Chapter 210: You Feel The Beginning of The Change

Mira had been a bit panicked by Elias’s seemingly endless sleep after the second day, and she had sent word to Brother Valerius about the issue, but she was informed that this was normal for him, and she should only call for their attention if his sleep exceeded a week or more.

She remembered how her mother used to tell her about the restorative power of sleep, but she had warned her that sleep should not surpass an entire day, else one risk falling into the temptation of the lesser divinities to sleep forever.

In the olden days, there were tricky spirits and ancient monsters who fed off the dreams of men, and they tried to make people sleep for long so they could forget their responsibilities in order to eat their dreams.

Mira knew that even if these events had happened in the past, they were not truly applicable in this current age of the Ascendants, but superstition still reigned among the people outside the boundaries of the Ascendants, and they were aware that the world was stranger than what the people in the cities and under the enclaves of the Ascendants believed.

The Kata that Elias had seen her practicing was a set of movements that was meant to dispel ghosts and evil gods who fed on dreams and made them into nightmares.

In the last few days, any opportunity she had, Mira performed the Kata, and now that Elias was awake, a small part of her was proud that she had a hand in his recovery.

Mira was deeply fascinated by the calculations in Elias’s eyes when she told him that he had slept for nearly five days. There was no panic in his eyes; he simply appeared as if he was calculating what he had missed and the significance of sleeping for such a long time.

This sort of level-headedness was rare, and after learning that the master she was now serving was just eighteen years old, it blew her expectations out of the water. She was about three times his age, but she doubted she possessed half his maturity.

After a moment, he looked at her and asked the question she was expecting, because she was sure he had looked out of the window and saw the massive structure that everyone in the city could see.

“What happened?”

She set down the wooden blade she had been practicing with,

“I don’t know all of it,” she said. “I was here with you most of the time, and your care is my greatest concern. Still, I was able to gather some details of what happened from some of the talks I heard from the people here in this place, and I was able to enter the city yesterday to get some supplies for Lyssa and to restock the kitchen.”

Elias’s expression did not change, patiently waiting for her to get to the point, as he had learned that sometimes it was easier to let people express themselves in the way they were most comfortable with, and only when it was getting too out of hand that a gentle nudge in the right direction was needed.

“I believe it began on the second day of your sleep,” Mira continued, “Even from here I could hear the screams, and when this sound did not wake you up, that was when I went to inform Brother Valerius of your deep sleep.”

She paused, remembering, a haunted look in her eyes. “I may not know much, but I know the sound of people being killed, and those were the sounds I was hearing from the city were much worse than I heard when my home was destroyed,” she gave a weird laugh, “Perhaps it is because we are so high up and so I can hear better than when I was running through the forest.”

Elias nodded, understanding that the memory of the oasis was a fresh scar in Mira’s mind that would most likely be permanent, and the fact that a similar level of slaughter had already occurred in his city while he slept was alarming.

“There seems to be an outbreak of an unknown creature in the lower districts. They apparently come from underground, and while they are not very powerful, they are like insects with a lot of numbers on their end. There may be an unknown species living under the city all these years, and now they are leaving their nest and causing chaos.”

She breathed out, “The screams that I could hear were coming from tens of thousands of people being killed. On the third day of your slumber, the Lord Protector arrived, and they said he was the one who raised the walls to stop the spread of these creatures after so many of them were killed, and yet there seems to be no end to their number.”

“The wall,” Elias said, “Is it as expansive as I think?”

Mira nodded her head like a chick pecking for rice, “if you walk through the city you would hear countless stories about the powerful Lord Protector, as they are saying he can raise mountains if he has to, and I think I believe them, the walls seal off the Tannery Quarter and the Eastern Warrens and it is more than three hundred feet high”

Elias frowned, “If this wall went up on the third day, then does it mean that there are still people inside?”

Mira nodded. “A hundred thousand. Maybe more. The evacuation had barely begun when the wall went up. I heard that it was to stop the spread and contain whatever was in there until a solution could be found. Whatever creatures emerged from underground, their number must be beyond any previous estimation, and the wall was made to buy time.”

“Time for what?”

Elias asked this question not truly expecting an answer from her, there were too many changes happening in such a short time, and when Elias heard that these creatures emerged from underground, he was once again reminded of the monsters beneath the earth while he was in the Fragment, and if there was any connection with them, as his mind went to the Yellow Eyed boy, and a tingle of fear or maybe disgust rushed through his spine.

“There are plans,” she said, and Elias looked up, after being a bit distracted from his introspection. “The Guild is organizing rescue operations and is trying to find a way to get people out. But the things inside are very dangerous, and a lot of lives have been lost. At this time, it is safer for the residents to hide than to resist the monsters.”

Elias was silent for a long moment, turning to look at the wall, and suddenly finding that he was not the only one changing; the world was rapidly changing as well.

Could all of this be happening because of him? Was his presence causing such changes? It was not supposed to be that way, at least not for another decade or more, because it would take at least that length of time for the collapse of the Heavenly Canopy to become apparent, and so whatever was happening was most likely a coincidence and was not related to him.

And yet, why did it feel as if a part of him was inside those walls when he glanced at it?

“A hundred thousand people,” Elias whispered.

“A hundred thousand,” Mira confirmed.

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