Ch168-How To Win Friends And Influence People

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Ch168-How To Win Friends And Influence People

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Sylver looked down at the next question and was surprised to see that this was the last one.

“I can’t-”

“-tell me, I got it… Poppy mentioned meteorites, and that Arda would be affected,” Sylver interrupted. Chrys’ body continued to lay flat on the table, as Sylver put his notebook full of questions away.

Turns out a great deal of the things he wanted to know had an extremely obvious answer, that Sylver should have guessed.

“I can’t tell you,” Rose repeated, the same answer she gave for just about anything even loosely related to the Ibis, including Nyx, the grimoires, the 3 golems inside the Dark Year, Ria, the dark elves, and a whole bunch of similar information that he would have loved to have gotten.

“Poppy said I got nudged off course… That implies there is a course to nudge me away from… What exactly was it that nudged me off course?” Sylver asked, and Rose moved Chrys’ body slightly.

She shrugged her shoulders, but it wasn’t an “I can’t tell you” shrug, it was a “you’re looking at it,” shrug.

“So this is the third party Kass mentioned… Powerful enough to meddle even with your plans… What would have happened if she didn’t get involved?” Sylver asked.

“I don’t know… Aside from the fact that you can actively feel it when someone is trying to read your future and get paranoid and stop doing whatever it is you were doing, you’re also just plain hard to predict. In the end, I more or less decided to leave you alone, and trusted that you would eventually get the book, and leave,” Rose explained, as Sylver ran a hand down his face, and pulled away several paper-thin pieces of skin from his forehead and nose.

“This reminds me… The coin flip. Did I already use it?” Sylver asked, and could see Rose just barely managed to suppress a grin on Chrys’ face.

“You’re going to laugh,” Rose promised.

“A lot of people tell me that, but they’re so rarely right,” Sylver argued, as the thin grin on Chrys’ face grew a little bigger.

“Do you remember when you found that gun when you first arrived here? On the submarine, that you ended up turning into a giant bomb?” Rose asked, still with that smile on her face.

“Vividly,” Sylver answered.

“When you threw the loaded gun against the wall, it was supposed to fire. The bullet would then pass clean through the cartilage of your nose, and shatter into pieces inside of your skull. Then the submarine would start to sink, and without magic, there would be nothing you could do about it,” Rose explained, and Sylver was certain he could hear a giggle in her voice, even if she wasn’t actually giggling.

“I see…” Sylver said, without any emotion.

Spring on the other hand started to laugh hard enough that Sylver’s shadow started to move back and forth, and Ria’s suppressed laughter made her vibrate against his arm.

“So you unloaded the gun?” Sylver asked, and it took Rose a couple of moments to stop grinning. 

Sylver blamed Spring for the weirdly jovial atmosphere he inadvertently created, while Sylver had Rose as a hostage, and was making her talk under threat of torture. He looked down at the small liquid metal creature hiding within his robe and came to a decision.

“I genuinely hate that I’m doing this again, but Ria… I need you to go with Spring for a bit… And I need your word that you won’t try to listen in on this conversation,” Sylver said at the small bar of liquid metal, that was currently housing the most dangerous item in this realm.

Ria hesitated.

Sylver felt it, she knew he felt it, and Sylver knew that Ria knew that he knew.

“I’ll tell you everything at some point. And you have my word I won’t lie to you,” Sylver added and felt the smallest bit embarrassed that he couldn’t just assume she knew he wouldn’t lie.

“Alright,” Ria said.

She didn’t say anything else. Spring split into two within Sylver’s shadow, and one half of him materialized, opened the door, carried Ria in one hand, and sealed the door shut with the other. Sylver waited until they were out of earshot.

“Lily did. Not unloaded, but she made it so the bullets were inert. It’s the only reason she and Poppy even knew about what I was trying to do here,” Rose explained.

“Why Lily? Couldn’t you have done it yourself?” Sylver asked.

“It doesn’t work like that… There is a limit to how much I can interact within a certain period of time. Getting you through the gate in largely one-piece used up the majority of the interaction I had available to me. I had to ask Lily for help, and because she couldn’t come here without Poppy, I had no choice but to let her know about what I was doing,” Rose explained, and Sylver could see the grin melt away and get replaced with a tooth grinding blank of a face.

