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Ch173-Coming Home

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As they continued to walk towards Sylver’s house he used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to freeze the puddle before Chrys’ boot touched it, and then used his shadow to stop her from slipping on the ice. He felt, and almost saw, several white blurs appear behind and ahead of him, but none of them slowed down to talk to him.

It was still dark outside, but the streets were already becoming alive with people walking to work. Chrys and Ria both quietly gawked at the passersby, while Sylver did his best to formulate a way of asking Lola about the [Hero] without making it sound threatening.

“Why exactly are you so afraid of a [Hero]?” Ria asked, and Sylver turned to look at the metallic creature, that had decided to get out from Sylver’s robe, and now formed itself into a golden pauldron.

To her credit, she was a damn fine pauldron. Fancy without being gaudy, neither too big, nor too small, and somehow matched Sylver’s style, despite him never wearing any armor.

Aside from the armor [Necrotic Mutilation] created, but that looked more like slimy fish scales. Ria on the other hand, actually looked like someone with an eye for detail had crafter her.

“Because they rope you into their “quest.” Your goals stop mattering, and your options are to either help the [Hero], or die,” Chrys answered, and Sylver had to be careful with how he said what he said.

He fucked it, and sounded far more hostile than he meant to.

“Don’t do that. Not to me, and not to anyone you’re close to,” Sylver explained, as he stopped walking, and gently turned Chrys so she was facing him.

After Lily’s “healing,” Chrys had lost a lot of her height, and the soft lightly freckled face that she was left with was a painful contrast to the ice-cold calculating eyes staring at Sylver. She looked like a 12-year-old girl, but she sometimes spoke like an old woman, and her unnaturally stiff gait did very little to make her appear normal.

But the eyes were the biggest offenders. Enough so that Sylver made a mental note to find her a good pair of glasses to hopefully dilute the edge in them. She knew too much, had seen too much, and had done enough that she had earned those eyes, even if she didn’t deserve them.

“Why? That’s what you were going to say anyway,” Chrys asked, and Sylver was relieved to feel she hadn’t tried peeking into the future for an answer this time. He considered crouching down to be at eye level with her but decided to remain standing.

“I want to preface all of this by saying that you are important to me and that I care about you. I have told you things only 1 other person knows about,” Sylver explained.

“I know... I care about you too,” Chrys answered, and Sylver felt a light warmth in his heart at her words.

“Good… I don’t want to have to be on guard around you. You can use your magic however you wish, but you can’t use it against me, Lola, or Ria, or anybody you consider even remotely important to you. Because you will slip up, and you’ll do something that will hurt them, and you’ll lose their trust, and I say this from personal experience, you’ll never get it back,” Sylver explained.

“What should I do?” Chrys asked, and the calm way with which she wanted to correct her error reminded him of Oska.

“To mages, words are important. To the extent that speaking for another mage, has in the past been considered a grave insult. It is only ever done by mages that are extremely close to one another. You don’t know me. Not well enough to speak for me. That’s part of it, one of those unspoken rules you’ll pick up as you grow older,” Sylver explained and made sure to keep his tone relaxed and casual.

He could hear with his ears that he wasn’t doing a good job of it, but Chrys seemed to be able to understand that he wasn’t anywhere near as angry as he sounded to be. He was tired, agitated, and had just now been metaphorically kicked in the unmentionables.

“I will keep that in mind,” Chrys promised.

“The other part is that I can’t do what I do while worrying that you’re working against me. If there’s something you want, let me know, and I will do everything I can to get it for you. If at any point you feel that my actions are going to negatively impact you, talk to me. I need to know you’re on the same page as I am,” Sylver explained.

“You want to become strong enough that you, and by association, the people under your care, are safe and untouchable. I don’t… I don’t ever want to go back there,” Sylver could almost see the chill in her blood spread to her face. “I’ll do everything I can to help you,” Chrys said.

“If you want our relationship to be purely transactional, I will respect that. But there’s more to life than not going back there. Take all the time you need to realize that. I got off topic… In short, don’t speak for anyone, and if I tell you someone is a friend, don’t use your magic to see their future. Other people… I’ll leave it to your discretion. But know that if they take offense, and either threaten you or try to hurt you, I’m going to kill them. So… you know… be careful with that,” Sylver finished, as he felt the disapproving hum emanating from Ria.

“How does a city like this even function if everyone is constantly killing each other over every slight?” Ria asked as Sylver and Chrys returned to walking.

“The guards usually get involved and stop everyone before things get out of hand. With all the various temples, even life-threatening wounds can be healed, for a price. In my case though…” Sylver explained and gestured with his empty hand as he tried to think of a good word or phrase.

“You kill them dead?” Ria offered, with her equivalent of a shrug.

She sounded like she was about to laugh, but there was also an odd note of tiredness in her voice.

