Sylver Seeker

Sylver kept the apple in a sealed wooden box he had made. He doubted something created by an enthusiastic spirit would get crushed by accident, but it would be stupid to take that chance.

It was an apple after all. A fruit that was meant to be sliced and served.

Without access to the Cat’s information gathering services, Sylver didn’t have the faintest clue as to how to approach this situation. He had expected some help from the witches or the spirit, but both seemed content to let Sylver figure everything out on his own.

His current “plan” was to walk up to the emperor, and simply ask him if this apple tasted like cherries. As stupid as it sounded, this was a tactic that had worked a couple of times. If anything, it worked more often than it had any right to.

Other ideas required finding someone close to the emperor that held a grudge, but that idea fell flat when Sylver considered the chances of someone of such a high position being anywhere near the Red Ring.

Sylver spent their entire walk from the swamp to the Blue Rat sect, trying to figure out a way to have a fragment of the apple end up in the emperor’s mouth.

Xalibur did mention that “Sylvar Senary the friendly necromancer” would be invited into the emperor’s court, but the emperor had died since then, and Sylver wasn’t sure how the current one felt.

Even if he was invited to see the emperor, would being the equivalent of a minor celebrity be enough for the emperor to trust a fruit Sylver gave him? Knowing Sylver’s luck, the current emperor had a fucking allergy to all red fruits.

On the other hand, if Sylver had a full day where the emperor was unconscious, he could end this “adventure” in a couple of minutes.

Or rather, he could have, if Faust was still around to help him. It wasn’t as if the emperor didn’t have guards.

Sylver could ask Lola to send him some S rank adventurer parties, ones that would be comfortable with toppling a rather large government and wouldn’t tell anyone afterward.

If they do tell someone, who gives a shit? No one is going to believe them, and even if they do, so what?

The high king might even give us all a medal for it.

Sylver could play it straight. “I have a mythical fruit that will grant those that consume it unimaginable power!” Sylver would say, while the skies thundered dramatically in the background.

I could have a high-ranking noble come here, and have them present the fruit to the emperor as a gift?

Then what? Watch the nobles get executed when the emperor falls into a coma like sleep?

Have them present the fruit, and then get them out of the country before the curse kicks in?

Not a bad idea, but would the emperor even recognize foreign nobles as being important enough to accept a gift from them, without checking it for poison?

If Faust was here, he could have asked the cultivator if he was able to sense anything malicious inside the apple but calling Faust back wasn’t an option.

I should have asked the spirit to make it look gold. Sylver thought bitterly.

But Sylver doubted the spirit would go for it, golden apples were a whole other story, completely separate from the shiny red apple. If he had asked for a fruit to grant him power, then it would have been gold.

Similar to gods, stories gained strength from the people who believed in them.

Sylver had known a handful of mages that tried to increase their power by having bards sing songs about their great deeds, but as they had later theorized, there’s a difference between a story that forms naturally and one that is forced to form.

Because it was a type of sorcery.

As far as Sylver was concerned at least. Bards were usually sorcerers, in all his years Sylver had only met a handful that could be classified as mages, the rest all used their magic without being fully aware of it.

The magic fae and spirits used was unreliable, and as Sylver was being shown for the 100th time, inconvenient.

On the bright side, he did get the cursed apple for free. The spirit was so excited at the mere prospect of participating in the downfall of a powerful figure, that it didn’t even try to haggle for Sylver's gold, gems, or anything.

But it wasn’t as if the apple came without any restrictions. The fruit had to be “eaten,” which meant shoving it down the emperor’s throat wasn’t an option.

Sylver had learned from past experiences, that while locking someone up and starving them until they ate the cursed food was an option, dehydrating them until they drank from a specific cup wasn’t.

Spirit magic didn’t adhere to any concrete rules and tended to function when it “felt like it,” to quote the Ibis’ head of sorcery.

“Would you like to come inside for some tea?” Tarragon asked, as Sylver was pulled away from his thoughts, and focused on the elf.

They were outside the Blue Rat sect’s gates, and the guards had already opened one of the doors.

Come to think of it, there is one person who might be able to help me.

“I’d be delighted,” Sylver said, as Tarragon gestured for him to follow, as Anise excused himself and left the two men alone.

***

Rosa didn’t so much as flinch as Sylver suddenly appeared next to her. Sylver had waited until she was done changing before he used [Fog Form] to enter her room.

“What do you want?” Rosa asked under her breath. The room was tiny, with just enough space for a bed, and a small square chest that doubled as a seat.

“I need to talk to you. We can talk here, but I think we would both prefer to talk somewhere else,” Sylver whispered back.

Rosa buried her face into her pillow for a moment, and Sylver had to lean back as she tried to heal her tiredness away.

“Is it urgent?” Rosa asked.

“It is,” Sylver said.

He might be called to rescue Fobur Plateforged at any minute, and aside from that, he was also worried that Owl might decide to check up on the box Anastasia had been in.

“Tell Tarr someone in your sect was poisoned and you need a [Healer],” Rosa said, as Sylver nodded, and disappeared.

***

The woman elf had dark bags under her eyes, and her ears were drooping so much that she almost looked like a pale dark elf. The guards standing near the doors opened them as Sylver turned around and walked inside Faust’s sect, and Rosa followed behind him.

Rosa kept her head and hood down as she walked down the long stone path and was careful not to let the staff she was carrying tap against the ground as she walked.

As Sylver gestured for her to enter the room he had enchanted, he saw the woman elf freeze. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in glowing sigils that were very clearly drawn in blood.

