Chapter 179: Ch155-Exposition Preposition

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Ch155-Exposition Preposition

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“I would like to ask a couple of questions,” Sylver said politely, as he gestured for Zelvash to sit down.

“I’m sure you do,” Zelvash answered, as he tucked his robe underneath his back and sat down onto the “chair” Sylver had created out of ice and a thin layer of [Necrotic Mutilation] so it didn’t freeze anything. 

“I’m also going to warn you that if you at any point try to answer any of my questions in any manner that I wouldn’t consider honest, and to the point, I’m going to punch you in the face,” Sylver added, as Zelvash froze while he adjusted himself in his seat, but continued to make himself comfortable after barely a moment.

“Could you elaborate?” Zelvash asked, after a couple of seconds had passed.

“If I ask you “what do you know about me,” and you answer “oh, we know quite a lot,” I’m going to punch you hard enough to make at least 3 teeth fall out. Pretend that this is an interrogation if that will help you,” Sylver offered, even as he heard, and felt, the various Serpents that lined the walls adjust their stance, and ever so slightly elongate their claws.

He wasn’t scared of them, alright, he was a little scared of them, but now that Sylver knew that there were people inside, there wasn’t a whole lot they would be able to do to him, without him dealing way more damage to them in return.

And with all the water swirling below them, Sylver at the very least had a great way to escape. They were back in that metallic spherical room that Sylver had used to meet with Zelvash the day prior, and sat around in complete darkness, on a mesh flooring that split the sphere into two halves.

Not that it would get to that point, Zelvash had a look in his eye that Sylver knew all too well.

It was the “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to save my people,” look. Which Sylver normally respected to the point he was politer than usual. 

But Zelvash was at that age where people tended to consider themselves “wise” and considered every syllable out of their mouth a wondrous gift of knowledge and filled with teachings.

So to maintain his sanity, and whatever working relationship they may have, Sylver had to make sure Zelvash didn’t accidentally forget who he was talking to, and tried to answer a yes or no question with a question, riddle, or some sort of saying.

The truth of the matter was that Zelvash didn’t look that old, but from the way he moved, to the way his mana was tightly wound around his skin and joints, Sylver could tell this dark elf was easily in his 200s.

Which would normally be barely a teenager in Eira, but in this realm, apparently dark elves aged much faster.

“Who do you think I am?” Sylver asked after a brief moment to gather his thoughts.

Zelvash was quiet for a good 30 seconds before he answered in a calm and relaxed manner.

“You are either a descendant of the dark elf that saved us, or you are a member of her group,” Zelvash said.

“Why do you think that?” Sylver asked, with a slight nod of approval.

Once again, Zelvash stopped to think about it. Clearly, he wasn’t used to having to pick and choose his words, so as not to babble.

“One of my perks allows me to see “potential” futures. Futures that are so improbable that they are more fantasies than possibilities. The day you entered the Garden, quite literally everything changed. With that, we simply checked who had entered the Garden, and kept watch over them,” Zelvash explained.

“And when one of your Serpents attacked me and refused to talk?” Sylver asked, with a shrug towards one of the men standing around while the pitch-black fire slowly flowed its way up their bodies.

“I had not told everyone what I saw. Partially because I did not believe it. Initially, I thought the Garden had simply figured out a way to interfere with my predictions. But mostly because as much as the “good” futures had become more likely, so did the “bad” ones. I decided to wait and see what you would do,” Zelvash explained.

Sylver lifted his hand, which was white from how hard it was clutching the small wooden box that contained Nyx’s miniaturized grimoires.

“Do you have anything else like this? A staff, a book, a bag, a ring, circlet, bracelet, chain, key, crystal sphere, is there anything else?” Sylver asked, without once blinking as he started right into Zelvash’s slightly tired eyes.

“We do not. You are not the first person we had thought would bring great change, and these cards were always used as a test,” Zelvash said with a shrug.

“The box of cards. Where did it come from?” Sylver asked.

Again, Zelvash gave himself a moment to compose himself and organize his thoughts and words.

