"Hm~ go awa~ay, Shirou." Rin half complained and cooed as the smell of eggs and meat reached her nose and a gentle hand keep shaking at her shoulder. "Or better yet, come back to be~ed~ "
That very same gentle hand brushed her hair off her face and behind her ear, and then a pair of lips whispered on her ear...
"Oh my~, so that's what you sound like in bed."
"Asdafakwha?!"
Rin put all super cars to shame as she went from zero to a hundred in no time flat, slinking away from the female voice and sitting up so violently she ended up falling backwards unto the bed, her left leg entangled in the silk sheets as she supported her upper body on her elbows and looked at the very amused blonde... no, at her very amused friend.
"Luvia, wh-!?"
"You were sleeping so nicely, I could not bring myself to awaking you earlier." The Edelfelt's heiress smiles as she straightens up, her generous bosom straining her almost diaphanous silk robe. "You looked and sounded like a content kitten. It was adorable."
"...!" Rin's full body blush also went from zero to a hundred in no time flat.
"The new famili- pets are grown up already. We did not get anything as good as Rojo this time."
"Well, chances are Rojo is a male and they have a heavily skewed male-to-female ratio, or maybe we just got lucky. Honestly, I have no idea on how to check for turtle gender."
Rin rubbed her head softly with both hands, not bothering to cover herself before disentangling herself from the sheets and moving over to the floor, then walking over to pick and don her own robe. At this point, the bedroom was lit with two very bright iron braziers and its floor covered with fur rugs, so all in all, it had a somewhat luxurious feel to it. Almost decadent since now they had proper drawers, though the shield and armour racks gave the room an oddly military feel.
"I learnt more about survival." Explains the leggy black-haired magus. "And we can raise horses as mounts if we find any foals. Would you happen to have seen any while exploring the area?"
"I have. Is it any different from growing fami- I mean, pets?"
"Apparently they are." And then she added. "Did you have breakfast already?"
"I wanted to wait for you." Smiled Luvia. "Come on, before it gets cold."
"Yes, yes, I'm coming."
"Alright."
"Why, miss Edelfelt. No bedroom jokes?"
"Maybe if you scream it sometime..."
"That sounds like a rescue-type situation. I think we would have other things to worry about..."
After breakfast, they dressed up and went out to check on their new pets. Indeed, four green shellbacks and an adult crocodile.
"Is it odd that I thought 'they are all so small' when looking at them?" Luvia places her hands on her hips while looking at the new additions to their security forces.
"I know what you mean."
The shellbacks are almost as tall as they are. Its just that the red one is over twice the height.
"Let us throw another five in the animal pen, and then we can try and swarm that overgrown spider."
"Are you forgetting about the cannibals? I thought we were doing that first."
"Right, I just really want to see what is inside the chest."
"Fair enough. But let us secure a safer living environment first, shall we?"
"Lets."
They explored downstream this time, and found that at some point, the desert suddenly switches into a flooded jungle. Enormous trees as thick as houses grow everywhere, with vines the thickness of their arms hanging lazily everywhere, and reptilian monstrosities trotting around placidly while munching on the thick algae growing on the river shores.
"This does not make a lick of sense." Complains Rin. "How do you go from boiling desert to rain forest in the span of twelve feet!?"
"Uhm. Do you want to try going in and just follow the river?"
"No thank you, I think I just heard a tiger or something."
"I thought you were a cat person."
"Cats, yes, Cats are adorable. Tigers are murder machines."
"What if Shero is just downstream?"
"His fault for wandering into a dumb place. Let's search here last. At last he can't leave the region, assuming he too has a brac- oh no."
"What is it?"
Rin facepalms as she looks at Luvia with her uncovered eye.
"He can just rule break himself free. I will explain later."
"...alright? Do you want to go catch a foal, or go check those ruins we spotted a mile back?"
"Ruins first, I think."
The girls turned around and began to walk, making small talk while keeping an eye out for danger...
