylver’s bones, and fell out.

“I’m asking just in case, but you haven’t found Sophia, right?” Sylver asked Faust.

The cultivator shook his head.

“Didn’t find any paladins or priests either. But there are a ton of holes that she could have fallen into. She probably just got lost,” Faust offered as he stood up from his seat.

“There’s fish and bread if you’re hungry,” Edmund said with a gesture towards the makeshift table Sylver had built out of wooden planks and hardened mushrooms. The shades had found backpacks that weren’t soaked in seawater and gathered the food for Faust and Edmund to eat.

“I’m good for now, thank you. I need to rest a little. I’ll handle the remaining vamps in the morning, assuming they don’t turn to dust on their own,” Faust said, as he walked into the tent.

Alongside Nautis, the head vampire wearing a red robe had also gone missing. The vampires that had been left behind were “strong,” but they weren’t a match for Faust or Edmund. Initially, the two tried to negotiate with them, but the ones that remained had all turned feral, and there wasn’t much to do aside from killing them.

Edmund cleared his throat and spoke in a language only he and Sylver knew.

“Do you think the three sisters are behind this?” Edmund asked.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. It could all just be a coincidence,” Sylver offered.

“He was summoning a demon inside someone you know, using a book you “know,” and despite being powerful enough to tear Tuli’s shell open, he got scared away by a fake scythe. Sounds more like someone wanted you here,” Edmund said.

“Don’t forget that the vampire he was working with knew me too,” Sylver added.

It was the middle of the night right now.

The sky wasn’t clearly visible, due to all the streams traveling up the inside of Tuli’s shell, which created a cloud over the crack. Now and then the cloud was sucked out, and the unnaturally bright moonlight seeped through.

Unnaturally bright in Sylver’s eyes, but since Edmund said this is how they always looked, Sylver trusted that it was just his lack of eyes playing tricks on him.

Sylver moved the demon core in his left hand, into his right.

“Is it possible you were wrong about it being a 6th tier? With how much mana you were manipulating, it-”

“I’m sure,” Edmund said.

Sylver turned the spherical pearl-colored demon core over and continued looking at it.

He waited for Edmund to finish healing his face before he spoke.

“I have an idea…” Sylver said with a hint of a grin in his voice.

“You want to move one of the moons off course. Just enough to disrupt Eira’s mana field. So that if one of our people is locked in a magical cage, this will provide them with enough wiggle room to escape,” Edmund said.

He somehow was able to keep all judgment out of his voice, he attached no bias, or emotion to the words that came out of his mouth.

Edmund was looking right at Sylver, and although he hesitated, Sylver eventually lifted his head and made eye contact with Edmund.

“You saw the shades inspecting the metal tree,” Sylver guessed.

“I also noticed you haven’t released the energy trapped in the pyramid. Moving one of the moons will mean all teleportation networks will cease to function, most barriers will break down, and the shift in mana will cause monsters to migrate to who knows where. Not to mention the fact that most modern-day mages don’t know how to adjust their spells will mean they will either lose the ability to cast altogether, or their firepower will be reduced to the point of uselessness,” Edmund counted out.

The reason he was so calm about the things he said, about the predictions he was making, was because he knew that Sylver knew all of that already. And because Sylver was Sylver, it meant that he thought that the reward of what he was suggesting, was worth the risk.

“There’s more… If I wait until I’m fully healed to cast the spell, it will be too late…” Sylver said as the brown flame healing him was snuffed out.

Under the light of a pitifully small campfire, the skeleton with black bones, spoke to the small human child in a language only they knew.

The result of this conversation would determine whether the realm of Eira would remain as it is, or if it would be thrown into chaos.