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Ch152-Pillow Talk

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“To start with, what are you doing here?” Sylver asked as he scuttled off the bed so the dark elf woman could cover herself up with the bedsheet. She just stared at Sylver for a couple of seconds before she answered.

“Who are you?” the dark elf woman asked.

Sylver realized it from when she had gripped him by the head, but unlike Lady Demor, this woman was a proper fighter. Her elbows were fucked up and covered in scars, there were lines across her forearms from various cuts, even her face had several hints at being repeatedly broken and healed.

“Amaranth. Necromancer and master of the dark arts,” Sylver answered while he looked the woman right in the eye.

The woman just stared at him.

“Fair enough… I’ll try to keep this short, I’m not particularly interested in whatever it is that’s going on. In an ideal world, we carry on what we started, and in a couple of hours, we go our separate ways. Having said that, I was hoping to speak to… your leaders, I guess? I would like some help with something I’m planning on doing. And I wanted to know if there’s anything I could offer you, for the aforementioned help,” Sylver explained and didn’t like how the woman’s head moved.

“Do you understand me?” Sylver asked as the woman’s skin lost all color, her ears shortened, and her scars and muscles disappeared, only to be replaced by spotless milk-white skin.

“I do, but your accent is too much without a translator,” Lady Demor said and seemed a lot less invested in keeping herself covered, as the bedsheet moved down enough that it wasn’t doing her any good.

“I take it we’re free to talk here?” Sylver asked, and made a conscious choice to ignore the comment about his accent.

“Of course. They wouldn’t dare try to snoop in on my bedroom,” Lady Demor explained and reiterated as Sylver didn’t look convinced. “And this whole building is surrounded by several layers of digital and magical interference. Unless a drone physically peeps through a window, no one will be able to tell what’s going on inside.”

“I see… So do I call you Demor, or do you have another name?” Sylver asked, as Lady Demor stopped bothering to cover herself, and crossed her legs as she sat up.

If this was a ploy to make Sylver uncomfortable, it wasn’t going to work. Partially because now he couldn’t see her as anything but a woman dressed in a flesh suit, but mostly because Sylver couldn’t say he was all that attracted to her now that he knew there was a battle-scarred dark elf underneath all that wimpy human nonsense.

“Demor is fine… Did someone send you?” Lady Demor asked.

The question was difficult to answer because Sylver wasn’t entirely certain how much he cared about Kass and whatever his employer was up to.

On the one hand, if Sylver fucked Rory over, she would fail her mission and could get punished or exiled or something. He hadn’t spoken to Rory long enough to know if he liked her or not, so for the sake of argument, he would think of her as if she was someone he didn’t outright hate.

If Rory failed, would Kass be forced to concentrate on his employer, or would he be freed up to find Sylver’s book faster?

Since this whole thing is about revenge, Rory is either stealing something important to Lady Demor to weaken her, or she’s doing something to set her up…

Sylver grabbed one of the nearby pillows and placed it over his lap as he thought it over.

There were 4 possible outcomes;

Rory is stealing something important, and if he told Lady Demor about it, Lady Demor was going to stop and kill Rory. Sylver would gain the trust/aid of Lady Demor and the dark elves, but there would be a chance Kass would know Sylver betrayed them and would refuse to reveal the location of the book. Not to mention the dark elves would likely not consider Sylver trustworthy, since he already betrayed someone he was allegedly allied with.

Rory is stealing something that isn’t important, and if he told Lady Demor about it, she let it happen. Rory, and by extension Kass and his group would “win,” Sylver would get the location of the book and the aid and trust of Lady Demor and the dark elves. The whole betrayal thing would still hang over his head, but this would be the best outcome.

Rory is stealing something important, and if he didn’t tell Lady Demor about it, Lady Demor would consider Sylver to be an ally of the Garden, and the dark elves as a whole will consider him an enemy. In return, all Sylver would get would be the location of the book, and nothing else.

Rory is stealing something that isn’t important, and if he didn’t tell Lady Demor about it, Kass and his group “win,” but the dark elves would consider Sylver to be their enemy. Sylver would get the location of the book, and nothing else…

They already know about me from Foma, and they gave me that card, but I did threaten them...

