In the distance, a bright obelisk towered over the land.
We entered the light, so I lost my wings, and this is why we crashed…
It’s almost worrying that the creature is nowhere to be seen considering that we still exist in the real world as well… But first…
Sofia grabbed Bookie’s book form and ripped out a few pages. Bright mana mist escaped the book and transford into a cloud of about two hundred birds.
“Search for any trace of Pareth and Alith,” Sofia ordered, catching the only bird with a blurred head as it flew away with the others, “Not you, Crowie. We need you to be our translator, you understand?”
“CA CAW!” Crowie answered, wriggling out of Sofia’s grasp and jumping to her shoulder.
Good Crowie.
Since the soul links were so ssed up on the moon that Sofia had lost even her connection to Pareth at the mont, she could not follow the movents of the birds from a distance like she usually did. It was not long before several of the three-eyed spinew, Sofia’s specialized reconnaissance birds, ca back from different directions and started making bird sounds at Crowie.
“Tell us which one to follow”, Sofia told Crowie, who then pointed at one of the spinews with his wing. “Let’s go.”
Sofia grabbed Bookie and carried him as she ran after the bird, crossing several kiloters in a few seconds.
“ALITH!”
Sofia rushed to the mangled corpse splattered against a rocky hillside. Alith was almost unrecognizable. She had protected the escape orb, cradling it with both arms against her chest, but the rest of her had not been so fortunate. She had hit the stone head-first, which had left a huge hole in the hillside, and had left her without a head.
Instantly probing the corpse with her mana, Sofia let out a heavy sigh of relief. Alith’s mana heart was intact and as lively as ever.
Sofia turned around, watching the high priest co running, struggling to follow the pace. In a dash Sofia went to grab the high priest and ca back.
The high priest healed Alith without needing to be ordered to, and Sofia anxiously watched her head reform.
Alith seed to be unconscious, but her eyes suddenly opened.
“I passed out?” was the first thing she asked as she quickly stood up.
“You lost your head,” Sofia answered seriously, while Crowie jumped off of her shoulder to deal with the other birds that had followed or were just coming.
“Damn… Where is Pareth?”
“We’re searching!” Bookie answered from Sofia’s arms, sounding slightly worried.
Alith looked around, “He’ll be fine. Toughest one of us.”
“I feel like I would know if he was dead,” Sofia echoed the sentint, “but it seems he’s hard to locate… The birds found you almost instantly.”
“Were we far away from each other?”
“I landed a few kiloters in this direction…”
“What about the spider thing?”
“No signs of it.”
“That’s at least one good point,” Alith said, verifying that the escape orb was still intact, “I knew Dopple felt weaker in the light world but I never expected I’d lose to a wall…”
“CACAWW!” Crowie interrupted after exchanging bird noises with another crow, pointing at the general direction Sofia had co from initially.
Sofia and Alith exchanged a blur-faced glance and dashed in that direction without a word, Crowie and the other crow leading the way.
Pareth was the opposite of how Alith had been found, he was nothing but a head. He had rolled quite far, the montum carrying him more than a dozen of kiloters into the plains, until he had stopped in the middle of nowhere.
Despite his state as a disembodied head, Sofia could instantly tell that he was fine, if unconscious.
“That makes it the second ti he gets to enjoy the benefits of a good sleep,” Sofia comnted, softly grabbing his head off the ground and brushing the dirt and grass off of it.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Alith sighed, “I assu that ans he’s fine?”
“Yes,” Sofia answered, turning back to try to see where the high priest was, who had been left behind again.
Alith decided not to wait, and summoned six small flasks out of nowhere. “Hold him still.”
[Soul Flasks]? It was a bit of a waste for Alith to use her cooldown, but Sofia said nothing, as she was still a bit worried about Pareth despite being almost certain he was fine. She held the head from the sides, letting Alith pat its blurry face until she found and opened his mouth, in which she imdiately poured the contents of two flasks.
Pareth’s body explosively regrown from his neck, his clothes included.
“Pareth?” Sofia asked, holding him from behind.
