But now, there was only silence. Even Noah had run out of tears.
“I'm sorry that I accused you of hurting him, Signor,” said Ofelia. “In your situation, I would have done the same.”
“You look at that thing he turned into and say I didn't hurt him.”
“'So shall you know the name of the unfinished one,'” said Noah, suddenly. He stared into the orb in Mischa's metal claw, his face pale, and his eyes dead. “'Once, he was called Wormwood—the Plaguebearer, the Swarmbringer, the Night Eternal. Shattered was he by the Voice Highmost into globes of Never-Iron, that dreadful ore that forges the chains of Hell—thus, the unholy Neverstones came into being.' ...Spoilers 22:12 -14.”
“So, this Neverstone,” said Ofelia. “Do we throw that down the toilet, as well?”
“Neverstones can't cross bottomless pit gateways,” said Mischa. “People have tried. Automatic energy discharge: it bricks the hardware. It's like the stone knows and fights back.”
The elf nodded. “We need to get rid of it some other way, then. If we put it back on Era, he’ll turn into a demon!”
Mischa sighed. “And if we don’t, his heart will stop from withdrawal by nightfall. The only option left is to put this stone back on him once it’s cooled off for an hour or so, and…hope for the best.”
“What about what Slasher wants?” asked Liv. “It's his life, doesn't he get a say in this?”
“The decision was Sir Era's own,” said Titania, smiling. “My dear, after that duel you gave him, who wouldn't risk possession to stay alive?”
Mischa scoffed. “Whoa, okay —what the actual hell have you been doin' with my boy? Gods dammit! Please tell me you at least used protec—"
The half-second look that Liv gave Mischa has been tested on mice at Endymion university, with a 75% lethality rate.
“Kalèm Titania! Kalèm Titania!” a voice from below—an Impish priest, dressed in significantly less gratuitous blankets than the High Priest, tugged at the hem of Titania's dress. “Ba fraùsa vo tarn faòren, nelDarùzh!”
This would be a good time to point out that Noah's abilities as a lie detector were restricted to human languages.
“This fellow says he knows how to purify the stone,” said Titania. “Give it here.” Mischa handed her the Neverstone. She knelt to speak with the priest, as Imps were kindergarteners in every way but age. “Mak tul! Mae vo, Yelàn?”
[Priest — Steal]
The priest snatched the stone and the rag around it. “Lupen nelGrata usàgen.”
Thankfully, Titania's confused wince was universal in its language.
The priest tapped his forehead. “Lupen nelGrata usàgen, Kalèm Titania.” He bowed to the queen, and with the Neverstone in hand, scurried off toward the upward stairway.
“He seems to know what he's doing,” said Noah, who was very correct.
“I hope so,” said Titania. “It's common for our clergy to speak in riddles and metaphors, but this one...I'm not sure what to make of it.”
“What did he say?” asked Liv.
“I mean, it literally translates to 'the wolf does not feel pity for the rabbit.'”
[Liv — Arcane Overdrive]
[Mischa — Reload]
[Ofelia – Stormheart]
[Noah — Hide Behind Everyone Else and Await Instructions]
[Era — Moan Questioningly from the Other Room]
“Drop the voggin’ stone!” Liv ran after the priest, with a flaming skull enveloping her fist.
[Legate Thoric — Uncloak]
The priest turned around to a swarm of white midair hexagons and holographs reading, “Shroudsguise - Copyright 5038 Koschei Thaumatronics™” in the air, and dissolved into Monty's sneering wizard of a brother.
“You are hereby invited to the Pyrite Palace to face Lord Monty,” he shouted, and it echoed throughout the room. “Meet me outside for transport; you have fifteen minutes. Bring all the weapons you like, but THIS—” he threw the Neverstone in the air, and fumbled it in his fingers, but nonetheless, caught it, “—is ours.”
[Legate Thoric — Teleport Self]
In a flash, the wizard on the stairs became just “the stairs” again—into which Liv charged face first.
