“Speaking of Chrys…” Edmund said.

They had been outside the obelisk’s range for a while, and yet Chrys hadn’t contacted them. There were plenty of birds nesting inside the forest, even if they didn’t have the vocal capacities of ravens, surely Chrys could at the very least find a rat to answer a couple of yes/no questions.

A worrying thought entered Sylver’s and Edmund’s minds simultaneously.

“She wouldn’t dare,” Sylver said.

“Wouldn’t she? She’s up against you. And if she knows you from before, she knows it’s pointless to attack you directly. She can’t go after me, because I’m me, but what about Chrys, Lola, and the others?” Edmund asked.

Sylver turned to look at the distant city.

“Literally everything could be solved if we sat down and talked. If she doesn’t know about Nautis or Nameless, it isn’t as if I’m going to try to shake information out of her. And if-”

“I wasn’t aware clairvoyants stopped being paranoid lunatics. I’m glad to hear the current generation of future-seeing magic users are all relaxed, and rational people,” Edmund said, while continuously rolling his eyes.

“Rose was reasonable. Even with the [Hero] thing, she didn’t sound all that crazy,” Sylver argued.

Before Edmund got a chance to speak, a flock of crows collided with Will. Most of them disappeared into a cloud of feathers and blood, as they hit the spikes on his back, but a few survived.

“We were just talking about you,” Sylver said, as he looked around at the splatters of blood the unlucky birds left behind.

Five crows, each with a brightly glowing left eye, turned their heads in perfect unison and looked directly at Sylver.

“Poppy is gone,” they said.

Their voices harmonized so well that it almost sounded as if a person was speaking.

“I feel like we’ve already discussed how I feel about pregnant pauses,” Sylver said as the birds simultaneously cocked their heads to the side.

“She’s not in this realm,” the quintet of ravens explained.

“How can you be sure?” Edmund asked.

The ravens turned their heads without moving their bodies and were now looking at Edmund.

“She told me,” the ravens said, as Sylver sat up from his makeshift seat, and moved towards the birds.

“Poppy spoke to you?” Sylver asked.

The sheer confusion dulled whatever sense of anger he may have felt. The birds turned to look at Sylver again.

“She stopped by the house before she left. She said that it’s too dangerous here without Lily and Rose,” the ravens explained.

Before Edmund could ask the question, the ravens answered.

“She said a lot of sleeping giants have begun to wake up. And she said she doesn’t want to be here when they start moving,” the quintet of pitch-black avian creatures said.

A moment of silence passed, during which Sylver resisted the urge to say something incredibly offensive. Thankfully, he succeeded in not telling Poppy, through Chrys, where exactly she can shove her ominous message of future danger.

“Did she by any chance specify what or where the giants are?” Sylver asked.

“She didn’t,” the ravens said.

“Of course not. Can’t ever predict something and be specific about it, that would make things too easy,” Sylver said.

Edmund reached out with his hand and gently patted Sylver on the shoulder.

“On the other hand, now that we know she’s gone, we don’t have to worry about her,” Edmund offered.

“That’s a good point… Alright,” Sylver said as he clapped his hands together, “from this moment on, I never want to hear the name Poppy, Rose, or Lily ever again. We’re done with them.”

The 5 birds made a coughing sound.

“There’s one more thing…” the birds said. “A good thing,” they added, once they saw the expression on Sylver’s face.

“What good thing?” Sylver asked.

There was no excitement in his voice, he was just tired at this point.

“She did something to the eye. She stabilized it, I think. It’s hard to describe it. But it’s a lot easier for me to control animals and people, and my range increased significantly, I can almost see the Asberg,” Chrys explained.

Sylver had to remind himself that despite her abilities, Chrys was still young.

“You…” Sylver closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to speak in a calmer tone. “You let Poppy fiddle with the only thing we have that can find my people?” Sylver asked, on the off chance he heard her wrong. She was talking through birds, it wasn’t impossible they weren’t saying the words Chrys meant for them to say.

Sylver did his best to not sound furious, but the quintet of ravens looked ready to fly away out of fright.

He wasn’t even sure who to blame for this.

Was he at fault for not instilling the importance of the eye to Chrys? Was it Chrys’ fault for being so naïve? Was Lola responsible for letting this happen under her watch? Should Sylver had asked Bruno to stay near her?

“What’s done is done,” Edmund said with a genuinely relaxed tone of voice.

