Saintess Summons Skeletons

Everything changed as the Deep’s light engulfed everything in sight, the hard roots regained worldly shades of brown and green, colorful flowers in a myriad hues appeared out of nowhere all over them, growing in the holes and cracks, soft green moss covered the ground and Sofia could immediately smell the pleasant scents of flowers and fresh sap. It was the exact same flowery smell the air on the moon had from the start, but turned up to eleven.

No immediate danger?

“Are you both alr-” Sofia started to ask, turning around, but she stopped when she saw the strange state of her companions.

“What the fuck… Is this some kind of illusion magic?” Alith asked.

She was wearing a different outfit, which looked like Dopple had extended into a long black robe, and her face was completely blurry, as if being looked at through a foggy window.

“If it is, I can’t feel any mana movements at all…” Sofia answered, her eyes shifting to the other unknown yet familiar presence.

Pareth had also become different. Gone was the skeleton, in his place stood a tall muscular man with wide shoulders in lordly clothes, just like Alith, his face was impossible to make out.

Seeing both of them like this, Sofia looked down at herself, she was wearing a light and soft beige summer dress, all of her things gone except for her black glove and Ormoncleth’s bell, which had gone from her staff to being a decoration on the ribbon holding her hair. Bookie’s book form had also undergone some change, now looking like a much smaller regular book.

“Bookie?!” Sofia immediately reacted, worried about him a lot more than she was about everything else. But it was a relief to see the book open by itself, its interior full of the usual golden fog, and Bookie summoned himself, appearing as a short boy in casual clothes with a blurry face.

“Sofia! Sofia!” he immediately cried out, “look! I have skin!” he showed, pinching his own arm.

“Oh, thank the lords you’re fine!” she answered, relieved, instantly grabbing Bookie for a hug.

Alith reached up to touch Pareth’s bulging arms. “Holy shit. This feels way too real. What the hell.”

“It looks like everyone is fine,” Sofia said, “How do I make sure I’m not hallucinating all of this, though?”

“Are we all hallucinating?” Bookie asked in her arms, “Then I want to keep hallucinating a bit longer…”

Pareth scratched his head, seemingly the most confused of them all, he looked like he did not know what to do with himself at the moment.

“If this is the light doing that, then maybe just cover the fruit?” Alith suggested, seeing as Sofia still had the glowing thing in her hand.

“Right, can you let go, Bookie?”

Bookie seemed upset but he let go of Sofia, landing on the soft moss covering the ground, after which Sofia covered the fruit by wrapping it into the fabric of her robe.

The world returned to the bleak reality of the dark tunnel’s black roots in an instant.

Everything was back to how it was, Bookie and Pareth were both skeletons again, and Sofia’s hand holding the fruit was actually buried inside the bones of her armor’s chestplate.

Bookie is out. So this was all actually real, or at least we shared the illusion.

“I lost my skin…” Bookie said dejectedly, observing his skeletal hand after taking off one of his gloves.

“I was going to say maybe the light makes reality overlap with the Deep,” Alith started, “but I don’t think Bookie and Pareth were humans even in the Deep...”

“I don’t know what it is the light does exactly, but clearly not that,” Sofia confirmed, “Still, it does feel like an alternate reality somehow? The blurred faces were a bit disturbing. I’m taking the fruit out again, I want to try something.”

“Alright, I want to try something too.”

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Using bone dominus, Sofia dug the fruit out of her armor, as soon as the light spread, reality shifted once more.

It’s all the same. So weird.

Sofia picked a flower from the wall, and watched as Alith brought her arm to her blurry face, making disturbing sounds.

“Alith? W- What are you doing?”

“Science.”

“Can I… Change back?” Sofia asked, and Alith said yes.

Sofia hid the fruit once more, and was shocked to find a dark withered flower in her hand in place of the bright blue flower that had been there a second prior. Despite the craziness of this withered flower appearing out of thin air, Sofia’s attention was immediately diverted by the sight of Alith spitting out a chunk of bloody flesh.

“What the fuck did you do?!” Sofia asked the obvious, and Alith laughed.

“At least now we know,” she said, raising her arm which was bleeding and missing the aforementioned chunk of flesh, “I didn’t feel anything in the colorful reality when I bit down on my arm, but uh… Yeah. I did indeed bite it.” She chugged one of her healing flasks and her arm was back to normal. “Hey don’t look at me like that, come on, you’ve both done way worse and also already eaten your fair share of Alith meat. Can I see the flower?”

“I- Yeah alright… Have at it.”

Sofia handed the withered flower to Alith, who looked at it carefully before putting it in her mouth.

“Are you sure that’s safe?!” Sofia freaked out, but Alith chewed without a care.

“It’s not very good, but it is, yeah. That’s a really real flower. Called an island Enlop,” Alith explained, “Comes from the Dwarven isles, mostly. It tastes pretty great normally, but this one is a bit past its prime… I was a bit worried that it might also be made of human skin but my skill seems to think it’s the real thing.”

“It’s not dissolving into mana or anything?” Sofia questioned.

“Nope. It was withered but as real as can be. As real as my arm injury.”

“Well shit… I honestly would have preferred it if the light made us see an illusion, but this is a lot more disturbing…”

“Sure is. But on the bright side, this might be an opportunity to find rare herbs? Some of the most potent magical plants can still be used even when they’re all withered and dead.”

“Maybe? That’s not what we’re here for though, and now I have even more questions about the lighthouse,” Sofia said, before bringing out the fruit yet again and handing it to Bookie, “Wait here, I’ll go past the corner back there to see what happens when I leave the light,” she explained, pointing at the direction they had come from.

“Good plan, I’ll stay with Bookie, take Pareth with you, just in case.”

“Sure.”

Sofia ran through the verdant corridor and Pareth followed. When she reached the corner, the corridor still looked full of life and greenery past it, but as soon as Sofia walked out of the light, it turned back.

Pareth, who was still in the light, also looked like his normal, skeletal self. Watching through Pareth’s eyes, Sofia could observe herself, from his point of view, she was still in the alternate reality, wearing the beige dress.

Well crap.

Pareth came out of the light, then stepped back in and out several times, seemingly just as fascinated by the experience as Sofia.

Sofia did the same, and quickly noticed that the boundary for her vision shifting from one side to the other was actually her mana heart being in range of the light, even if her body and armor were in the way.

But walls do block it?

Nothing about this makes sense…

“Is everything still fine?” Alith shouted from where she was.

“Yes! We’re trying out a few things, be right back,” Sofia answered, quickly carving a vision rune token out of a piece of her armor, standing out of the light and shoving the token in.

Connecting to the token, she could see Bookie and Alith standing far away in the corridor as their regular selves, despite being in the light.

“Try picking another flower!” Sofia shouted.

“Alright!”

Alith raised a hand, and grabbed the air next to a root. A black withered flower appeared in her hand as if it had always been there.

Despite expecting this result, Sofia was left speechless. What the fuck did we just get ourselves into?

“Can you try grabbing my dress from within the light?” Sofia asked Pareth while she was standing outside.

She watched as Pareth extended a hand and grabbed at their next to her arm.

“You’re actually grabbing nothing right now,” she told him, “Try pulling on it maybe?”

Pareth pulled, and Sofia was unexpectedly yanked forward by an invisible force. She stumbled into the light almost colliding with Pareth, who was indeed pulling on her dress.

So far Sofia had been more curious than truly worried about this light-world, but this last interaction definitely sounded all kinds of alarms in her head. This is a bit too real.

Is the real world actually the fake one?