[Liv — Trip]
[4 DMG to Liv]
This, arguably, was the first blood of the infamous Pyrite Palace Incident of October 24th, Age of Light 5211.
Kobal technology could build marble skyscrapers in less than thirty minutes and interconnect the whole world over with giant centipede trains. Still, beds were never really something Titania's people got the hang of. As such, Era lay in a granite box filled with enough wool blankets to dull the stone below. (Since the contents of the pyramid were turned to stone while sealed, 5,200 years of fabric mustification wasn't an issue.)
The voices outside were a blur—his dad's, his friends,' and Titania's, along with Monty's slightly less annoying brother. To his aching eardrums, the consonants fell away and became a smear of vowels. Thoric had stolen the Neverstone, and the others were about to go fight Monty without him—that much he had deduced.
Gods, this must be how a corpse feels in the coffin, and the walls of this bed-box aren't helping with that image.
Nearby, he heard the coming of footsteps, and pulled a blanket over the lower half of his body. Wait, I'm shirtless, but I still got pants. I could just move the blanket up a little...
Hah, screw it. Too tired.
A face came into view, getting in the way of the ceiling. Its appearance startled him, though he knew it was coming. Everything startles you if you're sleepy enough. Someone's here to see me...focus...focus...
“Hey, Slasher.”
Liv! Okay, don't panic... Joke's on you, panicking would require energy.
“Hey,” said Era. “Sorry about the whole turning-into-a-monster-and-attacking-you thing. Very unprofessional of me.”
She grinned, despite herself. Era had a way of bringing that out in her. “Now, you know what Riastrad is like,” she said.
“Constant pain, a demon trying to eat your mind, and bugs coming out every hole in your body?”
“Close enough.”
Era tried to laugh, but it came through more as a cough. “Point being, Liv, can you forgive me?”
“What?”
“Like, this isn't me apologizing or nothin'. Already did that. But for the sake of argument, can you forgive me for what I did back at the hospital?”
A warm right hand squeezed his own cold one. “Of course.”
He squeezed back, and the muscles of his wrist twitched and strained. “Proof positive.”
“Huh?”
“If you can forgive me for going all Bug Man on everyone—then you can forgive yourself if you go into Riastrad in the coming fight.”
“What if I hurt—”
“You won't. Not if you remember to have fun with it. I mean, yeah, if you were anyone else, I'd be concerned. But from having dueled you, well, you're the only person I'd trust to turn that kind of power into a force for good.”
From what little he could see of Liv's burning eyes, they became lighter, gentler, pale gold. He wasn't sure what that meant and was too tired to worry about it.
Though the advice made sense in his head, his eyelids grew a few hundred pounds heavier from thinking about it. Dammit. It's like I'm only allowed a set number of coherent thoughts in this state.
“I'm gonna take a nap,” he said. Though I doubt I can even sleep in this state, from all the pain. “Stick to the plan. Kick Monty's ass real hard for me, all right?”
“Only if you promise you’ll still be alive when you wake up, Slasher.”
“Of course. You’re the one who said you wouldn’t outlive your friends, right?”
She nodded and hoped the tears at the bottom of her mask weren’t noticeable. “And...I’m not lettin’ you die alone, either,” she said.
“Then it's a deal.” He raised their grasp a few inches above him and tried to form a quivering, bum
pable fist. “Death buds?”
Liv thought about it for a second. She pushed his fist back down to the blanket, leaned down to his right cheek, and planted her lips on it for much longer than either of them had anticipated. “Death buds.”
He felt warm for the first time that day. When she left, it took less than a minute for Era to fall into a dream...
...an extremely vivid and prophetic dream, at that. Granted, it was a dream, so he was considerably more filled with energy than his current waking-world self —but that was little consolation.
Oh, crap, it's Him.
Galgalim stared back at him from the space above his head. The ceiling, walls, and floors dissolved away into the heavens, and only a blanket of glaringly bright stars and nebulae surrounded them.
It's Him. I'm dead. I'm so dead.
“We meet again,” said Galgalim.
