READ WEBNOVEL Chapter 52 – Summer at the Amarins (2)
Traveling forth, the group did so on Reyra's personal airship. It was sleek, golden in color, and resembled a sloop without its sails. The head of House Amarin was standing behind its wheel on a funny-looking little stool custom-built into it. She was so tiny compared to the giant wheel she had to tiptoe to look forward, giving a funny spectacle to anyone who saw it. Yet nobody dared laugh.
"It will be my third time looking at an Undead…." Keily murmured, his voice weak and nervous.
"Hah!" Lia clapped on his back, "I never saw one before school, and I peed myself! You will do just fine!"
"You are awfully honest about it." Sion smiled, not wanting to tease her in front of her mother.
"Because I know you wouldn't laugh at me!" She smiled innocently and nobody had any more to say just let out a soft moan with a warm smile, seeing that she genuinely meant it.
"I fought with some…." Ceiline commented, rubbing Lia's head, enjoying that she was not afraid of her touch and that she wouldn't think she would hurt her with the claws she was born with. "They were animals once, but after resurrecting, they had a greenish-hue to their eyes, which was… different. Not animalistic. It was human yet not. Demonic…”
"The gaze of an Undead is unlike any living being's!" Reyra commented from behind the wheel, "None can be mistaken for it. If you look into the eyes of the dead, you will see death. Feel it in your heart, in your soul."
"My dad's gaze… wasn't the same either," Keily spoke up, looking at Reyra, wanting to know more, and nobody else was more qualified than one of the strongest mages in the current era.
"Yeah, the one they showed us in school was weird too!" Lia nodded rapidly, "It… looked like it locked onto Koa, me, or Aurora! I felt like being suffocated by nasty, cold air!"
"It probably did lock on to you," Reyra said after a quick thinking, surprising the rest. Sion furrowed his brows, trying to make sense of it but couldn't, and waited patiently for Reyra to continue.
"The Undead seem to share… a link." Ceiline said suddenly, but she was unsure, "I'm no expert, so I know very little of it, but I heard my family speak about it."
"They do have a mental link," Reyra confirmed her words. "It is stronger the closer they are to each other. The unintelligent variants share this link on an animalistic, basic level. So they won't get in the other's way when pursuing prey. We don't know where it comes from or how it forms, but all of them have one, and it was proven… No matter when the Undead was created, they recognize the bloodline of the Six Houses!"
"They… recognized me?" Lia asked, her mouth slowly opening wider.
"Yes." Her mother nodded heavily, "A freshly raised zombie knows if it faces someone from the Houses. We don't know why or how, but this is true and has been known since the Dark Ages. It locked onto you because its instinct told him two things; either flee or kill. Sensing your weakness, being then only at the 2nd Tier, it would have probably chosen the latter."
"Damn…" Sion clicked his tongue, watching Lia, "So the Houses are… always recognized by them?"
"We have been hunting them for 4000 years!" Reyra grinned, "I would be disappointed if they did not recognize us by smell! Hah! Good! Let them fear us if they know what that word means!"
"What about the intelligent ones?" Keily suddenly asked, soaking up her words, ensuring he would remember them all.
"Their link is superior." Reyra continued explaining, "They can devise plans, maneuvers, and whole schemes without uttering a word. Worse, their mind has a commanding presence in their… links to the other, lesser Undead. They command them by will. An Undead horde is dangerous because they won't retreat or care about sacrifices. The more thinking-intelligent variants are in one place, the stronger their influence is! Worst, they rarely have competition between their ranks. They are strangely united. As if they are a hive of bees! They all work towards the same goal, creating more and more of themselves."
"Brr… monsters!" Lia shuddered as the rest nodded, agreeing to her words.
"Worse than monsters." Reyra agreed wholeheartedly, "When too many are in one place, their influence can spread onto living beings. That is how cults and their deranged followers were propped up by them in the Dark Ages. Betrayals ran rampant, and trust was hard to come by. That… can't be let happen again! That is why anything related to them and collecting them in one place is a crime against Meriath!"
"The Horth Family…" Ceiline murmured, remembering the latest family who was deemed a traitor of the realm.
"Yes." Reyra said, watching her eyes, "That family went too far. They amassed intelligent Undead in such numbers, they could easily manipulate them! What if they release them to the world? To get more… test subjects? To… 'test' some theories? They were already kidnapping others and buying slaves from the black markets! They started with criminals from their own territory but…."