She looked up and locked eyes with Sylver, and he could tell she was on the cusp of making a comment, but thankfully for both of them, she decided against it and walked inside. As Sylver shut the door behind him, the sigils flickered with yellow-tinged light, as the glass jar in the middle of the room filled with a dark brown liquid began to bubble and froth.

“This is vile,” Rosa said to an unconcerned Sylver.

“But effective,” Sylver countered, as he gestured around the empty room. “Do wait a bit before speaking about anything you wouldn’t want someone to overhear.”

It wasn’t actually a soundproof enchantment but given Rosa’s reaction, he didn’t feel like explaining that it was meant to boil people’s blood. Anyone who wasn’t meant to be in this room would feel a faint burning in their fingertips, followed by steaming blood exploding out of their eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and every other conceivable orifice.

He learned this particular spell, or curse, depending on who you ask, from the same man who taught him how to create blue fire using water. The man in question used this “spell” to make an oven that cooked meat in seconds, whereas Sylver used it to create a section in his home that no one but him, and some bloodless undead, could enter.

He rarely used it because of how much of a mess it made, but just like with all dark magic, the more specific the curse, the harder it was to block. The undetectable people listening in would need the equivalent of 6th tier magic to not get their blood boiled.

“You’re here to ask the emperor for a safe place to grow your Eldar sapling into a full tree,” Sylver said, as Rosa did her best to not react, but failed spectacularly. Her wooden staff made a groaning sound from how hard she gripped it; the muscles of her jaw threatened to cut their way out of her face.

“My shades went through everyone’s things while I had tea with Tarragon. And I thought to myself, “what would healers need with a metric ton of mana probing equipment?” Then I thought, “isn’t a dormant volcano a perfect spot to grow an Eldar tree?” Then I remembered that you’re not part of the Council, and therefore any place you settled down, would need to be able to withstand the Council attacking it,” Sylver explained, as Rosa just stared at him with her now bloodshot eyes.

The part he didn’t mention was the part where he didn’t have anything to do while he waited for Rosa to show up and decided to try to use [Greater Greenhouse] perk to grow himself a tiny Eldar tree sample.

He then decided to check if it was pure enough to track the Council’s Eldar tree and instead discovered that there was an Eldar tree within walking distance.

Rosa was hiding the sapling somewhere very close by, north of the Schlagen mountains.

Sylver and the woman elf spent about a minute looking at one another. Rosa’s eyes initially darted all over the place, searching for an exit, but she realized the room they were standing in was exactly as sinister as it initially appeared.

Sylver hadn’t set it up with that in mind, but as Rosa’s mana began to move towards her head and chest, he was glad for it. She might have been pretending to be a professional [Healer] but the fact that she blended in so well with the others meant Sylver wasn’t completely safe.

“How do you know about Gorynych?” Sylver asked, and Rosa looked like she was about to have a heart attack. The fact that he felt her use her healing magic on herself only made him more worried.

“I need to sit down,” Rosa said, as Sylver tapped his foot and extended his shadow towards the elf woman. She didn’t so much sit down, as much as she slumped into the pitch-black chair.

Sylver continued standing where he was, while Rosa took long, slow, deep, breaths, while she held one hand against her chest.

She looked like she was about to say something, but she instead lowered her face into her hands. At first Rosa took another deep breath, but it was very shaky, and rightfully so given that she started sobbing immediately after.

Sylver remained where he was and searched through his [Bound Bones] storage for something resembling a handkerchief. The closest he found was a pillowcase, but thankfully Rosa stopped crying before Sylver had a chance to pull the large piece of cloth out.

She used the sleeves of her robe to wipe her tears, and after a couple of slow deep breaths, her face stopped tensing, and the redness on her cheeks and eyes began to subside.

“Why me?” Rosa said to herself. “6 generations worth of effort, and I have to be the one where it all goes wrong. My grandfather died for this, for the first time the finish line is in sight, and I’ve ruined everything,” Rosa said in an indifferent tone that worried Sylver even more than the crying had.

Sylver waited for a while, mostly because he couldn’t figure out what to say, and-

“Just talk to him,” Ria said, as she poked a tendril out of Sylver’s back, and then pulled the rest of herself out of Sylver’s robe. “If there’s one person in this world that can solve any problem, it’s him,” Ria said, as Rosa lifted her head to look at the black and gold girl-shaped liquid metal woman.

“What is this?” Rosa asked with a vague gesture towards Ria’s floating body.

“This is Ria… She’s a golem…” Sylver said awkwardly.

“Talk to him. He likes you, I’ve seen how he acts to people he doesn’t like, just tell him what’s going on,” Ria almost begged, as Rosa continued staring at her golden mask of a face.

Ria’s voice didn’t sound normal, the pitch was lower than usual, and her tone felt… motherly? Was she mimicking someone?

“You’re not with the Council?” Rosa asked as she continued to calm down.

“I’m not,” Sylver answered simply, as Rosa leaned her head back, and fanned her bloodshot eyes with her hands.

There was a fair amount of snot clinging to her right sleeve, and apparently she had been wearing makeup because there were smudges of it on her palms.

Has she been holding this in since I spoke to her in the carriage?

“I don’t know what to do. I just-I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Rosa said, as she stopped trying to sit properly, and simply slumped against the back part of Sylver’s shadow.

He had to adjust the angle of her seat, so she didn’t just slide off it.

“Tell me the whole story, Rosa. Take all the time you need,” Sylver said, as he sat down opposite her.

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