Sylver Seeker

Chapter 274: Get Ahead

Sylver Seeker Book 7

Chapter 8 (274) - Get Ahead

This city was different, in the sense it was a real city, he could smell smoke, the many smells living human beings produced, and as his eye adjusted to the slightly brighter light shining down from the sky, he saw people, actual real human people staring at him, at Klara, and at the woman with the copper tape wrapped around her head.

Similar to the city he found Klara in, everyone was dressed in brightly coloured clothes, wore so much gold it almost looked like they were using it for armour, and as Sylver stared at them, and they stared at him, he saw atrocities in their eyes.

Vampires, for all their many faults, never saw themselves as something they weren’t, not adult vampires at least, but these things looked so unbelievably proud of themselves that it almost made Sylver want to end this quest right here and leave without Nels just to get the fuck away from them.

They’d turned the souls of their hosts inside out, and the proper language to fully describe just how sacrilegious the results he was looking at were didn’t exist for Sylver to use. It was revolting.

It was only when some of the things closest to him started to look confused that he realized that his face was scowling. He was lucky his fake mask didn’t slip.

“Chernobog?” a “man” covered in strips of green fabric that made him look like a walking shrub asked, he had helmet around his entire head that had this odd design on it. It looked like he’d wrapped green tinted tinfoil around his head, and then pressed it flat, it looked like the start of a statue’s head before the details were hammered out.

Once he said that word, that name, everyone around and behind him started whispering to one another, they smiled,and when the man that spoke stepped forward, Sylver took a step back and raised his empty hand towards him.

“Why are you here? Is there not enough light for you and Belobog to merge?” the “man” asked as he walked towards Sylver.“I need your help,” Sylver said in as a calm and neutral voice as he could manage under the circumstances.

The “man” stopped dead in his tracks, and when he looked at Sylver, Sylver saw the rectangular pupils of the man’s eyes through the gap in his mask widen until he could only see black.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

Without blinking Sylver directed [Arcane Insight] into the “man” standing directly in front of him.

[Teixiptla – Grand Fragment Of Xochipilli - 299]

[HP: 299,000 – 100%]

[MP: 299,000 – 100%]

[Stamina: 299,000 – 100%]

[Corpse – Grand/Grand/Grand/Grand/Grand/Grand/Grand/Grand]

[Soul – Unique*]

The ”man” looked over at Klara, and although it was slight, the “man’s” shoulders relaxed slightly.

“What are you doing here?” the “man” asked. He almost sounded friendly, and-

“He’s looking for a woman named Nelson Magia. And he wants to make a deal in exchange for her,” the woman standing behind Sylver said.

Everyone’s heads had snapped to look at the woman, and then snapped right back to Sylver, who kept his eyes focused on the “man” he was speaking to.

As bad as a fight with the “people” back where he found Klara would be, a fight with these things would be completely impossible since their souls were stable enough that none of Sylver’s soul magic would do a thing against them. His only hope was that they didn’t have anyone with holy magic around, in which case he could probably fake his death and wait for Edmund to rescue him.

“What kind of deal?” the “man” asked.

Again, unprompted, without being ordered to answer, the woman behind Sylver spoke.

“He offered to bring people here that fit exact specifications. He also offered to fix the rituals that broke when the moon flashed red, and said he’ll likely have more luck fixing it than anyone else here,” the woman said.

Sylver glanced upward for a moment, and saw that the ceiling was empty. It was identical to the ceiling in the city he found Klara, but it was missing the floating white sand, he could see the inside of the tip of the mountain the hollow-vault was in.

Along with the tiny fractures that made the whole thing appear more brittle than glass. Having said that, between this city, the empty city they passed through, and the city Klara was in, that was four different spaces occupying the same exact space.

Breaking out would be trivial, but-

“If you have Nelson Magia will you leave?” the “man” asked.

The “man’s” body language was unreadable, Sylver got nothing from the tone of his voice, and his souls were such an awful amalgamation that Sylver had reined in his soul sense and tried his hardest to ignore the sensations brushing against him.