Sylver gave himself some time to think things over and felt like warm water appeared within his left hand, and traveled out into his fingers. He looked down at the hand and watched his tendons shifting underneath his skin.

“When we first spoke… You said you have personally seen me beat worse odds, time and time again. Have we met before?” Sylver asked, and could tell by the faint buzzing between his eyes that he was brushing too close to something he couldn’t think, let alone talk, about.

“I’ve met you, but you haven’t met me,” Rose explained, and Sylver raised an eyebrow at the implication.

“I would have felt someone watching me… Unless… Right after Nyx disappeared,” Sylver guessed and could tell by the increase in buzzing that he had hit the nail on the head. Thankfully Rose didn’t say anything, and the headache disappeared after a couple of seconds.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say every single clairvoyant that posed a threat to the Ibis felt Nyx’s absence. 

And then proceeded to poke and prod the Ibis, to see if it was still untouchable.

Luckily for Sylver, it was.

And unluckily for them, Sylver was extra paranoid and ended up massacring a little over three-quarters of the realm’s high tier clairvoyants that tried to see how solid the locked door behind which Sylver’s apprentices and family slept was.

Some of them had the gall to act surprised that he would take “some friendly strength testing” so personally.

In Sylver’s defense, after he was done, no one tried prodding the Ibis for a very long time. Sylver would later consider his actions slightly rash, and a little excessive, but he did the exact same thing when he was older and calmer when the Ibis had another moment of weakness.

Although that time, no clairvoyants were slowly dismembered and then lynched outside their castle with a message to keep their noses out of peoples’ business. 

Instead they just “disappeared.” 

As did their wives, husbands, parents, children, and whoever was unlucky enough to be in the clairvoyants’ general vicinity.

“There was something lovely about it. Like watching a fire burn. You didn’t question what you were doing, you didn’t hesitate, once you decided they needed to die, it was like the sea parted to allow you to pass and reach them. Everyone I’ve ever met is soft, malleable, they can be directed this way, and that way, but you’re like a cliff amidst fish,” Rose explained, as Sylver felt a coldness forming inside of him.

“I remember thinking back then… How comfortable it must be to have someone that devoted watching over you. I think Lily could see it too. Poppy… I don’t think she could get past the cruelty. In her mind, you’re either one thing or another. The idea that a monster could possibly have something it cares about wasn’t something she could understand,” Rose explained, and Sylver could see that Chrys’ only real eye was leaking some kind of see-through liquid.

Sylver gave her a moment to see if she would carry on, but she stayed quiet and just looked at him.

“I see… And what does that make her, after she had Nautis kidnap and imprison hundreds of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, nearly killed Yeva, handed out soul magic grimoires that killed unborn children, not to mention-”

“That wasn’t her,” Rose interrupted.

Sylver felt it then, the way Rose’s soul portion moved was different than before.

“It was all me,” Rose explained, and something inside Sylver just didn’t sit right.

“Let me guess. You can’t tell me why you were gathering women that were carrying stillborns? Or what this framework is for,” Sylver asked, as he pulled out the grimoire that contained Nyx’s attempts to decipher the enormous framework Sylver had seen on the floor where Yeva was almost sacrificed.

Where Poppy had killed him with a single kick, and Sylver later killed the man who became Spring.

“I was trying to entice a [Hero] to be summoned. The pillar the framework had been carved in was a deceased Eldar tree. The crystals gathered from the turtle demi-god were offerings. And the reason I had to use that moron is because it had to be done without my involvement, of his own free will,” Rose explained, and Sylver kept feeling something uncomfortable within her soul.

“You said you didn’t want to become a [Hero], you just wanted to go home,” Sylver said.

Rose just stared at him, for 3 whole seconds, and Sylver spoke up before she had a chance to explain.

“Why are you trying to put all the blame on yourself? Because you think, what? I’m not going to go after them if they don’t interfere with me? That I’m going to leave the people who can lead me straight to Oska? Or Helca? Or Sonya? Or Adema? Or Lenora?” Sylver asked as he stood up from his seat.

