[TLQ-B2] 15. Proposal (Patreon)

XV

Proposal

The remnants of the earthquake hitting the landscape escaped into the distance.

‘Kalameet,’ the name reverberated through my head. It was a name that rolled off the tongue but left a bad aftertaste. One that heralded a dark future.

I licked my lips. Recent events had done much to shake me from my regular indifference and calm nature. But in the presence of what could only be an eldritch being, centuries of training took over.

Inside me, I pushed down on Durand’s presence.

‘Do not make yourself known,’ I thought. Then my back straightened.

“Kalameet. What do you mean, I’m using your power? Death knows no god.”

The personification of Death was an ancient fairy tale known to me. Every culture had their own variant. Except for us Necrons. Not once in our vast history had a single being revealed itself as the ‘God’ of death.

Until now, perhaps, for the self-proclaimed god looked down on me. “Stand before me.”

In this frozen realm, his voice no longer was a mental projection.

The world twisted and warped. In the blink of an eye, I travelled hundreds of kilometres and stood at the foot of the iceberg. The ice prison towered and rose so far into the sky that I couldn’t see its tip. But for all that the top was not visible, the being inside was.

“Now, tell me again—”

Up close, he was more than a mere silhouette. Silver plates, rugged like the back of a mountain, weighed down his shoulders. A helmet covered the face, the two holes on its side a perfect fit for his horns. The cape billowing behind him didn’t seem made from a real material. Instead, it was some dark product of miasma, which attached to the rest of his armour like it was a living thing, a parasite growing on it. His hands, the nails of which were a deep red, cupped an orb blacker than the cosmos over Necron.

“—that Death knows no Monarch.”

And though millennia of education, learning, and every other fibre of my being refused to admit it, my mind couldn’t. The being in front of me radiated death like a sun did light. Part of it was the body I was in—it was easier to impress those with less mana that you—but this was no trick. For his energy to leak through the prison in this amount, his power must be fearsome.

‘He reminds me of Father.’ Of myself, when I still had my previous body.

Which was why I lowered…

And bowed over my arm. “Forgive my rudeness, Elder Kalameet. However, I must insist, the realm of Death knows no god…or Monarch as you coined it.”

Tales of powerful Elders capable of wiping out universes with a flick of their wrist existed. This could perhaps be such an Elder, yet I would still not recognise him as a God.

Winds struck my hair and ruffled the ends. They were no longer cold, strangely enough.

“Raise your head, Ilya of Kreed.”

I straightened…and locked eyes. His scleras were red, but the centre of his pupils were a void that sucked me in and didn’t let go. How long did he stare into me? I couldn’t tell. Only after he spoke did I regain a sense of place and time.

“…You’re not from here.” The ground rumbled with his words.

“From where, Elder?”

“This place. This prison you mistake for a world.”

I refrained from narrowing my gaze. Did he mean what I think he did?

To the side, ice curled up from the ground and shaped into a chair. “Sit, child.”

He gave me a moment to study the seat so I could convince myself there was no foul play at hand. Satisfied, I sat down in the ornate chair that was much bigger than my frame.

“You’re far from home,” he repeated.

‘He’s not letting that go.’ Which must mean he knew something.

I took a moment to choose my next words.

“I’m taking part in a ritual. It’s a test.”

“Which involves those corpses?”

“Its my task to raise them.” I kept my answers short on purpose. If this truly was an Elder of untold power, there was no telling what plans they had. If they had any at all, they surely wouldn’t bode well for me.

‘Not that that matters.’ I was no stranger to politics like these. You kept your head down, refrained from challenging their ego unnecessarily, and chose your opportunity to strike.

Yet for all my confidence, I had to keep myself from frowning. Had Grandmother known this would happen? My instinct was a resounding ‘No.’ What reason could she possibly have for not informing me of this?

The ice trembled around us. “Being careful, I see.” He trailed off in thought until suddenly, a low, droning sound rumbled out of the bottom of the iceberg.

“Ah, my apologies, where are my manners. It has been some time since I conversed with anyone.”