“If I have the Nelson Magia I’m looking for I will leave. But she is also leaving with me,” Sylver said with a gesture towards Klara.

The “man” looked around at the “people” behind him, and everyone vaguely shrugged their shoulders at him.

“Alright. Follow me,” the “man” said.

There was a good chance they realized Sylver was only two steps away from disappearing into the white sand behind him, and wanted to get him away it.

It was also possible they were about to lead him to Nels’ corpse, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a group decided what he wanted wasn’t worth fighting over, and just handed it over to get him to leave.

“You can go,” the “man” said at the woman that had lead Sylver here, and with a great deal more enthusiasm and pep in her step she turned on her heel and ran into the white sand.

The “man” turned his back towards Sylver and started to walk away from him, all the other “people” did the same, but they spread out to the left and right of where Sylver was standing, only two were walking in the same direction as the “man” that Sylver had spoken to.

Sylver followed after the man, but kept two arm lengths worth of distance between them.

“You said the sky flashed red. Did you see it flash red yourself?” the “man” asked.

“I saw it with my own two eyes,” Sylver said.

He initially let Klara walk by herself, but the “man” they were following was walking too fast for her, so he ended up putting her on his shoulder again.

“You wouldn’t happen to know why it flashed red, would you?” the “man” asked.

“I don’t,” Sylver said honestly.

He knew why a lot of Eira’s magic had malfunctioned, but as to why the moon flashed red, he genuinely had no idea.

Sylver saw other “people” while he followed behind the man, and he started to see a pattern.

He didn’t need to use [Arcane Insight] to confirm it because he could see clear as day, where one man’s elbow ended, and another man’s forearm began, on the same body. Although admittedly there weren’t any scars left from stitches, this was all done “naturally.”

The helmets they were all wearing were the same, most had different shades of the same colour, but there were a few that had two colours, or more, it made the puzzle piece nature of their headwear obvious.

It also made Sylver realize that if he took the mask on his face, and placed it onto Klara’s face, the two masks would lock together perfectly, into a single black and white helmet.

He smelled it when he first got here, but they weren’t eating human flesh, the shades hadn’t even found a single corpse so far, they were all eating what Sylver had to guess were vegetables, maybe fruit, but they didn’t look like any flora he’d ever seen grown in Eira.

They also didn’t have any of the odd characteristics the “people” in the previous city had, no crystals in place of hair, no fish scales on skin, tails, hooves, claws, going off pure physical appearance they were all oddly dressed humans.

All of them were adults, as far as Sylver had seen so far, fully grown men and women, of various heights and statures, ranging from early twenties, all the way up to the late fifties, not all looked like they were at their physical peaks but they were certainly not too far away from it either.

“Where are you going after you leave?” the “man” asked.

Sylver stayed quiet too long because he couldn’t decide whether to be honest or lie.

“Where are you going after you leave?” the “man” asked again.

“I’m going to Torg,” Sylver said.

It was the truth, and it was also a location that he couldn’t imagine even these “people” could do any serious damage to.

“Is Torg close to the city of Essera?” the “man” asked.

Sylver had memorized all the maps Lola had managed to procure for him, but nowhere on any of them was there a city named Essera.

“Not to my knowledge,” Sylver said.

“Alright,” the “man” said.

There was a gigantic cylindrical tower on Sylver’s right, he had no idea how he hadn’t noticed it before, but it was there, clear as day, so tall in the air that it looked like someone could stand on the tip and touch the inside of the mountain’s tip.

And as Sylver looked at it, and looked at the way mana was swirling around it, he had to be careful not to drop Klara as he stopped walking and stared at the tower.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

It was on the tip of his tongue, he’d seen this before, this exact tower, with this exact design, and this exact

magic. He’d seen it with his own eyes, and seen it so many times he felt like the biggest moron in all of Eira that he hadn’t instantly recognized it from the framework back on the pyramid he’d sacrificed a foot too.He held back his reaction, sent as strong of a message to Morana as he could to grab Lostal and immediately leave, and then followed up with the stronger message he could to leave behind absolutely anything she might have eaten inside the hollow-vault.