“You summed it up perfectly “the sea will part to allow me to reach them.” They betrayed you, why do you care what happens to them?” Sylver asked, and took one step after another until he was standing directly over Chrys’ body, and was looking Rose right in the eye.

He didn’t get the feeling she was lying as she answered him.

“Because I still love them. And I want your word, you’ll leave them alone,” Rose said.

“Absolutely. Tell me where everyone from the Ibis is, and I will defend Poppy and Lily with my life,” Sylver offered. 

He knew the answer just by the way Chrys’ face twisted into a bigger frown.

“I can’t do that,” Rose answered, and maintained eye contact for half a second before she blinked and looked away.

Sylver spoke with an uncharacteristic casualness, the kind he usually reserved for very close friends or people who were particularly interesting to him. The way he would discuss how varying degrees of brewing affected the taste of coffee.

“That’s alright. They’re strong, and they’re [Hero]s. How long do you think it will take me to gather enough power to win against them? 100 years? 10 years? A year? How many months? How many days? Once I get back to Eira, how many hours until I force the answers out of them? How many minutes until I find something they care about enough to talk? I saw the way Poppy looked at Fredrick, I’m willing to bet it would take mere seconds for me to-”

“ENOUGH!” Rose screeched, and Sylver felt an unimaginably large wave pass over him. He felt the rumbling waters above turn calm for a moment and felt as every single living creature within the dome froze in fear. Her voice echoed throughout the whole building, and ended up returning to the point of origin, and bounced around the inside of Chrys’ room.

Sylver placed a hand on Chrys’ forehead and added the slightest amount of pressure.

“Do that again,” Sylver suggested with a curious grin. 

“You know who I am. You know what I’m capable of. You know what I’m willing to do. Go ahead. I’m such a small, weak, little nothing of a man, what’s there to be afraid of. Peek into the future Rose. Or better yet, let me tell you exactly what will happen. You’ll kill me. You’ll probably kill everyone here. But you’ll have a hole in your soul. A nick, so tiny you won’t even be able to perceive it,” Sylver explained, still completely relaxed and casual, water needs to be lukewarm, as opposed to boiling, for a smooth taste.

“And what a soul it is! It’s massive! You probably won’t even feel anything for centuries!” Sylver said as he leaned down slightly to speak directly into Chrys’/Rose’s ear. 

“But then, one day. You’ll find yourself struggling to remember something. It will be tiny, inconsequential, you’ll shrug it off, and you’ll forget that you forgot,” Sylver explained, as he removed most of his hand off Chrys’ forehead, and now only had his pointer finger gently pressing on her temple.

“But then there will come a day where you won’t be able to remember someone’s name. Nothing out of the ordinary, it happens to everyone. But then you’ll forget another name. Then you’ll forget how many sugars you like in your tea,” Sylver said.

“By this point, you’ll start noticing that your magic is less and less stable, you’ll make mistakes you’ve never made before. There will be an accident, maybe someone gets hurt, maybe they don’t, but you will realize that your mistake could have killed someone,” Sylver continued, as the skin on his finger began to glow.

“You’ll go to healers, you’ll drink potions, tonics, you’ll make deals with demons, you’ll ask a god to aide you, you might even bring me back from the dead, who can say, you’re a [Hero] after all, anything is possible,” Sylver said with a faint laugh in his voice.

“But they’ll all tell you the same thing, there’s nothing there. They quadruple-checked, and your soul is fine. You’ll think back on this moment, and think that every word out of my mouth was a lie,” Sylver explained, as the skin on his finger started to burn away as if it was made out of paper.

“But you’ll feel it, deep inside of you. Like a tumor, slowly growing, spreading, soaking up your life, your essence, every day you’ll wake up wondering, “what am I going to forget today?” It will be worse if you have a family,” Sylver said, and the faint twitch in Rose’s soul gave her away.

“You’ll have good days, bad days, some days you’ll forget there’s a problem at all. But you’ll see it in their eyes, and from that moment on, there won’t be any good days,” Sylver continued, as the glowing skin floated away, and left behind a pitch-black bone, with pulsating veins of gold traveling from the edge of the palm, down to the tip of the finger.