Winds picked up and a gout of snow kicked past, which clouded all sight. When the world returned, the bare, snowy landscape was gone, and we were sitting in a garden underneath a gazebo.

“There, that should be better.” The voice was softer and more human.

I looked down and studied the man in front of me.

Long, snow-white robes swallowed his frame. Black Hair fell past the side of the silky cloth like a waterfall. He had pale white skin not unlike my own. His eyes remained red. They did not trap me like they had before, but they were cloudy, as if he were a dead man walking.

My heart itched just looking at him.

Years of existence exuded from his frame, giving one the impression that he’d been stuck in this place since the beginning of time.

I cast a roving glance around. ‘It’s an illusion.’

Had to be. But to cast an illusion on this scale…

“An easy feat to achieve,” he waved me away. “Ice is a simple domain to shape.”

I rubbed a finger over the table between us. The sensation was hard. Grooved and rugged, like real wood—how could something so real ever be made from ice.

Kalameet patiently waited for my attention to return to him.

“A question if I may, Elder.”

“Please.”

“What is this place? You mentioned Kreed.”

Asking elders questions was risky—they could turn anything into a debt—but this opportunity was too good to pass up.

The Elder smiled. “This is a mirror world.”

“Mirror world?”

“A copy of the real world in the spirit realm. Specifically, a mirror of a past event.”

My brain paused. I’d already suspected that this was a past even in some way. However, having it be confirmed was still a shock. If this was the past, then how was everyone interacting with me as if this was the present?

“The rules in the spirit world do not function the same as in reality.” Pointedly, Kalameet sipped from a mug of tea that I didn’t see him produce. When I glanced down, there was one in front of me as well.

‘I cannot sense anything.’ Was it because he was quick, or was his manipulation of energy in this realm that quiet?

The world I came from didn’t have a spirit realm. Not in the sense that he was describing, at least. Souls, the departed, travelled to another place at the time of their death. Noe one knew where it was—but it certainly wasn’t a place the living or undead could set foot in.

Yet here I was.

While questioning what was happening, I moved one of my arms under the table and stretched my fingers. The moment I did, my gaze narrowed. There was a…viscous substance which moved minutely around my fingertips as if it was making way for them.

I turned back to Kalameet. “So, the spirit world is replaying something that already happened…is this event important in some matter?”

His lips curved upwards. “A prison break.”

…he called this world a ‘prison,’ didn’t he? Given the command over frost he’d showed, it made sense.

“If I may be so preposterous, who locked you up, Elder?”

It was hard to think of someone who could imprison a being of this magnitude.

“The All-Seer,” he said easily. “Or perhaps you know him better as Lloyd. It was a punishment for my transgression against the denizens of Kreed.”

‘He tried to kill them,’ I translated. It was the greatest joy of every unhinged, powerful necromancer to slay living beings.

“Then the All-Seer’s not as smart as I thought,” I said. The others made him out to be some God of gods.

A low, rasping noise rippled from Kalameet’s throat.

“To be fair to Lloyd, I only awakened to this power after the prison was built. None of the four primary elements would work for my seal. Fire, water, and air were too flimsy to hold me at low intensities. At higher intensities, they may kill me outright and the All-Seer is not a tyrant. He needed something solid. Like earth. But the element would not do, for dead matter and earth are near synonyms of each other. Then he found ice.”

“A perfect insulator,” he continued. “One my powers would not find any purchase on in a million years…or so he thought.”

‘I see.’ My first thought had been that frost and death were always linked together in this realm, but it appeared that wasn’t so. I supposed that shouldn’t surprise me. I myself had not discovered the relation between frost and death until coming to this world—how many years or generations would it have taken others? I merely entered a period in history where the link between the two elements was already discovered.

‘Which means the Elder in front of me may be the progenitor of that link.’

“It seems you’ve realised it,” he said.

His thoughts must not be along the same line as mine—he didn’t know I could manipulate ice as well.

But I merely inclined my head. “You are my elder in more than just age.”

