Sylver Seeker

Chapter 278: Wood Balloon

Sylver Seeker Book 7

Chapter 12 (278) - Wood Balloon

The two watchmen were dressed in a tunic with red and yellow stripes, they both had thin chainmail underneath their tunics, and were armed with enchanted warhammers.

Three guardsmen came outside the gates before they were shut, and even from here Sylver could tell that two of the “guardsmen” had never held a sword in their entire lives until today.

When Sylver reached for the adventurer’s guild tags he kept inside his [Bound Bones], in the same bone he kept all his money in, he cursed under his breath as he realized it was missing.

“I know this is a stupid question, but do either of you have any kind of documentation to prove who you are?” Sylver asked Lostal, who had been stripped when he was captured, and Klara, who given her profession likely never had any formal documentation in the first place, and would have had it taken from her when the mask was glued to her face even if she did.

Lostal shook his head.

“If my aunt is alive she can vouch for me, and then I can vouch for all of you,” Klara said.

“It might not be enough if they were recently attacked and are under lockdown protocols… Plus I heard Krist’s are a serious problem down here,” Lostal said, and Sylver could do little but nod along.

Obviously they weren’t going to force their way inside if they were turned away at the gate, but even with [Black Mass] speeding up, Will getting to Dravinsk was going to take at the absolute least a whole day, and that was assuming the weather didn’t worsen.Sylver hadn’t said this to anyone, because why would he, but while he wasn’t “in pain” he needed to get somewhere safe urgently. So he could salvage what could still be salvaged.

More importantly, if a certain piece of him that was being held together by spit and willpower slipped out of his grasp, there was a very good chance his health would dip into the negatives, and sooner rather than later he would turn feral.

“Can you bribe them?” Nels asked from the saddlebag.

“No,” Lostal said at the exact same time as Sylver said “maybe.”

Neither of them scowled at each other, but they exchanged a look that was a lot less than friendly.

“Who’s your aunt,” Sylver asked without looking away from Lostal.

“She’s a cook at a tavern,” Klara said.

Sylver’s and Lostal’s expressions softened, in a small town like Velrod the word of a cook in likely the only tavern in the whole town was arguably as good as the word of the chief.

Both the watchmen and three guards looked healthy and well rested, if anything one guard looked a bit too healthy.

The watchmen held their arms up for them to stop about twenty paces away.

Sylver and Lostal looked at the watchmen and guards, and the watchmen and guards looked at them.

“What do you want?” the watchman on the left shouted, he seemed to be the oldest, not counting the guardsman in the back who was almost certainly a farmer just there to fill up a uniform.

“I’m an adventurer from Arda, named Sylver Sezari! I was on my way to Torg from Pere and I found these two when I was crossing the Moaning Heights! They need a healer, food, and rest!” Sylver shouted towards the men.

Lostal, for the moment, kept quiet.

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

“I can’t let you in until I see your status!” the watchman on the left yelled.

“I’m a [Necromancer] and [Swamp Lord] with a total level of one ninety five. I have a status hiding trait, I can’t control it,” Sylver shouted.

It wasn’t a lie. [Faceless] hid his status when he hid two thirds of his “face,” he had control over whether or not he showed his “face” to people, but he had no control over whether or not the trait worked while he hid his face.

“Alright, wait there, and don’t come any closer,” the watchman yelled.

He turned away from Sylver and company, towards one of the guards who wasn’t a real guard, and he whispered something to him.

The gate opened just enough for the not-guard to squeeze through, and the remaining two watchmen and 2 guardsmen turned back to Sylver and company and just looked at them.

After a few minutes of silence, one of the guards in the back squinted at Sylver, and said something to the guard standing next to him that Sylver didn’t hear.

The second guard also squinted at Sylver, and Sylver managed to read his lips as he spoke to the two watchmen in front of them, he caught the word “scenery,” but nothing else.

He caught only a small piece of the tune all four men were humming, but it was enough for him to figure out where this was going.

“Necromancer! What did you say your name was?” the watchmen on the left asked.

