Chapter 102

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Atlantis Bank, Atlantis, Kalenic Sea

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Towers-Over-Others looked up from his writings as a human approached his desk. The man wore a flamboyantly wide-brimmed hat with a feather stuck in the band.

“Ah, my good sir! Would you be one of the esteemed bankers of this fine establishment?” The human questioned. He then paused, waiting for an answer.

Towers sighed

“I would, but you can’t understand a word I say. My mouth is not made to produce human languages.” Towers answered. The man looked disturbed, which was an all-too-common reaction to Scorpeese. Something about the chittering, clicking language, which made perfect sense to Children, made a chill run down the spine of most humans. Towers turned from the man, who seemed to be experiencing just that, towards a capriccio walking nearby.

“Baliet,” Towers called out, getting the goat-woman’s attention. “Could you direct this man to the banking tills?” The capriccio nodded and approached.

“Sir, the bankers are over at those tills there,” Baliet relayed, pointing to the opposite side of the hall. “And have you not interacted with a Scorpan before? Unfortunately, they just can’t make the sounds your human languages use.”

“Ah! Thank you… madam? I have not, and that is fascinating! Can you understand him?” The man questioned as Baliet began walking away with him.

“Of course. All Children can understand each other, no matter the language we speak. I can point you to a Priest of The Creator if you like. They will likely know the answer to your questions, and if not, they can ask The Creator directly…”

Towers looked down at his paperwork as they passed from an easy listening distance. He sighed. He’d spent ages figuring out how to get clay tablets to work. They’d worked wonderfully, and with a proper medium, he’d been able to start writing down everything he could about the language The Creator had gifted him the knowledge of. He’d written it in Phenoc, of course. What use was a primer on the Runic language when it was written in the Runic language? There was none, of course.

Then, The Creator had claimed the surface, and paper was suddenly much easier to acquire. He’d already visited the small paper mill on the island and found the process fascinating, though the mill was too small to supply the island adequately. The rest needed to be imported from the Phenocs. Still, he found working with these ‘quills’ far more irritating than just carving on a tablet. They were thin and prone to breakage. They held so little ink that he needed to refill it constantly, and more than once, he’d pressed too hard. That created unsightly ink blots on the paper, which meant he’d needed to start over the page entirely.

He had a small mountain of crumpled paper, one of four, next to the desk.

One mountain was made of fired clay tablets containing his initial writings on the Runic language. These were ones he had yet to get to. The second, smaller mountain was of tablets from which he’d already transferred the text. While tablets were much easier to write on, space efficient they were not, evidenced by the difference in size between the second and third mountain. That may be an exaggeration. The ‘mountain’ of paper wasn’t quite a mountain. The stack of paper, covered in dense lines of text, was no more thick than any other book.

The time and effort spent producing it certainly compared to mountain climbing.

He put down the quill as he finished the page. A slight wind/fire spell produced a warm breeze, quickly drying the ink on the page. He hadn’t known to do that in the beginning. In the middle of the crumpled paper mountain were pages that just so happened to be stuck together, the ink running and transferring between them.

He placed it at the bottom of the stack and looked at the top page again. The book’s title was in the Phenoc language, Phenocian, with the subtitle written in Runic below it.

‘A Primer on Runic, The Language of The Creator and His Children.’

‘For those who cannot understand the words within.’

‘Written by Towers-Over-Others’

Of course, this wasn’t for The Children’s benefit. What would be the point of a primer for a language that any Child could ask for the understanding of? No. This was for the humans. The Creator had explained that a couple of guilders were attempting to translate Runic from all the carvings throughout the dungeon, but they weren’t having much luck. The language was just… too different from Phenocian. In Runic, each word was condensed into a single symbol. These symbols were composed of lines, dashes, and angles. The word could mean something entirely different if even a single element was changed. The sentence structure, adjectives, subjects, and verbs were organized differently.

The main difference between Runic and Phenocian was that humans’ written language came after spoken language. The letters were associated with specific syllables or sounds arranged according to how they were spoken. Runic was purpose-made to be as information-dense as possible. It didn’t have a spoken language to go along with it. The Creator called it a ‘Dead’ language. The people who initially spoke it were all long gone, and the knowledge of how to speak it was gone with them. Even He didn’t know how the words were spoken.

This book, as well as future copies, would be used as something called loot. A treasure, to be given to the guilders for defeating Tear on the Seventh. With the changes to the Fifth, he still had plenty of time to finish it. And he was eager to finish since he could get on with all the other books he wanted to write once he was done. The Scorpan King, Strikes-The-Air, had commissioned a compilation of The Creator’s teachings and methods of prayer in both Runic and Phenocian.

Given that all Children could speak with The Creator at will, though they would never dare catch his attention over something trivial, this book could only mean one thing.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

He wanted to spread the worship of The Creator to the surface.

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The Dungeon, Atlantis, Kalenic Sea

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The effect the soul magic was having on Huea was… confusing.

Soul Mana seemed to warp and change the flesh it came into contact with, and I had a theory on why. It’s soul magic. Its only purpose is to affect souls, and moving through the medium of flesh to shape the spells changed the flesh itself to better channel it.

To be fair, It did do that. Huea became noticeably better at gathering Soul Mana and casting the spells more efficiently.

I kept a careful eye on her throughout the experiments. While she did become slightly megalomaniacal at the end of the day, she shifted back a few days after the experiments ended while being banned from using Soul Mana.