The fact that Sylver couldn’t feel it actively pulling at him meant the process had either halted, it was dormant, or more it was possible that the various spirits and deities in the base of the mountain had aligned it too far away from what Sylver was for it to work on him.

He looked up at Klara, frantically looked through her body with mana for who knows what, and because he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, he didn’t find it.

Why the fuck would Nels come here if she knew what this was, she of all people would have instantly recognized…

Why was a piece of Babel on this side of the Asberg in the first place?

But why would someone try to replicate it when they could just use the real thing? How would they even know how to replicate it without the real thing?

“Nelson Magia is this way,” the “man” Sylver had been following said from down the road.

When Sylver turned his head and looked at him, he saw it clear as day, the lines on the man’s helmet weren’t straight, some of the fabric of his clothing was curled, Sylver looked up and now that he was looking for it, the way Klara’s hair was curly should have been the only clue he needed.

No wonder Chrys said Edmund couldn’t be here, it wasn’t finding the entrance that was the problem, the problem was that if even a single one of Edmund’s hairs came here it’d start a world ending timer that Chrys’ clairvoyance obviously sensed and directed her not to let Edmund come here.

Sylver followed the “man” and now that he was aware and looking for it, each circular seed he saw inside the cut open fruits, the way “people” wore gold coils on their arms and legs, they might as well have had a giant sign hanging from their necks for how obvious all of it was.

Mora responded to Sylver, but he couldn’t figure out what she was saying, she wasn’t scared, or hurt, not trapped either, but she hadn’t said “I’m outside.” She wouldn’t stay inside because he was still here, she knew how serious this was, and knew Sylver wouldn’t tell her to leave unless he meant it.

But whatever she was trying to say wasn’t “I broke out, and I’m outside,” the feeling he was getting from her was calm, and the way it was infuriating him, bounced back to her, and made her angry at the fact that he was not only not getting what she was trying to say, but that he was angry at her for not being clear.

It was a vicious loop, where the end result would have been Sylver punching her across the face while she ripped his legs off, but they both simultaneously calmed down, and Mora one more time tried to convey a concept that was far too complicated to cleanly pass through the infinitely long, but infinitely thin, connection they had with each other.

Something happened.

Or was happening.

That was the most Sylver managed to cobble together from what Mora “said.”

He was subtle about it, but under the guise of adjusting how Klara sat on his shoulder, he wrapped one of her long curly strands of hair around his finger, and almost sighed with relief when he didn’t feel anything.

It wasn’t a coincidence that tower was here, neither was the fact that these “people” were amalgamations of other people. But why wasn’t Klara affected? Or Lostal?

Did the piece of Babel not have enough mana to affect the entire hollow-vault and focused on certain spots?

Why was it here though? How would it even get here? And why didn’t the hollow-vault bend and break the second it started spreading through it?

Edmund was with a Dragon, and Nels is near a piece of Babel? Is that the pattern?

The Ibis’ Arch-Mages are near creatures and things with the potential to destroy the world?

Why?

Sylver concentrated on the map of the city Klara had been found in, and sure fucking enough, big ol’ spiral, he saw that the streets looked weird, noticed the houses looked out of the place, and he couldn’t put two and two together, fucking idiot.

The “man” Sylver was following stopped in front of a circular hole in the wall, it was about half a fifty meters tall, and as he walked over and stood next to the “man” Sylver saw that the curved walls and ceiling of the tunnel had fleshy and slimy looking spheres of various colours and sizes.

The “man” looked at Sylver, and Sylver looked at him.

“You’ll have to find Nelson Magia yourself,” the “man” said.

Sylver wanted to ask the “man” if he thought Sylver was born yesterday, but even if this was a trap, at the very least he would face the trap whole, instead of being punched and losing Ria in the process.

Sylver gave the man the smallest nod possible, did his best not to scowl as he turned away from him, and with Klara on his shoulder, walked into the tunnel.

The “man” turned around and walked away before Sylver had managed to walk far enough into the tunnel to lose sight of him.

