Ch201-One Loose End

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Ch201-One Loose End

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Sylver had been careful not to crumple up the page any more than he initially had. There were 7 creases on it, from the way it had appeared in his fist, and another crease from when he tried to fold it into 2.

He continued staring at the page, as Faust continued pacing back and forth on his left. It was the middle of the night at this point, most of the sect was asleep, two were keeping watch near the entrance, and Sylver had provided them with a light source in the form of a glowing carved-up plank of wood.

The ink with which the word TRADE had been written was a very dark blue, dark enough that it appeared black. The size of the page and the two rounded corners on the bottom left and bottom right meant it had been ripped out of a pocket notebook.

The tracker in Sylver’s pocket confirmed that the mana this page was emanating was the same one that had messed up the sword the [Jester Hero] had given Lola.

Whether that meant that the mana belonged to Edmund, Sylver couldn’t say for certain.

It felt like Edmund’s mana, but considering they were dealing with a [Hero], possibly a dragon, and Rose the ex-[Hero], who is to say one of them couldn’t make a convincing imitation?

This could be part of Rose’s ploy to fuck Sylver over one last time, it could be part of the [Jester Hero]s long term plan, it could be that the dragon is clairvoyant and knew exactly what buttons to push to make Sylver come here.

Sylver still had the [Dead Man’s Last Stand] burning a hole in his pocket, if there was ever a time to use it, a dragon’s corpse could do wonders for him.

“Ron said the [Jester Hero] killed a dragon before he came to Arda,” Sylver mumbled, as he searched around his [Bound Bones] storage and found the report Lola had written for him.

Faust stopped midstep and turned to look at Sylver, who was carefully reading through the first couple of pages. He flipped ahead to the end, where the less concrete information was and found the “killed a dragon,” near the very bottom of the list. The rumor was recent, very recent, and Lola seemed to believe it wasn’t very likely.

“The [Hero] came from the south and traveled north. There’s a dragon’s nest just south of Silia, it would have been on the path he took,” Faust said, as Sylver went back to the first page and reread the report.

“Could be…” Sylver murmured, as he continued reading.

Faust returned to pacing back and forth.

There wasn’t too much of a debate or conversation to be had.

He came here to find Edmund. And someone seemed to have Edmund. And they seemed to want something from him.

If they know enough about me to know to entice me with Edmund’s mana, surely they would ask something I would be able to achieve with my skillset?

Sylver reached up with his hand and scratched his bandaged-up face.

“I could go,” Ria offered.

Sylver turned his head towards her, as did Faust.

“I’m immune to magic and Ki, I could fly over there and tell you if it’s a trap or not. Or just pass along a message,” Ria explained, as Sylver considered her words.

“So, we’ve agreed the dragon’s nest is where the source of the barrier is, right?” Faust asked.

Sylver took Edmund’s tracker out of his pocket and activated it. The needle spun twice before it turned towards the “middle” of the Schlagen mountains.

With the mana-soaked piece of paper, Sylver had enough mana to track Edmund about 90 times. He activated the tracker 5 times while they walked towards Faust’s sect, and Ria confirmed 2 things.

That Edmund was moving.

And that after suns went down, he stopped moving, and the tracker was pointing to the center of the Schlagen mountains.

He put the tracker away after Ria had recorded the exact position, just in case.

“I appreciate the offer, but no. Dragons are… there’s a trick to talking to them. Although since this one approached me, it might be a bit more lenient…” Sylver thought out loud, as Ria asked the question he was just about to ask.

“Why did it limit itself to a scrap of paper, and only one word?” Ria asked.

“And why did it only contact me now? I’ve been here for a couple of days already, was it waiting for something? Is it because I was transported into that empty space? The way Izan described it, sounded like it was empty because of me,” Sylver said.

“I asked Xalibur, they call it a challenge field. Or challenge arena, doesn’t matter, you said yours was empty? No statues, no walls, no mountains, nothing?” Faust asked as Sylver shook his head.

