Jay kept [Wither] going the whole time he had the mana to keep casting it, but there didn’t ever seem to be a visible effect. The abomination never faltered, never even slowed, and definitely didn’t come close to keeling over like he’d hoped it would.
The water had begun to lighten again as they got closer to the sun when a shadow passed above them. It was barely there for a blink, shooting up from the depths behind them to pass them up in less than a second. Just as it faded, the sand in front of the abomination plumed upwards in a swirling column.
In the middle stood a single figure. Tall, broad, and carrying a tower shield matched to his height, Warinot Pixt split the billowing sand just by stepping forward once.
He said something, but Jay couldn’t hear it through the diving helmet. Whatever method Mirdun had been using to be heard through the glass wasn’t something he was willing or able to use. His meaning was clear enough despite the lack, between his snarl – directed at the abomination – and the way his eyes flickered up to the caged form being carried along by it.
He intended to fight.
Warinot gave no sign that he even noticed the abomination trying to deflect his attention.
The big man picked his tower shield up and slammed it back to the ground. Everyone present felt the shaking that resulted. Jay honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if they had felt it on the island itself.
The vibrations continued, building unnaturally, until they rebounded off some invisible barrier, slamming back together on the guardian. They died there, replaced by white whips of magic that lashed up from around his feet. His stance shifted as they coalesced, bracing as if he was about to jump.
[Detect Magic] had never gone off this loudly before. It sounded less like the normal gently rising Geiger counter and more like evacuation klaxons going off in his head. Whether the difference was the type of magic or the strength of it, Jay didn’t know. But something about it was different.
He didn’t stay braced for long before rocketing forward again, slamming shield-first into the abomination. It rocked backwards, flinging Jay against the magical bars of the cage. They were as cold to the touch as the chaining spell had been while digging into him. That was another thing he didn’t think was quite fair about this whole golden projection body: how could he be subject to a seemingly random assortment of natural laws but immune to an equally random other set?
Why was he wondering about this now? There might not have been anything he could really do to alter the fight – not that there was anything he needed to do, Warinot already seemed to be winning – but he should at least be paying enough attention to glean information on what someone that much stronger than him could do.
He didn’t know exactly how much stronger than him the big man was, but calling the gap huge would likely be understating the difference. So far the man had been seemingly chaining abilities, judging from [Sense Magic] going off in cascading waves of high volume. None of his abilities seemed to have incantations; maybe he was beyond the point where they were necessary.
Then Jay blinked. Something new was happening, something he hadn’t seen Warinot do yet. The stripes of white that had been building up around the fight bound themselves together into a ball, pulling tighter and tighter until it seemed like they shouldn’t be able to fit that close together.
The big man pulled back behind his shield, leaving no inch of his body exposed, just as the ball detonated. The strands of magic rocketed outwards, lashing at everything nearby. Chunks vanished from the abomination’s body as they made contact, reappearing in the water nearby, and the System windows it talked through roared in pain.
One of the tendrils slipped through the barrier of the cage Jay’s projection was locked in and his last sensation in the golden form was a tearing sensation that felt like a much lesser form of what he’d done to himself to escape the book’s trap. Then he was convulsing on the cot within his tent, a bundle of cloth between his teeth and Bolar holding him down.
The pain continued, less severe than the moment itself but still undeniable. It took several minutes before it began to abate, several minutes of continued seizing, and at one point Jay was pretty sure he’d heard Bolar let out a grunt of pain.
Eventually it ended. He wasn’t fully sure how long it took before that point, but it did happen. A spread of System boxes called for his attention but Jay shunted them all to the side in favor of bucking Bolar off of him, as the cracked man didn’t seem to have gotten the memo that he was alright again.
He tried to ask a question, spat out the cloth in his mouth, and tried again. “Why are you in my tent?”
“Kallin told me you were having a medical incident.”
Okay, that was not a reassuring thing to be told. What was with that man and being able to look in on everything all the time?
“How did he know?” Jay asked.
Kallin’s disembodied voice cut off the sinavine’s response before he could get a full word out. “Warinot told me. What, do you think I just spy on you people constantly?”
“Yes,” Jay and Bolar both responded. They looked at each other oddly over it, then mutually shrugged as if agreeing to forget it.
“That’s an unfair characterization of me,” Kallin tutted. “But I suppose in this case it isn’t entirely inaccurate.”
“How did Warinot know, then?” Jay questioned.
“He wanted to talk to you, so he was waiting outside your tent. When you never emerged, he decided to check, and found that your soul had separated from your body,” the earth mage explained. “He thought it might have been something relating to the goblins; it wouldn’t be the first time they’d done something that involved implanting a soultrap in someone. So he went off to try to find you and return your body to its full occupancy.
“Of course, we don’t think that’s what it is anymore. You and I are going to need to have a long talk, Jay Carter. That’s why Bolar is going to sit there and watch you constantly until I get there.”
