Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia followed after Henry without a sound, she could feel the surrounding monsters’ bones, the structure of their skeleton. It was unsettling. Outwards there were only fingers and palms, but inside every finger hid a skull, ribs, and a spine, while the palms were made of a mishmash of everything else. These were all human bones. The smaller fingers had them too. Sofia decided not to think about the implications. Henry’s earlier words were just ringing inside her ear.

If these places are real, the real world is fucked beyond measure…

When everything is so detailed; can it really be fake?

Or are this blood sea’s ‘dreams’, in the heart of Aphenoreth’s previous chosen… Just visions of the past failures of humanity?

If anything could produce such ‘time’ magic…

Sofia silenced her inner thoughts and focused as Henry approached a tight passageway between two sleeping hand beetles. The opening was narrow, but just wide enough to cross without touching the creature, thankfully the monsters made of hands had rather dull senses for the most part, but touch was sure to wake them up.

Only the soft clinking of bones echoed through the vast dark halls as Henry and Sofia got past the beetles, then continued through. The place was like a maze of concentric rings and Sofia had appeared right in the middle, which explained how Henry had been waiting for her there in advance, he already knew the path.

If Crowie was here with him from the start, then Crowie probably mapped it out first.

Henry's movements were sharp, precise, and barely made a sound or even created any air currents, his demeanor felt nothing like the relaxed pirate on his rowboat. But that only reassured Sofia that this was likely the real Henry and not another fake.

A thirty thousand year old ruin hunter should be at least this competent.

I wonder if he would teach me a bit…

The best Sofia could get for now was to pay close attention to the way Henry moved, while being careful herself. Following his footsteps, she reunited with Crowie. He was waiting at the end of the maze, as Henry had said, perched onto some kind of lectern, on a semi-circular elevated platform in front of the closed exit door.

Sofia and Crowie shared a short gaze, he seemed happy, but stayed vigilant on his perch. Reaching the door was relatively easy, there were fewer hand monsters near the end of the maze, from the door itself, only a few hand ants could be seen asleep on the walls. Henry and Sofia climbed the handful of steps to get on the semi-circle platform, and Henry finally let out a sigh.

“Glad ya still in one piece,” he whispered, “now gimme a minute, settin’ up a sound barrier.”

Henry unscrewed the pommel of his scimitar and tapped the handle on his palm a few times, retrieving a piece of dried up coral from inside. He used it like a piece of blue chalk to draw a singular line of incomprehensible wavy script spanning all of the last step to the platform, and infused it with some mana. The script lit up, and the air seemed to shift. As the mana of the ritual got used up the last character of the long line of script was slowly losing its glow.

Watching it properly get consumed, Henry nodded, and sat down. “Finally some calm, this wretched place… battered by a thousand cannons, I swear…”

Sofia sat down next to him, Crowie flying to her shoulder, “Neat magic, I have never seen anything like that.”

“Sure ya didn’t, learned that from anotha’ ruin, damned painful it was to memorize it, but I’ve not got any better for the job. Damn musician that I am, this old ass shit a ten year old could write got me beat in my own field!”

“Is it really that strong?”

“The fuckin’ sun could blow up in here and ya would be none the wiser from outside. Sound only though, keep ya lights down.”

“Do you know what is actually written?” Sofia asked, watching the characters slowly turn dark one by one.

“Not the slightest fuckin’ clue. Any nice booty from yar journey so far?”

“Some,” Sofia answered noncommittally.

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Henry burst out into laughter, “Yah ah ah! Yar learnin’ huh. Not sharin’ with a pirate, are ya? But rest assured, there is one thing and one thing only that crewmates absolutely can’t stab one another for and it’s them shinies. Our golden rule, so to say, can ya imagine the chaos otherwise? Tradin’, though, that we do.”

“Show me what you have first, then.”

“Sure, sure, simple enough, that,” Henry accepted, placing a hand on his hat and taking it off, showing Sofia the inside.

“Three wishing orbs? I have not found any.”