“Just black glass under my feet… It tried to read my mind, but couldn’t, you’re thinking that was how it found me,” Sylver confirmed, as Faust shrugged his shoulders.

“Aside from potential death, what’s stopping us from going there right now?” Ria asked.

“The center is inside the “White Ring,” which while not strictly locked down-” Sylver gestured with a tired hand for Faust to continue.

“-will be a hassle to enter, especially while the whole country is on high alert, and doubly so for someone trying to get to where the source of the barrier is,” Faust explained, as Sylver went back to staring at the mana-soaked piece of paper.

“Why “trade?” Why that word? Specifically. And why use such an old dialect? Is it to check if I’m old enough to know it?” Sylver asked.

“Are you old enough to know it?” Ria asked.

Sylver tapped the first letter of the word TRADE with his finger.

“It’s not Eirish, not exactly, it’s one of the precursor languages. The only reason I know it is because most of the good grimoires were written in it. Apart from Nyx and I, there were only a couple of people who could read it, aside from those that lived long enough to have spoken it. But it doesn’t make sense,” Sylver complained, as Ria and Faust continued trying to speculate what Sylver now realized was irrelevant information.

“I’m going to try and talk to it tomorrow morning,” Sylver said with a suddenly relaxed tone.

“What if it’s a trap?” Faust asked, and Sylver could do little but nod his head.

“What if it is? I need to find Edmund. From all the methods currently available to me, I believe Edmund is with the dragon. If I decide not to go see the dragon, what do you suggest I do instead?” Sylver asked.

Faust opened his mouth for a moment as if to speak, but he knew what Sylver would say to counter his suggestions and questions before he even said them.

Ria’s form shivered for a moment, as she practically shouted the words out. Sylver would later want to hit himself for not thinking of something so obvious.

“We don’t have to go to the dragon,” Ria exclaimed, as both Sylver and Faust turned to look at her.

“We can have the dragon come to us…” Sylver finished.

***

This high up in the air, Sylver got a bird’s eye view of the land that surrounded the Schlagen mountains. He had initially thought there were only 5 peaks, but now he could see there were 12 of them.

Each peak was nearly identical to the other, or it had been originally, every single one had been infested by people and looked closer to an anthill than a mountain top. The design was most definitely human, dwarves wouldn’t have built such tall buildings, and wouldn’t have been so wasteful with what little space they had to work with.

There were large rope bridges that connected neighboring sects, and even now Sylver could see people walking along them. Each bridge seemed to be wide enough for 2 horse carts to pass each other.

But what made them stick out in Sylver’s eyes, was the way they weren’t centered. Either the bridges had been built first, and someone built the sect buildings second, or there was a reason they made them longer than they had to be.

Sylver looked around himself one more time before he sat down on the invisible platform his [Bracelet Of The Aurai] created for him.

“How come you don’t have more tools like this?” Ria asked and broke the silence that could only be obtained when sitting hundreds of meters in the air.

They were high enough that some of the clouds reached low enough to wash over them.

“Are you asking about enchanted tools in general?” Sylver asked.

“Yes. A wand or something, or an enchanted sword,” Ria said.

“The main drawback is that enchanted items leak some mana. For a competent mage, that may be enough to track me, and in the case of monsters, it would make sneaking up on them nearly impossible. Then there’s the possibility of someone stealing my weapon and using it against me,” Sylver explained.

“Does that happen often?” Ria asked as Sylver chuckled at the memory.

“Once is enough. It’s… to say it’s embarrassing to be killed by your own weapon, is an understatement. And as you might have noticed, I try to avoid direct confrontation. If I have something seriously powerful with me, leaking mana all over the place, I might as well walk around with a giant target on my back. My illusions, and decoy shades, work so well because there isn’t that much differentiating me from them,” Sylver said.

Even though there wasn’t any noticeable change in the air, Sylver’s gut reacted to something. He looked around but went back to relaxing a moment later.

