Chapter 497 - Mildly annoyed skeleton (Patreon)

“I was lost in my thoughts after Dopple translated the thing on a temple… Did I miss anything?” Sofia asked after sitting down in the air.

“Aside from your dragon grandma threatening my talking bra into revealing that the language it and the fairy are talking is named Eddarinian? Not much,” Alith recounted.

“Eddarinian? That’s a familiar name…” Saying so, a number of skeletal hands appeared out of the ground and grabbed Sofia’s ankles. In the spirit realm, the Fae’s soul was quite strange, like a bunch of smaller souls piled together around a core to form a cohesive whole. 

Eddarinian dark arts of soul grafting. I see.

“Anyone knows anything about it?” she asked.

Erredis answered her, “Although this is my first time hearing it spoken, I know a bit about the Eddarinians. They were a religious cult, basically. It’s hard to date them exactly but they were already ancient history when I learned about them.”

“A religious cult? Worshiping who?” Astelia asked, curious about this cult she had never heard of.

“Worshiping what, would be more exact,” Erredis started to explain, “from what I understand, they worshiped a thing they called ‘the great tapestry of fate’. They believed that the universe was moving inexorably toward a singular great goal, and that it was their duty to repay for the gift of life given to them by bringing about the advent of this great goal as early as possible.”

“It sounds like many people could have an issue with that, depending on what the ‘great goal’ is,” Sofia analyzed, “Any clue on what that was or how they disappeared?”

“I don’t think that they knew themselves,” Erredis answered, shaking her head, “I only ever found a few books on the subject, but none of them ever elaborated on the goal itself or how anything that the Eddarinians did helped to further it. As for how they disappeared, records are a bit blurry, but I believe they tried to steal some artifact from a Klpetra princess.”

Kleptras again? I’m shocked I still haven’t met a single one with how they keep popping up.

Everelle shivered at the mention of the Kleptra, “That… That would probably do it… Angering the Kleptra is really having a death wish.”

That comment surprised Erredis, who turned to Everelle, “Got experience with the Kleps, kid?”

“I got to meet all the Seraphs at work meetings…”

There’s a Kleptra Seraph? Is there a Seraph for each major race, I wonder?

“Oh! So you’ve crossed paths with Er’Zgat. Well, he’s one of the more civilized ones, if I have to compare…”

“Is he?!” Everelle asked back in shock, shaking visibly.

“Well, he’s still a Kleptra,” Erredis answered with a shrug, “But nevermind that, something was on your mind, Sofia?”

“Ah, yes… I… I just noticed a few things and that led me to, uh, an interesting hypothesis?”

Seeing that everyone was waiting for her to elaborate, Sofia kept going, “Well, with the mention of a planar gate temple being here, it’s not too far-fetched to think there was a ‘planar gate’, right?”

Dopple said a few words in Eddarinian, and the Fairy, who had been silent in Erredis’ hand until now answered with a few angry-sounding words.

“Of course there’s a fucking planar gate, what do you think I was defending?! Is what she said,” Dopple translated.

“Thanks. So, starting from there, I thought back to the midenicite tablets that Alith and I found in this castle. They represented all the planes or reality, Deep included, and were found in ruins deep beneath where this castle used to be, supposedly that’s also where the Fairy’s skeleton also originally was,” Sofia explained, bringing out the one tablet she still had, which Aphenoreth had altered. “This is the only tablet I’ve got left, I sold the others to Richard, it used to only have Aphenoreth’s face on it, but yeah, was touched up a bit.”

The fairy started screaming again at the sight of the tablet.

“You will pay for defacing our holy artifacts, you wench, bla blah blah,” Dopple translated with no enthusiasm. Erredis squeezed the fairy a bit and that shut her up again.

“Erm… So, the planar gate existing near these tablets representing the planes, I made the assumption that it might be able to open a connection to the Deep. Everyone still follows me?”

“I think I get where you’re going from there,” Saria answered from behind her mask.

“Well, you were there when we spoke with Jen and I told you about my first trial so… Next is the Phageid, they launched two large scale attacks on the planet five hundred and a thousand years ago. Did they come before that?” Sofia asked Erredis.

“Yes. They have been a thing for quite a while, but only the weak ones, and they were a rather rare sight; we used to think these were just native monsters like any others for a long while before Sun herself clarified that they were not, and that she was holding them back. However, the first large-scale invasion was indeed the one from just a thousand years ago.”

