The plump man lying fainted on the floor. All were fear-stricken, staring at Viiela. Her expressions were as if she hadn't done anything wrong. Blood was still flowing like a smooth oil-stream from the plump man's severed limb.
"Somebody, stop the blood, he will die from the blood loss." The skinny man asserted. He skimmed the hall, hoping to find something that could stop the blood, but his efforts were panic-driven.
His words pulled Mritnaal out of admiration towards Viiela that she had held back. He looked towards the plump, one look, and he had known that the man was going to die.
He turned to Viiela, "It..." he paused, and before speaking anything else, he observed the people staring at Viiela. He held Viiela's hand and continued in Draanica, "Areish nirani… yiosna mirriaash… niriitaimss... (It will stir up the problems for us if this mortal dies.)"
Despite Mritnaal's efforts to look less suspicious, Draanica's hissing and reverberating intonation overwhelmed the bystanders without him even intending to do so.
Draanica, the expressive language of dragons, was a derivative of Draani. So, anyone who knew Nreeica(ancient Nreeti) the counterpart of Draanica could easily comprehend any derivatives of Nreeica. All the languages present on Wiskaar were the derivatives of Nreeica, so it was no surprise that Mritnaal and Viiela could talk in Alustraani, Alustraan kingdom's common tongue. Though, the fact how come Viiela and Mritnaal knew Nreeica the expressive language of Divines was still questionable.
I am hallucinating! I am hallucinating... Ensil was fully covered in sweat, shivering. Her eyelids were flapping like a bird's wing, completely denying to accept the reality in front of her.
"Nri... vinidss... nrakan mirtithh... (If it is how we need to do it, so be it)" While Viiela too replied in Draani, everybody started to take back their steps.
On Viiela's consent, Mritnaal reached out to the plump man and waved his hand over his bleeding limb. On his gesture, soil and rocks pierced through the wooden floor of the tavern, and formed a cocoon which sealed the bleeding hand.
He stopped the bleeding. Mritnaal’s action halted the panic, and once again, all were looking at Viiela with a horrified expression.
"Now, that all hindrance is gone, shall we continue," Viiela said to Ensil, while she approached her.
Ensil was frozen in her place and hadn't been showing any signs of moving from there. "Come on, I don't have all day." Viiela then took her hand and made her sit on the chair, she too occupied the adjacent one.
"So now, when will we be going to meet that Court Magician?" she didn't care for shivering Ensil and hit straight at the point.
What do I do? These two are dangerous, and I don't know their origins. Better, I get rid of them as soon as possible. It will be better if I let the Court Magicians handle this. They are all sorcerers, after all. Shaking in her boots, she gulped and replied, "Let's head there right now."
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All three of them were heading towards the Arcane Library. King Theocrus had offered to give Kaye a few Nreeti books as a gesture of showing his gratitude towards defeating Neehish, and Kaye gladly accepted it.
As they were walking more concealed depths of Tracian, Kaye asked, “Are there any other dragons like Your Majesty have seen in Titan war or monsters similar to it out there?” Kaye confirmed. He didn't want to stumble in front of another calamity (Clearly understating Neehish).
"I haven’t seen any dragons other than the one which appeared in the Titan War. But legend says, the Thrahidhraal Kingdom once had dragons, which burned down a lot of cities five centuries ago. Who knows, if they do have them now." Once again, King Theocrus started in his severe voice.
Leo was accompanying them, he hadn't recovered from the shock he got after witnessing Neehish's corpse, but the discussion piqued his interest. The corridor was like a horizontal black pit. Despite having magical tools lighting it up and decorated intricate rock carvings, the passage still gave off the vibes of a Dungeon.
King Theocrus' steps became unhurried as he went on, "But surely, it hadn’t really had something as ferocious as the Dragon of the Titan war. Otherwise, there wouldn't've been any need for the Grand Commission to maintain the balance of power. Thrahidhraal would've been ruling the world already."
“And monsters can be dreadful, but there are demons that can be summoned from other worlds.” He stopped in his tracks before continuing.
