“A revenant of a sort,” Jorfr finally said, prompting Zel to gesture to him in agreement. The Borean gave a smirk, adding: “Do not tell anyone I said that… And do not repeat it either. I only now realized what a grave insult that comparison is to our good king. The blood loss must have fogged my mind.”
Some time passed in silence as they waited for the Blackwall Gate and rested.
In the middle of doing the splits to ensure her hip wouldn’t get stuck as it had done once before, Zel looked to Victor, questioning: “That servitor of yours, Midnight Wolf. It was incredible, but… You didn’t break the seal to make it move, did you? It felt like something equivalent to that great big rocket you made in the Deterrence Fields.”
He stared back at her with tired eyes. A tentative, uncertain shake of his head followed, then he looked down to see that the seal was indeed intact.
“Though… Koschei still helped me. I- I don’t know how. He… Spoke in my head. He said something about how I was useless to him if I crippled myself, and then his voice vanished once I made the servitor obey you.”
“I suppose that preserving what he sees as his future vessel might not fall under that which the seal is designed to contain…” Jorfr pondered aloud, then looked to Victor, holding out a hand. His chest heaved with heavy breaths as one lung struggled to do the work of two. “The scroll.”
The redhead retrieved it and handed it over as quickly as he was able - that is to say, not quickly at all. Jorfr pulled it open and sloppily raised one hand, tilting his head and squinting as he read.
“Yeah, just had to make sure… The Duplex Barrier is mainly designed to seal up overtly malicious cursed items. It only has secondary protections against indirect deception, which is probably why he said what he said rather than bold-facedly lying. Even then, the Duplex Barrier might not be fully effective against an Antediluvian Gem, especially due to the artifact's nature and the soul within it.”
As Jorfr rolled the scroll back up, Zel finally managed to get her knee to stop downright screeching when she bent it. She chimed in: “Koschei might just be able to bypass the seal with some effort, and considering the mental requirements of forming a Servitor… I’d say it’s high time to get started proper on the Despot of Self.”
“I’d be glad, but I… I can’t help asking, what about your hair?” came a strange question from Victor.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Huh? It’ll just grow back in a day or two. Less, if need be. Itches like hell. Speaking of…”
Zel reached into her mouth. With a slight pull, a tooth came out - she tossed it back into her mouth and swallowed, uttering, “Hopefully that means the new ones are close to finished…”
Of her companions, only Victor was still sufficiently tethered to normalcy to give her a strange look over that action.
“What?” she raised an eyebrow to him. “It’s not as if it has been anywhere other than my mouth.”
A few more minutes passed. The light in the gate’s glyph was shifting, informing Jorfr that it was less than a minute from opening. As such, he spoke up: “The gate is almost open. After this, we will… Trek for a few more hours. At the end there is a lift into the basement of a Hulson clan longhouse. From there… I will give you a tour of Oasis City, even if I wheeze my way through it.”
“Oasis City? Is that what Oaseby translates to?” Zel asked.
Jorfr nodded: “...Yes. Do not pretend that Ikesians are any more creative with their settlement names.”
The gate finally stirred to life. Rather than physically opening, the light of its glyph flooded into sun-coloured gem in its middle, concentrating within the gem into a swirling maelstrom that cast a headache-inducing, psychedelic lightshow all across the cathedral. In a blinding flash of iridescence, accompanied by an immense wrenching noise that echoed everywhere and nowhere at once, the gate vanished, leaving a rainbow corridor of the same vast scale as the gate itself. Despite his condition, Jorfr sprung back up to his feet and began walking towards the corridor as if he were just fine, his condition only betrayed by his wheezing, labored breathing and the barely-plugged hole in his chest.
Zelsys, Zefaris, and Victor followed in his stead, never overtaking him as the Borean led them into his homeland.
----------------------------------------
The elevator-ride out of Agartha proved itself to be uneventful, if slow, due to the machine being powered by an entirely mundane steam mechanism.
“Do not go far from the longhouse before we meet the clan elders - that is all I ask of you. I have plans in motion which demand that we appear before them before we can freely and safely travel the entirety of Oasis City,” Jorfr had told Zelsys during the elevator-ride out of agartha.
“You said I would need to prove that I am what you had claimed me to be. Did they specify what it would entail?” she answered.
“Nothing specific. Any method of proving your capabilities could suffice, but… Please do not go around challenging strong-looking people to holmgang. It can be seen as distasteful and desperate if you do it too often and without the appropriate social context.”
“Makes sense. Oh, speaking of strong people - mind sharing the actual names of the Great Clans?”
“Well, we have time…” the northman shrugged, and so shared this knowledge.
Jorfr freely revealed the names of the three clans which had conspired against the Hulsons, ranting about their members and his grievances with them. Two secondary clans and one primary; the secondaries being the Buhaug and Eisen Clans, while the primary was the Ramdall Clan.