And now that the dark elf pretending to be Lady Demor knows I have a way to find dark elves hiding among the Flowers, if they can’t trust me not to fuck them over, they’ll try to kill me…

There’s a 50/50 chance I’ll fuck myself over if I tell Lady Demor about Rory’s thievery. And a 100% chance the dark elves will consider me an enemy if I don’t…

But even in the best outcome, they’ll still think of me as untrustworthy…

On the other hand, I’m not exactly breaking a deal… And I never said I would help them, only that I would bring a person of their choosing into Lady Demor’s house…

It’s bad faith of the highest degree, and the kind of scummy bullshit I promised myself I would stop doing, but Kass’ help after I know the location of the book will be useless.

“What do you want? And by “you” I mean, dark elves as a whole,” Sylver asked, and watched as Lady Demor scratched her elbow, and then seemed to chew on her tongue for a couple of seconds.

“Foma hasn’t told you?” Lady Demor asked, and Sylver suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

“No. I didn’t want to get involved, and we simply traded. Necklaces for a way back to the Garden. I’m assuming you’ve heard of the dungeon that disappeared in an explosion?” Sylver asked.

“Necklaces?” Lady Demor asked.

With a slight flourish, Sylver opened his hand and produced a small metallic rectangle that dangled from a string wrapped around Sylver’s fingers, courtesy of [Mirage]. It was a near-perfect replica, Sylver understood the importance of these enough to memorize them in the event he needed to use one to distract a dark elf.

Sylver seemed to guess right, as Lady Demor’s hand reached out to grab the necklace, but it simply passed through it, on account of being an illusion.

“You… You gave Foma one of these?” Lady Demor asked.

“There were 12 of them. But I only remember what three of them looked like,” Sylver explained, as two more metallic rectangles fell down from his hand, and dangled alongside the first rectangle.

“12 keys… but only…” Lady Demor’s face didn’t match her tone, if anything the calm polite smile made the slightly panicked and teary-eyed voice disturbing in a way that made Sylver’s skin crawl.

Sylver’s face blindness meant that he didn’t see a face when he looked at a person’s face, to him everyone had a piece of meat on their head that merely had the appearance of a face. There was no cure for this ailment, it was simply a price all undead paid when their souls “died”.

There were ways to make an undead’s face appear “alive” to make other undead incapable of recognizing them as undead, but there wasn’t a way to make an “alive” face appear comfortable enough for an undead to look at without feeling slightly sick.

It was akin to smelling shit, at some point you simply got used to it and stopped noticing. The more you spent surrounded by the living, the faster you got used to it, and in Sylver’s case, were taught tricks to memorize a face, to tell people apart.

It wasn’t a topic undead ever brought up to the living, because it was impossible to explain in words. Nyx originally thought it was a psychological thing, something an undead could be weaned off. But after she met a pair of twins, and turned one into a vampire, but left the other alive, and even while knowing their faces were identical, she still couldn’t “see” the living twin's face.

She even brought the twins to show Sylver, and if she hadn’t told him they were twins, Sylver would never have thought it. He even had them make molds of their faces, and still couldn’t see the similarities.

Sylver’s explanation, if it could be called that, was that undead processed primal energy differently from the living, even if he didn’t have a way to prove that. Aether wasn’t “alive” enough to prove Sylver’s theory true. He wasn’t “dead” but he was too far above “alive” to be “alive.”

The short of it was, Lady Demor's face crept Sylver out because it hit that awful sweet spot between alive and dead. Even if he could feel her soul was “alive” the face he was looking at was “dead.”

“I want to make a deal with your lot… And if I know what your goal is, it will be easier for me to know what to offer,” Sylver explained, as he looked away from Lady Demor’s face and chose to focus on her uncovered chest instead.

Skin didn’t have the issue faces did, “alive” or “undead” didn’t particularly matter for Sylver, he knew some people had issues with their partners being cold-blooded, but as someone who had to go out of his way to have a pulse and body heat, Sylver almost preferred to not have to bother with it.

When sleeping with the undead, the important thing to know was-

“When they drowned the world, they stole something from us… We’ve been trying to get it back ever since…” Lady Demor explained.

Sylver leaned back a little, as he took a wild, and extremely educated, guess.

“Is it, by any chance, a grey-blue tree that has dark blue veins that look like there’s melted glowing gold floating inside of them?” Sylver asked, and Lady Demor gave it away by her soul, her body language, and the fact that she very audibly gasped.

She grabbed Sylver by the shoulders and leaned forward until she was almost on top of him. The pillow on his lap stopped her from actually straddling him, but she was angled low enough that certain things were hanging over him.