“Uh, hi.”
Galgalim rolled all of His ten thousand eyes.
“Look, if this is about flipping you off, I'm sorry. I was in kind of a rough place, and—”
“Whatever. I'm over it. Because I'm a god, and an adult—two things you could never hope to be. As the guardian of wisdom, I can't let myself be consumed by the petty jealousies of weak, mortal meanies.”
“Are you okay?”
Galgalim's blue flames turned red, and His wheels spun around and into one another at a thousand times their usual speed.
“I'm FINE! Geez!”
He stopped, mumbling some mantra to Himself about fluffy kittens.
“But while we're on the subject, why did you do it? Are you another one of those 'new atheist' types I keep hearing about? We get it, you're smart, but no one, man or god, has the stamina to debate you every minute of every day!”
“Actually, it was more about the Fall of Rosencrace, and the Light of the Gods.”
The wheels quivered and jammed in their tracks. The central eye darted from corner to corner of the weird ass space room. “That? oh my, Me. That's right.”
“Yeah, I was gonna ask: did you really mean for the whole elvish race to—”
“NONoNoNoNononono. No. It wasn't me! Please listen to me! Okay, look, sure, between the other two Gods and I, I'm the most inclined to torture and destruction. I made a false prophet get eaten by his own starved goats, for Me's sake. But that's one person, every now and then. I never even think about something like genocide!”
“So...the Seraphs that blew up my country were framing you, then?”
“Those THINGS aren't Seraphs. They're not even Cherubs, Thrones, Principals, or anyone else in the angelic hierarchy. We don't even have angels anymore—Rafeth phased them out after we went paperless.”
“I mean, after I flipped you off, I had a feeling that was the case. So, that's a relief. But if it's not you guys behind the Light, who is it?”
“Era, I have ten thousand eyes, which each have ten thousand microscopic eyes of their own, and my vision extends to the most inaccessible corners of creation. I know the name, personality, and favorite movie stars of every molecule in your dimension. And I have no vogging idea where that so-called 'Light of the Gods' comes from. Powerful magical forces are at work to obscure my sight and my influence. If this keeps up, then in a few centuries, the Gods will be cut off from Luminar completely!”
Era could no longer ignore the tick, tick, ticking sound in his right ear. He looked, and there, sitting on an eternally huge stack of printer paper, was a little white duck, banging his bill against the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter.
“Okay, who's the duck?” asked Era.
“Oh, him? That's Ned Caratacus, the Holy Scribe.”
“I didn't hear of any Holy Scribe in Sunday school.”
“Me neither—honestly, we don't even know where he came from. He just sort of showed up one day and started jotting down everything that ever happens. Nothing we do can get rid of him, either. Kinda creepy.”
Come on, Galgalim, somebody's gotta do it. (quack.)
“...but all that's beside the point. I'm contacting you because I need to relay a message from you know who.”
Era looked over his internal list of first name basis contacts, seeing if he could narrow it down. No luck.
“Look, I'm not allowed to speak their name—and I don't even know their name. But it's...our boss, all right? The unknowable force from the outside—the Noumenon.”
That jogged his memory. “You mean the Voice Highmost?”
“There you go. Good ol' V-H.”
Era shuddered. “And what does the Voice Highmost want to say?”
“Why don't you ask them yourself? This'll just take a second. Oh, and don't look directly into the lens or your mind will explode—which, while hilarious, would mean I'd be out of a job.”
[Galgalim — Theophany]
A low bell sounded throughout all space and time, more audible to some than others. Galgalim's wheels, once amorphous, moving, and innumerable, stopped, forming a single disc of interlocking, gear-like rings. The disc extended into the darkness above like a telescope, with the smallest closest to Era. Blue sparks shot across every star, forming a web of energy and bringing every atom in Luminar's universe into perfect, harmonious sync, for a single frame of time.
Era turned away from the rings. His mind, while self-destructive and frustrating to no end, was not explosion-worthy. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them...
