Sylver Seeker

Now that he had a plan, and a way to “win,” Sylver almost had a hard time worrying about the fact that he was about to face a death lord and a god from another world.

Few things were as shitty as being in a position where you didn’t know what was happening to you and simultaneously unable to do anything about it.

Granted, Sylver would be hard-pressed to call his situation “ideal,” or even “good,” but even if it wasn’t as great and simply as leaving this realm and finding Edmund, it was better than blindly trusting Rose’s word.

Although if not for Nyx’s grimoires, that is exactly what I would have done.

The problem with hindsight is that in hindsight all of your decisions appear to have been made by an abject retard.

Why did you do this? Couldn’t you see the signs? How could you not have realized it sooner? And so on and so forth, because a lot of decisions Sylver made in the past were made using incomplete, or downright wrong, information.

Not to mention that he didn’t always make the “right” choice, even when presented with it. Experience stops you from making the same mistake twice, but in Sylver’s experience, it is rare that he gets to be in the exact same situation more than once.

Even when the situation is similar enough that most would argue that he should have been able to predict the outcome, it was one of Sylver’s unique talents to find a way to fuck it up in a way he hadn’t previously.

Sylver gently closed the grimoire he was deciphering, placed it into the wooden chest and minimized it, and was on his feet and standing between the door and Chrys as one of the dark elves standing outside his door knocked on it.

Sylver trusted the dark elves, but there was being trusting, and being stupid. His heart hoped they came as a group to celebrate, but Spring described their expressions as “solemn,” and Sylver’s mind didn’t let him not at the very least be on his feet and prepared, in the event some sort of betrayal was afoot.

The door opened silently, and a woman wrapped up in black cloth entered the small room, and kept opening the door until it touched the wall, and attached to the small device that would keep it open.

“I am called Irina,” Irina said, with such a heavily accented Elvish that it took Sylver a second to figure out that she was speaking Elvish.

Her face was hidden away underneath the black fabric that covered the rest of her body, only her eyes and her bare hands were visible. The fabric was not too dissimilar to the rags Sylver had been given to mummify the corpse containing Chrys’ temporary lungs and hearts. It was figure-hugging, but she clearly had some sort of armor or coat underneath it.

“Tod, pleased to meet you,” Sylver introduced himself and was extremely careful to keep his knees bent and ready, but without giving away that he was ready for a fight.

The people standing in the corridor made no move to enter the small and cramped room, but a few craned their heads to peek inside. They were all dressed very similarly to Irina.

“Zelvash say you are going bring new home,” Irina said.

Sylver very briefly considered if it would be worth it to have Ria simply act as a translator for them, but decided to leave her alone for the time being.

After Chrys’ condition had been stabilized, as much as possible in her current situation, Ria had very quietly moved until she and her book body was sitting on Chrys’ chest. From there she used barely visible tendrils to enter her body through the many cuts and sutured wounds and was in the process of figuring which implants to remove and in which order.

Ria seemed to have either not cared about the source of tiny hearts and lungs or had assumed Sylver had created them out of thin air using his magic. He was going to tell her eventually, he needed her to be on the same page as Sylver if they were going to be long-term companions, but it was fine for now.

“I’m from a different world. With Zelvash’s help, I will open a passage to it,” Sylver said slowly and took extra care to make sure each word was clear and loud enough for the dark elves in the corridor to hear.

“How passage?” Irina asked, and Sylver could both see and feel the dark elves behind her perk up.

“There are different worlds and people with the right knowledge can move between them. Think of it like making a hole in the wall to go to the next room,” Sylver explained and gestured to the wall on his left.

“But how passage? How many fit?” Irina asked.

Sylver stared at the woman for a moment and having decided they weren’t here to kill him and Chrys, walked over to his seat and sat down. Sylver gestured at the chair next to him and made it float over to Irina, who nodded at Sylver before she sat down.

“A spell. I know the basics, I have a book that will help me with the details, and your mages will provide the necessary mana. There isn’t a limit to how many can use it and with the fact that there are children, I’ll make it stable enough for them to survive,” Sylver explained, and almost flinched as the dark elves outside started to murmur amongst themselves.

“What about children that not survive,” Irina asked.

She sat with her legs pressed together against each other, and with both hands on her knees, with her back almost perfectly straight.