“Sylver Sezari!” Sylver answered loudly in a calm tone. Spring materialized behind Sylver, and walked to stand next to him. “And this is my shade, Spring!” Sylver said with a gesture towards the shade.

Lostal must have heard the tune the men were humming, because his eyes went wide and he nodded to himself.

“I didn’t know I was rescued by a celebrity,” Lostal said, way too loudly. He could feel the smirk on Nels’ face even if he couldn’t see it.

“Ask them if Mary is in there,” Klara said.

“Do you have a cook named Mary in there? This is her niece!” Sylver shouted towards the smiling, and almost giggling, men. “What does she look like?” Sylver asked Klara.

“Red curly hair, and she has a cut on her left ear,” Klara said.

“A cook named Mary with red curly hair, and a cut on her left ear!” Sylver shouted towards the men.

“That’s her niece?” one of the guardsmen asked.

“Yes, this is her niece!” Sylver shouted back while gesturing at Klara.

The farmer dressed as a guard returned exactly as one of the other guardsman opened the door to get inside the town, the farmer dressed as a guard whispered something to the watchman that had spoken to Sylver.

“Show me your guild tags!” the watchman shouted.

“I got into a scuffle in the mountains, and lost them!” Sylver said.

“That’s very unfortunate!” the watchman shouted.

“Could have been worse!” Sylver yelled back

The four men nodded at him.

The gates opened again, and alongside the guardsman, Sylver saw a bald clean shaven dwarf that was so skinny he looked more like a small man, than a normal sized dwarf.

The dwarf looked at Sylver, then looked at Lostal, and stared at Klara.

A woman with curly red hair and more freckles than face dressed in a black fur coat almost kicked the dwarf out of her way. Klara tried to slide off Mora’s back but ended up falling off, Lostal caught her before she hit the ground.

There was a great deal of shouting, yelling, and weapons being drawn as the woman with the freckles ran past the watchmen, guardsmen, ran through the town’s barrier, two archers that hadn’t been there a moment earlier popped up from the top of the gate and swung their drawn bows in the direction of Sylver’s face, Lostal’s face, Klara’s head, and for some reason both archers ended up pointing their arrows only at Sylver at the end.

Sylver and Lostal raised their arms high into the air, the woman with the freckles, who at this point was obviously Klara’s aunt, took a swing at the guardsman that tried to grab her arm, and aside from everyone almost getting shot, it was a fairly stereotypical happy reunion.

The dwarf turned out to be the interim chief, Kalok, between the song, Klara’s presence, and what Sylver had to summarize to be a gut feeling from the dwarf, Sylver and company were allowed entrance to the town without any further hassle.

Sylver draped Mora’s saddlebags over his shoulder as the horse shaped creature was led to a stable where real horses were stabled, while Sylver, Lostal, and Klara all ended up in a tall wooden building that until recently had been a warehouse.

There was a giant chunk of iron ore leaning against the corner of the building, someone had covered it in a tarp, in an attempt to prevent it from covering the floor in iron flakes.

The ceiling was at least fifty meters tall, a makeshift chimney had been hung over the large firepit in the center of the room, and the large room had been sectioned off into a sleeping area, a cooking/eating area with a makeshift bar, and the corner Sylver and company had been lead to was sectioned off by a hanging cloth wall that had bunch of medical supplies organized seemingly by colour.

There were nineteen men, and two women in the medical area, some were sleeping on proper beds, others were sleeping on recently made wooden armchairs. Sylver turned his head as he heard the dwarf yell a word in dwarvish that was a curse word, and simultaneously a slur that didn’t translate well into Eirish but vaguely meant “horrible enemy.”

A big chunk of the red mushroom robe Sylver had made for Klara snapped off and fell when she tried to slip out of it, and both Kalok, and Mary saw the gruesome sight of a woman who had so little body fat that you could see the tendons in her wrist and elbow, as along with veins that were so clearly visible through her paper-thin skin that they looked like blue worms climbing up her forearm.