"Hmm... Theo didn't tell you about Spirium's Execution and why he is living like a common man, did he?" He asked while looking at Kaye, King Theocrus eyes were filled with contempt and regret.
Not able to see any end to the passage, Kaye thought Finally, but why demons… He was about to know why Theo was living like the way he was? Kaye usually listens to tales with a laid-back attitude, but this one was something related to Theo and why it had anything to do with any demon?
Without a doubt, Kaye's curiosity started to reflect on his face as his eyes gleamed, and he set off King Theocrus, "No, My Lord, Master did not tell me."
"It isn't a legend or a rumor, but a true story of Kingdom Bas-Migustriya's Spirium city. One hundred twelve years ago, one of the Spirium's sorcerers had summoned a demon, and it was powerful as he expected it to be." King Theocrsu's tone changed, he was putting it like he'd been there to observe it.
"It was powerful indeed," King Theocrus pierced the ground with his cold glares and continued, "Unfortunately, more powerful than what the whole army of Bas-Migustriya could handle. The demon Made the citizens its plaything, tortured them all he wanted. When the demon got bored, it left the world, but the citizens of Spirium were pushed to their limit. They begged the King for their execution. Unable to watch the misery of citizens, King gave the order to the army for mass execution. Hence, the whole Spirium city's populace got executed."
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
King Theocrus' whole face was portraying utter sadness. Kaye hesitated, but asked anyway, "But what it had anything to do with Master."
"Martheo, my son, Theo's father, hadn't had any idea that he was helping his friend in summoning a demon. When the whole thing revealed with such a mess, Martheo admitted that he had helped his friend, the sorcerer who summoned the demon. Martheo gave him Arcane's of Nreeti." Once again, King Theocrus started walking towards the library, such that he could hide his sorrow as he was speaking, "He felt guilty for the execution of 20,000 thousand innocent people."
"The same guilt had made him accept my verdict of disowning him, followed by his execution. He gladly accepted it. Theo being his son, doesn't want to live here anymore." King Theocrus' eyes filled with tears as he concluded.
After hearing all the things which had happened, Kaye and Leo were at a loss for words. Then, unable to think of a topic to lit up the mood, they walked silently till the Arcane Library. A small gate at the end of the passage, it was tiny compared to Tracian's other architecture, 6 feet in length with a beautiful wood carved, cave-like opening. Unlike any other door in the Tracian, it was made of dark wood with a rough texture instead of techy metals. It didn't have any keyhole in it, neither a knob to open it.
Great, they are gonna use magic to open it. Kaye anticipated.
"Your Majesty, May I?" Leo took out his wand while approaching the gate and asked King Theocrus' permission to open it.
"Kaye get here," King Theocrus asked Kaye to stand in the circle engraved in front of the gate, and as Kaye obliged, he said to Leo, "Okay, now open it."
Instead of doing anything to the get, Leo turned back towards the passage and incanted, " [WAAK-PIAK-AILN-INIG-YISM-RANZ] " The incanting conjured up six mana rings which went down through the tunnel-like corridor. The only path through which they came in, lit up due to Leo's six small words.
Each one of the rings had a different color and stopped at a precise distance from each other. The immense light emitting from them revealed six rune-carvings present in front of them on the passage walls. All of the rings expanded and seeped into the respective runes. The mana started to flow from the runes into the gate traveling through the walls. It was almost like blood returning to the heart via veins. The dark wood of the gate bloomed in green light and opened up slowly.
So, the whole passageway was the Lock! Kaye thought, as he entered the library door following King Theocrus and Leo.
Were all the books stolen? Kaye's shoulders dropped.
There wasn't a single book present, only a small empty igloo-like room, nearly twelve meters in diameter. Every single stone-brick was a part of a big enchantment etched into the ceiling. Only an oddly high fireplace was built into the wall just opposite to the entrance. Perhaps it wasn’t a fireplace, because there was no ash or fire present in it. The runic symbols were all ending at the fireplace-like pocket in the wall.