“What about your umbrella?” Ria asked.

“It’s a special case. I uh… in my time teleportation was rare. And limited a very small number of mages, that straddled the line between mage and sorcerer, because of how much intuition their magic required. In hindsight, I took it more personally than I should have. The umbrella was built with mana leakage in mind. Lola used very specific, and very rare crystals and any other kind of enchantment would require years upon years of research and development,” Sylver explained, as he affectionately tapped the area on his back where the umbrella was hidden.

There were a couple of minutes of silence, during which Sylver and Ria just sat there, floating in the air, waiting for something to happen.

“Do you have anything enchanted you wouldn’t mind breaking?” Ria finally asked, as Sylver looked through his [Bound Bones] storage and couldn’t find something magical for her to deconstruct.

He clicked his tongue.

“There’s stuff in my workshop, and Lola has more defective enchantments than she knows what to do with. Did you figure something out?” Sylver asked as Ria’s soul shrugged its shoulders.

“I’m missing something. I have a theory, but I need a magic item of some kind to experiment on. I feel like something changed in the ribs, but I can’t be sure… How long are you planning to wait?” Ria asked, as Sylver looked up at the sky and then just lay down on his invisible platform.

“Until the sun goes down. You saw it yourself; he’s being moved around; the dragon is obviously patrolling the area. If it’s patrolling the outside, that’s a different matter… Having said that, it being outside the barrier would make more sense, given the donut shape of the barrier,” Sylver said, as Ria corrected him.

“Not if your tracker is correct. Even allowing for a 10 percent error, it’s still more likely to be inside than not. If you have a sheet of paper, I can draw you the tracking lines on a map, and show you how they intersect,” Ria offered, as Sylver was reminded about the paper he had been given and reached into his pocket to take it out.

It was very carefully being held between two pieces of glass. It still hurt Sylver from how dense the mana leaking out of the paper was, but the glass helped direct it, so it wasn’t leaking towards his face.

“Was it you who asked about seeing a real dragon?” Sylver asked, as he turned the paper over and looked at the blank backside of it.

“That was Chrys. Faust mentioned dragon nests, are those something anyone could go to?” Ria asked as Sylver laughed to himself before he answered.

“They are, but it’s… like going to see a dormant volcano. You will be safe most of the time, but someone will be the unlucky bastard that goes to it when it explodes. I’m sure Lola will be able to find a dragon that’s weak enough that I would be able to protect Chrys, in the unlikely event we catch it in a bad mood,” Sylver explained, as he turned the glass-encased paper over again.

“You said there’s a trick to talking to them. What’s the trick?” Ria asked, as Sylver placed the glass onto his chest and spread his arms out to let them rest on the invisible platform.

This high up it even with the suns it was cold or would be, if Sylver wasn’t covered in a thick layer of his robe, and was using a spell to warm his flesh up.

“You have to be polite, but keep it short and to the point, you have to be tough, but not aggressive, you need to be humble, but proud, the trick is adjusting your approach as you figure out what the dragon’s personality is.

“Which is a lot harder than it sounds. Because if you’re too aggressive, when you need to appear meek, that’s it. You don’t get a second chance… Unless you’re a lich that can make himself a new body,” Sylver explained, as Ria understood his uncharacteristically somber tone.

“I see… What language is this anyway?” Ria asked, and a small metallic tendril tapped against the piece of glass holding the page in place. Sylver lifted it to look at it again.

“It doesn’t have a name. Or rather, it’s called Eirish, but comparing this to modern Eirish is like comparing a tree to a piece of paper. There isn’t even a direct translation, this language requires context, trade is just the nearest word in modern Eirish, TRADE is typically used when-”

Sylver just barely managed to sit up as he felt the magic finish enveloping him.

***

It took a great deal of restraint to not start running, as Sylver realized he wasn’t staring down a crack in space itself and was instead looking at an enormous eyeball. The eyeball slowly moved down, and then back up, before the dragon moved him away from itself.