As someone somewhat accustomed to seeing bodies in various conditions of damage and decay, the starvation thing hadn’t really hit Sylver as hard as it hit Kalok, Mary, and also Lostal, whose whole entire face went pale.

Most of the men that had turned to look at what made Kalok yell almost immediately looked away. Sylver waited until Klara was covered up in a thick wool blanket before he spoke.

“Both floating ribs on the left side are cracked, and on the right from the bottom going up the first, second, fourth, and fifth ribs are all detached from the costal cartilage," Sylver said.

He heard more than a few of the wounded men flinch at the words, most of them were aware how painful even one broken rib was.

“We don’t have anyone with healing magic,” Kalok said

“I kind of figured,” Sylver said while gesturing with his eyes towards the poorly organized medical supplies.

He had looked around as they walked to the building, there were similar warehouses that had been converted into living areas spread out through the entrance to the mine. The source of the barrier was completely mechanical and portable, given the way it was twitching and leaking mana everywhere, it was a very old backup that hadn’t been maintained properly.

“Lostal?” a man’s voice called out from the edge of the medical area.

Lostal turned around, and looked at a man with a bandage wrapped over the left side of his face, a fairly solid attempt at a makeshift splint to keep his left arm straight, and a wide white bandage over his stomach was wet with blood.

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“Matson?” Lostal asked as he limped towards the grinning man.

The wounded man was small but unlike Lostal he was wide in the sort of way that made him look like he could break down a stone wall with his bare fists.

“I’m guessing you’re also out of healing potions,” Sylver said to Kalok, who was still looking at Lostal who was being introduced to the wounded men laying around the man named Matson.

“We didn’t keep any here,” Kalok said.

It made sense, potions had a relatively short shelf-life, and there was no way a mine would operate without a healer nearby.

“How much?” Klara’s aunt, Mary, asked.

“Hmm?” Sylver asked when he realized the question was directed at him.

“How much do you want to heal her?” Mary asked.

Surprisingly enough, the question sounded genuine, she didn’t sound the least bit like she was asking it as an insult.

“I have a skill that’s somewhat capable of healing. But in her case the broken ribs have already healed wrongly, she needs someone to first align them properly, and then heal her. My skill isn’t enough for that, healing her as she is right now might cause something to tear open,” Sylver explained.

[Draining Blight] had an affect that let him channel an attribute, Health, Stamina, and Mana, from one creature to another, but like he said, it would be good enough to heal a flesh wound closed, but in her state Klara would need active healing prior, during, and after surgery.

At how low the efficiency was if he took 100 health from a donor, by the time it passed through him and reached Klara there would be less than 20 health, maybe even less, and that 100 assumed he was draining a “donor” to death, partial draining would be even lower than that.

If he used the [White Hair Ape] floating around in his [Still Water] it might be enough for Klara, if he worked really fast, but given her size, condition, and that Sylver wasn’t doing that great himself, the most likely outcome would be her death.

“How long does she have,” Mary asked with a truly eye watering amount of concern in her voice.

“As long as she doesn’t move around too much it’s not life threatening. Likely doesn’t even hurt that much by this point,” Sylver said.

Klara vaguely shrugged her shoulders in agreement. Mary sat down on one of the boxes in relief.

She didn’t mean to do it, he could see it in her body language and her soul, but Klara looked at the saddlebag draped over Sylver’s shoulder in a way that made both Mary and Kalok suspicious.

Sylver tried to play it off with his face, but when the two didn’t budge, he took the saddlebag off his shoulder. He placed the one with Nels’ bodyparts on the floor, and held the one with her head in it in his hands.

“Alright. This is going to look bad, but it isn’t… Just keep your voices down,” Sylver said.

He waited for both Mary and Kalok to nod their heads.

He could also feel that some of the wounded men behind him had sat up in their beds and chairs to see what he was about to take out of his bag.

Both Mary and Kalok took a big step back when Sylver slowly started opening the saddlebag made of [Black Mass], Mary in her case had moved in front of Klara to shield her with her body, whereas Kalok reached behind his back for what Sylver had to guess was a weapon he currently didn’t have.