The bubbles closest to the entrance/exit felt similar to the “man” and the other “people” he’d seen and felt walking around. The tunnel smelled like old clothes, and the air was hot, maybe in the high eighties, Sylver wrapped himself and Klara in a spell keep the air cool and breathable, and the deeper he walked down the downward spiraling tunnel, the smaller the bubbles around them became.

A lot of them were separate from each other, but every few minutes of walking he saw three or four bubbles of the same colour pressed against each other like they were trying to make a balloon animal.

The air was humid, the floor was wet with a slippery slime, and Sylver had to walk around human skin hanging by one arm from the ceiling so it wouldn’t hit him and Klara in the face.

It was odd, if this was where it happened, then he should have been able to feel the piece of Babel wrapping around him, but he didn’t feel anything, it wasn’t even going after Klara.

The fact of the matter was, Sylver didn’t know enough about the pieces of Babel to know if the moon being moved would affect them. Theoretically… it would?

Why would it though? It was moving things around so it wasn’t in contact with anything permanently stationary, was there anything in it for the moon moving around to be disturbed?

With all of the fleshy spheres glowing different colours the resulting soft light was strangely relaxing, Sylver asked Spring to remind him to try to create something similar in his bedroom, even Edmund might appreciate this, provided Sylver didn’t tell him where he got the idea from.

He stopped to look at a particularly active sphere, an amber coloured pair of glasses was pulling out long thin strands of muscle out of a man’s leg through a hole in his knee. The glasses must have felt Sylver staring at them, because they turned around and looked right at him.

“Have you seen Nelson Magia?” Sylver asked quietly.

He could barely hear himself as the various fluid filled fleshy balloons caught and muted the sound.

The glasses turned away from him, and returned to dismantling some unfortunate man’s physical body.

People pass the trials, get rewarded with a mask that wraps around their souls. They wait around in the first city until they’re ready, merge with their other fragments, and the resulting abomination is brought here to be dismantled and properly remade?

How does the thing in the sky play into this? They feed it sacrifices as payment for using the white sand to fuel their merging?

The problem with trying to approach these sort of systems was that Sylver approached it from the perspective of a pragmatist, and wrongfully assumed that everyone also wanted to do things in the fastest and most efficient manner possible.

Thing was, systems born from deities, spirits, religions, ancient magical technologies that not even the Ibis fully understood, didn’t always take the efficient and direct route, sometimes they meandered.

The starting point might not even be the tests, now that Sylver thought about it, there was a whole society of people inside the lower part of the mountain, that the skin-wearers interacted with on a regular basis. Did they purposely infect them with curses to cultivate them to be harvested later? Were they experimenting on them?

Sylver had seen Nels’ without skin before, so he knew what he was looking for, but so far most of the bodies inside the spheres were men, the very few women he saw looked relatively whole, and didn’t have anything even remotely resembling Nels’ proportions.

The biggest problem with trying to achieve anything that involved biological components was that unlike diamonds human bodies left to their own devices adapted to their confines, and those tiny alterations added up when a spell required a large number of bodies.

From what Sylver could tell whoever, or whatever, was doing this reached the same conclusion he had way back when he attempted something similar, individual spells for individual bodies.

Was that the purpose of the masks? They were meant to alter the souls so they were compatible with matching fragments, and then this was the final step of altering the physical bodies to combine the bodies and the souls into one singular being?

The real question was how were they all not infested with demons?

Fully grown human bodies uninhabited by souls and more malleable than unborn children, this was a demon’s wet dream, so why wasn’t there so much a droplet of demonic energy in the air?

Was the thing in the sky acting as a guard? It felt strong, but not named demon strong.

How did something like this exist so close to Arda in the first place? Why didn’t Chrys see it, this was arguably as bad as the Sun Demon, potentially even worse.

Sylver stopped walking, spread out his soul sense as far as it would go, and bolted down the tunnel.

He kept his face neutral, slowed down his sprint to a jog, and as he looked at his surroundings, he didn’t like what he was seeing.

There were women with dark hair in the fluid filled spheres. Where before there were various shades of blond, brown, red, and white, there was now only black, and to make matters worse, a very particular and familiar shade of black.