“You’ve seen their tree of life?” Lady Demor asked as she leaned in so close to Sylver’s face, that he could almost see his reflection in her extremely dilated pupils.

Sylver was very careful as he grabbed her by the forearms, and pushed her off him.

“I haven’t but… It seemed like the most likely option. It explains why those “demons” as you called them, can’t enter inside houses, and why all the “high-elves” are the way they are. Although that last part, I’m not too sure of… Look…” Sylver said as he scooted backward until his back was against the bed’s headboard.

“There’s a lot I can’t explain… But if you’re upfront and honest with me, I’ll be honest and upfront with you. Are you trying to steal their “tree of life?” Or are you trying to steal the Garden from them?” Sylver asked, and caught his mistake before Lady Demor even said a word.

“You know what it is, but you don’t call it the “tree of life.” Who are you?” Lady Demor asked, and moved slightly closer to Sylver.

“Necromancer and master of the dark arts, and that is all I’m willing to reveal on that matter. You said you’ve been trying to get it back; can you elaborate on that?” Sylver asked.

Lady Demor appeared to be at a loss for words for a moment before she moved another inch closer towards him.

“I can’t,” Lady Demor answered.

They quietly sat on the bed, staring at each other, as Sylver waited for his mind to provide him with an idea.

Instead, Spring came to the rescue and reminded Sylver about the card the old dark elf had given him. The one that appeared to have been written in the Ibis’ code, and Sylver had given to Ria to try and decipher.

Sylver gestured towards his robe, which had been floating near the door, and the small card floated into his hand. Lady Demor’s eyes followed it, even as Sylver held it out to her.

“You spoke to Zelvash…” Lady Demor said in a breathless whisper.

“Is this enough for you to speak more openly?” Sylver asked as Lady Demor took the card from him with shaking hands, and almost hungrily turned it around to read what was written on it.

To the untrained eye, it looked like a bunch of unconnected circles and squares with seemingly random dots and lines going through them. Sylver could tell from the way her eyes were moving, she wasn’t actually reading the framework, she was simply trying to memorize it.

Or, looking for something…

“I’m not… I don’t have the authority to make any kind of deal with you,” Lady Demor said with a soft laugh, as she pushed the card out towards Sylver, who made it float back into his robe. Her eyes followed it, up until it disappeared into his robe.

“Which is why I said I’d like to meet with your leaders. Can you arrange a meeting?” Sylver asked.

Lady Demor reached up with a thumb towards her mouth and chewed on the nail for a moment before she yanked it out and huffed to herself.

Sylver just sat there for a while.

Completely nude, with only a small pillow covering his lower half, while he watched a pale-skinned woman move around a little too much as she thought, which led to a great deal of swinging.

“I don’t know. I can’t contact anyone…” Lady Demor said, and nearly managed to get her nail back into her mouth, but stopped herself.

“If I tell the Serpents I know about the “tree of life” will that be enough to get their attention?” Sylver asked, and got another puzzled look from Lady Demor.

“You’d be ripped apart by the angels before you got anywhere near them,” Lady Demor said.

“Hypothetically speaking, what if I don’t? If I mention Zelvash and the “tree of life” will that be enough to get at least one of them to sit down and talk to me?” Sylver asked, and could see her eyes widen.

Her face didn’t express what he could feel in her soul, but her eyes did.

“You’re the one who nearly killed 3 Cherubs,” Lady Demo said.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Sylver countered.

Lady Demor very slowly nodded at him, more confused by the situation, than uncertain at this point.

“Did you come here because you knew what I was?” Lady Demor asked.

“No, but that reminds me…” Sylver trailed off, as he had to come to a decision.

He didn’t like the idea that a bunch of humans stole an Eldar tree from dark elves, and then modified it until they became as immortal as elves are, but at the same time, it wasn’t his business, his realm, or his problem.

Sylver was raised by a dark elf, but that didn’t mean he was responsible for the happiness and prosperity of all dark elves. Because Adema raised him as much as Nyx did, and she was as human as they come.

Sylver wasn’t particularly fond of liches, they either didn’t bother retaining their “humanity,” or the part they did retain was too focused on their goal to sit down and have a chat with Sylver.

He liked vampires when they weren’t too uptight and didn’t consider him to be beneath them. Werewolves were always too busy trying to fight him for dominance to ever befriend him, and after the first time, Sylver didn’t have any interest in being the leader of a werewolf pack. It was fun having a harem but it got old, fast.

