497 What was the deal?
Thud! Lilia landed in her room in the elvish castle. The room was dusty and dark, everything got scattered around and her elvish-looking golems were shut off.
Clap! Clap! "Come on, get moving, clean the place!"
The golems started to move and clean, probably forbidding the maids from getting in was a bad idea. No, her room was a hazard for anyone lacking sufficient magical knowledge.
Walking with a smile, she opened the door and walked away humming.
"Where did you go?" Sylph cut her at the corner, she was waiting for her.
"Ah, Sylph. I just went on a walk that's it." Lilia smiled and Sylph grabbed her by the head.
"A walk you say, the magic I sensed was more than that…" Sylph clenched her fist on Lilia's head with a smile.
"AwAw! My little head will burst…all my knowledge is spilling out, my memories!" Lilia wriggled like a worm.
"Shut up and stop messing around. Where did you go?"
"I would like to tell you but, someone just quizzed the memories from my delicate head." Lilia was almost unable to hold her laugh.
"Speak! Or no more tolerance."
"Fine, you're no fun. I headed to the human continent. Met that mage you talked about." Lilia said with a sigh.
"Cain? You met him?" Sylph gasped.
"Yeah, I can see how he enslaved you. Besides me, he might be the second most terrifying mage out there." Lilia said thinking, "No, I would go as much to say he's a mage I would try to listen to."
…That was something else, especially coming from Lilia. She usually hated talking with other mages to her they sounded stupid. Spending months to learn a ninth-tier spell and understand the concept behind it was just…stupid in her eyes.
Hearing them talk about such subjects was like an architect listening to kids wanting to build a house with sticks and mud.
Saying that she is willing to listen to him means she thinks she could learn a thing or two from him.
"Did he tell you anything?" Sylph asked.
"About that…he wants me to bring him Tarrasque blood," Lilia said.
"Tarrasque? Okay…why such a thing, I don't think we need that…" Sylph started thinking.
Legends speak of an ancient being so powerful, that its very existence is an act of evil. A creature whose body is so vast, maw so voracious that with great ease it could devour the king of lizard two folds.
An immortal five-hundred-foot-tall, one million-ton lizard from ancient earth. He keeps sleeping underground for eternity with no sign of waking up.
"When that monster is asleep, he's basically a rock with no blood. Does he want you to wake him up?" Sylph looked scared.
"Who do you think would win? A long-forgotten apocalyptic monster or a little girl with red hair?" Lilia asked.
"My money on the little girl, just the collateral damage is going to be severe," Sylph replied.
"Just him waking up will cause a massive earthquake and trample half a continent, that's out of the question. I need to make a plan first, might take me a couple of months before I get it done." Lilia started thinking.
"But for you to accept such a mission from him, is that trust, or did Cain offer something of equal value?" Sylph asked.
Lilia shook her head. "He offered a lot of money." As she said, both she and Sylph appeared naked in a white room.
"Here no one will be able to hear us, let's those duplicate talk bullshit outside," Lilia said grinning.
"So what did he really offer?" Sylph asked glaring at Lilia.
"A chance to get Mystra's head," Lilia said with an evil grin.
"The goddess of magic? Cain can't do that." Sylph looked surprised, she never heard of such a thing.
"The dragons intend to use Yggdrasil to enter heaven and slay the gods. Cain offered a reverse card, magic to pull the essence of a god to the mortal world." Lilia grinned.
"Is that even possible?"
"He did give me the formula, I would say the equivalent to a twelfth-tier spell if those existed. It will pull Mystra out of heaven, suck her power and charge himself with it for a few moments. In that time Mystra would be weakened and in the mortal world, I can kill and take her place." Lilia created a chair to sit on.
"Said what he intends on doing with her power?" Sylph asked.
"No, and I don't care. I approve of the formula and I'm happy someone else besides me is going to activate it. Tarrasque blood is going to be used to give his body enough endurance to handle the stress for a couple of seconds."
"When do you intend to do it?" Sylph asked with a worried face.
"Told you, a couple of months, not until I find a safe way to do it," Lilia replied. She flicked her fingers and they returned to the outer world.
"I'm going to take a bath, care to join?" Said Lilia.
"Yeah, why not," Sylph replied and they headed toward the royal bath.
"Highness Sylph, how many do you need with you?" A maid standing at the bath door asked with a deep bow.
Sylph thought about it. "Twenty maids, I'm getting in with Lilia. And have them bring us a drink."
…Inside the bath, Sylph rested in the hot water. Two maids massaging her shoulders. Lilia was floating in the water like a corpse.
"Your wrinkles are showing up," Sylph said looking at Lilia.
"Yeah, I look like a forty-year-old woman that isn't taller than five feet, my elf blood isn't helping that much keeping me looking young," Lilia replied.
"Surprisingly honest, couldn't use magic to look younger?" Sylph asked. In her head, she was thinking of a way to preserve Cain's young look.
"I can, and I usually do but not too much. I do make sure everyone who sees me knows I'm old. If I used it too much I might look like a kid, that's annoying unless I want to scare someone." Lilia replied.
"What did you use it for last time? Sneak up in some place?" Sylph asked.
"There was this devil who grants alchemy knowledge if offered years of a person's life. Made a deal that I will give him all my years before reaching thirty years old. I made myself look like a kid to make him think he got a deal but in reality, he was getting nothing." Lilia said with a smile.
"You tricked a devil? To what purpose?" Sylph stretched her legs for the maids to massage them.
"One of your maids came to my room one night. She begged me to give her a cure for a rare illness. Heard of mind separation?" Lilia said.
"When someone starts acting as if he's two?"
"Yeah. That maid didn't seem to understand that I didn't have a cure, so I had to go find one for her. With some witchcraft, I knew that the devil had what I wanted."
All the maids here knew that Lilia was a mage, a wizard, a witch, and a scholar. Anything mystical she has dabbled in, be it necromancy or devil summoning. At some point, Lilia even picked a random elvish citizen to use in her experiments and no one dared argue with her.
"Wonder what Cain is doing now?" Sylph wondered looking up.
"Probably breathing…" Lilia started laughing.