“I will make the gate as stable and safe as I can, but this isn’t magic I am familiar with. In a perfect world, we would wait until I can experiment to learn how to properly open a gate, but it would take me years to get even a little better at it. I’ve already explained this to Zelvash, it will be up to you to decide if the risk is worth it or not,” Sylver explained quietly.

He wasn’t embarrassed by his lack of skill, he was a necromancer, opening a gate wasn’t even “dark” magic, the fact that he knew how to open a gate at all should be impressive on its own.

Rose did mention that coming home to Eira will be much easier than coming to this world, but why should Sylver believe her if she stayed quiet about the death lord? Sylver hoped Nyx’s grimoire would provide some sort of groundbreaking revelation in regards to realm traveling magic, but if it was there Sylver missed it on his first read-through.

Sylver’s saving grace was the fact that he had a piece of himself on Eira to travel back to. Although he wasn’t certain how it would function with the [Xander’s Waystone] embedded in his ribcage, but Sylver would figure it out.

The “coin” he had given Lola to tell her if he was still alive or not was mostly compressed bone and blood. Sylver hadn’t intended to use it as a guide for a gate, but it would work.

Or could, if Sylver was being honest with himself. Once he became a lich, he hadn’t bothered to bring his body back to Eira. He simply discarded it, vaporized it, and summoned his soul back to his phylactery.

“What is it like?” one of the dark elves from the back shouted, and Irina turned to see who it was and said something in her language in a tense and quiet tone. Going by the way the group consisting of mostly men backed away slightly, Irina held some kind of authority over them.

“Going through a gate or the world?” Sylver asked to clarify.

“Gate,” Irina said, as she turned back around to face Sylver.

“It’s going to hurt. Your skin might move a little, a bone might bend and pierce the skin, blood might flow the other way, if it’s a bad gate, it will feel like falling into a meat grinder. But I have ways to prevent anything that will kill you from happening. But as I said before, there’s still a risk. It all depends on how powerful your soul and willpower are. An adult that has been in a life or death situation should be mostly fine. A child that hasn’t been alive long enough to learn to talk? Might die,” Sylver said honestly.

Even with the death lord under his control, a gate cared less about power than it did about precision. Sylver’s trick with the demons mostly worked because he tore a hole back to his realm. Even if he sacrificed 100 dark elves, it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough mana to tear a hole to Eira.

The “wall” between the demon realm and Eira was so flimsy it might as well be made out of paper. The “wall” between Eira and other realms was as tough as if it was made out of metal. You needed a “door” to travel between realms.

Even with Sylver using the book as a fuel source, it still required him to gain the kind of skill mages normally spent centuries developing. Although Sylver doubted the system would provide him, or anyone, such skills to help him out.

Despite common belief, teleportation, spatial manipulation magic, and other similar magics had absolutely nothing to do with the magic that was required for moving between realms.

“World. What is world like?” Irina asked as Sylver had gone quiet from being deep in thought as to how to open the gate without having to watch tiny skinless corpses fly out on the other side of it.

Sylver thought it over for a moment or two.

“I won’t tell you what it’s called, on the off chance someone tries to follow us,” Sylver said quietly and carried on as Irina nodded. “I won’t sugarcoat it… The world you are going to is dangerous. There are monsters the likes of which you’ve never seen, and can’t imagine,” Sylver explained.

“How many monster? How strong?” Irina asked, with an odd shake of the shoulders.

“Millions upon millions. Probably more, magic doesn’t like empty space. Whenever a city manages to clear out a safe area for itself, a tiny worm will grow into a giant snake and will lay hundreds upon thousands of eggs. Within a month the area will be infested by a new type of monster, that is twice as powerful and twice as deadly as its extinct predecessor,” Sylver explained and lifted his hands in the air as he spoke about the worm that turned into a snake to emphasize the increase in size.

“Can hunt to eat?” Irina asked. Sylver could now feel a collective “enjoyment” from Irina and the group behind her.

“You can hunt them, yes, but the meat can’t be eaten. It’s either too tough for anyone’s stomach to digest, or it’s poisonous, or the taste is so revolting that you can’t even swallow it. But there are plenty of people that buy monster parts to use as components for spells, crafting, or potion ingredients. In return, they give you money to buy meat from farmers,” Sylver said, as he flicked his hand dramatically and summoned a single gold coin from his [Bound Bones] storage.