“I don’t know. It has always been with us. I believe that the woman who saved us gave it to us. The cards have a special property of always returning to their box. If at any point I felt that you weren’t trustworthy, I would have simply asked the box to bring the card back, and it would have disappeared from your person and would have reappeared back inside the box,” Zelvash explained, as Sylver looked down at the small box in his hands, and wasn’t the least bit surprised.

As far as magical technology went, this box was almost prehistoric. There were roughly 100 of them in the Ibis, but quite literally no one ever used them. Mages that had enough authority to request one of the boxes almost always had one way or another of storing their belongings.

Some used rings, some used bracelets, or necklaces, most simply had a mage capable of using spatial manipulation magic to enchant their wand, or staff, or what have you. Sylver had a couple of shades that were made specifically to store things, and had gifted a couple to Nyx that she used, and had disappeared with.

There wasn’t an explanation for the presence of this box that Sylver liked.

Because the one that made the most sense was that Nyx had come here, had taken an apprentice, but died before she had managed to teach him everything he needed to know. Trapped, alone, and feeling responsible, the apprentice forged words that Nyx’s famous apprentice Lich would recognize, and hoped that one day he would end up in this realm, and would save it.

Sylver wouldn’t hold it against Nyx if she took another apprentice…

He never actually finished his apprenticeship, technically speaking, but there was little he could do about that now.

Luckily for Sylver, he had made the conscious decision not to focus too hard on the box, and grimoires, and therefore wasn’t going to think or worry about Nyx, and her potential apprentice.

“When I forced my way inside your ship… Were you tracking me? Is that why you were so close to us?” Sylver asked, after having spent several seconds with his eyes closed, while he stuffed feelings he didn’t have time for back into their fragile glass bottle.

“We were, yes. But only to observe, you were the one that ran straight to us. You are… If my perk is to be believed you have no future. Even when I grabbed your hand, it was like staring into an abyss. There was no past, no present, and no future. Just… nothing,” Zelvash said with a slightly faraway voice that teetered on the edge of getting punched in the face. 

He sat up straighter as Sylver lightly glared at him.

“I’d like to know what exactly is going on between your group and the Garden,” Sylver asked, as he crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back in his ice and dark green leather-like seat.

Zelvash answered quite quickly this time as if he had practiced.

“We’re at war. They can’t kill us; we can’t kill them. Every time the Dark Year arrives, we do as much damage as we possibly can, and while they’re busy with repairs, we replace their people, plant bugs, and try to sabotage their equipment,” Zelvash explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Why can’t you kill them?” Sylver asked.

Zelvash gestured around himself, towards the Serpents that stood motionless against the wall.

“The armor is useless under direct sunlight. They store it away and use it to power lamps and lasers that make getting past the Trunk impossible for us. There’s also a… limit to how long one of ours can wear the armor. It operates using pure life force, after less than 2 years of use, every single person in this room will be dead,” Zelvash explained.

Sylver had guessed as much, it wasn’t exactly the most graceful use of life energy, but with how much dark energy they had in their bodies, it would be extremely effective. In a way, it was almost brilliant.

They used their weakness to their advantage.

“Why can’t they kill you?” Sylver asked, and could see a trace of a spark light up in Zelvash’s eyes.

“They told you about the other side of the world. A superheated boiling ocean, where no one and nothing can possibly exist, because of a second sun that burns hundreds of times hotter than the one on this side?” Zelvash asked.

“Yes,” Sylver answered.

“There’s no second sun. The water boils because of cracks below the water. The clouds of steam rise far into the sky because of the force and bend light. The result is a reflection of a magnified and brighter sun,” Zelvash explained, as Sylver just cocked his head at him.

“Is it only light being bent?” Sylver asked. 

He saw a hint of a smile play at the corner of Zelvash’s mouth, but the man forced it down to remain calm and collected.

“Yes. It goes from boiling, to rock-solid ice, to impossibly hot steam, in a seemingly random cycle that makes traversing the surrounding area extremely dangerous. A trick of pressure and magic,” Zelvash with barely a flicker in his voice.

The positive energy is likely getting filtered out somehow… The dungeon was filled to the brim with negative energy. If it’s stored underground, and not just beneath ice, it’s likely that the dungeon itself acted like a sponge or straw, and was the reason for the negative energy around it…

Sylver just looked at Zelvash for a moment, and asked a question that he couldn’t remember the last he had bothered with.