Sylver shook his head as he brought his focus back to the matter at hand.

Rory.

Hmm…

“How long have you been Lady Demor?” Sylver asked, and gestured at Lady Demor.

“I can’t answer that,” Lady Demor said with a shake of her head.

“Less than, or more than, a year?” Sylver asked as Lady Demor shook her head again.

“Have you-”

“Is this about the girl you came in with trying to steal from my vault?” Lady Demor interrupted.

Denying it would idiotic, and it wasn’t as if Rory wouldn’t get caught if Sylver denied it.

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry about it, she’s stealing a replica. I was going to have them all exiled, but… that would mean exiling you too…” Lady Demor said slowly, as she realized the issue as she said it.

I only really need Kass…

And it’s their own fault for getting tricked and caught…

“Can you hold off on the exile part?” Sylver asked.

Lady Demor sat up a little straighter.

“Why?” she asked.

Sylver decided that there was little to be gained in getting caught in a lie, especially when he couldn’t think of a good lie.

“One of the people who would be exiled is currently working for me. I’d also like to resolve things peacefully without anyone getting-”

“They stole from me,” Lady Demor said, in a voice that was just barely her own. The tone had a harshness to it that didn’t match her appearance the slightest bit.

Sylver just looked at her and tried to figure out if his judgment was clouded in any way shape or form.

He didn’t like Kass, but that was mainly because of him being a clairvoyant. He and his employer owed Sylver money, but he didn’t care if he got it back or not.

Rory…

Maybe if she was actually competent enough not to get caught? Although it sounds like she was set up from the start.

In the first place, regardless of how I feel about them, Lady Demor is the one getting stolen from. If someone stole from me, I’d kill them, and anyone that tried to stop me from killing them.

Yeah… I’m not betraying them, because I never agreed to help them, I got Rory in Lady Demor’s house, as far as I’m concerned, and as far as Kass should be concerned, my part is done.

“Would you mind waiting for a few days? Possibly a couple of weeks? Once I get what I want, I won’t have any business telling you how to deal with people who steal from you,” Sylver explained, and a very small part of him felt ashamed for saying such a thing.

No, wait, that’s Ria. Sylver realized, as he traced the feeling down to the band of metal wrapped around his arm, that was doing its very best not to pay any attention to her surroundings.

“Of course… But you are going to have to keep me distracted. That was the plan, wasn’t it?” Lady Demor asked, as her skin seemed to inflate and darken for a moment before it settled back down into a muscular and dark blue shade.

“So they were set up from the start?” Sylver asked. The dark elf tilted her head at him and spoke slowly, and with a thick accent.

“Yes,” she answered simply. Sylver didn’t feel great as he asked this question, but he would have felt even worse if he didn’t.

“Are you doing this because you think I won’t help you if you don’t?” Sylver asked, with a gesture towards the woman, who had placed her hand on his leg and was moving it upwards.

She just stared at him, before Ria said something in whatever language it was that the dark elves in this realm spoke in Sylver’s ear, and he repeated after her.

The woman smiled at Sylver, as she said something that sounded like she was clearing her throat. She spoke at least 6 sentences.

“She said the crazed look you had in your eyes as you killed those last two men in the Gold Giers Trials reminded her of her late husband. And I don’t want to translate the rest,” Ria whispered into Sylver’s ear.

“Was it something good, or something bad?” Spring asked as Sylver was too busy watching the woman’s hand go further and further up his leg.

“It’s disgusting, but if your stories are to be believed, nothing he hasn’t done before,” Ria said with a huff.

Sylver floated his robe over to him, and Spring invited Ria to get off Sylver’s arm, and she hurriedly accepted his offer to not be aware of what he was about to do.

He wasn’t entirely sure as to what the nameless dark elf was going to do, but Sylver was fairly certain he would figure it out from context.

With Sylver’s part done, now it was just a matter of waiting for Kass to tell him the location of the book. And afterward, he was going to try and see if it was possible to get the dark elves to help him steal the book and save Chrys, in exchange for growing them their own Eldar tree.

Sylver still had questions for the dark elf, but that could wait until a later time.

But the idea that the Garden had an Eldar tree somewhere inside, certainly explained the name. And why they were so concerned with collecting positive energy.

Not to mention, where they got the mana for a spell capable of stopping the planet from spinning.

Depending on circumstances, there was a possibility Sylver would be able to get it to start again.

Or finally, fix his mana conductivity issues.