~O~
Shirou walked into the Lemurian community around the ancient Pagoda of Endless Lusts, and greeted Adon and the rest of the Lemurian warriors. They had finished preparations, and were about to raid the pirate's stronghold. The first step would be to take the beach before fighting up the ramps and platforms leading unto the gargantuan ship they built in preparation for the day the barrier was taken down.
To be honest, Shirou was unhappy with throwing the pirates into the Wheel, but letting them alone was not an option, killing them was abhorrent, and if he freed them, they'd just go on robbing and enslaving elsewhere. If these lands were inhabited, he may have even cheered at whoever exiled the pirates in a prison without bars, away from civilisation and free to build a new life for themselves. Sadly, that was not the case.
He thought of the memories he saw in the pirate's sword. Of the violence, the abuse, the plundering and specially the rape, and reaffirmed his determination. This was the only path.
"Hey, Shirou. You ready?" Adon and Mei walked over to greet him, both of them decked in full gear this time.
"Hello, Adon-san, Mei-san."
"Are you sure you are fine with just that much armour? I know that as an archer, you prefer the mobility of lighter armour, but ours is meant to be easy to move in even if you were to fall overboard, you know?" Mei looked at him from top to bottom. "It is the traditional armor for a nation built around its merchant navy."
"I'd like to wait until I know how to make it myself."
"If you say so, but its always better to get a master of the trade to do it for you." Mei shrugs.
A total of twenty three Lemurian warriors and a budding hero begin moving through the jungle, literally descending upon the hungover pirates, climb down the cliff side unto a massive pole marquee the pirates erected on the beach, sliding down its ropes and support beams to find it covers a three-floor, ramshackle wooden structure full of iron cages to hold both prisoners and beasts in between crates, kegs and barrels.
"Hn. Lucky us." Comments one of the warriors before creeping up to an sleeping pirate and grabbing the man, quickly beating him unconscious with rather more brutality than efficiency. "The cage keys."
"Alright, change of plans," Adon gestures to the other warriors to stop approaching the ship and instead come help free the captives. "we can deal with the pirates later. Let's rescue everyone first."
"Right." Shirou nods with a smile.
This is the sort of thing he can get 100% behind, after all.
A young man struggles to see through bloated eyelids as he hears his cage's lock click open. He tries to shield himself with both arms, and freezes when he's pulled into a hug.
"Shh. Poscore, its Mei. We're getting you out of here."
"Mei...!?"
The other prisoners stir, and for a moment, Shirou is dreading the sound of about 2 dozen people crying out for help. But it doesn't happen. Instead, they quietly stare at their rescuers, and ready themselves next to their cages' doors.
Of course things wouldn't go that well, though, and they are half way through freeing the prisoners when one of the pirates passed out on the beach sits up and notices the Lemurians crawling all over the marquee, and begins raising the alarm.
Almost two dozen pirates were laying on the beach, and quickly start running towards the Lemurians' group, weapons at the ready.
"So much for taking them captive." Adon calls out loud. "Warriors, protect our people!"
With wounded and battered victims behind them, and bloodthirsty pirates in front of him, Shirou suddenly has no issues with drawing his bow and beginning to cripple the pirates' legs.
From the pirates point of view, a straight line of silver light shone for just a moment through the air, and then their lead man fell down with an arrow through the knee. Three more silver lights in quick succession cripple three more pirates, but they feel the distance to the tent is barely a few dozen feet, and whoever the archer is, won't be able to face the lot of them.
That expectation turns to ash as they come face to face with a group of Lemurian warriors and realize that they only outnumber their enemies four to one.
A trident flies through the air and blows a pirate off his feet and unto the sand, having sunk deep enough into the man's head that its spikes are poking out from the back of the pirate's shattered skull. Then the Lemurians' spear wielders rush to block the top of the stairs while their archers move forth.
One of the pirates looks at the Lemurians, and realizes that less than half of them are actually fighting, the rest are helping their brethren up the cliff face and into the safety of their jungle home. With the prisoners freed and the enemies positioned to fend them off, he lets out a curse before turning around and trying to flee into the massive ship.