“Alright, so… And I think everyone will start to understand things a bit better from this: This city was invaded and overrun by Phageid around the year 1750. A thousand and five hundred years ago. So, they attack every five hundred years, when Sun is at Her weakest, and five hundred years before their first large invasion, they came here.”

“So they stole the Eddarinian planar gate, or at least copied the technology, and are using it to invade?” Astelia concluded as she followed along.

“That’s what I think, but not only that. During my first trial, I got to witness the Phageid’s first invasion, when they attacked the city my trial was taking place in, and the Phageid then came from a fissure in space glowing with a strange red light.”

Saria nodded, “Oh, yeah… Red light…”

“To make it short,” Sofia explained, “I recognize that red light now. It’s light from the Deep. I can tell, I have been there…”

“No wonder the fuckers are so hard to track down…” Erredis mumbled.

Alith interjected, “I follow you so far, Sof, but there’s one thing I don't get… Wouldn’t that all mean that Richard already knows all this?”

Erredis frowned. “Unsummon the fairy,” she ordered Bookie. Sofia silently approved, so Bookie followed the order, and the midenicite fairy’s soul returned to Bookie. Then Erredis disappeared and reappeared with Remia in her arms, passing the sleeping Dryad along to Sofia.

“Alith. Ring,” she ordered next, as large mana circles appeared under the group’s feet.

Alith obliged and the entire group was transported out of Zangdar, landing on the large metal platform that surrounded the ‘Tower of Rebirth’ on Veliadren. Kyle appeared next to the group almost instantly, but before he could say anything, Erredis jumped away, transforming into her Dragon-form mid-air and disappearing into the distance, creating a storm behind her.

“Well damn. Someone is angry,” Kyle commented as he watched her disappear, “Glad to see you alive and well, you three,” he said to Sofia and her skeletons, “Got us worried for a minute. Took you all for dead, honestly. What’s she so pissed for? Something to do with that Dryad?”

“No, boss, she believes the lich hid information on the Phageid,” Everelle naturally answered.

“I’m no longer your boss, you know? Also that’s a big fuckin’ accusation. Oh, by the way, Sofia, I just got word from above that it’s safe for you to reconnect. You still won’t be able to get experience or new skills but at least it sh-”

Kyle was interrupted mid sentence by a big angry black Dragon landing near the tower with a bang. She spat a saliva-covered skeleton on the platform with disdain before transforming back to her horned-human form with her armor on and her mithrium halberd out.

Richard got up slowly, cleaning himself in an instant with a quick spell, and scratching his skull.

“I said I was coming so what the hell was that for, exactly?” he asked, sounding confused more than anything else.

After Erredis explained the accusations against him to Richard, it was his turn to get mad, although he sounded more like a disappointed father than an infuriated old lich.

“I’m the one who’s spent most of his last thousand years fighting back the tentacled fucks and you think I would hide something like this?! Has your brain also started to rot, Erredis?”

“Then explain yourself,” she answered coldly.

“Listen… As soon as my friend brought back the tablets, Alkorm and myself went to check the place, of course we did, but all we found were the remains of an old Eddarinian cult chamber, completely turned to Midenicite! What gate?! It was all mana-repulsive stone by the time I got there!”

“Let us ask Alkorm to testify, then,” Erredis continued without emotion.

Richard sighed audibly, “You would doubt my word to this extent? Fine then. Call Alkorm, I stand by my words. I’ve never been anything but fair and honest in all I do.”

Erredis then looked in Kyle’s direction and it was Kyle’s turn to sigh, “I'll be right back…”

Then Richard spoke up again, “As for the matter of the tablets and Zangdar’s planar device… The tablets do hold some encoded information on the planes, but I have long deciphered them, hence why they were returned to my friend Zhǎng Lú, as he was the one who discovered them. The information in itself is not that valuable, and is certainly not enough to build something as ludicrous as a Gate linking to all planes. Believe me that if it was, I would have long built one already! Meanwhile, the contraption that sent the city of Zangdar to the Margin is just an extension of my craft as a spatial storage specialist, it has nothing to do with any planar gate or Eddarinian relics…”

“What a peculiar group of people…” A young man in flowing bright-green robes said to himself after he appeared out of nowhere at the end of Richard’s mildly-annoyed tirade, Kyle standing next to him, “A pleasant surprise to see you alive and well, Grand Animist of Eoct.”