...a circle of light flickered on the space in front of him—a projection from Galgalim's rings. In the pale circle sat a single black vertical line, blinking in and out of existence.
The line moved to the right, forming familiar letters and punctuation: “Can you hear me?”
Era was underwhelmed. This was the Voice Highmost, and it didn't even have a voice. If anything, this was being dictated.
“Hi,” said Era. “I can read this, if that's what you mean.”
The cursor flew backwards, deleting what it had written, and continued: “Okay, good. You're probably wondering why I'm calling you here and talking to you.”
“Did I do something to offend you?” asked Era.
“Probably, but so does my family. Doesn't mean I'm going to smtie them or whatever.”
Era stood there, his eyes wide open, staring at the fourth to last word of the sentence, before it was backspaced away.
“What?” said the Voice.
“You misspelled 'smite,'” said Era.
“My bad.”
“Oh, I mean, I'm not criticizing or anything, it's just...how come an all-powerful, perfect being forgot how to spell a five letter word? No offense.”
More silence.
The voice continued typing, slower this time: “The same reason bad things happen to good people. Look, Era, I didn't find out I was your world's Supreme Being until last month, and I'm fu”—the last two letters were quickly erased—“vogging terrified. I thought I was just writing a story, something to be enjoyed. I'm not qualified for godhood. I'm barely qualified to sit behind a desk.”
Era chuckled. “Hey now, don't be hard on yourself—that's my job. So why have you called me here?”
“Because, given the properties of all parties involved, I can accurately predict the outcome of events to come in the immediate future with no margin for failure. Which means...”
Another deletion. Five seconds of blank space.
“Which means, Era, I can tell you that your friends are all about to be killed by Lord Monty. I'm so sorry.”
Though the party in the Great Feasting Hall had died down for some time now, a few Kobals were still scattered around the tables, lazily drinking wine and playing harps. In all of Kobalheim's pre-Goblin-War history, there was never any given point where a Kobal wasn't lazily drinking wine or playing a harp. Physicists ought to call this a universal constant.
Noah and Ofelia knelt in hasty prayers for the fight to come. They stopped when they saw Liv, with the Glass Cannon staff propped against her shoulder, coming up from behind them.
&nbs
p; “You guys ready?” she asked.
“Livvy, this isn't the sort of thing I could ever be ready for,” said Noah, “but given the fact that we're gonna have to fight the Dark Lord in about five minutes, regardless of whether or not—”
“He means we're ready,” said Ofelia. “If you saw Mischa passed out, that was me—he threw such a tantrum when I said he couldn't come along, I had to hypnotize him. That is, unless you wanted him to come?”
“He's not strong enough to face the GU.” Liv scanned over the hall. “Where's Branny? Don't tell me she chickened out.”
Noah shook his head. “Still on top of the pyramid. Poor girl’s nothing if not persistent.”
[Thoric — Throw Voice]
“Time's up, degenerates,” said a voice from the ceiling. “Or perhaps you'd like us to cut the middleman and fill the pyramid with nerve gas instead?”
[Liv — Throw Voice]
“'But moooooom, I wanna fight nooooow!' That's you, that's how you sound. We'll be up in a sec, asshole.”
Liv turned to the others. “Recap: One, kill Monty.”
“Two,” said Ofelia, “get the Neverstone.”
“Three,” said Titania, “grab the Jade Crown, and lob it down your bottomless toilet.”
“Four,” said Noah, “get the Neverstone back on Era, without getting him possessed again—still not sure about that part—and everyone goes out for tea 'n' cookies.”
Liv nodded, drew in a deep sigh, and turned toward the spiral staircase to the surface level. “For the Light,” she said, because someone had to say it.
For the past two days, the least popular members of the GU's “warrior” rank must have gushed out twice their weight in sweat. The goal was to convert Titania's “Hall of Valiant Silence”—equal parts corridor to the throne hall, temple, and eternal resting place of the Kobal royal family—into Monty's new rec room.
Neverstone: A LitRPG Adventure (The Mad Elf Book 1) Page 40