Chapter 337: Chapter 2.55

We had lots and lots of fun with these cute doggos who didn’t behave typically for their species at all. For example as I told them to sit, they kept snarling at me which was quite rude in my humble opinion.

But sadly, we didn’t have much time to spent with them as we still had to go through each and every step we needed to take later.

But even that went by rather quickly with a healthy dose of peppermint tea and so, Tom and I soon found ourselves inside a carriage which was on its way to the central royal district. Not to meet the king, or the one and only true pope, the ruler of all the faiths, but rather to see the pope of death himself.

Apparently, he wasn’t exactly keen on going out of the royal district at all, so we sadly had to go to him. But at least we were invited inside, so nobody took any issue with us simply strolling inside with our masks on and being covered from head to toe.

The guards we met were already informed about our presence and guided us deep underground until we arrived at the floor which was reserved soley for Aska’s faith which became pretty obvious rather early due to all the paintings of how purgatory apparently looked like. I had to admit, pools of lava would be quite the improvement to the atmosphere of that place even though it didn’t fit well with the general asthetic of being all dark and gloomy.

But the skulls certainly fitted in that place so their perception wasn‘t entirely false. Even the door knob of the door we were supposed to go through was a miniature skull which was a bit over the top though.

After a priest knocked onto the door a few times, we were allowed entry by a deep, hoarse voice.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, your holiness.” Tom said and bowed deeply as we were in the middle of the room. There wasn’t much inside except more paintings of purgatory and a wide mahagoni desk. Behind said desk sat the pope of death, a rather tall and skinny figure who didn’t look that healthy. “Please do not mind my company. He is rather … unaccustomed to others.” Tom said in regards to my actions which weren’t that many to be honest. I just stood there a bit behind Tom without bowing or greeting the pope. I was disrespectful, but that was part of the play to paint a very specific picture of us.

“I have seen worse.” Being the pope of an organisation so intertwined with crime, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “I presume the priestess made contact with you as well?”

If he meant the whore who was cosplaying as a priestess of chaos, then yes, we were in contact with her. Surprisingly it wasn’t difficult to get her into said position as one of their bishops readily agreed after we promised to cause a bit of mayhem beneficial to his church. Afterwards, it wasn’t very difficult to get in contact with the pope of death, especially because we had such a tempting offer to make.

“Your holiness, if I may ask, why do you desire the philosopher’s stone?” Tom asked and immediately started our negotiations.

“You are not the first one to ask me, but so far, you are the most promising one. But still, I can only give you the answer I gave to that mage as well: I want to see my god.“ He was certainly a feverish follower, no doubt about that. “And if I can visit the land of the dead in the process, that’s even better.“ I smiled happily behind my mask as the whore had indeed prepared everything.

Claiming that the philosopher’s stone which gained a lot of popularity in the last hundred years was in purgatory sounded incredibly crazy, but made sense in his position. Even though it wasn’t common knowledge that purgatory was also a prison, he should know it. And extrapolating from there, it would make sense to secure valuables there as well.

The issue was though that there were incidents of children returning from the land of the dead after falling into a well for example, but nobody knew how to get there for real, nor why only children managed to return.

And there, I came into play as the necromancer who managed to find the gates of purgatory, the only place connected to all the worlds there were. The only issue was that I couldn’t prove it easily. But in all honesty, I didn’t need to prove anything. I just needed him to belief and going purely by his profession that was something he was capable off.

Grabbing into one of my few pockets in this pitch black mantle, I retrieved a blue stone and carefully placed it onto his desk. With interest, he stared at the stone but didn’t dare to touch it yet.

“This is a soul shard. I was told souls are damaged when their host dies. They aren’t able to heal these wounds themselves, so purgatory helps out a little. This shard is the leftover energy of the process to make reincarnate souls once again. Souls start with a lot of energy when they enter purgatory because they had grown over time. Said energy is stripped from them and used for all kinds of processes, including to heal the souls. But still, there is more than enough left over and is usually condensed into these shards to store. You are looking at enough energy to obliterate this whole city … provided you know how to use it.” Tom knew exactly how to bullshit around successfully. His little speech was based on so many half truths that I could be the one who wrote it. It was true that souls grew over time which could also be measured by the amount of mana one could draw at a time, and that that excess energy was used in purgatory as well.