Jay glanced over at the sinavine, who nodded.
“How long will that be?” he asked, trying not to let on about the nervousness he felt.
“Not long,” the man replied. “Not long at all.”
Shit.
*
About fifteen minutes later – as best as Jay could judge with no sight of the sun, at least – Warinot stepped into the tent and nodded Bolar out. The younger man didn’t hesitate to leave, not even sparing a glance backwards.
The big man wasn’t dressed in the diving suit, so clearly he’d been back long enough to change into his more normal attire. He still had the shield, though, and Jay wasn’t sure how well it boded for his own fate that it was placed firmly between him and the exit. It wasn’t the pose of someone expecting any easy chat, but realistically he hadn’t expected whatever talk was coming to be an easy one anyway.
[Sense Magic] pinged as the tent began shaking. Jay tried to stay balanced with nothing to grab onto and barely managed it, almost toppling off the cot at several points. He couldn’t tell what was happening outside the tent, but the feeling of magic being used in the area grew more and more overwhelming until it eventually shut off entirely with no warning.
Kallin moved into the tent. This close, Jay picked up on the peculiar scent that the steel-skinned man had, something halfway between the sharpness of ozone and the tang of blood. It was undeniably metallic. The grin on his face looked like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a grimace or not.
“We’re contained?” Warinot asked.
“To the best of my prodigious abilities,” Kallin replied.
“Good.” The big man’s voice was grim. “Then we should start with this.” He placed one fist on top of the other and tapped them together three times. A globe of white light spread out, molding itself to the tent’s boundaries, and the System windows that had been begging Jay for attention seemed to cease to exist.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
With them went the sense of power he had from his increased attributes. He felt enervated, like he’d gone from a human to a paper cutout of a person. He tried to take a breath and started coughing, hacking like he’d caught tuberculosis.
“That might have been a bit too much suppression there, Pixt,” Kallin chided.
“You wanted the veracity effect. This is a necessary step.”
The reflective man waved a hand as if to dismiss that. “Fine, fine. He’ll just have to handle it.”
“He’ll manage,” Warinot said.
“I’m sure he will.” Kallin’s gaze hadn’t left Jay the whole time he’d been in the tent but now he visibly shifted his attention to the necromancer. “Let’s get this interrogation started, then. An easy question first: what kind of [Snake Tamer] takes [Astral Projection]? Care to let us in on that?”
They called that an easy question? Maybe it would have been, if he’d been telling the truth about his Class. How did they even know the name of the ability?
“It was part of what my home does for tamer classes,” Jay tried. “Helps to better connect to the snakes.”
Warinot shook his head. “Try again,” he ordered.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I said try again,” the big man repeated. “This time without lying.”
Jay had been hoping that he’d misunderstood the man’s use of veracity for the effect. Clearly it had been exactly what he’d expected: a way to discern whether someone was lying or not.
“I just thought it’d be neat,” he said.
Kallin quirked a metallic eyebrow. “You thought it would be neat? You took a random ability, unrelated to your Class, because you thought it would be neat?”
“I’m not from this area. I just saw a cool choice and made it.”
Warinot nodded. “Truth on all three, there.”
“Where are you from, then?”
“You’re not going to know it,” Jay warned. Kallin motioned for him to go on anyway. “It’s a place called Ohio.”
“True.”
“Well, you’re right that I don’t know it,” the metal man said. “But I rather refuse to believe that there is anywhere in this world that is so isolated as to not have accumulated Class knowledge. No Tamer class in their right mind would take any soul projection ability, not with the consequences of that going wrong.”
Jay shrugged. “We don’t have anything like that. I’m not even sure what you mean.”
“That is… also true, somehow,” Warinot said. His severe look had shifted to one of bafflement.
“You don’t know why leaving your body vacant is a bad idea? Especially while tying yourself to other beings with souls of their own?” Kallin’s voice was incredulous.
“The way you’re saying this,” Jay started, “I feel like I should know. But honestly, no, I don’t have a clue.”
“Kamenta grant me peace,” the metal-skinned man muttered. “I can’t tell if you’ve been astonishingly lucky to avoid one of your snakes taking advantage of the vacancy or if you’ve got some other ability to prevent it.”
Warinot shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to be able to stop soul effects,” he said. “He was very unable to get out of that cage, and his projection was already cracked in a way that is likely connected to some form of direct soul attack.”
“So it’s luck, then.”
“Seems to be,” the big man agreed.
“Do you feel like a lucky man, Jay Carter?”
Due to the phrasing, the Clint Eastwood scene popped in his head and played itself out before he could answer. “Not in a general sense.”
How could he? He’d died before his time, in Kalras’s words, and had only gotten reincarnated here because of some extremely delayed bureaucracy. There was nothing lucky about that.
“Truth,” Warinot said.
