Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia stood on the giant stone hand’s cold palm as its fingers opened. The sound was grating, black dust fell through the separating fingers, as though this hand had been closed for an eternity.

What is this, now…

As her senses extended beyond the fingers, she felt more of the giant hands. All sprouting out of the ground, like hers, all clenched tight. She was in a circular room, like standing inside of a giant egg, the strange striated black wall felt oppressive, almost alive. She saw a single exit, a rounded triangular door, held shut by three stone hands with interlocking fingers.

Steeping on the edge of the hand she stood on, Sofia looked down. Including hers, exactly ten hands came out from a deep darkness below. Though made of stone, and slightly warped, they were, without a doubt, human. Not the ever so slightly elongated fingers of the elves, not the stout palms of the dwarves, not the frail, dainty fingers of the vampires, not even the clawed hands of the fairies, human.

And they all… Have the proper bones.

The dreams of the blood sea… Each ruin a dream to unravel…

Henry might be trapped in one of those hands too.

Focusing her aura, Sofia opened another of the closed hands. She could manipulate them from afar, so they counted as dead, and yet, they posed some heavy resistance.

Is it the stone that’s making it this hard?

Why… Are they clenching so much?

Nevertheless, dead bones could not resist her call, the hand opened, slowly, revealing a pile of black ash in its palm.

… This isn’t Henry, right?

Sofia opened more hands. Ash, ash, more ash, nothing else, then finally, something. Someone.

A dead, dried up, crumpled up body, in a garment of shriveled hands.

What…

Sofia jumped to the hand with the body. The person was long dead, only a thin layer of blackened skin remaining on their rotting bones.

Seeing the shape of their skeleton through their decomposing body only confirmed Sofia’s first thought. Definitely human. But why can’t I…

Sofia lightly grabbed the corpse’s arm. The blackened skin flaked away like charred paper. Sofia could see the bones directly.

I thought…

There were bones there, yellowed, lifeless, but unlike even those in the giant stone hands, Sofia could not feel these ones. She lightly caressed them, they were old, brittle, but bones still, bones that her aura obstinately refused to pick up.

That’s never happened before.

Is it really just the logic of this place being…

I have a bad feeling about this.

Sofia stood up, she glanced at the closed door, but her mana senses had picked up an odd shape, inside of the corpse.

Well… Please excuse me…

Plunging her hands inside of the corpse’s chest, Sofia fished out the large object. A five pronged crystal.

So large, so complex, so intricate…

Sofia shone her light on the crystal, observing the reflections, the deep patterns inside.

Even all the old stones I saw paled in comparison. This has to be… An ascended mana heart.

What is this place, really? What are the blood sea’s dreams?

Sofia felt a need to open all the hands. Henry could still be there, and she was curious.

It was all just more ash.

She unlocked the door held by three stone hands, a long corridor awaited on the other side, in the same striated style, black walls, black floors, no signs of light except from her own. She stepped out, and it all disappeared. Like a breeze blowing away a mirage, she found herself outside, or at least, that was the impression she got.

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Ambient mana had dried up. The air was thick with gray dust, making it impossible to see far, and the ground, covered as well, like stepping through a desert of ash.

The forbidden moon?

No. But it feels… So similar.

I don’t get it… What am I supposed to do?

Mindlessly petting Crowie, Sofia took a few steps through the dense dust.

In this place devoid of mana, she had to expand her own reserves to use her mana senses, but they were unobstructed. More hands?

There was nothing she felt in this desolate place, save for more giant hands, mangled, withered, broken, but hands still, scattered about as though corpses on a battlefield.

Sofia flew around in this lifeless expanse, first with caution, then with urgency. Who knew for how long she was really able to withstand the permanent effects of this sanctuary before becoming one of its eternal prisoners? But there was nothing. Only the giant dead hands, that had all met a gruesome fate.