Perhaps he was actually smart enough to go get help? All the same, that's enough for the pirates to howl and charge, trying to push the Lemurians off the stairs so they can bring their weight of numbers to bear. A spear guts a warrior, a warrior impales a pirate on the face, and the wooden stairs begin growing slippery with blood.
"Shirou what in the...?" Mei blinks as Shirou's bow seems to grow in his grip and he draws it empty, just for a long iron arrow to appear ready to fire.
Four of the pirates turn to gore. And with a second shot, three more have their upper bodies gone.
They break and run towards the ship as the Lemurian archers pepper them with arrows.
"Adon-san..." Shirou kneels next to the gutted Lemurian, his first acquaintance in this world. "I'm sorry."
He picks up the body and turns to Mei.
"We should retreat." He says with a calm he doesn't feel. "The rescue should take priority."
"Right. Everyone, you heard him, help everyone and let's go!" The strawberry blond woman jumps down to the sand, and twists Adon's trident off a pirate's skull. "He'd want his daughter to have this."
They retreat into the jungle, having taken but one casualty.
~O~
"I am going to say 'a necromancer did it'. How about you?" Luvia looks at Rin as both girls crouch behind some rocks and look at the dried-up feline beasts stalking the premises of the building.
"Fair enough. Do we care enough about whatever is inside that building to throw the turtles at them?"
"A lot more where these came from."
"Agreed."
With a magus' calm detachment, the girls send the green turtles ahead, keeping Rojo back. The sandbeasts leap to action, then try to growl and intimidate the girl's familiars, to no avail. The turtles don't care, they just alter their paths to run at the enemy through the shortest possible route, and slam into them with 'fists' raised.
As soon as the sandbeasts are busy with the turtles, Rin and Luvia rush out and begin firing high-potency, carefully aimed gandr, doing their best to avoid hitting their own familiars, and quickly taking down one of the sandbeasts, though not fast enough to take them all before one of the turtles goes down, its head literally bitten off, its body falling limp unto the sand with a dry thumping noise.
Rin sends Rojo into the fight, and they manage to take down the remaining three sandbeasts while losing only two green shellbacks in total.
"...no point in wasting the meat." Rin stores one shellback corpse in her bracelet, while Luvia does the same with the other.
"Alright, let us proceed, then."
They left the remaining green turtles outside, and had Rojo go in ahead of them, finding the building's roof to be pointlessly tall, tall enough it was barely visible despite the bright floor-height light of multiple iron braziers. The floor is covered in sand so deep small dunes as tall as their hips dot the place here and there, and yet there is a clearly preserved path leading further in.
"These pillars are quite something. They are each carved from a single rock."
"I am starting to think you are developing weird interests since coming to this place. I blame the bracelet." Rin looked at her friend.
"There is nothing wrong in an appreciation for architecture. Well, I guess its hard to appreciate a master's handwork if you do not know about the craft."
"You made a hut. A really cute and wholesome little hut, but it's still just a hut, Luvia."
"Fine, our next home will be a ziggurat, what do you think of that?"
"Like the Babylonian pyramid things? Please do not. Makes me think of an unpleasant someo- actually, sure. I just cannot wait to see Shirou's expression."
"A pyramid is a grave, a ziggurat is a temple and palace, they are very different things, Rin."
"Well, you are already blonde. Let's get you a golden armor." Then she smiled. "Shirou's going to love it."
Luvia looked at her friend with eyes full of doubt, but decided she can try and get the story behind that statement at a later date. As busy as their days were, there isn't that much to do at night, so they got into the habit of talking until late at night.
"Luvia." Rin asked for her attention, and nodded ahead, at the grand shrine in the back of the temple.
A tall man barely dressed in dried-up bandages stood by the altar, his short hair clipped at random. He smiled at them, but made no hostile gestures, so Luvia pushed Rin back gently and walked forth, much to the black-haired girl's amusement.
