Saintess Summons Skeletons

After playing around for a bit, Bookie settled in Sofia’s arm and a half, and started recounting the events of the time Sofia spent unconscious.

“So you appeared with Pestle, and it made a huge bang! A huge pillar of black and white light boomed out of the ground! We had to escape because the explosion was so big it almost reached us! But then it stopped, and it made a huge mess,” Bookie recounted.

“It was an ascended dying after all, it would be surprising if there was no mess, right? So what’s next?”

“Well! The mana everywhere got all weird! It started making spells by itself and stuff, so we kept running away, then we found an exit hole in the ceiling, and we hid in the tunnel to another zone until the mana calmed down. It took more than an entire day! Then we sent the birds down to see, and the sea was all dried up!”

Bookie continued to explain that the explosion had drilled a big hole in both the ground and ceiling of the zone, linking it with a new area up and one area down. Most of the fish water had all flowed down the hole, drastically changing the environment in the sea zone. More skeletons were sent down to check the now flooded level under, and they retrieved the spare pieces of the dead robot.

At the same time, the mana instabilities of the sea zone almost completely disappeared, which left the group free to explore the rest of the underground ruins, those that hadn’t disappeared from the explosion, at least. They first found a safe place to let Sofia rest with part of the group while the others continued the search. After just a week of exploring the ruins, Sonia found more of the lab, and a vault that she was certain should have contained the artefact, but it was missing. In fact the entire vault had been ransacked.

“And the only things we found there were some of those!” Bookie declared, to Sofia’s surprise, pointing at a corner of the cave.

“Orichalcum fruit pits?”

“Yes! There were several of them scattered around the floor in the vault. But we didn’t really know what to think of it. So then, we searched the zone trying to find who had stolen the artefact. We didn’t find anything at first, but after a few days, we ended up back on the island where we found these fruits the first time,” bookie explained.

“That random island where I picked them? I don’t remember anything else being there.”

“Hmmhmm, the thing is, Pestle wanted to grab some, but the fruits were gone!”

Sofia was silent for a second, then she understood the implications, “I see. They should have grown back during the nights when the plants went crazy… So the same people who left the pits in the vault were probably the ones who picked the fruits.”

“That’s what Sonia said! And so we searched for all the fruit trees in the area, and we left skeleton birds to guard them.”

“Clever. It looks like that worked. So what are we up against?”

“It did work!” Bookie confirmed, looking proud of himself, “But a lot of the birdies dieded before we managed to catch one… It’s machine people but not from the dark epoch, they look a bit like… Small rusty chairs with arms…”

“Not the strangest thing, I guess? How dangerous are they?”

“Quite dangerous! It was one of them who broke my shield!” Bookie complained, still sounding a bit bitter at his shattered mithril shield from when he first scouted out the zone.

“So, strong physical fighters? Did you try to negotiate for the artefact?”

“No! They always attack as soon as they see us, they don’t even talk! And I can’t eat them because they don’t even have a skeleton. Sonia had to hide from one and be very careful to follow it without being seen. And then we found their home, but there are hundreds of them!”

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“That certainly doesn’t make things easy. But this sounds like this all should have taken at most a month, no?” Sofia asked, “And you still haven’t managed to get through?”

“It’s not easy!” Bookie said, looking up at Sofia, his skull bending backward much more than someone with a neck would ever be able to, “But they can eat metal and make more of them! And the explosion of the dark epoch place sent metal everywhere so they keep eating more!”

“Oh… So that’s why the Fublins were stockpiling all this junk… They were actually preventing the expansion of their rivals. It looks like me and Pestle made the mission a lot more difficult than it should have been…”

“No no! I think if the explosion didn’t open up plenty of underground passages we would have never found the laboratory vault,” Bookie said confidently, although Sofia wasn’t sure how much of that was true or if Bookie was just trying to spare her feelings.

“You all worked hard while I was down. It should go faster now that I can hel–”

“No!” Bookie cried out, jumping out of Sofia’s arms and standing in the middle of the path out of the cave, blocking it with extended arms, “Sofia is interdicted from leaving!”

Sofia chuckled. “Is that so? Come back here, I’m not moving for now. I need to figure out how much of my skills I can still use before anything anyway. I won’t just rush out, don’t worry.”

Bookie looked down as he trudged back to Soffia, “D- Do you think your arm can heal?” he muttered as he sat back on her lap.

“Well… You should be able to see my blueprint, right?” Sofia answered, caressing Bookie’s skull, “It’s going to be a bit difficult, but I’m sure we’ll manage something. There are plenty of people who can help me, after all.”

“W- What if I ask uncle?!” Bookie said.

“No, no… I don’t think the Lords would fix this,” Sofia told Bookie, “It’s the consequences of my own actions… They seem to mostly help… When fate gets in the way. Not when I myself mess up. And I think that’s fine.”

“But your arm…”

“I’ve completed a trial as a piece of flesh strung on a bone puppet before, I can deal with this. Besides, look, it’s not like I don’t have a left arm anymore, it’s just not quite as good,” Sofia reassured Bookie, poking his ‘cheek’ with her left arm made of semi-soft bones. “I’m a lot better with the texture than before, too, if I wore a glove and long sleeves I could shake hands with this and no one would even notice.”

Bookie chuckled at Sofia’s awkward attempt at shaking his hand, she clearly still wasn’t controlling the fake arm too well. “Sofia, you have better control even when you make tentacles to see in the dark,” he pointed out, putting a hand over his jaws to stop himself from laughing too hard.

“Ahah… Well, you’re not wrong. I just never had to control a hand this directly without the appropriate nerves, you know? Fingers are a lot harder to manage than a few tentacles!”

To illustrate, Sofia morphed the bone hand’s fingers into five wriggling tentacles, firmly shaking Bookie’s skeletal hand.

“Waaah! Sofia is secretly a Phageid?!”

“Leg?!” Pestle woke up out of nowhere at the mention of Phageid.

“Pfft, what, you even want to eat those? You know they’re midenicite just like you,” Sofia pointed out.

“Pesle is know, is Pesle why want to try leg!” the fairy clarified, as a ‘fleshy’ body slowly formed around her bones.

“Right… Speaking of, now that you’re both here, care to explain what happened to you?” Sofia asked, glancing away from Pestle who was unhurriedly invoking a blue dress with an unknown spell to cover her newly re-formed naked body.

“Pesle is find liquid mana in ruin, lots and lots! Leg everything. So much leg, soul is repair a bit, so Pesle is get more strong and remember lots of Fae One magic!” she excitedly explained, “but also it is make iron skelton wake up and kill Sofia arm…”

“No need to sound so guilty,” Sofia said, looking at the ceiling of the cave, “we all decided to let you explore the ruin, and I was the one who decided to come save you. And I would do it again even if it cost me my other arm. I’m really not mad at you, so cheer up, alright? So what is with this fleshy body, illusion magic?”

“Not illustion, it real fake body!” Pestle explained, “Is all mana. Very not strong, but Pesle is like because it all soft! Not make clink clink clink when Pesle is move!”

“Real fake body, huh? Maybe we could even fix my arm like this… The Dragons’ shapeshifting spell is a good thing to look into as well…”

“Ah! It…” Pestle interrupted, “real fake body is maybe dragon spell… Pesle think… Ravager Ones is steal it from dragons,” she admitted with an awkward smile, “Maybe we is steal spell from a bit everyone…”

“Everyone?” Sofia repeated.

“Klepra also…”

It was Sofia’s turn to try hard not to laugh. “...no wonder the ravagers went extinct.”