Chapter 613 - Careful approach

Sofia’s staff flickered in her hand, her own appearance oscillating unstably between her light and dark world forms for a few seconds before stabilizing in the light world one, making the staff completely disappear.

Alith was going through something similar, her outfit and weapons changing randomly as she observed the lake and the city, her face blurring and becoming clear again in quick succession. “Even just crossing the lake might be dangerous,” she said after a long while, “our goal is the palace, isn’t it?”

“Not only the palace,” Sofia answered, pointing at another part of the city, “see that tall chapel right there? This is where we’ll find the dead god.”

“The one with a spire floating in the air?”

“Yes. The higher floors are completely gone in the real world. It looks like it’s caught in an in-between state.”

“Did your vision show anything else?”

“No, I recognize the shape of the building, but that’s it. I couldn’t even get a glimpse of the city in the vision.”

“Which one do we go for first?” Bookie asked from up in Pareth’s arms.

“Whichever one the monsters in the city will let us reach,” Sofia answered, observing the deep creatures.

They were numerous and varied, some taking an arachnid shape similar to the giant stalker, while many had more unconventional forms, some being somewhat humanoid, some others being utterly indescribable with words.

“Ah shit…” Sofia mumbled as she spotted a honeycomb-like entity hiding inside of a house.

Alith turned to Sofia, “What?”

“Parasite,” Sofia said without more explanation.

“Hmm… Well at least these ones you know how to deal with,” Alith replied, crossing her arms, “The small stalkers are more worrying. I couldn’t do anything to the big one.”

“Hopefully the smaller ones are weaker, and I’m correct, the parasites like the small stalkers can all be dealt with in the same way, but we need something to make the rot stick to them, is the issue.”

“We just need some non-carbon black powder, right?”

“Even the carbon can work,” Sofia said, “The rot won’t eat its own byproducts but what matters is that the holy light does not get reflected. I confirmed when we were fleeing from the stalker that it reacted to holy light the same way as the parasites. So the rot’s carbon powder should do the trick, that’s not the issue.”

“Then what is it?”

“Let me show you…” Sofia said, bending down to pick a flower, placing it in her open palm. She carefully shone a thin ray of light on her hand, covering the flower in rot. It was devoured and disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

“No powder?” Alith immediately understood.

Sofia showed her empty hand. “I found that out when we were waiting for the fairy… The carbon powder doesn’t exist in the light world.”

“And neither do my pouches…” Alith added, “So we can only reliably kill them outside of the light world?”

“Assuming we can kill them at all. The parasites’ flying swarms are particularly scary already. And we have no information on the others at all… Our best bet is probably to try to avoid fighting at all.”

“Maybe you could switch to that master thief title and go without us?” Alith suggested without much enthusiasm.

“That’s not even an option. The dagger disappears in the light world, so my title isn’t active…” Sofia explained, stopping before she could find anything else to say as she heard something unexpected. “Does anyone else hear that?”

Everyone was silent for a few seconds, but no one else seemed to hear anything.

“The water, the wind, the creaking of branches,” I hear nothing else,” Alith said first.

“I don’t hear anything either!” Bookie added, and Pareth seemed to be the same.

It stopped… “I’m almost certain I heard someone singing,” Sofia explained.

“Either you misheard, or there’s still someone alive in the city,” Alith deduced.

Looking at the shimmering deep creatures lurking around every corner, Sofia found it hard to believe there could possibly be anyone still alive in there.

“Maybe someone from the deep is singing,” Bookie said, “the one that helped us at the academy wasn’t a mindless creature at all so it could sing!”

“The ‘student’?” Alith asked, “It’s true that it never attacked anyone, and it acted somewhat… Civilized.”

“Well, let’s just keep that possibility in mind. We should get going, the faster we’re out of here the better.”

Sofia resummoned the Fairy which had just timed-out, as well as her olden bird recon unit of 54 black turvins. Bookie’s summons were just like everyone else, constantly flickering between the fleshy and regular skeletal form.

They sent a single bird to the city, Sofia being well aware of the dangers the Deep creatures could pose to Bookie’s summons. Nevertheless, as long as the most important ones like Crowie or the engineer were safe, she was ready to accept sacrifices.

The bird flew over the hole-ridden lake for all of three seconds before a luminous eel-like creature jumped from under the water. The attack was fast, clean, and almost silent. The giant deep eel jumped a hundred meters up into the sky, its wide maws engulfed the bird mid-flight at the apex of its jump, and plunged back into the calm waters in the blink of an eye. The bird did not even have the time or chance to unsummon itself.

“It’s gone…” Bookie announced, his voice shaking a little.

Sofia sighed and gave Bookie a few headpats. “Are you sure you’re going to be fine?”

The idea of permanently sacrificing a few skeletons to the deep creatures if needed was something that Bookie himself had suggested earlier when the group discussed what to do should they encounter the stalker again. He knew he was going to have to eventually abandon many of his precious skeletons as Sofia replaced his pages anyway, since he was still limited to fifty of them. Despite that, it was clear that he did not enjoy the process. Sofia was also a bit reluctant, but it was undeniable that the information the lost bird had just taught them was invaluable.

“It’s alright…” Bookie mumbled, “they willingly follow our orders, I’m not even forcing them…” he explained with a sad voice, “the others will all go if you ask them too.”

“Let’s not. It’s better to limit the sacrifices. At least now we know, both the lake and the airspace above aren’t safe…”

“Doesn’t leave us with many options,” Alith noted, “We can try to go even higher, bet on a teleportation despite the unstable space, or dig under the lake.”

Looking up, Sofia shot down one of Alith’s suggestions, “Going higher isn’t it. I didn’t see them before, but there are things hanging off of the tethers. Like bats, maybe? I can’t see well, but they’re not deep-colored, at least.”

“More skin dust monsters?” Alith asked, “We might have understood the tethered were people but there’s still no explanation for the smaller dust crawlers and the horse thing you saw in the first city.”

“Likely skin monsters, yes,” Sofia confirmed, “Either way, flying seems like a bad idea. Though perhaps we could try to back out and enter from above the tethers, directly to the tree.”

After some deliberation, Sofia sent a bird back to the outside, to see if the idea of climbing over the tethers was safe.

It was not long before Bookie announced in a whimper that this bird had also permanently died. Sofia consoled him while Alith tried to think of another way in, squatting as she observed the distant city. “If only Asty was here, I bet she could teleport us there safely,” she commented.

“She cannot see the deep monsters,” Sofia rebutted, “I would not bring her here in a million years.”

“I know. Just saying. Looks like we’re going to have to dig. Are you gonna bust out the sandworms?”

“They’re not great for digging through dirt and rocky terrain like this,” Sofia denied, shaking her head, “but I do have the skeletons for the situation,” she proudly declared, ripping one of Bookie’s pages to summon a small army of digger Kidjikkiks. They were rarely used, as she could normally just phase through the ground with the graveyard skeletons, but Sofia finally felt validated about having kept the diggers all this time.

The centipede-like Kidjikkiks were originally living inside of one of Cerberus-beta’s moons; this was exactly their field of expertise.

After Sofia and Alith decided on the exit point that seemed the safest in an obviously empty and somewhat isolated house in a corner of the city, the Kidjikkiks started to dig. In a few minutes, the Kidjikkiks had already dug deep enough, and started to head toward the city from under the lake, everyone else following them from a safe distance.