"A mad fool went wandering in a sandstorm. Eventually, a man happened along and said "You mad fool, what are you doing in this sandstorm?" The mad fool replied - Your turn to talk, fool!" He gestured Luvia to talk.
"I don't see anything but sand in here, you-"
"Sand, yes! Biting, flying, stinging sands! Singing sands, singing stinging biting sands!"
The man starts to sway in place while reciting really awful nursery rhymes involving sands and heat.
"I think he's quite gone." Rin comments half way about a 7 prophets song countdown.
"What does he live off? I can't see food or water here."
"Well, the river isn't too far."
"You think those drybeasts... erh, sandybeasts... sandbeasts? The cat things. You think they'd just let him pass whenever he wanted to?"
"Fair point."
His prophet countdown finished, the small man starts bending at the waist in a deep bow as he talks.
"This is the best place to hear it, you know. Walking around the desert listening to the sand whisper just isn't good enough! Strains the ears, not to mention the mind. Perhaps that's why so many of you are mad fools. Not right in the head from trying to listen to the silent sands. Here, here you can hear the sand shouting at you! When I stumbled into it the first time, all unaware, it simply whispered "Welcome home."
The girls look at the man with pitying eyes, and start looking around for anything of use or anything to learn. The pillars and the walls are indeed incredibly tall and heavy, with no visible seams. Due to the sand, they can't really see the floor, but it looks like the building is basically sealed off from the outside world except for tiny windows far above, barely visible as slits of light in the dark, and the entrance.
"You know, this place is really spacious." Luvia is feeling the walls, wondering about the lack of seams in the rock.
"And with just the one entrance, its easy to defend."
"Its also near the river, and close to the edge between the jungle and the desert. Very visible. Chances are good Shero will notice it if he walks by."
"Yes, yes, that is all excellent, but there are two problems with moving in. First, what do we do about Mr Nutjob over there, and..."
"And?"
"Those."
"Ah."
Rin is planted with her feet at shoulder distance, a hand on her hips, the other pointing plainly at two tall, bright sand whirlwinds moving about in the middle of the floor. Luvia is about to comment on wind currents, when she realizes that there's not even the tinniest breeze inside the temple.
"Seven prophets went a-walking, bearing all their tricks, one was caught by Hanuman, and soon t'was only six~ " The man's song echoes softly from the temple depths.
"I feel bad just leaving the guy like this." Rin sighed.
"Why, miss Tohsaka, I always thought you were an excellent magus, oh rival of mine. Do not tell me you are foolish enough to adopt a madman in these circumstances."
"Oh, I was thinking about putting him out of his misery."
"Never mind then, I stand corrected."
They make their way back into the massive temple (cathedral?) and Rin raises her hand to aim at the raving madman's head, when suddenly he looks at her in the eye and straightens up, beginning to talk with a completely different tone of voice.
"I tire of conversing through this madman, Magus. While I do desire release from this plane of existence, such is not within your power to grant. Not without the Scourgestone."
"What do you know, you point a gandr to their head, and suddenly they are all coherent." Luvia smirks a little bit.
"How do you know the word Magus? I doubt it is popular around these parts."
"I am what you'd call the storm, Magus. An elemental from the Outer Darkness, chained unto this world and tasked to destroy the jungle city of Xel-ha... but this priest, Petruso, sacrificed himself to stop me from ever reaching his people. Now he and I are trapped together. Trapped in a loop of time, where I am unleashed and sweep down across the land, only to end here, over and over again. If you kill him, his spirit will push back time to reinvigorate his flesh. You cannot free him. You cannot free me. Not without the Scourgestone."
"The levels of skill required to accomplish such a thing... Petruso, you were close to being a sorcerer, weren't you?. Time manipulation and soul manifestation?"
"Well, a sorcerer would have done it without sacrificing himself." Luvia sighs.
"Admire the fool, do you? If you wish his suffering to end, you must find the Scourgestone, Magus."
"Just a moment, please."