“Hello,” Nels said in the most disarmingly soft voice she could manage.

Kalok said another swear word which was also simultaneously a slur, but a different one, it vaguely translated to “let the dwarf seeing this die,” but it was the kind of specific word that doesn’t make sense without understanding the dwarvish language and their culture.

Nels understood just enough that she was shocked at the slur, but also understood it wasn’t directed at her.

“She’s not undead or anything, this is just… it’s temporary, she’s fine,” Sylver tried to explain. Nels nodded her head in agreement, which made Kalok and Mary flinch at the sudden movement.

Truth be told, he didn’t fully know or understand how Nels was doing this. His absolute best guess was that the metal cube she’d encased her heart in was doing everything it could to keep her “alive,” which in this case meant creating what amounted to tiny portals that connected her throat to her lungs, and the blood vessels in her neck, to the blood vessels on her torso.

“I can’t use healing magic… just so it’s clear,” Nels explained.

There was a long moment of silence during which both Kalok and Mary returned to where they were standing before Sylver showed them the contents of his saddlebag.

He placed Nels down on the nearby table, and both he and Nels ignored the whispers behind them from the wounded men and women.

“You said you’re heading to Torg, right?” Kalok asked.

“Dravinsk first, then Torg,” Sylver said.

“How are you going there?” Kalok asked.

“On my horse,” Sylver answered.

Kalok looked away from Sylver, and looked at the various wounded men, who were all looking right back at him. He also seemed to look through the thin cloth wall separating them from the rest of the warehouse, where the rest of the people in the warehouse were.

“You said you’re an adventurer. What rank?” Kalok asked.

“C-rank,” Sylver said.

Lostal limped over to the group at that moment, and his friend Matson walked alongside him to help him not fall over.

Instead of doing what a lot of people did in this situation, which was to imply and never actually ask out of fear of being given a direct “no” and not having a way to ask again, Kalok did the thing Sylver loved dwarves for, and just directly said what he wanted.

“Could we hire you to get all of us to Merol?” Kalok asked.

Torg was South-West of Velrod, the “town” they were in now, Merol was East of Veldor, it wasn’t completely out of the way, but it was close to being the exact opposite direction Sylver planned to travel.

Going back to Pere was out of the question, aside from the danger of being dragged into the hollow-vault, the Moaning Heights on their own were as dangerous as regular mountains. And they were especially dangerous for Sylver to cross in his current condition.

On top of that, the idea of just leaving Klara like this didn’t sit right with him, it would most certainly not sit right with Edmund. And it wasn’t like he was doing anything other than waiting around for Edmund to show up, or for Chrys to contact them.

“I don’t know about officially being hired. But I can escort you to Merol. How do you know Merol isn’t like this?” Sylver asked.

“We managed to get in contact with them through the cans,” Kalok said.

“Cans?” both Sylver and Nels asked in perfect sync.

“Have you ever played with a can on a string?” Kalok asked.

“What are you talking about?” Sylver asked.

“You take two cans and have a taught string between them. What you say in one can causes the string to vibrate and the same sound comes out of the can on the other side of the string,” Nels explained.

“Sure, I get the concept... But we’re not talking about a literal can and a crazy long string, right?” Sylver asked.

“No, of course not,” Kalok said with an odd grin, “It’s what we used before teleportation became the norm, there’s a giant copper cone buried deep underground, with a metal chain attached to a small steel sheet. Sound carries through the underground stone, and through that we can talk to Merol and a few other towns,” Kalok explained.

“Sound carries through the stone…” Sylver said to himself.

“How have you never heard of this?” Nels asked with an unnecessary air of superiority.

“Let me guess, you read about it in a book,” Sylver asked rhetorically.

“You've spent more of your life with dwarves than anyone else, no, better yet, we’ve talked through this,” Nels said.

“When have I ever… Yes, I have, I remember now. But that was through ore veins, I didn’t think… Anyway, so Merol is safe? Do they have healers?” Sylver asked.