“Brother Pareth!”
Pareth’s right hand moved. He gave soft pats to Bookie’s head.
Finally Sofia could relax.Everyone was safe.
The group exchanged a few words about the situation and the deep’s creature, but when they started to talk about what to do next, Crowie jumped into the conversation. He cawed repeatedly and pointed at another small crow.
“We get it, Crowie,” Sofia said with a nod, “After you.”
What has this crow found?
The small crow led the group to a small wooden cabin in a sparse forest. Many of Sofia’s birds had gathered here, and were looking at the cabin from the branches of the surrounding trees.
It was clearly inhabited, as so thin smoke ca from the chimney, but Sofia felt nothing from the ambient mana.
“I think I feel soone inside,” Sofia whispered, “but they have no mana.”
“Let’s not waste this opportunity to get more information.”
Alith approached and knocked on the door.
“I’m coming, yes!” a feminine voice answered from inside. Alith took a few steps back, and the door opened, revealing an avian lady in a plain dress, she had a long black beak and shiny black feathers just like a crow.
Her face isn’t blurred?
“Visitors? I did not expect that, no. This must an I was right, yes,” she mumbled to herself, “Well… Want to co in?” she asked.
“Are you not going to ask us any questions?” Sofia asked.
“You’re all way too low level to be a threat. No matter what happens next, it will be more comfortable to talk inside, yes,” the avian lady said with narrowed eyes before turning around.
Low level, avian… She’s definitely an outsider like us!
That ans she must have a scribe. Sofia tried to Identify the avian lady.
[Warrior - Lv. 400 ]
Right. This must an…
“Did you co here with Nex?” Sofia called out, stopping the avian lady in her tracks.
She looked back. “Co in. It’s an order now, yes.”
“Well, looks like we no longer have a choice,” Alith said, having likely also identified the avian.
The avian made everyone sit on a wooden bench on one side of a rectangular table, while she sat cross-legged on the opposite side.
“Nex… Did they send you?” she started with no other greetings or explanations.
“No,” Sofia confidently answered right away, disregarding the tense atmosphere the avian was trying to create.
“I guessed as much… You are too weak. If this is not a rescue mission… This confirms I have been left here for dead. I expected that, but it still stings, yes…” the avian said with a sigh. “Why are you here? Did the guardian not warn you about this place?” she questioned.
“Erredis let us in,” Sofia answered, “We’re here looking for sothing. Old writings from the Deep.”
The avian’s expression was hard to read. “That you might just find, yes. If you don’t end up like before then. I would not bet highly on your chances.”
“Then can you help us? Any information would be welco, and we could also try to help you get out of here,” Sofia offered.
The avian laughed in a series of disturbing caws. “How long has it been, outside?” she asked.
“The year is three thousa-” Sofia started to answer, the avian cutting her off.
“Three thousand fucking years?!” she shouted, the shockwave from her voice slamming Sofia in the face and blasting the four walls of the cabin away. “Leave,” she finally said with a tired voice, “I am lost, and so will you if you stay. Leave this moon. And be wary of the invisible stalkers. One touch and you’ll end up like ,” she said, standing up.
“Wait, we-” Sofia started, only to be cut off again.
“My mory could reset any mont,” the avian said, “I will likely kill you if I reset close to you. Leave. Do not search for . If you find my link, do a favor, and kill , yes.”
Before Sofia could say anything, the avian deployed her wings and disappeared, leaving the group speechless in the scattered remains of the broken cabin.
“No wonder the admin left the warnings…” Alith said, breaking the silence, “fucker lost one of his companions here and left her to rot in a shitty cabin.”
“It’s probably worse than that,” Sofia said in turn, “rember what she said, ‘did they send you?’ ”
“Shit… There are more like her?”
“How likely is it that we’d find her by chance if she was the only one?”
“Man… And that thing about invisible stalkers…”
“Yes, about that… That’s probably the giant thing we just escaped from… Rember how I told you the Sun temple’s parasites were invisible even to Sun? Yeah…”
“Oh…“
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