Rin shot a full power gandr at Petruso's head. The ancient priest's head disappeared into a shower of gore that painted red the back of the great shrine, and his body collapsed into the sand-covered floor. For a moment. Before Rin could say a word, time itself blurred and Petruso was back to stand the way he was, reciting the prophet's countdown song.
"Four prophets went a-dancing, beneath the corpse-fruit tree, one climbed up and stayed there, leaving just the three."
"It was worth a shot." Luvia didn't seem impressed.
"Right? Why would we just accept that thing's words. Hey, you there?! Where do we find the Scourgestone, then?"
"The sandstorm is a living thing summoned from the aether by foul sorceries. Bound here by the same dark rituals. It escaped the bonds of its masters aeons ago, and knows nothing more than an ageless nameless hunger. It seems to like me though. You, not so much." The small man babbles both to himself and the girls.
"Petruso, is that you? Can you tell us where to find the Scourgestone? Is the Storm saying the truth?"
It takes a moment for 'the Storm' to talk again. Its voice sounding much louder and more urgent this time, as if coming from a closer place rather than some faraway land. The sand whirlwinds in the shrine begin to thicken, speed up, and move along the floor.
"The Scourgestone was shattered when I was unleashed upon the world. Each piece was lost to time. As I sweep across the Exiled Lands, I seek the pieces that would provide my liberation. And yet, though I touch all, I do not find what I seek. They are locked away, in caves where the howling sands cannot reach. Search the Passage, used by the Lemurians to wage war upon the one who unleashed me. Search the tomb of Gallaman. He once boasted to his friends as they quivered, caught in my wind, of the lucky stone that would be buried alongside him. Search the eastern coastline, for the pirates whisper to one another of a stone that grants their captain wishes. Combine these pieces, Magus. Recreate the Scourgestone. Complete the Archivist's ritual. Only then, can I return whence I came."
"If I did that, it would be for Petruso, not for you. And that's a big 'if' anyway."
"Come on Rin, stop antagonising the wind. Let us go."
"Good bye, girls. Stay away from the wind." Petruso calls out after them.
They make their way out of the great temple, and see the Storm coming from the west, almost upon them now.
"That's why it sounded closer! Back inside!"
"No, it comes here to die, remember!? Come!"
Luvia grabs Rin by the hand and starts running towards the jungle. Behind them, the kilometres tall, furious Storm rages as it walks on lightning legs and howls with fury at the desiccated man that walks out of his shrine, then begins manipulating enough magical energy to bind the elemental forces to his flesh, bend time, and conquer the Storm. The magic in the air grows thicker and heavy, and causes the girls to have trouble breathing even though they are already a dozen metres into the jungle, panting and gasping on their knees as they puke raw magical energy, desperately try to purge their bodies from it by casting whatever they can.
"Gah... kuhg... argh... to... to think that little man was this strong..." Rin coughs as she speaks.
"Uurrrgh... that really was... agh... t-time manipulation and soul binding... ah... wasn't it?"
They roll away from the little pools of bubblingg magic they just puked into existence, and lay there catching their breaths while a stone's throw away from the shrine. Petruso begins to walk back into the temple.
The old High Priest looks at them a last time, shakes his head, and disappears into the gloom of the shrine.
"Poor girls. I don't expect them to survive for very long. Kind. Much too kind for these lands."
~O~
Author Notes:
Yes I am aware this one is very short, or at least shorter than normal, but I felt this was a proper place to end this chapter.
From what I understand, magus going into the past far enough to reach the Age of the Gods risk being poisoned by the excess of magic in the air. So far Luvia and Rin have been okay because they are excellent Magus, but even they will have a hard time when exposed to Petruso's full power, who would be one of the greatest practitioners of the age. Well, he's likely to be god-blood, since modern Magus have magic circuits and he does not.
My discord tag is Maglad#4263, feel free to say hi and give comments and suggestions. I have 2 more fanfics, and would be happy if you dropped by and took a look. I hadn't posted anything for years, but am getting ready to resume my "Yet Another Overlord Fanfic" story soon(tm).
Have a great day!