The only reason he felt Ria’s fear was that he was actively holding onto her staff, otherwise the dragon’s impossibly large soul would have made focusing on anything other than the dragon impossible.

As Sylver floated away from the creature, he gradually realized they weren’t alone.

Sort of.

It had three heads, each one almost completely identical to the other. The one on Sylver’s left had murky white eyes, the one in the middle looked fine, and the one on the right didn’t appear to have a mouth. The heads were roughly the size of a large boulder, and the two with the mouths could easily swallow at least 10 men in a single bite. Each eye was as big as Sylver was.

Its scales hung loosely on its body, and with every shallow breath caused the light illuminating them to sparkle in a brilliant rainbow. Every motion made an odd clinking sound as if the scales were made from thin crystals.

Its body had the shape of a fat mouse, a rectangular, bottom-heavy form. It almost looked funny because of how wide it was but describing a dragon as humorous wasn’t something Sylver was currently capable of. It looked more like a successful hunter, fat from its many kills, than a lazy rodent that stuffed itself full of nuts.

There were no wings that Sylver could see, but going by the bumps on its back, they were hidden underneath the scales, the way a beetle would hide its wings.

Where the necks were attached to the body, Sylver could see what he had to assume were scars. The scales were flat up against their neck, in a very noticeable straight line. Someone had beheaded them, all three of them, multiple times.

There was a serpentine movement to them, as the heads moved towards Sylver, and shifted so the one missing its mouth was in the middle, while the blind one was on Sylver’s right, and the normal-looking one was on his left.

They changed positions again, and again, and in the end, the blind head was on the left, the mouthless head was in the middle, and the normal-looking one was on Sylver’s right. Their necks were pressed up against one another, the way a braided rope would be.

The blind head began to speak.

Instead of a painfully loud booming voice, the creature spoke with a soft, almost feminine tone. Its mouth opened so slightly that Sylver struggled to tell which one was speaking.

“What did it-” Sylver tapped out STOP so hard that he bruised his finger from tapping on his skin. Ria compressed herself as much as she could and remained quiet for the rest of the conversation.

The dragon spoke in the ancient Eirish dialect the word TRADE had been written in, it spoke 4 words, and Sylver only understood 3 of them.

“Something NEGATIVE MOUNTAINS REFERENCE,” the dragon head said.

Sylver reached deep into his memory, and condensed years of study into two simple words.

“NO UNDERSTAND” Sylver replied and could see what he felt amounted to a smile from the three heads.

The one that looked normal breathed out a puff of pure white smoke, so thick and dense that it looked like floating milk. The smoke spread out below the floating Sylver’s feet, and he watched as the smoke formed into a three-headed dragon on one side, and a small human-looking man on the other.

The man was armed with a sword, and a round shield, but everything identifiable about him was too vague for Sylver to get a clear picture. The man swung his sword, and a giant ring appeared on the 3 headed dragon’s body.

A chain appeared and attached itself to the ring, and like a dog on a leash, the dragon was pulled away from the man, with its claws tearing the milky land apart as it tried to fight against the chain.

The landscape changed again; the dragon was in a cage with 12 familiar-looking stone pillars keeping it contained. The chain that was attached to the ring around the dragon’s body, originated from a large bowl in the middle of the cage.

A stream of liquid came up from the bowl, traveled up into the air, and spread outwards, like a protective umbrella, until it formed into a bubble that surrounded the 12 peaked mountains the dragon was trapped in, along with the land around the mountains.

Several spheres appeared over the protective bubble, and the image changed so Sylver could no longer see the dragon. The spheres that represented the suns moved around erratically, and Sylver had to guess that it was trying to tell him how long it had been since that man had trapped it.

Sylver didn’t know enough about the path the suns took to understand the exact amount of time, but given the way the buildings rapidly sprung up, then fell, and were rebuilt repeatedly, he had to guess it’s been a while.