For her safety, I restricted the number of soul mana spells she could cast daily after that. Thankfully, having the ‘leashes’ of five ‘risen,’ two dozen zombies and ten skeletons wasn’t acting as a constant source of Soul Mana drain. No telling if that would change if she raised more, though.

But, on to the other part of the Experiments!

The Risen, what I was calling the undead who still possessed souls, were just the same as Hallmark. They weren’t actually alive. Their bodies didn’t need to breathe, drink, or eat. They were more like puppets, and their souls pulled the strings of their bodies. The ‘net’ spell Huea cast trapped the soul within the body on the affected’s death and turned from a net into a network, the ‘strings’ that the soul could then use to puppet the body. The ‘Raise Zombie’ spell was much worse, in comparison. With no actual soul to act as the puppet master, the soul mana in the spell pretended to be one. They could follow simple commands, but that was all.

But, in comparison, the Soul Sprites were utterly fascinating!

They’d shared that this was the first summoning of soul manabeings in a very long time, which tracked with necromancy being exterminated and outlawed. But that also made me wary. The other manabeings in my dungeon had hinted about the gods and their relationship to them, and I worried about catching the attention of whatever being acted as the god of Souls.

Sounded like a god of death to me, and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

In the end, I had about ten Sprites possessing golems. There were various bone golems, including the Bone Colossus, Two Death Knights, two Skeleton Horses, and the Undead Wyvern. The Colossus was one of the original two sprites I summoned, composed of multiple skeletons to create a hulking, imposing being. The Death Knights were each paired with a Skeleton Horse to compliment the huge lances I gave them. The Wyvern was made on a whim, using the last dozen Drake-kin skeletons, combining them such that the resulting being resembled Wave’s current form.

The fact that it resembled that one Skyrim undead dragon was a coincidence; there are only so many dragon designs you can go with.

For now, they remained in the experimental chambers. I didn’t want the knowledge I had access to soul magic to spread since that would probably get the human churches to declare a crusade against me.

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???, ???, ???

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The Ferryman Stirs.

What!? Impossible!

I speak only the truth. They’ve shifted in their watch over the hells, and their gaze has focused on the mortal world again.

This… is most disturbing. Something must be done! You know what happened the last time.

Of course, I do. I’ve already done what I can.

Damn, these laws. Oh, how I long for the days when we could deal with threats like this ourselves.

The laws were made for a reason. It was too disruptive to the humans. In the thousands of years we walked among them, they never changed. But look at them now!

More of them are dying than ever, only strengthening The Ferryman and their domain.

But there are so many more of them, bolstering Life to stand against them! Percentage-wise, fewer die every year. Err, except this year.

There has been more than the usual amount of Chaos. Speaking of, did you check the rest of them?

I checked, and they’re all inactive.

Are you sure?

Yes, I’m sure. Void hasn’t moved in Millenia. Chaos is still locked away. Death is the only one.

Touchy. Are we gonna let the rest know?

Order would dismiss it before they ever brought it before the rest… But Light would do something about It. He has the most followers out of us all and lost the most, you know, last time.

You’re right about Order. I don’t like going behind their back, but we must do something about this. If you’re going to tell Light, what about Life?

Life and Light are joined at the hip. Anything you tell one, the other will hear about soon enough. She’s second on the number of followers and already detests The Ferryman. She’s invested in her little monkeys and doesn’t want them to die.

True… Alright. I trust you.

Uh, Thanks. See you later?

Definitely.

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Council Chambers, High Temple of The Gods, Theona

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“Silence!” Archpriest Garyson declared, “I know this information is shocking, but our response must be swift and united in its execution. Now, will you let me finish without descending into pointless rabbling?” He finished, raising an eyebrow. There were a few grumbles, but when each Archpriest and Priestess on the council again took their seat, he repeated his earlier announcement.

“Seers and Oracles from at least five different temples have been having premonitions of great change and upheaval for most of a year. This is something you are all aware of. But, in the last week, their dreams have changed. The Undead now feature prominently in their visions of chaos and death. Someone has rediscovered necromancy, though we do not yet know who.”

“It must be the Bahrain! Their invasion of our kingdom failed, and now they turn to dark magics to bring about our end!”

“I disagree. I believe someone discovered a lost grimoire, and it has been corrupted by its magic. We must send out priests trained to locate Death mana and eliminate them before they grow in power further!”

The room was in chaos once again, though Garyson had at least been able to finish his announcement before the arguments started. The Archpriest of the God of Light and Justice sagged in his chair. Archpriestess Lilianna of the Temple of Life shouted down Archpriest Frand of the Temple of Water. Frand was well-known for blaming anything he could on Bahrain, judging them as heretics. Garyson knew better, as did most of the other Archpriests.

The gods were the gods, no matter the names humans assigned them. The Bahrain god of Light and the Desert was the same as his own god. They just focused on different aspects of the god and his domains. The Bahrain were more focused on survival, a reflection of their culture. The Desert was harsh, and what were the gods but a reflection of the world? Light in the Phenoc Kingdom, or dukedoms as it were, meant peace, hard work, and the knowledge that justice would be done. In Bahrain, Light meant unrelenting heat, dehydration, and the tempering of a man.

Garyson shook his head. This was no time to wax philosophy.

The argument continued through the night, with initiates and acolytes bringing food and watered wine to keep the aging clergy awake and active. Much was discussed. Options were assessed, and their ultimate strategy was presented, dismissed, circled around to, and changed enough that no one was happy with the result.

A true compromise.

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