Saintess Summons Skeletons-Chapter 624: If I had a nickel…

The short man walked out of the room, immediately calling out to a tall guard wearing fancy medals strapped on his chest who was listlessly signing papers in a corner.

“Surran! I am escorting this lady to meet with the chancellor. Leave the paperwork to Otto, you stand in for me until I’m back.”

“Yes, commander!” Surran answered with renewed spirit.

“And don’t stare at our guests like this. You knobhead!”

He yelled a few orders to the other guards standing around the room doing nothing, and led Sofia outside through a reinforced back door leading directly beyond the palace walls. He took her to the interior pathway leading directly to the main entrance, the fully-armored knights patrolling inside of the palace walls silently nodding to him as he walked by.

When they were sufficiently far from anyone else, the commander could finally start the discussion again, immediately asking a question about the ‘Grand Inquisitor’.

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“Is it true what they say about him? That the reason he never takes off his helmet is to hide his pointy ears like a corruptor’s?” he inquired, his voice cracking a bit on the last word.

He never takes off his helmet? That doesn’t sound like the Aphenoreth I know… But I have seen him with pointy ears once, in the original picture of the midenicite tablet.

“No,” Sofia decided to finally answer. “Even I have not been given the opportunity to see his face many times, but I can assure you his ears are perfectly normal.”

“Is that so? I was thinking there might be some truth to it, considering…”

“No, Pestle has no link to my adoption at all, it’s a long story… What about your Queen, they say she had eternal youth, is that true?”

The commander sighed, playing with his mustache as he seemed to reminisce about the Queen, “That is true… Tragically so. Even now, after she left us, her body seems everlasting…”

“Do you really not have any idea how she died?” Sofia continued.

“Not in the slightest. But if you can keep this between us… We have reasons to believe she knew death was coming for her. Just look around you. Does this look like a kingdom without a proper leader? We found writs in her majesty’s chambers detailing her plans for the next hundred years of this kingdom. It’s almost scary how efficient a ruler she was… But here we are…”

It sounds like her plans were not quite followed to the letter if this is how the moon ended up… Maybe I should ask about that.

“Did she predict the storms?”

“Alas not, how could she? Our Queen was a sage and a warrior, not some lunatic pretending to have knowledge of the future. It has certainly been a source of great distress to the chancellor, not to mention the recent disaster with the Sorcerers… Now… Can you share the details of your ‘adoption’? How come the Grand Inquisitor who has never been known to even show his face would end up adopting someone?”

Sofia giggled lightly at the question, pretending not to notice the hidden objective behind this probing question, or the fact that two of the knights they had passed by earlier were now following them from afar. “It was by pure chance, actually. It was a few years ago, when I had no real family left to speak of. He was simply doing what he usually does, and the randomness of life put me right in his path. He must have seen something in me, I could not tell you what, and decided to take me with him. We’re not exactly close, still, but we’re family. He’s the one who sent me here.”

Well, not quite, but this guy does not need to know that. I wonder if that was convincing enough?

“Hmm… That is still honestly hard to believe,” the commander commented, “but I suppose the Lords are all like this, strange in their own way, are they not? Have you had the chance to meet any of the other eight while you were with the Inquisitor?”

Other eight? So there were exactly ten, with ‘Lady Esprizia Ormoncleth’ being the tenth, like that Count told us.

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“I have had the privilege of meeting the Orator and the Annihilator,” Sofia started, closely monitoring the commander’s body language to know if she had made a mistake betting that all four Lords of the deep would be involved in the lost epoch as ‘human’ lords. So far the commander seemed not to react in any strange way, so it seemed Sofia’s intuition was right, she continued, “I haven’t much to say about the latter, the former is quite the proficient speaker, as the title suggests. He has a bit of an overinflated ego, in my opinion, but that does fit someone of his station.”

The commander seemed to relax a bit and nodded in agreement. “That is certainly the impression His Holiness left on me as well. Even in front of our Queen, in her palace, he would not mince his words.”