How many years? A thousand? Ten thousand? How many generations of necromancers would I have to traverse to find a direct link to Kalameet in my family tree?

An intriguing chain of questions, to say the least. But there was another, more important question that loomed over all of these.

Where was he now? Not once had I heard of an Elder named Kalameet, nor found as much as a hint of his presence. Grandmother also hadn’t mentioned him.

My head tilted, the angle changing the interpretation of the light falling on Kalameet’s face. Here was an Elder who could move my body and spirit to whatever location he wished in this spirit world yet he hasn’t tried anything. No attempt to chain me or take over my body, no scheme to latch his soul onto mine and perhaps ferry his way back to the physical world.

“Elder,” I said carefully. “You’re already dead, aren’t you?”

The clouds hiding within his gaze moved behind his pupils. He smiled and pointed at me. A flash of cold light sparked around his fingertip.

I blinked, looked down at my chest, then behind me. There, a tooth of frost lay buried in the ground. It was big enough to cover my chest two times over, yet there was not a mark where the spike had passed.

My gaze returned to the elder. “As you can see,” he said. “I, and everything I produce, are merely an afterimage.” His chin turned towards the sky. “This place was designed as my personal hell. It replays the events of my failure.”

Overhead, the world shifted again. Blue skies morphed. Darkness claimed the sun. A veil of black spread through the skies and in seconds, nothing but the dark remained. Nothing but the cold, touch of a planet that had never known warmth. And yet in the deepest reaches of the shadows, an even deeper dark stirred. A great avian creature, its digits webbed like spiderwebs, so thin of fat its appearance was more bone than felsh.

The colour of the frozen north beamed from its sockets. On its back, an armoured titan loomed with its hands spread out. Cold whirred up from the earth into the sky and sucked into its palms.

This was nothing but an image, so there was no mana for me to feel pressured by. Still a chill passed through me. Once more, I confirmed in my mind that this was indeed an Elder.

‘Would he beat me at my peak?’ The answer wasn’t clear to me. At the height of my power, I could craft a plague that would wipe out a planet in days. My Archons could whip up a whirlwind of terrorising undead that would destroy civilisations. However, death was not an element that worked instantaneously. It needed time. Preparation. Rituals.

Ice was different. A single beam with enough power behind it could cast a world into an ice age, freeze all life for eternity. The extra element in his repertoire, combined with his mastery of death, could prove lethal.

But he’d been stopped. How—

From one moment to the next, the darkness washed from the sky. What remained was the clear air from before, from which a mild cold settled onto the land.

“You will have to forgive me,” he mumbled. “I never saw what ended my existence, so I cannot show it to you.”

Which meant he’d gone out exactly like he showed me: instantaneously.

A firm breath exited my nostrils. My brows knitted together. To think Erst has monsters on that scale…I’d thought this realm nothing but an infant realm of sorcerers. ‘Is the All-Seer still roaming around?’ He couldn’t be. Ruelle was the patron goddess of the House of Light, not him…

But that didn’t mean he was dead.

My attention returned to the Elder. “I’m sorry for your loss, Elder.”

He waved me away. “You needn’t be. Losers deserve no compassion.”

I braided my fingers together. “Then I won’t give any. However, Elder, for what reasons are you showing me this?”

Nothing could be done to change the past, and the Elder was already dead. Was he trying to warn me of a potential, future opponent?

“I have a proposition.”

“A proposition?” I said carefully.

‘Here it is,’ I thought to myself. Was this where the Elder shenanigans entered the conversation?

Kalameet held up his hand. “Nothing invasive, I assure you. I’m less than a spirit, after all. My offer is for me to train you.”

I waited.

“You are no amateur when it comes to death,” he said. “Yet you still have much to learn. Of both death and ice.”

That was true beyond a shadow of a doubt, though, again, he was assuming I didn’t know anything of frost.

“And in return?” I asked. “What is it you would request, Elder?”

His hands linked in a mirror of my own. He leaned forwards and flashed his teeth. “Your hand in marriage.”

…

What?