Chapter 21: The Unlife (2/2)
‘They’re surprisingly nice. Maybe they’re like the guys I knew working in the fast food place and smoking weed… doing something illegal that’s not actually bad. Just with corpses and souls… I’m having difficulties drawing the parallels.’ the discussion on the table took her out of her daydreaming.
“They’re gonna be more bold in the coming months I tell you. Moving on Riverwatch like that is no easy feat. Especially during a tournament. It wasn’t a raid, more a demonstration of their power.”
They were talking about the Elven attack ‘Guess they do go outside.’ She thought, as she bit into a piece of bread.
“I just wish we could get one of their corpses… nobody ever sells them to us…,” Indra said
“Yea… we don’t really have the resources for that either… as much as it pains me to say that.” Walter mentioned while bringing more filled mugs.
“What are those markings by the way?” Ilea asked as she studied one of the mugs. Walter seemed to light up at that as Lucia explained.
“They’re enchantments… make the shit in there more tasty. Pretty low level stuff and barely noticeable.” she said.
“Well that’s neat.” Ilea commented and got a chuckle from Lucas.
They continued talking and eating for an hour before most of them started going back to their work, research or to sleep. Indra showed Ilea the place where she would stay. “It’s not a luxury inn but then again you’re not exactly an esteemed guest. Tomorrow you can show me some of your healing magic and maybe I’ll be able to include you in some experiments I wanted to try.”
Ilea nodded and looked at the rather poor room. ‘Experiments? You creepy fuck. The room is alright though, considering we’re in a cave. And compared to the mining stations it’s miles better.’
“Sure.” she said, while putting her belongings next to the bed. “When will you give me my sword back? I’d like to keep my training routine up. Now that I can’t really heal anything.”
Indra nodded at that “I’ll see to it tomorrow, maybe I can get you something a bit less dangerous… although that thing didn’t seem exceedingly so…,” He mumbled the last part but Ilea heard and smiled a little.
‘Oh it’s pretty harmless… especially if I use it.’
He soon left and she started meditating with all her buffs applied. Trying to grasp the extent of her new sphere ability and implementing her heat vision. She used her Flame spell to create sources of heat while using different ways to look at it. Her heat vision even leveled once and she got much better at grasping the heightened senses from her Sphere. She however meditated for nearly eight hours straight doing it.
After that she wanted to go check on the common room but found that two undead had been placed on her entrance. One of them held up a notice for her to read.
‘Ilea. These two will see that you do not enter any forbidden rooms or try to leave. They will warn you with a grunt before attacking. I do hope you can agree to those terms. Do find me on the third room to the left one floor down if you wish to negotiate the conditions.’
She nodded to herself after reading and started towards the common room.
The guards at the common room let her pass and her undead followed inside. She waved her hand in front of them and poked them in their rotten faces. “No reaction hmm? And Walter isn’t here either…,” placing a couple copper coins on the counter, she helped herself to a pint and walked back out of the bar. Looking behind her, she read the letters above the entry. ‘Vultures Den… original, are we?’
Walking around in the cave system, she was stopped from entering some of the rooms by her guardians and found little of interest in the ones she could enter. ‘I do like the common room but this place is pretty boring, I do have to say…,’ she walked, sometimes trying to trip her followers.
After the third fall that also got boring. ‘They’re reeeeally boring pets. I’d rather have a baby dragon or something. Not a fae though, those are bloody annoying I hear…,’
Entering another big room, she found someone she hadn’t met before. A woman with red hair, looked to be in her thirties. She had a beautiful black dress on and was chanting something from the book she held in front of her. ‘VERY revealing dress…,’ Ilea thought, as she sat down on a nearby chair. Mana gathered around the woman and as she finished the chant it went into the complicated carvings etched into the stone floor.
Smoke rose up but nothing else happened. Ilea saw with her magic perception that the used mana slowly dissipated. She loudly groaned at that.
The woman sharply turned around and glared at her. “RIGHT??? WHY does it not WORK?” without further notice, she sat down opposite of Ilea and poured herself what looked like whiskey. “You’re that guest girl hmm? Sorry for the disappointing show. Guess there’s not much interesting going on in this bloody cave… Indra plays around with his mushrooms, papa bones digs for gold or whatever and Walter cleans his glasses… at least the ale is good.”
She sighed, downed her glass and arched her back. Then poured herself another glass and downed that too. Gesturing to Ilea, the healer declined while motioning to her mug. “You took one of his mugs out of the common room? Brave girl… brave girl. You’re a healer eh? How’d ya get here? Well whatever. Do you like reading?”
Ilea felt that answering in the positive would open a barrel that she wasn’t sure she wanted to open. Having nothing better to do she nodded. Not like she could’ve said no to that question anyway. She indeed did open an apparently sparkly barrel as the woman that turned out to be called Celene started talking about her passion of writing romance and erotica novels. She was apparently obsessed with vampires and demons, thinking them to be the superior lovers.
‘Maybe Earth and Elos aren’t that different after all…,’ Ilea thought as Celene was showing her different anatomical pictures of vampire and demon penises. It did actually get very interesting as she described the species transforming capabilities.
“As a healer you really ought to try at some point. You being here just reaffirms my latest tries… you could patch me up easily should it be too much!”
Ilea just sipped her ale, trying not to interrupt the passionate woman. ‘It always is a pleasure to hear someone talk about what they love… be it the prospect of mating with a vampire…,’ She had a good time until Indra entered the room.
“What in Halthir’s world… Celene, stop tainting that innocent girl! Ilea, I have something I need you for, if you would.”
Affirming him and saying her goodbyes to the now again caught in her notes Celene, she followed Indra to another room. There were several undead there on which she was supposed to apply her magic. Indra was surprised to see that he didn’t know which elements were used in the healing process.
“Hmm… this is not a holy power… nor a natural one… interesting interesting… it seems rather arcane at its core, pure healing power…,” he said as Ilea repeatedly used Reconstruction on the living corpse before her. It did have an impact as new wounds produced on its body were healed by her.
“Normally healing magic that heals the living would destroy the dead. Your power works on both I suppose…,” he shelved that knowledge as interesting yet ultimately useless as most necromancers had ways of un-healing their creations, or simply raising them again.
Several hours later, Ilea excused herself to take a two hour nap. Afterwards she went back to the common room to find an agitated Walter looking around the place. His eyes fixated on the mug in her hand as she entered as his eyes turned completely black. Black lightning started to spark around him as he approached her slowly. She activated her buffs as well as he stopped right in front of her, ready to react in a fraction of a second.
He just grunted in an ethereal tone and took the mug from her hands. “At least you paid. No mugs outside the common room.” He said, the mana vanishing as he went back behind the bar, immediately starting to clean the mug she brought.
She sat down and enjoyed a meal after the scary ordeal. The initiates soon joined her, three of them this time. Naiir was the last one’s name. He had a sling around his arm, apparently the punishment for working on a hammer of Harthome he hadn’t been supposed to.
“I could heal that for you you know?” Naiir just shook his head at the suggestion.
“I appreciate the gesture but a punishment is supposed to be borne… otherwise what is the purpose?” she shrugged and continued eating.
They were caught up in a conversation about the different quality tiers of corpses when Ilea suddenly felt a massive pulse of mana go through her. She had her buffs on low burn most of the time now as she had more mana to spare and the higher levels would continue to reduce the cost. Walter and herself immediately looked into the direction that the pulse came from as the three initiates noticed the sudden change in their moods.
“Wanna get that heal now?” she asked, as a grin spread on her face.