“A few years will pass, maybe centuries, given the impressive size of your soul, but eventually you’ll stop noticing it. You’ll look away for a split second, and your grandson is now an old man. A tiny sapling is a great oak tree, you don’t recognize the room you’re in, the people around you are strangers, you’ll look down at your hands and see wrinkles, cuts, bruises, suddenly there’s a man holding your hand, looking you right in the eye, but who is he? You can’t remember,” Sylver continued, starting slow, and finishing fast, as the gold-colored veins merged into one, and sat comfortably on the inner side of the finger bone.

“And then one day... I don’t know when, but I know it’ll come. You’ll have this moment of perfect clarity. The fog will lift, you’ll remember everything, the flood of memories and emotions will rush and overwhelm you, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh, but most importantly, you’ll remember the day you decided to threaten me,” Sylver said, as his voice changed from a polite and calm gentleman’s, to the kind that could shake mountains.

“Sylver Sezari, the Arch-Necromancer of the Ibis, the first creature alive or dead to cast 11th tier necromancy, a man who warned you, explained exactly what would happen, and yet you still chose to go against him,” Sylver continued, as the very tip of the finger sunk the slightest bit into Chrys’ forehead.

“And on that day, in that oh so brief moment of clear-headedness, you’ll think to what little is left of yourself “why didn’t I just give him what he wanted?” And then-how long have I been monologing for?” Sylver asked, and switched back to his normal voice mid-sentence, as he pulled his finger out and away from Chrys’ forehead, and turned to look down at the Spring half.

“About 4 minutes?” Spring answered, as Sylver stood up from his crouch and cleared his slightly dried up throat.

There was an unmistakable ammonia scent in the partially airtight room, that Sylver corrected with a brief gesture of his hand.

“Anyway... We have a deal or the implication of a deal, and that’s that. I will destroy the book, and I will leave. Somehow Edmund’s location will make its way into my hands, and we will go our separate ways. What I decide to do afterward, is none of your business, and none of your concern,” Sylver said to the completely motionless Chrys, who was now lying in a small puddle of Rose’s making, that Sylver’s magic cleaned up with a single flick of the finger.

“100 years,” Rose said, with the kind of reserved tone a person would use when a bear’s open maw was mere inches away from their face.

“Elaborate. Use your words. We’re just having a conversation, right?” Sylver asked, and for a second was worried Rose was going to snap something in Chrys’ neck, from how tense it looked.

“Don’t touch Poppy or Lily for 100 years. Leave them alone. And I will heal Chrys, everyone, here, and I will open the gate for you,” Rose offered.

“So you’re offering to do something I can do myself, in exchange for not interacting with people that have information on the thing I care about the most?” Sylver asked.

He was certain he heard something snap as Chrys’ head nodded.

“No thank you,” Sylver said.

The silence lingered for an unknown amount of time.

Sylver stood where he was, calm, collected, completely in control of the situation.

Rose’s soul wriggled within the confines of Chrys’ body, desperate for an answer, a solution.

“100 years. I will heal everyone here, open the gate, and in 5 years, you’ll get the location of someone else from the Ibis,” Rose offered, as Sylver pretended to consider her offer.

“No thank you.”

“100 years and-”

“Unless whatever you’re offering includes the location of every member of the Ibis, my answer isn’t going to change,” Sylver explained and watched as Rose’s soul coiled into itself, and for a split second relaxed, before it went back to nervously coiling, like a terrified serpent.

“Fine… You’ll hurt me, I’ll destroy you, everyone in Eira you’ve ever so much as glanced at, and I’ll lock whatever remains of you in here with me,” Rose said quietly, as Sylver spent a few seconds inspecting his charcoal black bone finger, now outlined with thick veins of glistening gold.

“Do you think I’m afraid of dying?” Sylver asked, as Chrys’ bloodshot eye briefly glanced at him.

“Stay away from Poppy and Chrys… For 100 years… and… I’ll give Chrys my right eye,” Rose offered, and Sylver was seemingly caught off guard.