Nels all but rolled her eyes at him.

“Countess Camilla De’Ariyo was in Merol when everything… happened. She’s still there, along with her warriors and mages. All the nearby towns and villages were told to gather there, if they’re able to,” Kalok explained.

“How many people are there here?” Nels asked.

“Two hundred and eighty one people, not counting you three-four,” Kalok said with a gesture at Sylver, Klara, Lostal, and after a short pause, Nels too.

“So this would be a full caravan?” Nels asked.

“Not exactly… There’s a… It might be easier to show you,” Kalok said.

Sylver followed the bald dwarf, and took Nels with him, Lostal limped along after them with the help of his friend. Kalok brought them to a gigantic stitched together waxed tarp, he untied a small knot that was holding a section down to the ground, and while the dwarf was able to walk under the created gap at his full height, everyone else had to duct, almost crawl even.

Underneath the tarp was the large wooden hull of a ship, it didn’t have any sails, no holes for oars to row, and while he was able to read and understand the dwarvish runes carved into the wooden hull, Sylver couldn’t quite figure out what the end result of the runic magic was going to be.

“Manoc lived in the East before he came here, he saw elf children flying around on floating pieces of wood. He managed to do something similar with mine carts, but after an idiot forgot to turn one of them off after offloading the ore, they flew into the air and crashed through a roof. The whole idea was scrapped for years. Until Countess Camilla heard about it and commissioned him to build a large-scale proof of concept a few months ago, ” Kalok explained.

This was by no means the first time Sylver saw someone recreate a magical technology that already existed, but it was the first time he saw a dwarf create magical technology by copying elves, who Sylver knew for a fact, copied the magic from dwarves.

“So everyone gets on board, and a team of horses walks along the ground and pulls this giant wood balloon behind them?” Sylver half asked, half guessed.

“In a nutshell, yes. He couldn’t figure out a way to get it to push forward itself. His plan was to build long runways and launch it like an arrow. According to him it could transport enormous weight and travel extremely long distances at very little mana cost. As long as it didn’t need to turn or slow down until landing,” Kalok said.

And after the first crash landing he would have added wheels, then solar powered sails, then he would have figured out he could use leylines as a power source to fly higher in the air, then wings to properly steer it.

And then there’d be more, they’d fly higher and higher and eventually one of the serpents in the sky would dip down to swallow the entire aircraft, its passengers and crew, and that would be the end of that branch of magical transportation for about 400-500 years.

“What does it use for a power source?” Sylver asked. At this point he had a good guess, but he wanted to know for sure.

“A mana crystal alloy,” Kalok said.

“Can we see it?” Nels asked before Sylver had a chance to respond.

Kalok walked over to the back of the ship, spent a few minutes turning a very small lever that caused the wooden boards to slowly spread open. Sylver had to walk on his knees to fit through the tiny corridor, and ended up using [Fog Form] to get through the tiny hatch Kalok easily climbed through. Lostal and his friend stayed outside.

There were three platinum coated hoops hovering around what looked like a watermelon sized grey ball of aluminium foil someone had chewed up and spat out.

Sylver was familiar with dwarven magical tech, so it was a little unsettling to see what was undeniably a modern made precursor to what the dwarves of “old” ended up naming a Mana Engine.

Three hoops to account for the alloy spinning around on the X, Y, and Z axis, silver tipped rods to act as stabilizers and dampeners, the only difference was that the control panel looked like it had been repurposed from a mining tool, and that the creator of this device didn’t know about the tendency of mana alloys to separate into layers.

Which under the right circumstances, resulted in the kind of explosion that made the dwarves use this specific source of mana exclusively as a weapon, and never as a tool.

“You talk about Manoc in the past tense, so who’s going to operate this thing?” Sylver asked.

“Allson. He’s a wizard, I’m not entirely sure how much of this he built himself, but he said he knows how to work it,” Kalok answered.

“Alright… How soon would you want to leave?” Sylver asked.

