There were a very small handful of subjects that Edmund knew would cause Sylver to react negatively. And in the context of “demons,” only 1 made sense.

“I’m not going to ask the gods for help,” Sylver said.

“I just wanted to make sure we considered it,” Edmund said.

Sylver waited a few seconds before he answered him.

“It’s been considered,” Sylver said.

“So in terms of doing something, we’re limited to trying to wake up a comatose demi-god?” Edmund asked.

“Well…” Sylver couldn’t bring himself to meet Edmund’s eye.

It didn’t work, Edmund guessed what was on his mind anyway.

“The sister. Poppy. You promised not to mess with her, and yet you got involved with that Aurick boy. And now you have to talk to her, but don’t want to,” Edmund summarized.

“Don’t want to is an understatement. She’s a [Hero], clairvoyant, and sort of a god, as it stands, she is the last creature I want to see, let alone talk to,” Sylver said, as Edmund could do little but nod along.

A moment of silence passed.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Edmund offered.

“Actually…” the desire to simply shove the responsibility onto Edmund was enticing.

But…

Ed wasn’t good with these sorts of things. Neither was Sylver, all things considered, but at the very least he knew when to bite his tongue and back off.

“No,” Sylver said, and saw that Edmund understood why he didn’t ask him to handle it for him. Edmund’s strengths were many, he surpassed Sylver in a great number of things, but dealing with slimy clairvoyant [Hero] gods, wasn’t one of them.

“If you tell me the smart thing to do right now is to sit still and wait, I will wait. But I need you to tell me there isn’t something better I could be doing. You’re worried about the Krists? Tell me where to fly, and you can consider them gone. The Council? I’ll personally bring you their leader on a silver platter. Just… let me do something,” Edmund said.

To Sylver, Edmund’s awakening was something he had been building up to for the last 2 years. It was the top of a hill he had been climbing.

To Edmund, his awakening was a sudden bump in his otherwise flat road of heroics. He was running around, hitting things, saving lives, and then all of a sudden, Sylver is falling down towards him.

Sylver gave himself a moment to think.

“You know what? Poppy’s home isn’t that far away from Tuli. And I am getting kind of worried about Faust,” Sylver said, as a shade began searching for a map.

The map floated into Sylver’s hands, and he spread it out on a nearby table. With a flick of his finger, he made 5 spots glow on it, and connected them to one another with a thin line.

“We teleport to this village, visit Torg, then we go east through the mountain range, so I can get a few wyvern shades, then we stop at Novva’s house to rest, have Melo teleport us over to where Poppy lives, then it’s just a 3 day trip to Tuli, where we meet up with Faust, and all together fly back to Arda,” Sylver explained, with a gesture towards the zig-zag path they would need to follow to hit all the destinations.

“Right, his wife is immune to magic, and can’t be teleported… Wouldn’t it be quicker to do this backward? Teleport directly to Tuli, meet up with Faust, then visit Poppy, and then make our way over to Novva, pass through the mountains, visit Torg, and fly back here?” Edmund asked as he traced the path they would take if they did as he suggested.

“Hmm… Once Anna is with us, we can’t teleport. If we start from Torg and end at Tuli, we’ll have to fly the longest distance to get back to Arda. If we start at Tuli, and end at Torg, then there will be less road to fly…” Sylver said.

“She’s indestructible, right? Doesn’t need air, heat and pressure aren’t a problem for her?” Edmund asked as Sylver nodded his head.

“Faust and I teleport to Arda, and since you’re only carrying her, you could cover the distance in under a day… Wait…” a 6th mark appeared on the map, near the Sinis Sea coastline.

“Laketula. What’s in Laketula?” Edmund asked.

“A small gift for Faust. He’s married now, so I’m not sure if he’ll even want to go there, but I wouldn’t have been able to find you without him,” Sylver explained, as Edmund tried to puzzle out what a cultivator could possibly want in a small port city.

“Ah, you’re planning on setting up a trade route to get him, and the cultivators here, a steady stream of Ki-infused jade, right? Is that the gift?” Edmund asked.

“That too,” Sylver said, as he made a mental note to do just that.

Edmund leaned a bit closer towards Sylver and looked him in the eye.

“It’s quite hot and sunny that far north, and going by that glint in your eye, I’m going to guess Laketula is one of those ports where the women sailors don’t bother covering their torso,” Edmund said, without so much as a hint of judgment in his voice.

“He’s never been. Or if he has, he doesn’t remember it. We can make a day out of it,” Sylver offered.

“That does sound nice… I can’t remember the last time I had good seafood,” Edmund said, as he rubbed his chin.

“Fresh seafood, imported liquor, and semi-nude women, the only way it could get any better, is if we had more people to share it with,” Sylver said, as Edmund nodded along.

Edmund almost dropped his sword as he realized something.

“Do you think there’s any chance they’ll have Atolonian brandy there? The Sinis sea connects to the Asberg, right?” Edmund asked while almost drooling onto his shirt, as Sylver made a face.

“It does…” Sylver answered with a worried tone, as he went back to drawing a path on the map.

“So when are we leaving?” Edmund asked, with the excitement Sylver would expect from an actual child, not from a grown man that only appeared to be a child.

“Since it’s just us two, we can leave tonight,” Sylver offered.

“You’re not taking Mora with you? Or the uh metal… Ria. I kind of assumed-”

“Mora is still recovering, and Ria… She needs some time away from me. And I need some time away from her. I’m sure she feels the same way,” Sylver said in a slightly muted voice.