She tried flying up with [Runelord]’s flight first, ten, a hundred, a thousand meters. The dust cloud seemed infinite. Landing back down near one of the hands coming from the ground, she stood near its hole. She observed its wrist and forearm disappearing into a darkness so deep that no light seemed to shine through. After tossing some debris in it and confirming it wasn’t actually that deep with the sounds, she jumped. The hole went straight down, the thin arm the hand was attached to being proportionally much too long, until Sofia found where it ended.

It was just a small underground alcove, filled with black ash. The arm sprouted from there, abnormally thin, like a mushroom’s stem growing from the ash.

There’s something in there.

Sofia dug through the ash, digging out the base of the arm.

I suppose… I somewhat expected that.

The arm was growing out of a five-pronged crystal. Nowhere near as large as the one still strapped on her back, but still big, still someone’s mana heart.

Were these people used as sacrifices to summon all these hands? I really… I really don’t get it.

Could it be that– Sofia’s thoughts were interrupted by a subtle, yet familiar feeling. A pull on the divine essences she carried. It was too faint to tell which ones were affected, but she clearly felt it, coming from above.

She flew out of the hole. The feeling grew stronger.

Up!

Sofia flew up as fast as she could, she could not see an end to the dust. She expelled some mana to give her wings something to push against, she flew up faster. Eventually, she emerged from the dust. Below her, an endless ocean of dust, as far as her eyes could see, thousands, millions of kilometers.

Above…

The pull felt stronger than ever, stranger than ever. An oppressive, suffocating feeling, that she could instinctively tell, she could not escape. It was coming, for her.

This is it. It’s that essence, isn’t it?

LOOMING!

Sofia looked up.

Her mind blanked in an infinite array of colors, like the purest ray of light.

“CAAAW!”

“Hah, look who’s wakin’ up. I almost thought I’d be stuck down here with that restless birdo forever. How’re ya feelin’?”

Sofia sat up, holding her skull, her vision still shone with dizzying radiant colors. “I’m… Give me a minute…”

“Sure, not like I can fuck off anywhere anyway.”

Gently hugging Crowie, Sofia slowly recovered her sight. They were currently on an open hand, slowly drifting on black waters; pillars of giant interlocking hands broke the horizon here and there, suggesting the existence of a ceiling somewhere up in the darkness.

“Care to update me on the situation?”

“Thought ya’d never ask. Yar bird is the one who found me. Guided me to ya.”

“Crowie did? How did he even…”

“Caw!”

Henry shrugged, “Point is, found ya lying like a dead fish in a hidden corner. T’was a few hours ago. Continued through the ruin. Deeper layers of the dream. Almost the end, I bet. Current’s been getting stronger. This place gotta end somewhere.”

“That’s good… Wait… Before… Before that, what happened to you?” Sofia asked.

“To me?! … Oh, what happened to me after we got separated, ya mean? Not much, truthfully. Just explored the ruins. Hands everywhere, no monsters that I could see. I searched for ya with all I had but we must have fallen into different layers, so I could only press forward.”

“Did you see… Anything strange?” Sofia continued to ask, her thoughts still drifting to the thing in the sky she had failed to see.

Henry tilted his skull as though wondering if there was something wrong with Sofia’s, “Anything strange? Just look around ya, what isn’t strange around here, lassy?”

“... Fair,” Sofia conceded, seeing that her staff was piled up with the mana heart she had collected before and Henry’s weapons on the fingers of the floating hand behind him, she reached out with a hand, calling her scepter to her.

Henry flinched at the weapon suddenly flying past him, “Ya coulda warned me before that.”

“Rich coming from you.”

Sofia caressed her scepter like she’d reunited with a long lost lover. She let the ringing of Ormoncleth’s bell calm her still shaken mind.

Afterwards, Sofia sat still, making casual banter with Henry, watching Crowie hop around the hand like a hungry pigeon.

Eventually she felt a tremor from the dark waters ahead.

Henry reacted fast, spinning around and grabbing his scimitar, “Get ready to fight, lass! ‘Tis a big one!”

Henry’s mana heart shattered, pierced from behind by a glowing rod of sky-blue plasma.