Without any warning, the man who had captured the dragon appeared right in front of Sylver. His body was turned around, and Sylver could see an almost glowing marking on his right shoulder blade, a birthmark. The man split into two, one man that looked identical to the first, and another that was slightly thinner.

Both of them had the same birthmark, a filled-in circle, with flame-shaped lines sticking out of it.

3 children appeared behind the two men, and each one had the same birthmark. The bigger man had 2 children, the smaller man had 1 child, all boys.

The bigger man’s 2 children were given the sword, and the smaller man’s child was given the shield.

The children grew, and at some point, the two original men disappeared, and the children were moved forward as if to replace them.

Sylver was then shown as the two originals men’s family trees grew, and each generation replaced the previous one, over and over again, and passed along the sword, shield, and birthmark.

At some point, one of the shield children was moved off to the side, and while the rest were still in the same group, that child’s line continued away from them. The group that remained only had the sword, the one outside had the shield.

It was slow, but Sylver could see that with each new generation, the birthmark gradually became smaller, had fewer flames, and eventually was so small and thin that Sylver could barely see it.

Sylver looked around and could see that there were only 5 men with the birthmark on them, everyone else didn’t have it.

The landscape changed again, the five men with the birthmark stood near the chain that connected the bound dragon to the bowl, and as each one disappeared, the chain became more and more weathered.

When there was only one man left, the chain looked rusted and brittle, like it was only one good tug away from breaking. Finally, the last man disappeared, and the chain slowly became thinner and thinner and finally broke apart. The three-headed dragon was released and flew away.

If the man with the birthmark dies, the dragon will eventually be freed…

The landscape changed again, and Sylver saw that the last with the birthmark man had a son, but the son didn’t have the birthmark

Off in the distance, Sylver saw a small girl, with such a faint birthmark on her shoulder blade that Sylver could only tell it was there because it was glowing.

The man’s son walked over to the girl, and moments later, another child appeared in front of them, and this one had a birthmark that was as big as the originals had been. The child walked over to where the chain and dragon was, and it went from being weak and brittle, to as strong as it had been since the beginning.

Their child will have enough original blood to reapply the spell…

The landscape changed again.

A tall figure clad in a robe stood between the girl and the boy. It had a sword in its hands, the sword the original man had used. The figure stabbed the girl in the chest, it stabbed the boy in the chest, and with the sword still wet with the two people’s blood, the figure walked over to the dragon and shoved the sword into the bowl.

The bubble surrounding the land burst, and the dragon broke out of the 12 peak mountains and flew away.

The image wound back, to when the boy and the girl were still around, but they now had the child with the large birthmark in front of them. The robed figure appeared once again, and stabbed the boy and the girl, and stabbed the sword into the bowl, but nothing happened.

If I kill them after the child is born, it won’t work… I would have to wait for centuries for the chain to weaken again…

The landscape changed again. This time it was a map of Eira, with the Schlagen mountains in the middle.

The sword the original man had used appeared in front of Sylver and turned so he could see the birthmark-like symbol embedded on the metal blade. It floated down into the Schlagen mountains, and stood upright near the dragon, like a monument. It was in the 1st peak, the one where the emperor lived.

The sword descendent is the emperor, because of course he is… And the prince, or whatever his son is called, is the boy who could father the child with the birthmark.

The shield had a similar-looking mark on it, but there was a symbol inside the circle, that for some reason looked familiar. As if Sylver had seen it before, very recently too.

It moved down onto the map, and landed northwest of the sword and dragon, and slowly moved towards it. It was moving along a river, there was a double bend that Sylver recognized, he knew which river the dragon was referring to.

The shield descendant girl is coming here soon…

I need to either kill the girl or kill the boy, to prevent their child from being born... If I use the sword and their blood I can free the dragon earlier, and I won’t have to kill the emperor, or wait for the chain to weaken… But I need to find the sword first…

It’s with the emperor, has to be… Unless it’s a metaphorical sword?