“Tomorrow at first light. We have enough provisions to last maybe another two weeks, after that we’d have to send men out into the forest to hunt. The sooner we can get to Merol, the better,” Kalok said.

“Alright… First light… It’s doable… I need to talk to my friend in private for a bit. I’ll be on the roof if you need me,” Sylver said.

Nels’ head was thrown into the air by Sylver, he materialised directly above the opening and caught her, threw her through the long narrow corridor and caught her again at the end of it, and finally dropped her from the top of the ladder, and caught her at the bottom.

He climbed up onto the nearest warehouse roof, and used the large sheet of snow to make a warm triangular igloo-like tent.

“Do they just kill everyone who sees it explode every couple hundred years?” Nels asked in that same foreign language Sylver still couldn’t remember the name of, but at this point didn’t care enough to ask. She also made the tent soundproof, and Sylver had shades stationed everywhere to be on the lookout for eavesdroppers.

“I’m more surprised he never thought to ask why the elves only use them as toys. It should be fine. I don’t think this chunk is big enough to gather enough speed for the layers to separate,” Sylver said.

“What did Kalok mean when he said “when everything… happened?” Because this doesn’t look or feel like a regular monster outbreak,” Nels asked.

Sylver was quite a moment too long before he spoke.

“When the sky, or rather the moon, flashed red, a lot of town and city barriers stopped working. And the guards inside lost the powers given to them by the High King. On top of that, the teleportation network the High King had set up ceased to function, and a lot of wizards, mages, and potentially sorcerers, lost access to certain triangulation based aspects of their magic,” Sylver said.

“I see…” Nels said.

There was nothing as obvious as squinted eyes, or mouthing the words “was this you?” but in response to the question Nels didn’t ask, Sylver winked at her.

“So what’s in Merol?” Nels asked.

“I don’t know. I think they make parchment. Maybe dyes too,” Sylver said.

“If Ed doesn’t find us on the way to Merol, what are we doing after we get to Merol?” Nels asked.

“I just realized I left your body down with Klara… It’s fine, I can see it from here. If it’s just us two, we can fly to Torg. Depending on the weather it won’t take that long… Actually, there’s a necropolis I’ve been meaning to visit not that far from Merol. If we’re just sitting around waiting for Ed, we might as well check it out,” Sylver said.

“What about the lost scout reporting what’s going on in the hollow-vault to his higher ups?” Nels asked.

“Well… Countess Camilla is in Merol… One of the mages accompanying her has to be a dimensional mage. If that mage can tell me with confidence my waystone hasn’t been tampered with, we can teleport Lostal with us to Tuli, and fly over to Pere so he can report directly to Novva. And if not… Let's get to Merol first,” Sylver said.

“I hate to even ask this out loud but do you think Ed’s alright?” Nels asked.

“I’d know if something happened to him. It’s Chrys that I’m worried about. I didn’t question the silence before I got to you, but we’re well outside the hollow-vault’s reach. I cannot imagine what could possibly be so urgent and time consuming that she couldn’t take a minute to get in contact with me,” Sylver said.

He widened the icy tent so he had room to lay down, and a pair of shades materialized on either side of him.

“How bad is it?” Nels asked.

“It’s nothing. Just need to fiddle around with things so my center of gravity isn’t so high up,” Sylver said.

“Sure,” Nels said without putting any effort into making it sound like she believed him.

“You should sleep, if you can, tomorrow might be a very long day,” Sylver said.

The two shades undid the stitches Mora had woven, and the one on the left reached with her thin hands deep into his torso and pulled out a pitch black onyx coloured rock, with a tiny yellow light flickering inside of it, like a firefly in a jar.

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask-” Sylver didn’t finish his sentence as he looked over and saw that Nels was out cold. Just like Edmund, this was likely the first time she was near someone she trusted enough to fully lower her guard, and sleep the sort of sleep Sylver could have only dreamed about before he found Edmund.

He quietly yawned into his hand, laid back down, and while the two shades pulled out what constituted as internal organs for him, he worked on moving around the few ribs that had survived the black masked thing’s attack.