Saintess Summons Skeletons

Eternam entered the room, his sharp three toed talons clicking on the wooden floor. His hands looked similar, with long and nimble clawed fingers. He looked like a humanoid crow. His body was covered in sleek obsidian-black feathers except for his torso which was covered in black fuzz instead.

He wore several layers of thin black clothes, some tightly wrapped around his torso and his featherless forearms and ankles, and some loosely hanging over those. From under his arms, extending to his back, long black wings draped around him like a tall and majestic cape.

His face was a strange human and bird mix, with human eyes above a crow-like pointed beak and a crown of spread feathers adorning his head.

Strangely… Zerei looks more human than he does. This is more like a super-extra beastman ancestor or something like that.

The real bird species beastmen are kind of pitiful in comparison. Like comparing a lizard and Dragon.

Eternam’s head turned on the side like a bird’s as he observed Sofia.

“A Saint? I thought Knowledge’s saint was still alive, but if so, which God is it? Loyalty, perhaps?” Eternam asked as he drew closer and sat on the chair opposite Sofia’s. His long feathery wings almost entirely covered the chair making it look like the Avian was sitting on thin air.

Knowledge? Oh, for necromancy? Is Knowledge’s saint a Necromancer? That would make sense considering Pareth’s ritual uses Knowledge’s rune…

“No, my patron god does not have much to do with my necromancy abilities. The class I have is not really a saint and not really a necromancer. Call it a hiccup of the system.”

“Is that so? I hear resentment in your voice. You must not be contributing much to your patron God’s power.”

“I”ll kill him if I have the opportunity,” Sofia confirmed without flinching.

Eternam reeled back a bit, making eerie bird noises. Sofia understood this was laughter. Or perhaps cackling was a more appropriate interpretation.

“An ambitious plan. You might need more than a few skeletons. But you seem to have things under control. Dragon scale… I also feel Avian magic on you. Whose old tomb did you pîllage?” the Avian asked. The words were accusatory but the voice was still neutral.

“Oh, it’s probably from this,” Sofia started to say, bringing out her staff, “I did find it in a ruined Avian city, underground beneath the human continent’s spirit forest.”

Eternam’s body was immobile but his head stretched forward, staring at the staff.

“Nice find. So a group found shelter underground. Interesting, yes. No other finds from there?”

“There was a survivor actually. She was turned into an Apostle and survived trapped underground until I arrived. She’s also going to be a teacher here for the year.”

Sofia had a scare as Eternam had leaped from his chair and suddenly came closer. Pareth even appeared in between them but the Avian’s unblinking stare still reached Sofia from between Pareth’s bones.

“Really, yes?!” the Avian teacher asked.

“Uh- yeah… She should be here already, I think.”

“Ah. Sorry if I scared you,” Eternam apologized as he backed up. His eyes now lingered on Pareth and his halo. “Another survivor. Even an Apostle, that is great news.”

“Are there so few Avians left? She never explained why they had to hide.”

Eternam sighed and sat back down. “Do you know basilisks?” Eternam asked, venom in his voice.

“The miasma-spewing flying sea serpents? Who hasn’t heard of them?”

“Those exactly. Around two thousand years ago, their king emerged from the depths. A basilisk strong enough to contend with the strongest of Dragons. Its appearance sent the basilisks into a frenzy. They no longer had enough of the sea, they needed to conquer the land, to roam the skies.”

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“That sounds quite bad… But why would the Avians disappear when weak races like us humans survived just fine?”

“Avian bones are a delicacy to basilisks. Spreading worldwide through the skies, they hunted our kind without rest, leading to our near extinction.”

“Sorry for your loss… What happened to the basilisk king?”

“Killed, yes. An alliance of ancient and powerful beings got rid of it, but too late. Still, I am ever thankful to them. The headmaster is one of them, forever a hero to the Avian kind.”

“It’s hard to believe the system would let that happen. I already received an Angel’s warning against using my most destructive spells in places where it could hurt civilians. But yet they would let Avians go extinct?”

Eternam shook his feathery head. “The system was not always so pervasive. Its foundation and angels were once weak. It took a long time for it to become what it is now. We can only comfort ourselves in that this tragedy led to the strengthening of the Angelic ranks, which has been vital in recent times.”

“Let me guess, Phageids?” Sofia tried.

“That is what has been keeping most of their attention for the last thousand years, yes,” the Avian confirmed.

“How is it that the old and powerful don’t do another basilisk king and hunt them down? I know some people who are but they seemed to be struggling…”

“It is not so easy. The Phageid are slippery, hard to track. Everyone has been trying to find their origin, but the best we can do so far is to answer the attacks in kind. This being said, most anyone over level 400 will seek and hunt them whenever they catch wind of their appearance, myself included.”

Sofia and Eternam’s conversation looped back to necromancy after a few minutes of discussing other matters.

“Quite a peculiar ritual circle,” he commented as he observed Pareth’s summoning circle that Zerei had improved, “Curious how the base has been completely replaced by a divine rune. That makes everything else have to work around it. I can tell that an Avian helped design this just from the runic syntax.”

“She helped make it much simpler. There used to be a bunch of useless junk to hide the divine rune in plain sight.”

“Not bad. And this is for your holy skeleton, you say? It looks sturdy enough. A shame that the skill must be doing half the work. This ritual circle by itself wouldn’t do any good to anyone else.”

“Not even to raise a regular skeleton?”

“No, even in the off chance Knowledge accepted to activate the magic, it would still only create an empty husk. This can only ever bind the soul of your one skeleton, and no one would be able to steal that.”

“Oh! Speaking of which, he is able to teleport to me whenever. I wondered if I might be able to reverse the process and teleport to him. Do you think that would be possible?”

Eternam’s head rotated one way then the other.

"I will need to see the teleportation through my own two eyes to tell you."

"Sure, go ahead Pareth," Sofia ordered. Pareth walked away a few meters then teleported back.

Eternam silently watched the process.

"Hmmm, the connection could certainly be taken over to teleport to him instead, but…”

“But?”

“You would need to learn how to teleport by yourself first.”

“Oh. Alright. Well, that was already in the plans.”

“Never a bad idea,” Eternam confirmed. “Better yet, you might be able to take this one step further.”

“How so?”

“You could achieve a place swap by teleporting to each other simultaneously. Timing would be key for that to be consistent, but it could be a great tool in a fight. Either way, these kinds of teleportations will always be easier than regular ones, since you won’t have to direct your soul through the spirit plane yourself and can just follow the already existing track.”

“Interesting. A bit more effort than I had hoped, but that will work. Was the talking you did through the skull at the entrance working on a similar principle?”

“No, this is just a transmission spell, the ritual is engraved inside the skull. I could see, speak and hear through anything as long as it has this rune inside and I can connect to it.”

“Could I ask you to teach me that?”

“That is going to cost you a lesson credit,” Eternam informed her, “Or you could trade for your own knowledge.”

“Do I have anything you want to know more about?”

“My shades are uneasy around you for a reason I cannot quite understand. Any idea about that?"

"Oh, this is due to two of my skills I believe…"

The knowledge sharing about necromancy was lively, clearly Eternam was quite enthusiastic about the subject matter.

Their discussion was interrupted by someone knocking on the door.

"Time for a practical exam, fellow teacher. You know how to connect to the runes now, do so and inform me of the identity of the new guest."

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