Saintess Summons Skeletons

An important detail about the corrupted elf growing wings was that he had been clearly looking in the direction of Sofia.

With little options left, she did two things, the first was to start channeling the graveyard, the second was to order the skeleton spiders to jump straight into the sun if the elf found them. She debated leaving Pareth alone on the roof to confront the thing and see if he could at least injure it, but ultimately decided against it. Losing Pareth now would be more than a bit annoying.

She finally phased through the roof of the small inverted pyramid section she had been on before the monster could reach her. The cold grasp of the graveyard skeletons had never felt so warm. Since Sofia had been on the border of the roof, she was currently sinking through the external wall.

Can I spot those things while I’m in the spirit plane? Coming out of the wall at a random place could be dangerous. I can feel that this side section has three floors. At least there’s nothing ‘alive’ in there, nothing that has mana or a soul at least…

The graveyard skeletons themselves could change freely from one plane to another; they were in a constant in-between, so as two of them kept pulling Sofia down, she ordered another to check if there were any elves in the first room and if so, to come back into the wall immediately. The skeleton barely poked the front of its face out of the wall before it reeled back.

Pull me down faster!

I saw when I was walking on the spider rope that the door to the lowest level was just open. Hopefully there’s a closed room on the middle floor…

Though she could vaguely map out the place due to most physical things being largely transparent in the spiritual plane, it also made the exact details hard to grasp. People’s bodies and most small objects especially didn’t really show up except for their soul and mana. But for thick structures like walls, trees and such, they existed as these white layers of cloudy fog in a sea of white light everywhere. Long-story-short, she had to trust the graveyard skeletons to find a safe landing point free of elven horror. And though it pained her to admit it, the graveyard skeletons were her dumbest skeletons by a long shot. They just weren’t very bright when it came to anything that wasn’t ‘pull people into ground’.

Still, the skeletons apparently found it safe to bring her out in the central room of the second floor. Just in case, she stuck her hand with the storage ring out of the wall and as soon as it started to turn corporeal, she dumped Pareth out of there and looked through his eyes.

Sofia’s feet got caught in a bunch of metal doodads when she stepped out of the wall, [Way of the fool] narrowly saving her from falling face first on the brick floor as she stumbled forward into a gravity-defying position.

Just then, she lost connection to the two skeleton spiders which had been in the same place as her, which she decided to label the north building.

So that thing really followed me as well as found and attacked the spider. I didn’t even realize it had jumped. Until then, Sofia had still wanted to hold onto the foolish hope that perhaps these weren’t wings but some kind of feelers that just happened to look like the small things’ wings, but no, these were wings as well. She wanted to curse more but she forced herself to calm down, panic wouldn’t help her. At least the thing had gone after the spider and not her, so that was something. Now she had to hope that her trip to the spirit plane had been enough for it to lose her tracks.

Finally, she took some time to observe the room she was in. There was a lot of strange machinery everywhere. It was very reminiscent of the room in which she and Alith had fought the previous owner of Zangdar. These won’t start spewing out steam, right?

Sofia’s next reflex was to walk up to the heavy metal door and try to open it, she was relieved to find that it was completely stuck like the other doors she had seen until now.

Nothing entered here in forever I bet. So as long as I don’t do anything, I should probably be safe here,maybe. I don’t have anything better at least…

Reflexively, Sofia tried identifying things in the room, but except for stuff like levers and buttons. The scribe seemed just as lost as herself when it came to knowing what these things were for. It seemed to be a whole thing all linking to a big mechanical thing in the middle of the room. The more Sofia looked, the less she understood, until she found a locked glass case on a wall in-between countless tubes and gears.

Behind the glass, on which the elvish words for ‘do not open without permission’ were engraved, she could see a thick book titled: ‘Flare protection module models’.

That at least answers what this room is for. Kind of.

There was a ‘flare protection’ module listed as offline on the main power panel. I don’t know what a flare is in this context. I doubt it has anything to do with the flare arrows of the paladin scouts, but whatever it was, the protection clearly wasn’t good against a Deep Lord’s envoys.

There was a ‘defense system’ module too. I guess this was the one actually meant to protect against intruders. Maybe reactivating it could be helpful, if I’m not part of what it tries to defend the place from… Who knows how much I’m mistranslating anyway, half these words I have to guess.

Reactivating the station’s modules could be a good first step to try to get rid of these things.

Honestly it’s interesting that this facility is in such good shape considering what roams inside. The south building is missing but I haven’t seen much damage besides that. I guess the root question is why would Ormoncleth prevent its operation yet not just sink the whole thing.

Sofia felt a tug at her consciousness, the remaining skeletal spiders weren’t disconnected, but they were clearly trying to send some kind of message, they were showing the same kind of agitation they had when the monster had grown wings.

What is it now?

Pareth appeared next to Sofia, the room could host his large body without trouble as elves were usually quite tall. He pointed at something on the side of the room before disappearing into her ring again. Some kind of barred hole. What’s that, air vents? It’s not like the elves can fit…

The revelation of what was to come made her skin crawl, she hurriedly channeled the [Graveyard of the righteous]. The swarm!

Without any kind of scouting, she sank straight through the floor to the lower level, her head phasing through the ground just in time to catch a glimpse of the sprawling mass of bulbous creatures gushing out of the vent.

Frantically looking around, she cursed in her heart, this room had the exact same kind of air vents, she rushed to the closed door and phased through. Now in a corridor, she freaked out at the sight of even more air vents. Now that she knew about them, she could see them everywhere.

She ran randomly, phasing into every room she could find to see if any was safe. She couldn’t hear the swarm crawling in the walls but more than once she spotted their presence from the corner of her eyes as she phased through the walls. She had never been so thankful for a place to be so large and to have such a complicated layout, had the building been smaller, she would have been quickly surrounded.

In a hurry, she summoned her own swarm out of the book, the 100 rats.

Spread out, map the whole place, use the vents, dispel yourself if the things so much as come close to touching you!

The rats quickly ran off, using the vents to their advantage, they were quick to spread around but also quick to disappear. Sofia hid inside the walls, this was soon to be the only safe place left on this floor.

The rats quickly found out that the swarm already occupied most of the building. The only place still relatively free was the third floor. They knew where I was from the start then, didn’t bother searching up there. That’s bad news…

It was then that the few remaining rats made a discovery. A single room for which they couldn’t find a way in. A room without air vents. Sofia was elated by the discovery until she understood where this was.

It was the room on the third floor that Sofia had passed by on her way down. The one she had skipped because the graveyard skeletons had detected the presence of an elf.

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