“I know what you are thinking, they aren't stolen. This is the Arcane Library of Tracian, one of a kind,” Leo replied with a voice highly tinged with pride. Maybe because he was the overseer of the Arcane Library and treasury of Magkrin.
“Enough with the talk, retrieve the set of Nreeti books,” King theocrus commanded, still somewhat gloomy about the topic of his son’s execution.
Leo nodded his head and returned his wand into his coat. Then he stretched his hand wide open, and the whole room was filled with mana coming out from him. The rune-carvings on the wall started glowing and pumping the mana into the fireplace-like pocket by absorbing it from the room.
Kaye was mystified with all the coursing mana in front of his eyes.
“Mr. Kaye, you may retrieve the books,” Leo said, pointing towards the fireplace.
Didn’t know what to say, Kaye nodded his head and started walking towards the place where the books were supposed to be. When he looked into it, there was only one single book lying there. He picked it up with care, and another one slid in from nowhere as soon as he took the previous one. One after another, the book appeared again and again until the seventh one. Kaye staked all of them on his hand, leaving both Leo and King theocrus gaping at him. The books might have been too heavy to lift for some average person, at least their reactions suggested so. All of them were having covers made up of tree barks, and they were all jumbo encyclopedias in dimensions, with too thick pages.
“My Lord, how many more books will I need to be able to enchant magic items on my own?” Kaye asked while holding those gigantic books in his hands like they were only pillows filled with cotton. Though, each of them was really like a pillow in size.
“These books you are holding will be enough for any kind of enchantment as far as Nreeti is concerned, but the problem is that you can’t use magic, so you need to write your own spells in Nreeti, from which you want to enchant the magic items with. In other words, these books have the knowledge of how to enchant. What to enchant, still needs to be created by you in Nreeti,” Too eager King Theocrus laid out with his verbose explanation.
"In short, I would say you need every Nreeti book of the element in which you want your enchantments to be. All and all, Nreeti isn't some ordinary language which can be learned with some grammar rules on hand." He added while scratching his chin.
After hearing all the details about the Nreeti books Kaye’s face froze as if he realized something, he looked towards Theocrus and asked, “Your Highness, How do all the dwarves of Magkrin know Neptinian language?”
Ever since he was in Magkrin, he never faced any language barrier. Did it mean all the Dwarfs of Magkrin knew Neptinian?
King Theocrus' mood lightened up a bit as he said, “Oh, we aren't speaking Neptinian. It is you, Who is speaking Dwarvish all this time."
Quit joking! Kaye couldn't buy it and retorted inwardly.
"Concentrate on your words and speak something,” Leo asked Kaye with a smirk on his face.
Kaye put all those books into the space ring and did as asked. He said, “jslkdd sdkfld dfsd (Okay! I will speak this then.)” The words which came out from his mouth were strange, but he could still understand them. Wow! This is not the language I am speaking since I am in Neptina. I didn’t even realize I was speaking in Dwarvish.
“It is a powerful rune surrounding Magkrin made by His Highness which renders Dwarvish as a common tongue within it. That way, we don’t have to teach other people Dwarvish. If they stay out of Magkrin for more than one day, its effects wear off, and they smoothly switch between their common tongue and Dwarvish without even knowing.” Leo replied to utterly surprised Kaye.
“But why go through all this stuff, I mean what’s the point in,” Kaye hadn’t had any idea of diplomacy and politics around the Magkrin so he asked.
“Dwarvish is an exclusive language among the seven Mighty Brothers. So it cannot be taught to anyone for security purposes. It still works as an indiscernible code when two Dwarven people talk in another country. It is perfectly legal and approved by the Grand Commission itself. So much so that Grand Commission’s Headquarters were enchanted with the same runes as Magkrin.” Leo explained with a glimmer of pride stretched his wrinkly skin.
"So now, you got the Nreeti books for enchanting. What about that thing you went to Luckard for, are you still planning to make that deal with me. I mean, you will be needing wealth to get other Nreeti books." King Theocrus asked with dead-serious expressions on his face.
"About that, I'll be needing the forge available once again." Kaye smiled as he replied.