The thing is, he understood exactly why Sylver looked like he was about to start screaming. But unlike Sylver, Edmund’s mind didn’t immediately go to the worst-case scenario, knowing him, Edmund truly believed that Poppy did something to help them.

Instead of dwelling on what had already happened, and could no longer be changed, Sylver chose to move along.

“Alright then… Can you ask Lola what she knows about Nautis?” Sylver asked.

The quintet of ravens spoke without so much as a pause.

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“He disappeared 3 years ago,” the ravens said.

“Excuse me?” Sylver asked, with giant creases on his forehead from how open his eyes were.

“The people whose turn it was to torture him, disappeared, along with Nautis, a little over 3 years ago. To date, none of them have been found,” the ravens explained, in a relaxed tone of voice, as if it was no big deal.

“Did… Was… The report Lola gave me, that caught me up to date on all the things I missed while I was away… You wouldn’t happen to know if this was mentioned in it?” Sylver asked.

There was a pause this time.

A good 10 seconds of silence.

“She says it was,” Chrys said.

“Where?”

“Right before Arda’s monster outbreak. A lot of weird things happened around that time, she says it’s possible you skimmed past it,” the ravens explained.

“Because compared to everything else, it was barely worth a footnote?” Sylver clarified.

The pause that followed lasted for a solid minute.

“Yes,” the quintet of ravens said.

“Alright, good to know,” Sylver said.

***

Sylver sat with his back to his companions and stared at the distant sunset.

The ground below was mostly grassy plains, with a barely visible stream of water meandering through it. The long shadows cast by what little remained of the sun showed the smooth hills spread throughout the otherwise flat land.

After talking to Chrys for a while, Sylver gave himself some time to think things through.

Tera was going to give birth within the next couple of hours. Her water hadn’t broken yet, but Chrys could already see the two identical boys sleeping in their cribs, a week from now.

Both were in perfect health and indistinguishable from one another. The only thing Chrys couldn’t see were their names, because Tera didn’t like the names Bruno suggested, and Bruno didn’t like the names Tera wanted to use.

Ria had gathered a literal metric ton of Lola’s prototypes/botched enchanted items and sealed herself away inside one of the storage rooms in Sylver’s workshop. And since it was Ria, Chrys couldn’t see what she was doing. When Chrys tried to go inside, Ria politely, but very firmly, asked her not to disturb her.

Mora had followed suit and disappeared into the dungeon 2 days ago and was yet to return.

Chrys also mentioned that she was 99.8% sure the Sun Demon was real. Or, at the very least, something very bad was going to happen in 13 years during the Summer Solstice. So bad that it made it nearly impossible for Chrys to look further than 13 years into the future.

On the other hand, the other clairvoyants didn’t see anything of the sort occurring in the near future. Quite literally, not a single one saw anything notable occur during the next real summer solstice.

But that was something to deal with in the future, it was important, but it wasn’t urgent.

Rescuing Tuli was urgent.

And since Chrys had confirmed that Novva didn’t have anything that could be used to curse Nautis, Sylver wasn’t sure what their next step was going to be.

Edmund floated over to Sylver but didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Since a demon is involved, anything other than a priest or paladin will be basically useless. We would just be handing the demon more people to fight against us,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said without looking away from the sunset.

“The biggest danger is that we don’t know just how many people Nautis has. Or how strong they are. Or how strong he or the demon is,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said.

“And because of Tuli’s shell, as well as the obelisk’s magical interference, we have no way of scouting it out without actually going in,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said.

Neither of them spoke for the time it took the last sun to finish setting. Sylver continued sitting on the edge of Will’s back, and since the suns had set, he watched the ground beneath them.

Sylver sighed as he came to a decision. He stood up and turned around so he was facing Edmund, Faust, and Anna.

“Alright, I have something. As far as plans go, it isn’t my best, but-”

Sylver had the imprint of a small hand on his chest and was flying away from the giant sphere of sparkling light. A half second later, the sphere of light, or rather, the person surrounded by the sphere, was sent flying toward the ground.

Sylver watched as Edmund flew behind the sphere of light, while Faust carried Anna toward the direction Sylver had been sent flying.

Sylver kicked his legs forward and turned around, so he was upside down, relative to the ground. A person wearing silver chainmail, armed with a silver great-sword, had jumped upward and was less than a second away from reaching Sylver.