“Well you must have gotten lucky so far,” Kallin said. “Unless it’s something else. Maybe you have a rarer variation of the Class with some extra benefits. I normally wouldn’t pry about that, but really, now’s your chance to speak up and head off some of the later questions.”
“As far as I know, I have the normal version of my Class. But I’ve also never met anyone with the same Class, so I wouldn’t have a way to check,” Jay noted.
“Both true,” the big man verified.
“I guess [Snake Tamer] isn’t that common. If you’ve gotten this far, though, how have you not…” He trailed off as something seemed to occur to him. “What level are you, Jay?”
Would it be worse to just own up to it or to tell them he didn’t want to say it? He tossed the question back and forth mentally, trying to deflect so he had some time to think.
“Is that really a necessary question?”
Warinot picked the shield up and inched it toward Jay, the simple thump of its repositioning somehow ominous. Kallin didn’t say anything.
“Okay, fair enough. Eleven.”
They both goggled at him, then at each other, then back at him.
“Who let you out of the house?” Kallin asked.
“How did you even manage to get to Steelgate?” Warinot queried.
Jay shrugged. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I’m not that weak.”
“Do you want to tell him first or should I, Pixt?”
“Considering I do not know what you mean by that, I believe you should,” Warinot replied.
Kallin nodded. “I’m at the top end of Tier Seven.”
“I am less than a single level from ranking up to the same Tier,” the big man added.
Tiers Six and Seven. God. Jay knew of only ten total, though the book that had mentioned the specific ranges had implied there was something after the tenth, but that was still an insanely high level. Warinot had to be one hundred twenty, if he was one level away from ranking up, and Kallin could have been anywhere from one-thirty to one-forty.
They could probably crush him with a single pinky.
“So that makes everyone else… What level, exactly?” Jay asked.
The pair of questioners exchanged glances.
“The minimum level allowed was forty-one. Except for you, who stowed away and got here at less than half of that,” Kallin said.
“And somehow he was still the most willing person in our group to go into the deepest parts of this shelf,” the big man said. It almost sounded like he was defending Jay, but that couldn’t be right.
“Somehow, yes. That’s quite odd, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten him anywhere, given what happened afterwards.”
Kallin shook his reflective head from side to side. “True. But the willingness could be a point in his favor.”
Warinot agreed briefly, then chose to ask a question himself for the first time since the interrogation began. “How did you encounter the creature of Unlife?”
“It claimed it had been following me. That it had somewhere it wanted to take me,” Jay said.
Warinot cocked his head. “Truth. But you could hear it?”
Kallin leaned forward. His fingers flexed a couple of times before clenching into fists.
“Sort of. Hearing might be the wrong word to use,” Jay hedged. “It talked with System boxes. Red text on a white background.”
The metallic man exhaled, the breath ragged, and his hands clenched even tighter. Jay could have sworn he’d heard a knuckle or two pop.
Warinot shook his head. “I saw nothing of the sort while handling the creature.”
“Interesting,” Kallin hummed. “Would you step outside for me for a second, Pixt?”
“If you insist,” the big man replied.
The metallic earth mage gestured, [Magic Sense] pinged, and Warinot stepped outside. Jay noted that there was no glimpse of sunlight in the brief movement of the tent’s flap this time, unlike when they’d first arrived. When the bigger man had asked Kallin if they were contained, Jay hadn’t thought he meant being entirely encased in stone, but that may have been what happened.
“Now, Jay,” Kallin started. “This is a very important question. I need you to know that the normal consequences for an accurate answer to this will not apply here. You will not be summarily executed, you will not be tortured, and you absolutely will not be sent out into the wilderness to die.”
What the hell was this question going to be? Those were normal punishments for giving an answer to something? A sneaking suspicion dawned in Jay; he had very fervently hoped the suspicion was incorrect.
“How did you become contaminated with necromantic magic?” the metal man finished.
It wasn’t the big one, so that was good. There was still a chance Kallin didn’t know. It was a bit too close to the big one for comfort but at least it was on the right side.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Jay stalled.
The mage put a hand out to the side and dust swirled up into it. [Magic Sense] went off yet again, then rose in volume as the pile of dust flatted out into a square. The square quickly became reflective through some process that Jay didn’t know, but it made the sense increase yet again.
Kallin passed the mirror over. “Have a look at yourself.”
Jay took it and did.
Good God, he looked rough. Was this why Morios had looked so concerned when he’d come out of the water? Unnervingly flat black eyes, clearly unnatural white streaks running through his hair, and sunken cheeks would make anyone concerned.
“Oh,” he said. “I hadn’t… looked at myself.”
Kallin’s expression became one of pity. “It’s unfortunate but also undeniable. In the places I’ve been educated, the symptoms of necromantic poisoning are well-known. You are very nearly a textbook case for it. So, let me ask again: how did it happen?”
I am really crossing my fingers that it isn't needed though. Wish me luck!
