Chapter 1299 Nameless Things

Chapter 1299 Nameless Things

A few more days passed in blissful idleness. Sunny continued concentrating on Shadow Dance, not ready yet to learn more from Ananke — the information she had shared with them was already vexing enough, and he was struggling to parse through all of its many implications. He also resumed his habit of studying the weave of the Estuary Key, even though it still remained a complete mystery to him.

After hesitating for a while, Sunny turned to the old woman for help, but there was no result. Although she was a priestess of the Nightmare Spell and a follower of the Demon of Fate, she was not a weaver herself. Sunny knew more about Weaver's sorcery than Ananke did.

...Which was not to say that she did not know anything about sorcery at all. After spending several days in the ketch, Sunny and Nephis noticed two strange things about the swift vessel and its owner. The first one concerned the ketch itself. Its sails were always full of wind, pushing the boat across the shining surface of the Great River with enviable speed. Which was not too strange in and of itself, if not for the fact that this speed was too constant and stable. It also did not seem as though the direction and strength of the wind ever changed — or rather, they never changed around the ketch. They did, however, change some distance away from it, creating an eerie situation where the waters where the wooden sailboat passed were different from the rest of the world. Not only that, but Ananke also never manipulated the sails in any way to help them catch the wind. And nothing ever attacked them. Both Sunny and Nephis knew, of course, that the ketch was not a mundane boat. It was obviously enchanted in some way, they just did not know how. There were no runes carved into its surface and no sophisticated runic patterns like on the Chain Breaker. There was no spellweave hidden within the old wood either. Updated from n0velb(i)n.c(o)/m

Eventually, they were defeated by curiosity and asked Ananke directly. That was how Sunny learned that, while the old woman was not a weaver, she was still a sorceress. However, the sorcery she used did not belong to the Demon of Fate, nor was it the runic sorcery created by Hope. Instead, it was the ancient sorcery upon which Hope's runic magic was based — the sorcery of Names.

Noticing their bewilderment, the old woman chuckled. "My Lord and Lady... don't look too surprised. I am not some kind of powerful Shaper. I was just taught a few simple Names and Phrases by my mother, enough to sail the Great River and provide for myself."

Sunny and Nephis were still stunned. It was not every day that they met a practitioner of an entirely new system of sorcery. In fact, Sunny had only ever met two sorcerers... himself and Noctis. Noctis had known a great deal about True Names of things and how to invoke them, but his was a more sophisticated kind of magic, which relied on inscribing the Names with runes instead of speaking them directly. Nephis had met a few more, considering that she was acquainted with the forgemasters of Clan Valor. She had told him that the members of the Valor family often received Aspects tied to crafting, which was how they were able to create powerful Memories. However, the family had accumulated plenty of knowledge of runic sorcery, as well.

The cage that Sunny and Cassie had almost died in during their imprisonment in the Night Temple was proof.

Plus, if Nephis learned these Names from Ananke, he could always ask her to teach him in the future. Sunny sighed, then forced himself to say:

"...I'll decline, for now."

His heart was in pain.

Nephis looked at him silently, then turned to Ananke and bowed slightly. "Please teach me, Grandmother."

The old woman nodded with satisfaction.

"It will be an honor, my Lady."

And that was how the first strange thing they noticed was resolved. The second, though...

The second had to do with Ananke herself.

It seemed that the further downstream they traveled, the more the old woman changed.