That this energy could be stored in any way, or used in any other place except purgatory was debatable though. Fundamentally, we were talking about using part of a soul as a source of energy which wasn’t exactly possible outside purgatory. Once part of the soul is spilt off, it instantly turns into pure energy which is fine in purgatory but not in any other place. Even I wouldn’t try to break a soul apart because the unstable energy could very well erase the whole city from existence. Not a fun endeavour.

Transferring even the slightest bit of energy out of purgatory was also not something one should do because it would only lead to the same result. An uncontrollable catastrophe.

“So that stone … why can’t I feel anything from it?” The answer to the pope’s question was rather simple. Because it was a normal stone we found in a treasure chamber.

“Are you capable of feeling souls, your holiness?” Tom asked and with that, we both knew we had the pope in our grasp.

“Where is the entry to purgatory?” Everywhere and nowhere but wasn’t something we could tell him that easily. Instead, we chose a more or less believable answer to this question.

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“It is quite the common phenomenon that children who go missing and return with only a few, hazy memories start out their journey near wells. It is not the water working as a gateway though, it is the process of falling that helps. It isn’t called falling through reality for nothing. That is all I can tell you at this point.” Tom explained apogoleptically. The pope didn’t seem to mine much though.

“When we find the stone, I get one wish, you get one and the necromancer has all the rights to the stone afterwards, is that correct?“ That would only be fair, wouldn’t it? One could wish for whatever with such a strong artefact after all.

“It is.” Tom stated warily.

“Then what do you need me for?” The pope asked and smiled bitterly. Truly, thus far there really wasn’t any reason for us to take him along, but we had already thought about one.

“The last time he was in purgatory, he couldn’t stay longer than three seconds. Usually a living soul is thrown out quickly, but we assume that this isn’t the case for persons who have a strong connection to purgatory. And by strong, I mean an even stronger one than he possesses.” Tom explained and pointed towards me in the end.

“Hmm …” We had already given him a lot of sweet bait already, and yet he still wasn’t entirely convinced.

“We are starting tomorrow at dawn at the northernmost gate. It is a one week trip for three, so it is either you alone with us, or nobody. And we also cannot wait too long as our time window is rapidly closing.” Tom said, doing what every salesman had in their bones. First, praising the wares, and then putting pressure on the buyer through a time limit for example.

I didn’t know if it had worked at that time because he was still undecided as we left shortly afterwards. In any case, we already had another plan prepared in case the pope decided against using the opportunity that presented itself in front of him.

 

He was pressured thanks to being denied any access to higher positions within the whole church. Thus, it es very likely he would accept our proposal, in particular because meeting a god was honorable enough to force the pope of all the churches to reconsider their decision.

 

“That went rather well.” Tom mumbled on our way back to the carriage. There was nobody around us a this point but I still didn’t answer verbally and just nodded. Being found out as a woman could ruin our chances because my gender certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of a necromancer.

 

Only as we were inside the carriage already a few hundred metres away from the tallest cathedral in the kingdom did I speak up.

“Whoa, not being able to speak is seriously disgusting. How does your wife even do that?” I asked amused.

“She can speak?” Tom said a bit confused by the sudden change in topic.

“Really? I thought we were all hearing her grunting and oinking and just guess what she wanted to say…” I mumbled and looked out of the dark window exactly as we passed the royal gate.

“… why do you two dislike each other so much?” Tom asked for the first time in centuries.

“Have you ever noticed she isn’t particularly fond of violence? Or death? Or if I bite her? Or do anything she doesn’t want me to with her?” I asked and remembered the times where she rejected my approaches one by one.

“Well, you have to respect her boundaries.” Tom said while frowning. He must have known that I rarely respected anyone’s boundaries, especially not if said person wasn’t exactly important.

“Hmm.” I didn’t answer his statement at all, mostly because I couldn’t reason with myself why we disliked each other. Was it because she didn’t want to join in on my many kinks? Maybe because I didn’t like to share? That wasn’t it either in this case. Maybe we were at the point where we were disliking each other simply for the sake of it. And I had to admit, it was kind of fun verbally abusing her.  

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