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“I know this is likely a stupid thing to ask… But have you tried negotiating with them? Talking things out with the Garden? Truce, alliance, non-aggression agreement, some sort of peaceful surrender? What does the Garden want anyway?” Sylver asked with as gentle and polite of a tone as he could manage.

Zelvash’s face didn’t show it, but his voice was as cold as the ice he was sitting on.

“All they want, is our complete, and total, annihilation. And once we and our children have all starved and froze to death, they will start using some sort of magical device called Eden’s Garden. It will turn this never-ending tundra into lush forests, deserts, beaches, mountains, lakes, and rivers. They could bring this world back to life today, if they wanted to,” Zelvash explained, with his age once again leaking into his voice.

Sylver felt Ria tighten around his arm so hard, she managed to bruise a perfect ring into his skin. Sylver didn’t flinch and refrained from reaching up to rub his arm, as he simply numbed it and left it alone.

“Why not just poison the water? Or drop an explosive down into the water? They have ships that can fly,” Sylver asked, as he pretended to rub his chin, but instead, used the movement to flex his bicep to get Ria to loosen up.

“They already poisoned the water. And they tried explosives, but we’re protected by a wall of pressurized water. We “live” surrounded by a giant dome of steam spewing from a circular crack in the ground. And while their technology as a whole is far more advanced than ours, they haven’t been able to build a submarine capable of passing through our liquid shield,” Zelvash explained and seemed to be surprised at the words leaving his mouth.

“Because you’ve been sabotaging their efforts,” Sylver asked. 

Zelvash shook his head. He reached into his robe’s front and pulled out a small metallic rectangle.

“Because even we can’t pass through it. The only way in is through an impossibly complicated and barely functional door. Each key allows one person entrance. And more importantly, to remain inside, you need to have a key on you,” Zelvash explained, as he tucked the metallic rectangle back into his robe.

“What happens if you don’t have one when you’re inside?” Sylver asked.

“The ancient mechanism activates, and starts slowly allowing boiling hot water inside. In my lifetime, I’ve seen it happen 4 times. Each time one of our women couldn’t do what was necessary and put the whole colony in danger,” Zelvash explained, without so much as a flicker in his voice.

“And you can’t keep the pregnant women and children on the underwater boats because they end up being poisoned despite never coming into contact with the air and water outside…” Sylver half asked half mumbled to himself.

If he had understood everything correctly, the dark elves had access to some kind of hidden vault that was saturated with negative energy. The unborn children become dark elves while still in the womb, and are too weak to handle contact with positive energy if they’re forced to leave the vault…

On Eira, they had a whole process to make sure that by the time the children reached adulthood, they were capable of handling positive energy. The process mostly involved having them eat foods with ever-increasing amounts of positive energy.

But it took a long time to get them to adapt, Nyx said it took her and her sister 25 years before they could leave their familial hole. According to her the absolute minimum time required was 14 years, but even during times of war, everyone always waited until the child was in their 20s before allowing them out.

“As you lose the keys, fewer and fewer children can be born… No wonder you were so surprised when I returned them to you… How many do you have left?” Sylver asked, and for a split second thought Zelvash was going to either lunge at him, or vomit.

Instead, he whispered the words, as if it was a curse.

“172…” Zelvash said, without allowing the words to catch in his throat.

Sylver leaned back in his seat and looked at the old dark elf.

“You need someone to handle the farming, someone to watch after the children, and similar miscellaneous tasks… That would be roughly 1 adult for every 6 potential children?” Sylver estimated while he closed his eyes and thought it over.

“4. Out of 172 available keys, only 129 are being held by children. By our best estimates, in just 300 years, the very last child will be born. Each one takes nearly 18 years to mature to a stage where they don’t immediately die from exposure, and even then 1 in 10 doesn’t survive the first month outside the colony,” Zelvash explained, as Sylver nodded along.

In a certain sense, elves were a lot like fish. They needed very specific conditions and areas to lay their eggs, and raise their young, and Sylver had personally witnessed what happened when these specific conditions were disturbed by an outside force.