He handed one to Irina and made a small pile float over to the dark elves behind her.

“The food is great. Or at least, I think it is. There are going to be professionals to teach you how to handle everything, don’t worry about it,” Sylver explained and waited for the dark elves to finish inspecting the gold coins he had handed out.

“Given your dark energy affinity, you’ll need a place underground. I have an area I think will be perfect, but we will need to clear it out first. Exploding insects, they’re a lot less dangerous than they sound. But tons of tunnels, lots of flat area on top for farming, and all corpses will make excellent fertilizer,” Sylver explained with a small smile growing on his face.

“I do not understand “dark energy?” What is?” Irina asked.

Sylver was at a loss for words for a moment but gradually managed to gather himself.

“The uh… There are 2 kinds of energies… There are more, but for this explanation, there are 2. One is positive, the other is negative. Plus, and minus. Up, and down. White, and black. Push, and pull. Order and chaos. The energy inside of you, is mostly negative, minus, black, pull, chaos,” Sylver explained, and didn’t like the way Irina’s eyes became saddened and angry at the same time.

“Dirty blood,” Irina said almost in a whisper.

“Not dirty, negative. It’s the energy of death, the energy of pain and suffering, the energy that gives a monster its fangs, claws, poison, the energy that makes a curse work, the energy that drives men insane, the energy that brings about destruction, the blood flowing in your veins isn’t dirty, it’s the blood of chaos and violence,” Sylver explained, with a vague gesture towards Irina and the group huddled behind her.

“Bad blood. Bring bad things,” Irina said with a pause as she searched around for the right word.

“If you ever need a large amount of negative energy just torture a couple of people to death. Or kill their children in front of them, heightened emotions also work. A properly defiled corpse produces it on its own, and a majority of monsters prefer living in a space saturated with negative energy. The spiders, the snakes, the slithering, slimy, cold, dangerous, feral, unpredictable, the creatures that hide from the world because they can’t survive in the open,” Sylver explained and watched as Irina and the dark elves behind her collectively looked more and more embarrassed and humiliated.

“Like us. Hide away,” Irina said barely loud enough for Sylver to hear.

“Yes. I’ve also heard it sometimes called the energy of the weak,” Sylver said.

Irina looked like she was about to disappear into her seat.

“And the pathetic,” Sylver added.

He could feel a tension building in the air, and even Ria stopped working on Chrys and started to pay close attention to what Sylver was saying to the group of dark elves.

“And the desperate. Oh, you have to be desperate to use dark energy. If there are alternatives available to you, you should never use dark energy for anything,” Sylver said and made eye contact with the various faces peaking inside his small room.

“They’ll hate you for it too. You’ll be despised for who you are. How dare something like you exist in their world. You’ll be hunted down. Your children will be butchered. The world can be a scary and cruel place to a creature that lives in darkness,” Sylver explained, and couldn’t even see Irina’s eyes from how hard she was staring at the lap.

“And for all those reasons, I love you,” Sylver added and was worried someone might snap their neck from looking up to meet his eyes.

“It’s a tool. A tool like any other. It isn’t evil, it isn’t good, it isn’t bad, it is simply an energy that exists in the world. Like a knife,” Sylver explained, and with a dramatic wave of the hand produced one of his daggers.

“Is this dagger evil? It has taken countless lives. I have caused immense suffering using it. But I’ve also used it to heal. I’ve used it to protect myself. By keeping me alive, it has saved as many lives as it has taken. Of course, they call you dirty. Because you terrify them. And they should be afraid. Those with light flowing through their veins are too “good” to do what it takes to survive. They think themselves above being desperate. Theirs is the magic of healing, pleasure, stability, safety, growth, life,” Sylver said, as he shifted in his seat and sat up.

“Did you know it’s killing you? Dark elves naturally don’t live very long, certainly nowhere near as long as their “elf” counterparts. If your children were born with more light energy in their bodies, they would live 10 times more than they currently will,” Sylver added and had to pause as he felt something get stuck in his throat.

“But… There is a beauty to it. To greed, selfishness, destruction, suffering, death. What creature is greedier than a parent desperate to protect and save their child? What can be more selfish?” Sylver asked, but didn’t get an answer.