Sylver flexed his left foot and snapped 2 of the metatarsal bones, which resulted in an explosive release of seawater.

Sylver feinted reaching for the silver armored person’s weapon, and when the person pulled their sword back to counterattack, Sylver pushed all the water around him using [Advanced Water Manipulation] upwards.

The silver great-sword-wielding person was pushed upward, along with the water, while Sylver was launched towards the ground.

He narrowly missed a tree branch, that would have torn an arm off if he collided with it, and expertly dived into the small hole formed in the earth beneath him.

He created a tunnel barely big enough for a toothpick to be pushed through, as he used [Fog Form] to squeeze through it. Sylver made the earth directly above him bunch up, which increased its density, which in turn protected him from the onslaught of holy magic the person above was trying to kill Sylver with.

Just as Sylver thought he was “safe,” a silver javelin impaled the space his head had been a moment earlier. It was sheer luck there was enough room in the tiny hole he made for him to move his head out of the way.

He wasn’t as lucky with the second javelin, or the third. The second one passed through his left thigh, it slid along the bone but didn’t break it. The third javelin got him in the stomach, but just like the first two, the thrower had used too much force, and the javelin just moved through him. They left two holes in him, that hurt so much, that a lesser undead would have lost its mind from the absurd amount of pain.

Instead of digging deeper, Sylver pressed his hand up towards the hole one of the javelins left behind and forced a tendril of fog through. He materialized on the surface a split second later.

Upon closer look, his opponent was a woman, the shape of the shoulders and the wide stance gave it away since the leather padding underneath the silver chainmail hid any sort of obvious womanly tells. Her helmet didn’t have any eyeholes, and it appeared that the “helmet” was simply very fine chainmail that had been tailored to perfectly wrap around her head.

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

Sylver made a sideways gesture with his hand, as a spike of solidified earth formed underneath the woman, and if she reacted a little slower, would have pierced her through the groin, and exited through the top of her head.

Instead, even though she had been ready for an attack from the side, she stomped her foot on the ground and canceled out Sylver’s magic.

Expertly, she blocked Fen’s attempt to shove a rapier through the back of her neck, she dodged out of the way of Dai’s downward swing, and as Sylver tried to jump back to create some distance, the woman sort of threw herself at him, using the sword as a lever.

Sylver couldn’t see her eyes, but he could feel the woman savor this moment, as she got closer and closer, to the seemingly defenseless undead. Her hands were both glowing, reaching for Sylver’s head, and the second she made physical contact, Sylver would be gone.

But right at that moment, the seawater that had been making its way downward reached the ground, and the unimpeded woman found herself trapped by the ice that had enveloped her. Sylver tried to send an earth spike through her face, but the woman managed to react quick enough to block it.

Instead of spike exploding out of the back of her skull, the silver fabric like chainmail was torn and revealed a scratched pale check underneath it.

Sylver didn’t bother trying to finish her off, because his current priority was to buy as much time as he could. If it was just one paladin, that would be one thing, but even as Sylver ran away, he could feel 4 more aiming at him from above.

Sylver kicked up a cloud of dust, and 8 identical black robe-wearing men ran out of it, each wearing a mask made out of semi-solid mushrooms.

Sadly, the paladins either had a way of tracking him, or they were very lucky, because all 4 of them ignored the decoys, and it was pure luck that Sylver didn’t get hit by their silver javelins.

Off in the distance, he could see flashing lights, which could belong to anybody given the current opponents, but Edmund’s magic had a very distinct crackling sound to it.

Sylver wasn’t going to win this fight, not with a shredded thigh, and a hole where his belly button should be, but he didn’t need to.

He only needed to survive long enough for Edmund to kill them all.

Just as Sylver finished this thought, he smashed his face against the invisible barrier.

Sylver stabbed at the barrier with his dagger, but he was experienced enough to know when a barrier was too strong for him to break.

He turned around and saw a woman wearing a bright red robe, floating in the air, surrounded by what could only be described as a sea-urchin-like barrier consisting of feather-shaped silver daggers.

For a breath, Sylver and the woman made eye contact.

And while Sylver recognized her by the shape of her hips, as well as the glowing tattoos on her uncovered shoulders, he could tell that Sophia had no idea who he was.

And between the hood hiding his face, the red crown on his head, and the generic black robe, he couldn’t really blame her.

The mass of floating silver blades pointed right at Sylver and flew at such speed, that they left an afterimage behind them.