The dragon must have read his body language because it managed to get the point across that the sword was very real, and was indeed somewhere in the 1st peak. The actual shield on the other hand, was just gone, even the dragon didn’t know where it was.

Sylver strained his mind for the words he wanted to use. The best he could do was the word the dragon had used.

“TRADE,” Sylver said.

Edmund.

He froze in place as he felt the dragon's magic engulf him and continued to stay still as the Edmund mana-soaked paper slid out of his pocket and flew down towards the milky smoke.

The dragon’s chain snapped, and it flew away. The paper floating near it became covered by the smoke and took the shape of a burly man that looked identical to Edmund. He walked over to the robe-wearing figure, and they hugged.

It will give me Edmund when it’s free…

So, I either need to find that sword and wet it with the boy and girl’s blood or kill the emperor and wait for the chain to weaken on its own… If the boy and girl have a child while I’m waiting, I failed.

Before Sylver could say anything, the Edmund mana-soaked page floated back to him, with a new word written on the other side.

QUESTION.

At least I can come here again if I need to. Just have to say this out loud.

Sylver focused in on himself as he tried to figure out how to say what he wanted to say.

“NEGATIVE TRAP AFTER,” Sylver said in his broken ancient Eirish.

What will you do after you’re free?

The three heads uncoiled from one another, and Sylver could feel a disharmony between them. He couldn’t tell if they were sharing a soul, or what was going on, it was so massive that it was like trying to count how many suns you could see while being blinded by every single one.

The smoke underneath Sylver’s feet showed the dragon being freed from the chain and then showed it flying away. It flew west, and then landed on an island where other similar-shaped creatures were flying around.

A dragon sanctuary…

The next question Sylver asked, he asked because he knew that Ria would ask it.

“NEGATIVE TRAP AFTER KILL TRAP?” Sylver asked and felt a wave of heat pass over him.

If this dragon had someone else, Sylver would have been killed just now.

Because if someone else tried to interfere in an ancient dragon’s business, by asking “will you destroy the city after being freed,” they would be dead.

Sylver didn’t even need to focus on the dragon to know it was staring at him. He could feel the gaze of the two heads practically clinging to his skin.

“Something something TIRED something DANGER something TIRED something HOME something NEGATIVE MOUNTAIN AGREE,” the dragon said.

Sylver was no longer sure he had understood it correctly, “NEGATIVE MOUNTAIN” didn’t work in this context, it didn’t fit.

Before he could say anything, Sylver appeared exactly where he had been several minutes ago and started to fall towards the ground.

***

There was a commotion of some kind, as Sylver walked back to his sect. People were running past him at breakneck speeds, and even though he was curious, Sylver decided against getting involved with them. The gong they were ringing was already giving him a headache, he wasn’t in the mood to deal with whatever was going on.

He had enough on his mind.

The two boys standing guard at the sect entrance, nodded at Sylver as he passed them.

“What happened?” Faust asked as Sylver sat down opposite him.

Sylver summoned a fresh set of bandages to replace the ones on his face while he spoke.

“They’re using an ancient dragon as a fuel source for their barrier, and it’s somehow linked to a bloodline. I need to kill the emperor to free it,” Sylver said, as Faust’s eyes became wide enough that Sylver stopped what he was doing to stare at him.

Faust’s soul did a backflip, as he reached into his bathrobe and produced a single sheet of paper. He unfolded it and turned it so Sylver could see what was written on it.

“In that case, we should celebrate,” Faust explained, as Sylver just stared at the page.

In big bold letters, right at the very top of the page, Sylver read words that filled him with so much joy he felt like he was about to throw up.

“THE EMPEROR IS DEAD” the page read.

The attacker from before Sylver had arrived used poison, which took several days to finish the job.

And to make things even better, Sylver remembered where he had seen the symbol on the shield.

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