His holiness? Sofia thought, her mind full of questions, but she could not ask any without blowing her cover built on half-truths. Instead she opted to change the subject back to the Queen.

“Your Queen was sometimes called the silent queen, was she not? Did she just never speak?” she asked.

“Ahah, no, no, of course she would speak. How else was she to rule such a large kingdom? The Queen of few words might have been a better fit, but that would not be much of a grand title. Not once did I witness her hesitate or misspeak. She was always straight and to the point, efficient to a fault, just like her blade.”

“The rapier, right? Where is it now, resting on her coffin?”

The commander laughed, “Ahahah, you must not be very familiar with the history of our kingdom… If you speak of that blade, it is still embedded in the torso of Oviron’s rotting carcass!” he said with a hint of pride.

Oviron again. And the place with the dead god is called Oviron’s spire… So that Oviron is the dead god I’m looking for, and Ormoncleth, either the Lord or a marked one sharing the name, killed him.

“I see… There is no better place it could be, I suppose,” Sofia continued, going with the mood.

“Rightly so,” the short commander said, nodding to himself.

Sofia saw him do a discreet sign with his fingers, and she could hear the footsteps of the following knights slowly become fainter.

“What about the other Lords?” Sofia asked next, hoping that she could avoid further suspicion by asking questions herself, “I suppose you have met many during your long service to the Queen?”

“Almost all of them,” the commander affirmed with pride, “a great honour. Sometimes I wonder, if I had been a little more gifted with the blade, whether I could have risen to become a mercenary Lord like the late Zerteth… Although I suppose he was too short-lived to envy. But even my meager talent could get me to where I am now, so I’ve little to complain about. What about you, lady Sofia? Any particular talent? An ambition to lead the human race to the next level?”

Unsure of what to say, Sofia decided to laugh it off, “Ahah… Alas not. I-” she took a second to search for her words and a suitable comeback, “I fear I did not inherit my adoptive father’s ambitions. The most I can do is to repay him by going on errands like these.”

“Oh! Yes, I did mean to ask, now that you mention it again, why exactly were you sent here? Not to offer your condolences, I assume?”

“Indeed not. I have very few details, but I know your Queen has somehow gotten her hands on a… Sorcery schematics?” Sofia tried hesitantly, “that she got from another Lord… I’m not even sure which one, the letter did not say, It could even have been from my father himself, for all I know. Either way, he wishes for me to retrieve it and bring it back to him,” she explained as they neared the palace’s doors.

“Interesting. I would make a comment but I am afraid only the chancellor himself could tell you anything about such private matters of Her Majesty.”

“That I understand.”

The commander nodded and took a deep breath, “Open the doors!”

With the sound of chains moving, the palace’s massive doors slowly swung open.

Surprisingly, a tall, slender man was waiting on the other side. He looked dead, a gray, rotting corpse, floating a good meter above the ground. His open eyes were like a black abyss, staring straight through Sofia’s soul.

She couldn’t move.

Next to her, the commander seemed to be seeing something else.

“Chancellor?! You’ve finally decided to come out of your chambers! What great news!”

Sofia tried to move as hard as she could, but she could not feel herself, let alone move a finger, and her thoughts became muddier by the second. She saw Pestle jumping out of her mantle, throwing herself claws first at the floating corpse, but the Fairy, too, became frozen in place, stuck mid-air a good meter away from the ‘chancellor’.

The corpse’s right hand rose like that of a puppet pulled up by a string, and drew an horizontal line.

Sofia saw Pestle be split into two at the waist, glittering midenicite-blue blood spilling out.

Then her own vision started to tilt, before falling to the ground with a wet thunk.

With a loud gasp Sofia opened her eyes, adrenaline rushing through her veins. She was in a familiar bed. In a familiar room.

Someone came with hurried footsteps.

“Goodness, you’re awake!”