“I’ve witnessed, and experienced, firsthand what ends up happening if you let enough enemies live. You can’t be too careful. Also, I don’t kill everyone who crosses me…” Sylver explained and paused as they came to an intersection, and he had to wait for Spring to remind him which direction to go.

“How do you know when to kill someone, and when to let them go?” Chrys asked, as Sylver turned left, and pulled Chrys along with him.

“Gut feeling? Anyone that keeps trying to get up after you cripple them, has got to go. Anyone that believes you only won because you cheated, will always try to kill you afterward. Let me think… Anyone whose honor you’ve besmirched… Honestly, you can just tell after a certain point. If their soul rolls over and shows me their belly, I’ll let them go, they’re not a threat… but…” Sylver trailed off as his idiotic mind kept bringing itself back towards Lola, the [Hero], and that stupid prophesy he claimed to have forgotten.

“But the people crazy, or confident, enough to attack you in the first place, aren’t the types to be scared into surrendering,” Ria finished.

Sylver thought the explanation over.

“That’s a good way of putting it. Anyway, I’m polite to most people, so the only ones that choose to pick a fight with me, deserve whatever happens to them. And the city is likely a better place due to their absence,” Sylver explained, as he turned another corner.

Having lived inside the house for only a few weeks, Sylver hadn’t really considered it to be his home.

But either due to being away for a long time, due to having someone he cared for to house at his home, or because he was exhausted, Sylver felt a lump form in his throat as the building came into view.

It wasn’t quite as strong as when he returned to the Ibis after doing something particularly awful, but it wasn’t nothing.

Which worried Sylver, as much as it relaxed him. If Edmund was alive, who is to say Aether isn’t as well?

But Sylver was too old to be that optimistic and forced himself to keep his expectations low.

As they approached, the two large gates swung open. Both had been polished to a mirror finish, and Sylver noticed that a delicate-looking layer of barbed wire had been added near the top. As he stepped through the barrier surrounding the house, Sylver felt his old magic circling him and Chrys.

Even if it was powered by a naturally occurring leyline, it didn’t have that oomph that Sylver’s new body’s magic had. It felt just a little blunt, even if Sylver could feel at least 300 souls currently trapped in the basement.

He had to assume these were all from would-be intruders because any other alternative was worrying. The shades spread out and inspected the property, as Sylver and Chrys walked towards the front doors.

Every imaginable surface was spotlessly clean, even the small pipes through which Sylver moved from room to room, had somehow been polished. The bushes and flower beds surrounding the front entrance were in pristine condition, forget dead leaves, the flowers didn’t even have a limp petal.

“You’re bald,” a young woman’s voice said, from the now wide-open front doors.

Misha looked like she was shorter than Masha, but it was only due to her slightly crouching behind the straight-backed Masha. Both wore similar clothing, Masha had long ash white trousers, and a dark red shirt, while Misha had ash white shorts and an off-color dark red blouse.

They were both also holding wooden staves…

Sylver ran his hand over his shiny scalp, as the mask that had been covering his face disappeared.

“I am. Looks good, right?” Sylver asked in jest.

“You look like someone painted a face onto an egg,” Masha offered, and Sylver could do little but shrug.

“Is it permanent,” Misha asked from behind her sister.

“I can literally bring the dead back to life, why wouldn’t I be able to grow myself some hair?” Sylver asked, and regretted it instantly, well before they had formulated a response.

“But you can’t change the color of your eyes, or that your hair is white?” Masha asked.

“You’re also freakishly pale,” Misha added.

“All very valid points, that I cannot think of a good response to. In short, yes, my hair will grow out, don’t worry about it. The better question is, I’ve been gone for 5 years, why are you so unsurprised by my return?” Sylver asked.

Misha and Masha exchange a look.

“You said you’d come back,” Masha said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Sylver made another mental note to work on his face, to stop himself from blushing in the future.

“That I did,” Sylver said. “This is Chrys. She can speak elvish, so ask Ging to translate while she’s learning Eirish,” Sylver explained and gestured at the small girl standing next to him, who was still holding his hand.

“And this is Ria,” Sylver explained, as he gestured at his shoulder.

“Hello,” Ria said, as she created a small head out of a tendril, and used it to speak.

Truth be told, the whole interaction was beyond awkward. Most of it was due to the simple fact that Sylver didn’t know what to say, and neither did Misha, Masha, Ging, or any of the other rabbits.

They spoke as if he had only been away for a couple of days, and not 4 years and 10 months. Masha told Sylver about what they had been up to since their bodies finished being repaired, and they figured out how to enter them.

And for the most part, they ate, slept, took baths, and when they felt like it, looked through the notes and exercises Sylver had left them. Misha had progressed much further than Masha had, on account of the fact that she couldn’t sleep as well as Masha could, and spent the vast majority of her sleepless nights practicing magic.

They were more surprised by Ria, and the strange mana coming out of Chrys’ eye than anything else.