Deeper in he saw other things on the women’s bodies, their chests were all the same sizes, further down they all looked like they were the same height, and as Sylver got so close that he could feel Nels’ soul on the tip of his nose, he saw that every single sphere was a deep dark yellow colour, and every single woman floating inside it looked exactly like Nels.

But when he walked up to one of the orbs and touched it with his hand, the soul inside was unmistakably not Nels’, as small of a relief as that was.

Upon closer inspection the woman’s skull wasn’t quite right, Nels had a small jaw, and this woman must have had a wider one before whatever it was that molded her into this shape shrunk her jaw so much that her back teeth were so far back they rubbing against the front of her ear canal.

The air this deep was so hot Sylver was starting to use enough mana that it was actually wearing him down, it wouldn’t kill him to release the spell keeping them cool, but it would kill Klara in just a few seconds.

He walked further down, and the nude female bodies all around him started to get younger and younger. It was like someone was trying to draw a person from memory and kept getting closer and closer with each image, but never quite got it right.

All the masks now looked similar, there were still slight variations in how the gems were positioned, but the overall design was the same, a curved circular mask that covered the entire face and looked a lot like the mask Sylver tended to outfit his shades with.

But his masks were white, not gold, and they didn’t have any gems in it.

He could feel Nels’ soul so clearly now he was ready to get Edmund and call it a day, this was close enough that even if he accidentally vaporized her Sylver would have a solid enough grasp on her soul not to let her fully die before Edmund healed her.

But instead of calling for Edmund, Sylver walked further down the tunnel, the yellow and gold masks and bodies turned amber and orange, and further still, they took on a dark red hue.

As he started to hear strange words being whispered inside his skull, Klara slumped over on his shoulder.

He caught her as she fell, and once he was sure she was still alive, he wrapped her up in his robe to hopefully soften the effect. He was close enough now that he could feel the souls within Nels, each step he took was struggle not to start running again.

He was the edge of a giant colourless house sized sphere sticking out over the edge of the curved wall.

He saw her, and she saw him, and at first Sylver almost skipped towards her, but instead stopped dead in his tracks when he fully took in what he was seeing and saw that Nels was missing her body from the neck down.

Sylver removed the black mushroom mask from his face, tied his hair into a ponytail behind his head, and as he walked towards her, he noticed that all the nude women’s bodies all around her looked identical to her body, except they were all missing their heads. At this distance, Sylver could also tell that all of them were alive.

“Tell me something only you would know,” the bodiless head floating in the giant liquid filled bubble asked. The odd way she over-pronounced each word was music to Sylver’s ears. His eye teared up from the sound alone.

“The very last conversation you had with your father was about a card trick you saw me do,” Sylver answered without hesitation.

It was weird in ways he couldn’t put into words to see a flash of emotion on Nels face, for a split second she looked like she was about to start crying, but it was only for a split second.

“You… You…” her head leaned down slightly and broke eye contact with Sylver, and after mumbling to herself for a few seconds, she looked back up at him, “You’re terrified of those yellow horses with the long necks,” Nels said.

“Terrified is a strong word, and you didn’t think dolphins were real,” Sylver said defensively.

It was like he’d been holding onto the heaviest weight in the world, and he’d just put it down, but the moment Nels’ face hardened, Sylver put the relief on pause and focused on her.

“There’s a piece of Babel here, and it merged the hollow-vault with the dungeon that used to be underneath the mountain. How soon is the next full moon?” Nels asked.

“In eight days,” Sylver said.

The seriousness almost completely vanished from her face.

“Oh… There’s no rush then, I thought… Usually… Do you know how to get out of here?” Nels asked.

“Of course,” Sylver said.

Nels looked at him with an unreadable expression.

“You can’t imagine how much I missed you… I thought I was…” Nels said with uncharacteristic genuineness.

“I missed you too… Everything is going to be alright now,” Sylver said.

It was the wrong thing to say.

It was especially the wrong thing to say to her at this exact moment, because it turned out usually inhumanly stoic Nels looked ugly when she cried, and she didn’t even have any hands to hide her face.

Unlike Sylver, who looked fairly decent while tearing up.