Saintess Summons Skeletons

It was a bit shameful to admit, but Sofia could only accept that the fourteen year old knew much more about the world, and she was very eager to share her knowledge. As such, despite spending all night and morning on their respective beds there wasn’t much sleeping going on in the room. At their level, they only really felt the need to sleep once every few days already less than that for Sofia with thanks to the Saint set. Which happened to be their latest subject of conversation.

“So I have these three pieces. The headband halves aging, the bracelet halves the need for sleep, and the sash halves damage from physical projectiles. The set effect is some health and mana regeneration when I’m sitting, it hasn't changed with the third piece.”

“That’s strong, the sash in particular is very good. I don’t know of the rest of the pieces, only that there should be six or seven I think. But maybe you could ask our Saintess if she knows anything.”

“Your Saintess?”

“Ishka, Saintess of Blood. She’s out there, the Queen’s daughter.”

“And she would tell me about a piece if she knew about it?”

“Considering the worth of your [Summon Blood] skill… I’m sure you could find some common ground.”

“It’s not like I can teach her though.”

“That is true, but there is no reason to worry, if anyone was willing to buy as much as you can possibly summon, it would be her.”

“Well, that is the hard part… I’ll just let you know if she shows up again, she’s been away to who knows where for three years now."

“Alright, thank you Astel, now that I think about it, how should we contact each other? I don’t think the rat is a very safe way…Are there long distance communication items? I feel like if some would know about that it would be the Vampires.”

“Hum… well,” Astelia hesitated for a second, then stood up from her bed and made a grabbing motion toward a wheel mounted blackboard that had been hidden between furniture. It was covered in white chalk mathematical equations that Sofia couldn’t even begin to understand. “The only way we have to send anything through long distances is teleportation.”

With another motion from the girl’s hand, the chalk dust all detached from the board to coalesce into a solid ball in her palm. “You see, teleportation works like this, this is the physical plane, and this is the spiritual plane,” she started, drawing two parallel lines, then she pointed at the void in between, “That’s mana. What happens with all teleportation skills is always different flavors of the same. First you push out your soul through the spiritual realm toward the destination. That’s quite painful usually, it takes a while to get used to and even then you cannot escape being a bit sick from your soul moving so far away from your body. You do it like that because it is the only way to have an undisturbed mana trail over a long distance.”

She kept illustrating on the blackboard, drawing a point A for where the body is in the physical realm, and a point B for where the soul is pushed to in the spiritual realm, with a line of ‘mana’ linking the two through the mana plane.

“So now you have a thick mana trail linking two different places in the two planes, from there you can use space magic to poke at the space, deforming it following the trail of mana,” she illustrated by drawing a large tunnel starting from point B and tapering until it was only a thin line touching point A.

“When the two planes touch like this, they will self correct, and in this case, since you’re deforming the spiritual plane, it will snap back bringing your body to the place in the physical plane where your soul is in the spiritual one. That’s teleportation.”

And since Pareth has a soul, and we are soul linked, he can always teleport to me… Doesn’t this mean I should also be able to teleport to him? That could be a lifesaving skill to have. I need to research this more.

“I think I get it. So summoning is when you do it the other way around and deform the physical plane.”

“Yes, but for skills like [Summon Hero], or my own teleportation skill, [Wherever the Moon Shines], it’s the Gods who are doing the heavy lifting, our bodies and souls are just the tools they’re using for it.”

“Ok but then what if you skip the whole creating a mana trail and just deform space? You teleport in place?”

“You teleport somewhere random, close or far depending on how much mana you spent on deforming the physical plane. You have more questions?” she asked while erasing the board by coalescing the chalk into a ball again.

“Two actually, why can’t we see the world be deformed if that’s how it works, and where does that leave us with communication items, that was the subject…”

“Oh!” Astelia’s face took a slightly redder tint, “Sorry, I got lost in my explanations. Uhm, so you cannot see any deformation from teleportation skills because it happens at such a small scale that it’s impossible to detect. All you can do is be on the lookout for the mana trail.”

“So I could actually predict where someone is going to teleport by doing that?”

“Absolutely, but for short distances, the process is very fast, so, yeah… And for communication items, the problem with them is obvious. They have no soul and so cannot create enough mana trails.”

“There’s no other way?” Sofia wondered aloud. “Surely we could communicate using something else, maybe sound…”

“Over a very long distance? No way.” Astelia interjected as she jumped back onto her bed, “This is a field that is most researched by Heroes, for some reason, but despite their efforts and those of the magic academies, there still isn’t a good way. Or there could be one, maybe, but then it’s not something the Vampires are privy to. And we have a very large network of information.”

“I see, thank you for the free lesson then. But that leaves us in a weird situation.”

“Well, there is a solution, just show up at a Vasperian embassy every so often, if I want to tell you something, they’ll have mail for you, and you can leave one for me since you have the card. We have teleportation mages who take turns relaying information through the different locations, just that there is a lot to cover so it could take some time.”

“Alright, that will do! Keep me up to date on your Saintess’ location then, thank you again. Honestly it feels like I’m learning a lot from you and not the other way around.”

“I could use more blood… You know… If…”

“Of course, just tell me where to summon it.”

Sofia and Astelia then spent the rest of the morning discussing about Scripture and the current situation in Skyreach. With the Church, the King and the war with the Red Winds Empire all creating turmoil, there was a lot to cover. The young Oracle was like an Infinite well of knowledge, testament to how she got her [Fast reading] to level 100, and when a question stumped her, she would seek Agran’s help, who was also very well learned.

Once they felt the conversation was running too long and starting to stagnate, they decided on exploring the Castle for a bit together. In Astelia’s own words, she probably hadn’t seen a hundredth of the rooms in the gigantic complex. Sofia found the lighthearted exploration very relaxing.

When the moon came up, Astelia’s moonlight dependent teleportation skill was available again. Accompanied by Agran and on Sofia’s request, she sent her as far south in Skyreach as she could, to a small shack on the southern coast. After an awkward handshake and a promise to meet up again, the vampire and her guardian were gone.

Sofia didn’t know what it was but during their last handshake, the girl had slipped a small object into the palm of her hand.

“A ring?”

Sofia put the small gold ring aside for the moment.

“Alright, first thing first, put the anti-teleport bracelet back on…” Considering what she learned about how widespread the efforts to find her had started to become, that was an absolute priority.

For whatever reason, the Church really wanted her back. Even more so since the happenings in Verenha. The bounty on her head had apparently been around officially for about two weeks, and it had suddenly jumped from five hundred gold to a whopping fifty thousand gold. Up there with her name, description, and a drawing of her face, Astelia even gave her a copy of the posters. At least they have good artists at the Church, I even recognize the drawing style from some of their books. Guess I’m a public figure now.

Anyway, what’s with the ring?

Looking closer, the thin and small gold ring had something carved inside: T.L.D.R.

“Why would she…”

[Storage ring]: A small storage ring containing the relative space of a barrel. An expensive commodity. Open it already!

“Are you alright, Scribe? Feels like you’ve been growing more impatient. Don’t go catching a soul parasite…”

Let’s see what it is that she wanted to give me at the last minute without Agran knowing.

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