Chapter 68 – The First Island Of Greybone

Four hours passed. The Desert Rose drew near the first island of the Greybone chain. It first appeared as a black line on the horizon and quickly grew thicker.

Darya got herself readied with what she had left. She had a new dress, a new telescope, and the remaining gauntlet. She regretted not buying two of everything when she was in Belkian. 

Both her manacers with their insane modified colliders were at the bottom of the trench.

Should be careful where I leave them. Now, fish will be dying at random for years to come whenever they swim straight into invisible underwater blades.

She could also use Nerima and master Lam to locate them, but she really didn’t want to go back to that horrid trench again. The only way she would’ve cared was if she dropped those dangerous weapons in a sea of belugas. The trench was full of monsters that she already wanted dead. Some of them would die in the most confusing way possible for thousands of years, the human equivalent of getting sliced in half on the way to buy groceries.

Losing Manacers had also given her a new perspective on what she needed as weapons. The two she lost were actually wasteful to use as colliders. She wasn’t actually casting any spells through them. They were just blunt tools to give structure to the collider she really needed. She could’ve done the exact same thing with a random stick. Actually, she could’ve even stretched the collider of a living fish.

Fominel had the perfect solution prepared for her in under thirty seconds. He grabbed two brooms and cut the handles into four pieces each. He sharpened all of them with diagonal cuts. Darya had them hanging from her waist now. 

Disposable Rods for Crazy Colliders. DRCCs. That sounded stupid, so she just called them what they really were: Sticks. An archmage with a bunch of sticks. 

Sarka was beyond excited to see this new ‘arcane stick magics’ in action. Neither he nor anyone else knew what colliders were. Darya didn’t want to explain it either. 

She also wanted to solve her other major problem that she identified during the last battle. Basically, she needed entities to hop between. If there were no entities, her mobility was done for.

Many solutions were proposed. 

Seris suggested taming a flock of birds. A pigeon army. Nerima suggested hatching an army of wisps like Enta. That would turn the Desert Rose into a daycare. Fominel suggested unleashing a biblical locust swarm over the battlefield. Master Lam suggested hot air balloons. Sarka, in his infinite wisdom, proposed an elaborate matrix of dragons. He seemed to think fire-breathing carnivores could be hired like a crew and hosted on a wooden ship. 

No one had a good idea. 

Only Lurim could command a bunch of entities, but his belugas could only be in the water. He had done very well for a toddler, even saved her from the trench on his own, but Darya knew any complex strategy wasn’t going to work with a three-year-old. It was better left up to how he did things normally. She told Nerima what to look for, and she told Lurim to listen to his sister. He nodded eagerly.  

At the end of all preparations, everyone was ready to do their part. They reached the separation point. Darya was to go ahead with Nerima and Lurim. They were Dreagan bait this time, with the additional goal of extracting Emil. 

Darya got into a boat after Lurim and Nerima leapt off into the water. She was quickly carried to the middle of a Beluga pod. After making sure Darya had a proper rope harness to cling onto, they took off in a straight line to the horizon. 

The first island grew larger and larger. The faint fog cleared, giving them a good look at it. The island was larger than it looked from a distance. It was longer on one diagonal side, arranged almost like a rectangle. 

It had a mountain range with two peaks. The first peak was smooth, with the ruins of an old castle on top. The second peak pierced the sky almost as sharp as an antenna. As they drew closer, that silhouette started making more sense. There was a tall monument on the very top. It looked like an oversized lightning conductor.

The pod slowed down, transitioning into their usual spiral pattern while flashing their mana pulses and cooing at each other. Nerima splashed out of the water with Lurim. 

“We’re here. What’s next, princess? Can you see the Dreagan from here?” 

“Not sure about that,” Darya said, taking out her telescope. It was supposed to be a black dot in the sky. 

She probed the gaps between the pale gray clouds. It was pointless anyway. She wasn’t going to spot it that easily. 

“Nothing from here. I think we should just go for Emil. If that thing attacks, we’ll deal with it.” 

“Sounds good, princess!” Sarka agreed. “I have no clue how a Dreagan can fly high enough to make it difficult to spot.” 

Well, It’s high enough to drone-strike us from orbit. 

“This is a dilemma. If it doesn’t attack us, we have failed!” Sarka said. “Considering we were supposed to divert attention away from the ship.” 

“Got it. Our mission can’t go too smoothly. The moment we find Emil, I’ll look for that Dreagan and start the fight. There’s no need to wait for it to make up its mind.”

“What if it doesn’t want to attack at all?” Nerima asked. “We’re just starting a fight no reason.” 

“No, that’s just plain old murder. I’m going to kill the Dreagan no matter what it does or doesn’t,” Darya said with a scoff. 

Nerima nodded and dove back with Lurim. The boat zoomed towards the island. When they drew near enough to see the shore, Darya let go of the harness she was hanging on. 

[Flying Celestian]

She floated off into the winds.

[Smooth Slither]

Leaning forward, she gave it the direction. 

The island lay under her exactly as it looked from sea level. It was a rectangular strip of land with wobbly edges. She descended, flying lower to probe where Emil would be. Nerima had already described him having a bed to sleep on. 

Is it a village, or is it a hut somewhere? 

Darya saw hundreds of overgrown ruins. The island was large enough to have several settlements. The one near the castle was the most obvious. It was more of a town. There were two villages in the mountains, and at least four lining the coast. 

The place looked beyond abandoned, untouched for decades, maybe even more. She flew even lower to scan better before the weightless spell ran out. 

Nerima said the old man who was with Emil had the keys to the castle. Could he be in that town near the castle? Looked too abandoned for that. Then he must be nearby at least. 

Thinking about it further, that didn’t make any sense. If Greybone towers fell generations ago, why would someone stay close to a castle just because they had the keys? How old was this old man? Why was he alone?

It seemed as if she would need another seeing session with Nerima to narrow down the location. She flew down towards the castle to sweep the slope before heading back to the shore. 

She saw something on the way down. A wooden cabin on the grassy slope next to a large tree with twisted branches. She wasn’t sure if she saw it correctly, but there was some smoke. 

“Lucky find!” Darya muttered, circling back. 

With a closer look, it was clearly the only place that didn’t look like a ruin. She saw small fields of crops down the slope, and a well-trodden path going down that way. Another path went down the mountain, through a small forest into a ruined coastal village. 

She flew back up the slope as the weightlessness spell lifted. She landed near the crops because she saw movement. 

[Wind Step]

Flying over a patch of what looked like cabbages, she landed in a mound of soft soil, feet immediately sinking halfway in with the impact. 

I always suck at landings. 

She pulled her legs free and looked around. She had seen someone from above. 

“Greetings…” 

A shaky little voice came from behind her. She jumped, caught herself, and turned. She hadn’t even felt his presence. There were no footsteps, breathing sounds, rustling of the leaves, or anything to indicate someone was nearby. 

It was a hunched old man with a crooked walking stick. He looked nothing like what she imagined. Nerima hadn’t given her a description of what he was supposed to look like.

Nerima had gotten the ‘old man’ part right. This person was very old.  The merfolk part was a surprise. The old man had glowing turquoise eyes similar to Lurim. He didn’t have as many iridescent scales, but what he had was the worst surprise of all. 

The old man’s limbs were covered with something that Darya was more than familiar with. 

Sarka asked the question before she could even open her mouth. 

“Greetings, old master. I can’t help but notice all four of your limbs are blackened. Were you created by a Dreagan?” 

“That can’t be right…” The old man leaned in, squinting at her through two wrinkled slits. “Such a rough voice for a beautiful woman…?”