“I know this is a rude thing to ask, but how exactly… I’m not saying she isn’t alive but is she like a shade? Is she-”

“You know as much about her as I do. I can’t tell if she’s going through a phase, or if there’s some kind of deeper problem, but she isn’t talking to me about it, so the best I can hope for is that she’ll talk to Chrys. She has this air of naivety about her, but it isn’t consistent,” Sylver explained, as he rolled up the map, and stored it away.

“I can see how that could be difficult… You said she’s from Earth, right?” Edmund asked.

“She is, but this doesn’t feel like the normal moral compass realignment, because, from what I can tell, she didn’t have a fully formed compass, to begin with. The thing is, as much as I want to help her, I don’t have it in me to raise another child. I somehow got it right with Oska, and she helped me with Helca, and those two basically raised Sonya without me,” Sylver explained, as he sent Spring away to give Ging a list of things to buy.

“Is she with Chrys right now?” Edmund asked.

“Probably. You think she’ll talk to you?” Sylver asked.

“I can certainly try… Anyway, let me know when you’re ready to leave,” Edmund said.

***

“Wait, tonight? How? Bravo is away for the next 3 days?” Lola asked, as Sylver lifted his hand, and tapped the area just below his shoulder blade. It was the spot where [Xander’s Waystone] was.

“I plan to find a group of bandits, at least 10, teleport us all inside, and then I’ll be able to teleport 5 people out. But since Anna is with us, we’ll have to travel by foot, or by air, to get back here,” Sylver explained, as Lola tensed up in her seat.

“How long will you be gone?” Lola asked.

“If there’s something urgent, Edmund should be able to fly me back within a day. If there’s anything you need help with, I’m in absolutely zero rush to leave. To be perfectly honest with you, I really don’t want to talk to Poppy. At all. But it’s either that or sitting around waiting for something to happen,” Sylver explained.

“What did Ria say?” Lola asked.

“She was happy for the time off. Interpret that how you will,” Sylver answered.

Lola didn’t move, or blink, for a while, and looked like she was holding her breath.

“What’s your end goal for Chrys? What do you intend to do with her?” Lola asked.

“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Sylver said.

“If she… If I…” Lola leaned forward, and tried to use hand gestures to make her point clearer, “what if-”

“Lola,” Sylver said, in the sort of quiet voice that could make a room full of screaming adults pay attention. “Take a deep breath, and tell me what it is that you want.”

Lola did as the ancient lich suggested, and just to be safe, took a second deep breath.

“I want to retire…” Lola said.

Sylver let the silence linger because that was the easiest way to get the second part out of Lola.

“And I plan to have Chrys replace me,” Lola finished.

“I thought you were setting Tamay up for that?” Sylver asked.

“That’s the “business” side of things. The workshop, the various contracts, contacts, accounting, the politics, all the stuff I could theoretically hire someone to do for me. I want Chrys for the other work. Dealing with the assassin’s guild, keeping the Cats and the Cord in line, handling the real politics, all the dirty work that is necessary to keep the clean part moving,” Lola said.

The odd thing was that Lola didn’t look hurt. For anyone else, the focus point would have been how difficult her actions weighed on her conscience, but Lola just looked tired.

Tired the way a miner would be physically tired.

“Why Chrys?” Sylver asked.

If Lola had asked about one of the dark elves, Zelvash, Ruslana, or pretty much everyone apart from the children, his only worry would have been that they would take it too far.

“I don’t… I don’t want this kind of life. I’ll tolerate it if I have to, but Chrys actually wants this,” Lola said, as if she was surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth.

“Because she’s afraid for her safety, and she wants the resources you control, to build herself a giant army to protect her,” Sylver said, processing what he was saying, as he said it.

“She described it more like a bunker, but yes. Not today, obviously, I’m not an idiot, and neither is she, but in the next 30 years or so, maybe more, we haven’t put a date to it, just that eventually, all that is mine, will be hers. She’s a natural at this. And with her clairvoyance, and what she can do with her eye, I can’t imagine anything managing to win against her,” Lola explained.

Whatever tension had been in the air, had dissipated by now.

“What brought this on? Why are you telling me this now?” Sylver asked.

“Just… you know… in case your trip takes longer than you initially planned…” Lola explained, with an almost alarming amount of discomfort in her voice.

“Are you sure it wasn’t because she had a prophecy the day I left to wake Edmund up, and cried so hard she lost consciousness for almost an hour because of the sheer amount of stress it caused?” Sylver asked.

“Oh…”

It was the sort of “oh” people usually used when they were caught in a massive lie.

“Who uh… who told you?” Lola asked hesitantly.

“No one told me. It’s my house, I know everything that goes on inside of it. Did you think Edmund was spending so much time with her because he just loves clairvoyants?” Sylver asked.

“…”

“Well, he does. But that’s not why he’s been teaching her how to meditate and calm her heart. Or why Chloe has been following her around, to make sure she didn’t eat something that contained ingredients that mess with clairvoyants. Caffeine is a big one, as it turns out,” Sylver explained, as Lola leaned back in her seat, and just stared at him.

In genuine awe.

“She also had a zinc deficiency,” Sylver added.

“I see,” Lola said, with an odd relaxed smile on her face.

“This isn’t going to get fixed overnight. It might never get fixed. Edmund did all he could, for now, Bruno is handling the alchemical side of it, and Zelvash is going to help her with the meditation exercises and such. If Ed could do more, he would, but now it’s up to Chrys,” Sylver explained, as Lola nodded along with that almost annoying smile on her face.

“Be careful,” Lola said, as Sylver stood up from his seat, and began to walk towards the door.

“Who’s more careful than me?” Sylver asked.