“Have ya been killin’ a lotta stuff?”

“No.”

“Well, no shit, then. Thems don’t grow on trees! Aahh… How I long to find a nice tree in this forsaken realm…”

“Alright… So, on my side…” Sofia started, opening up a hole in her bone armor to grab something from inside her chest, “I have this,” she said, presenting the presumingly ascended mana stone.

“Ooh, interesting find, this. But won’t be able to leave the realm with ya, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

“These ruins are dreams of the blood sea, remember?” Henry said, “What ya scavenge might leave the ruin with ya but it won’t leave the admiral’s heart.”

“Is it worthless, then?”

“No. Far from it. Such a great decoration, sell it. Sell it at port for knowledge. That stuff will follow ya. Anythin’ else?”

“I also have a partial spell schematic. About 90 to 95% memorized I think? I’ll have to work out the missing parts somehow.”

Henry nodded, looking interested. “What’d it do?”

“No idea.”

Henry’s interest faded instantly. “Good luck with that, then, milady. My magic is full again, let’s get this thing open,” he said, putting his hat back on as he stood up and turned around.

Sofia observed the door and platform in detail, the door itself was an arch mirroring the shape of the platform. The hand theme was there, but different, the sculpted stone of the door represented hands clawing at it from all sides, nails digging narrow trenches into the stones, weaker fingers leaving a scrambled trail like meat crayons. The singular color of the stone barely concealed the gruesomeness of the scene.

Nothing that stands out on the door itself. So it must be the circles and the lectern thing.

On the ground, a tiled mosaic of greys and black formed a picture of countless hands surrounding two circles. Henry and Sofia had instinctively moved into one each, but the lack of reaction showed there was more to it than that.

Sofia turned around, Henry was already observing the lectern-looking pedestal, placing his hands all over it, tapping it to sound out its insides.

“Anything?” Sofia asked, “There’s no magic nor bones anywhere in there, the ground or the door.”

“Pretty sure thing’s the trigger,” Henry said, glancing back, “Maybe tis’ one of those times when bein’ a skeleton with no flesh will fuck ya. There’s nothin’ but those fingerprints at the top,” he explained, pointing at the angled top part of the device.

“Maybe we need to kill each other again?”

“Ya better hope fuckin’ not, cause ya owe me one, matey.”

“I do not remember agreeing to that.”

“Find a way to open this, then. Watchin’ ya.”

Sofia shook her skull, and walked up to the device. There were indeed fingerprints marking in the shape of a thumb on top, and not much else that stood out. She pressed a thumb against it, just in case, which did nothing.

“Maybe if we press it from within them circles?” Henry suggested.

“I thought you were just going to watch? We can try but my arms aren’t that long.”

“Just leave the finger there,” Henry said with a shrug.

Sofia was tempted to argue back that it was his idea so he should try it himself, but considering how relatively helpful the traitorous pirate had been so far, she figuratively rolled her eyes and plucked out her left thumb.

It regrew, every so slightly crooked, with a pain like getting a finger stuck in the mouth of a kleptra.

Still shaking but not letting out a single groan of pain, Sofia stepped back into one of the circles, keeping the finger pressed against the lectern with her aura.

“Oh, my bad,” Henry reacted a second later, “Didn’t expect ya’ to actually do it,” he added while stepping into the other circle.

As soon as his second foot was on the floor inside of the tiled circle, the lectern shone red, and the door started shaking.

Sofia looked behind her, the door was not just opening, one of the hands surrounding it was slowly retracting, leaving deeper grooves into the surface. It would take a while for all the hands to retract, and the shaking of the door quickly spread to the entire halls.

“CAAAW!”

Sofia felt movement behind her. The hand insects were waking up.

“By the smiler o’ the sea, deep in shit are we! Use this!” Henry shouted, throwing one of the wishing orbs from his hat at Sofia, “We gotta hold our ground!”

Sofia caught the orb. A squirming tide of hand-ants was approaching. She already knew what to wish for.

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