“And she’ll be able to use it? She’ll be able to find everyone?” Sylver questioned, and Rose nodded both times.

“If they’re out there to find, she’ll find them. If Poppy or Lily find out that you killed me, they’ll die before telling you anything,” Rose explained, and Sylver…

Believed her.

He could see it in Chrys’ eye, a perfectly calm, unwavering will.

There wasn’t anything special or fancy about it, just the eye of a woman who made a decision and is now willing to die in unspeakable and unimaginable agony to adhere to it.

Sylver walked over to Rose, placed his glowing finger on Chrys’ forehead, and for 10 whole seconds didn’t move a muscle, with only the faint hum emanating from his finger filling the room with noise.

“Alright. You’re free to go. I’ll wait here for the eye, and for however it is you plan to heal Chrys and everyone else. You don’t need to heal me; I prefer doing it myself. Once that’s done, you’ll open a gate for us, and we’ll all go our separate ways. Assuming Lola really does know where Edmund is, Poppy and Lily will live happily ever after,” Sylver explained, as he pulled his finger away, and a mark so tiny that it looked like a pinprick, remained on Chrys’ forehead.

Rose remained where she was. She didn’t move, didn’t run away, her soul didn’t even attempt to pull the now free extension back into itself.

“If there is something you want to say to me, I very strongly recommend you say it right now or forever hold your peace. I’m not an idiot, Rose. And while I can’t say I’m not vindictive, if I make a deal, I stick to it. Your eye, healing, gate, Edmund, in exchange for Poppy and Lily getting to live full and fulfilling lives. I might even offer to help them, provided they have something to offer me,” Sylver explained, as Rose didn’t move an inch.

Sylver’s attempts to find out if the Eira he was in was his Eira were all in vain because Rose couldn’t tell him.

But even with how little he actually managed to get out of her, Sylver still considered this a massive win.

Not to mention, it was a massive win for Rose too.

She now knew who she was talking to, and hopefully will pick who she makes deals with a lot better in the future.

“One more thing… Whatever it is that’s stopping you from sharing information with me… If what you’re about to do is a poisoned chalice, I… Well, I think I’ve made enough threats for today,” Sylver said.

Given the lack of reaction, he was being paranoid, Rose barely registered what he had said.

“There’s a price to pay for this, but I will be the one to pay it. At this point, I just want you gone. If there’s nothing else, we have a deal,” Rose said simply, as her soul snapped away from Chrys’ body, and moved out of Sylver’s range.

“Do you think she’s actually going to come back?” Spring asked, as he materialized from the floor, and leaned on one of the walls while Sylver sat down and flexed his smoking bone finger.

“You can’t comprehend how terrifying what I threatened her with is to an immortal. I’ve literally only ever done it once, and the man ended up letting himself get devoured by demons, so as not to live through it. I would say I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but that would be a lie. And she loves Poppy and Lily, and now seems to have a better idea of who I am, she’ll be back,” Sylver explained to the nodding shade, as he stretched and cracked his knuckles.

“You weren’t bluffing,” Spring pointed out, as the Spring that had been tasked with keeping Ria occupied started to make his way towards Chrys’ room.

“I was. There’s an art to bluffing someone who can see the future. I knew she wouldn’t let me go after Poppy and Lily. I was just putting pressure on her to get a better deal. But… Don’t tell Ria. It’s done, there’s no point worrying her about it,” Sylver explained, while Spring nodded along.

“How long do you think it will be before Chrys can find someone?” Spring asked.

“It might not even be necessary… Depending on what kind of condition Edmund is in, I might be able to track his brother and son… Maybe Adema too… But Chrys is a very gifted clairvoyant, all she’s doing is replacing the book with Rose’s eye. Worst case scenario, I’ll take the eye back, and give it to a better clairvoyant,” Sylver explained, as Spring opened the door, and fused with his other half, that was carrying Ria in his arms.

“How did it go?” Ria asked, as Sylver wrapped his still smoldering finger with a bandage, and hid it away in his pocket.

“Swimmingly. All things considered, I have a really, really, really good feeling about this,” Sylver said.

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