Dark elves are considered bloodthirsty warmongers, and they are, but only because they have to be. When the only place you can raise a child is a hole in the ground usually filled with precious materials, you either need to have something valuable enough to buy it, or you have to be strong enough to take it.

There were some rare instances of dwarves allowing groups of dark elves to move in with them, but on account of their association with the undead, diseases, and dark magic, it was more myth than anything else. The “proof” Nyx referred to whenever she made the case for dark elves living peacefully among dwarves, was circumstantial at best.

The more likely truth was that the dwarves had no choice but to hire the dark elves as guards, and paid them in land in place of money.

Oddly enough, the location that Nyx’s text referred to, was occupied purely by dwarves by the time Sylver went there. And the supposed group of dark elves guards were gone without a trace.

Save for the sealed-up cave filled with elf bones.

It was a stretch, but it was possible Nyx had come here in an attempt to convert a realm for dark elves to live in, and had fucked it up, and caused the exact opposite to happen.

Although it didn’t feel like her.

If anything, this kind of monumental fuckup felt closer to something Sylver was capable of. The scale was a lot bigger than what he normally allowed himself to operate in, but it had that bitter taste of a Silver Lich mistake.

“If I do manage to bring your “tree of life” back to life… what will that achieve?” Sylver asked, and felt every Serpent in the room collectively hold their breath.

“It will buy us the time we need. We can win if we stop dying from old age,” Zelvash said quietly, but with a trace of a smile that reminded Sylver of someone he couldn’t put his finger on.

He just looked at Zelvash for a long time.

Sylver didn’t have any issue going against the direction this world seemed to be heading towards. If this world had gods, giving one of the forgotten nuisances the tool they need to become a world-turning threat, wouldn’t go unnoticed…

But if Sylver did this, if he helped the dark elves, he would be dooming the human-looking “high-elves.” It would be a very slow and gradual doom, but doom nonetheless.

“What is your plan if I manage to get you a fully functional “tree of life?” Total annihilation, the way they want to annihilate you?” Sylver asked.

Technically speaking, dark elves, elves, and high elves were all the same “race.” The differences were due to environmental reasons...

Initially.

After roughly 10 generations, the differences become semi-permanent.

After 20, it stops being possible for a dark elf and a high elf to procreate. For a dark elf to be as dark blue as Zelvash, Sylver had to guess he’s at the very least a 50th generation pure-blooded dark elf. And there was also-

“Yes. We have the knowledge, the tools, the magic, all we are missing is the manpower. They outnumber us almost 1,000 to 1. It won’t happen tomorrow, or a year from now, or a century, but with a working tree of life, we will eventually take this world back,” Zelvash explained, as Sylver just looked at him.

Sylver rubbed his eyes with his hands, and then went back to staring at the old dark elf.

Sylver cocked his head as the slope of Zelvash’s left ear looked oddly uneven. Almost like someone had molded it in the shape of a ruffled feather. His breath caught in his throat as he made a connection he didn’t want to make.

No…

Sylver looked Zelvash right in his beady brown-black eyes and extended his soul out towards him.

No…

Sylver felt his mind following the train tracks he was now trying to rip apart, but now it was too late.

Now that he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.

No!

Sylver leaned closer as his soul slowly poked Zelvash’s, and he could feel the colorless darkness surrounding all of them gradually turn darker and darker.

He felt something inside of him grow colder and colder as he allowed the thought to sit and fester.

Sylver knew he was only seeing what he wanted to see. After a lifetime of being a mage, his mind wasn’t just used to bending reality to suit his needs, it was a master of it.

With a deep sigh, Sylver came to a decision. 

These weren’t Nyx’s dark elves.

“I’m not going to make you a tree of life,” Sylver said calmly, as he felt every single person in the large room focus solely on him.

“You’re going to help me make a gate, and I’m going to give you a home back in my world,” Sylver said, as Zelvash’s beady eyes widened in horror, and then in a childlike, teary eyed relief.

They were Sylver’s.

Somewhere in the distance, Sylver imagined that Rose, Poppy, and Lily collectively choked on whatever it was they were drinking.

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