“You want to see destruction? Go steal a cub from a bear. Suffering? Every single one of your “serpents” is in constant pain to protect themselves and their people. And the deaths go without saying. The people you have all so selfishly killed to defend yourself, to stay alive, to protect what’s yours. Your blood isn’t dirty. It’s the blood of the desperate, the selfish, the greedy, the people who put themselves and theirs above everyone, and everything else,” Sylver continued and was a little proud of himself as he could see that both Ria and the dark elves were hanging on his every word.

“What’s running through your veins is love. Love for yourself, love for your people, love for who and what you believe in. And I am helping you because one day I hope you extend that love to me. I am old. Older than I appear, and older than I have any right to be. And in my time I have had to depend on other people. Some of them were full of darkness like you are. Some of them were full of light, like the elves living in the Garden. And do you know what happened when my enemies came after me?” Sylver asked rhetorically, half standing up at this point.

“What?” Irina asked almost excitedly.

“The ones full of light heard of my crimes. My vicious, selfish, and despicable acts and they decided that I posed a danger to them and the world at large. They surrendered me to my enemies, to save others, and to save themselves. They thought that because my death would prevent the deaths of others, they did the right thing,” Sylver explained calmly, and it had the intended effect as Irina and the rest became a shade paler.

“The dark ones?” Irina asked, a breath quieter than before.

“They told my pursuers to go fuck themselves. They stalled, cheated, fought without regard for their wellbeing or their honor, they sullied themselves to protect me. Because they knew I would do the exact same thing for them. There is power in love. And that is the power you and your children are full of. The very same power I will give you, and the very same power I hope to one day receive from all of you,” Sylver finished and heard Ria make a very quiet but strange sound.

Just like him, a large portion of the dark elves had a few drops of water in their eyes.

The rest of the day/night was spent with Sylver telling them about the rivers, mountains, horses, rabbits, birds, sunsets, stars, dryads, fairies, dragons, everything and anything he could think of that would interest people who spent their entire lives living either inside a giant metal dome, or surrounded by ice and water.

*

*

*

Sylver carried Chrys in his arms, but upon discovering that only 1 person could pass through the gate, had to have Ria activate the implants in Chrys’ legs to make her walk through it. A woman missing an eye picked her up when she was on the other side, and very gently carried her away to one of their healers.

Zelvash greeted Sylver once the door opened, and after Sylver confirmed that Chrys was fine, and left a couple of shades with her just in case, he followed Zelvash to talk to Ruslana, the leader of the dark elves. At Sylver’s request, Ria remained with Chrys, as did one half of Spring to keep her company and watch over the two of them.

It was hard to describe the inside of their “home.”

The mixture of weak lights and total darkness caused Sylver’s [Advanced Night Vision] to flicker on and off. Pale green mushrooms spread out on the ceiling illuminated the inside of a giant dome that made an odd-sounding banging noise as giant ice glaciers repeatedly smashed themselves against it.

In terms of building materials, the whole thing appeared to be made of the exact same thing as the dungeon in which Sylver had found Ria.

Except they had removed several walls and used them to build houses out of scrap metal and some sort of dark brown wood-looking material. Sylver saw more children during the 2 minutes it took Zelvash to lead him down a staircase than he had during his entire stay at the Garden.

They all had an extremely unhealthy complexion about them, elves normally had unnaturally smooth and spotless skin, but the children running away from the ivory white bald man had oddly aged-looking skin, with thin and frail hair, and fingernails that looked more like claws.

Sylver suppressed tears in his eyes, and the lump in his throat, as he saw other damage that they would spend the rest of their lives recovering from. The first 10 years are the most important, to fix some of these kids would require quite literally doing the equivalent of rebreaking a broken arm that had healed wrong.

The kind of thing Sylver knew how to fix in theory, but also knew he didn’t have the proper skills to put into practice. Hopefully, Lola would be able to find a healer capable of this, but for the time being, Sylver forced the issue out of his mind.

After the first time Zelvash tripped over a slightly raised piece of rusted flooring, Sylver snapped his fingers and produced a floating ball of light to illuminate the dimly lit passage. The majority of the area was empty, the children and their caretakers, and farmers, living and working near the entrance, while the underground contained hundreds upon hundreds of empty rooms. Despite the steam barrier protecting it, it was so cold that Sylver could see Zelvash’s breath.

4 guards stood at the end of the corridor, and one of the men started to slowly turn the giant wheel that seemed to act as a lock. He finished spinning it and the door began to open as Sylver and Zelvash got to it.

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