"They never were enough…." Celine said, gulping, remembering the story she heard from her own House.
"Adhere to this! And only this!" Reyra said, her voice strict and commanding as she looked at them, "You can't deal with Undead! Kill them. Destroy them. BURN them. All of them! Their bodies, their essence, and their tools, weapons, and clothes! BURN EVERYTHING. As they have no soul left in them… just BURN THEM! Keeping anything from an Undead is dangerous."
"Understood." It was Keily who answered first, looking into Reyra's eyes, nodding heavily. It was clear that he was taking her words to heart and engraving them into his memories.
"Good~" She smiled at the bunny boy, "These were Erias's last words before he… departed. This is a must. The dead must be burnt to ashes. So when we find that Undead beast, I'll let you watch it and study it so you can familiarize yourself! Then I'll destroy it, so not even ash remains!"
…
….
……
By noon they were hovering above a thick forest filled with pine trees, hiding the hilly, rocky surface below them.
"I never before saw a dragon!" Keily said, afraid yet excited, holding onto the ship's railings, leaning over the side.
"They are not dragons." Ceiline corrected her quickly, standing next to him, "Dragons have four legs and wings on their back! Wyverns' wings are connected to their bodies and front legs! Like bats! And they are also stupider! Smaller! And weaker!"
"Woah…" Keily blinked his eyes, looking at her weirdly, and that was when she caught herself looking embarrassed.
"Ahahaha! That is a Nerifit for ya!" Reyra laughed loudly, anchoring the ship mid-air and walking beside them.
"They say their line is descendant of dragons," Sion explained to Keily, "so a little proudness doesn't hurt~!"
"S-sorry…" Ceiline murmured, fiddling with her claws.
"Don't be! With your appearance, it is clear it is true!" Lia and Reyra said at the same time, in perfect sync. "Plus," Reyra continued, "It is true. Sadly, they are a dying race. Not enough left of them to start repopulating, so they went into hibernation."
"Wait!" Sion raised his hands, his eyes enlarged. "Dragons exist?!"
"Of course they do!" Reyra looked at him, rolling her eyes as if he had asked something foolish.
"No way…" He whispered, exchanging a glance with Keily, "I thought they were only legends! From before the Dark Ages!"
"No, they exist. With many more true magical beasts." Reyra crossed her arms, "Most beast folks are descendants of those beings. A marriage between a beast and a human. But that happened so long ago we don't have any records! Anyway!" She shook her head before starting to go on a tangent, and Lia whispered to the others.
"Mom loves ancient history… she went traveling the continent to find old relics and legends, the castle is full of- OWIE! Moooom!" She moaned, holding her butt, which was pinched really hard.
"No whispering while I'm here, girl! Manners, please!"
"Lady Reyra is right," Ceiline said, scratching her throat. "My House has the coordinates of two sub-realms where two adult dragons are sleeping. They fought in the Final Light campaign."
"I met with Arcus." Reyra chimed in with a soft voice, "Poor guy is damaged."
"Mom?" Lia twitched her mouth as it sounded rude, yet she couldn't just pinch back her mom's butt. But she thought about it.
"No, it is true." Ceiline nodded, surprise in her eyes as from her House, only the core leaders had a chance to ever visit those realms and talk with the old dragons. Not to mention, that only happens if there is an urgent need for a piece of advice from someone wise. "I shouldn't be surprised…." She added after a brief thought, "Arcus was Erias's friend."
"He let him ride on top of his head." Reyra grinned, "But the old codger took too many blows to the head. He is senile and confused. He took me as Erias's daughter too often while I was there! He doesn't know 4000 years have passed and thinks Victory Day was only a few years ago. He asked about how Erias is, refusing to believe he is dead. He was adamant, saying that Erias was just starting to work towards eliminating the root of the Undead curse, but… heh, there are no records of anything like that! Not even in Erias's personal diaries!" Reyra sighed in a sad voice.
"My family said the same." Ceiline echoed her sighs in a pitying voice, "Venerable Arcus has fought through too many hardships. The Undead's corruption weakened his mind."
"And also, time did its part, I guess." Sion added amusedly, "I read that dragons are supposed to live indefinitely."
"What about wyverns?" Keily asked, tilting his head to the sides.
"A few centuries." Reyra replied as she suddenly flinched, forming a smirk on her face, "And this one is lived past his expiration day! Stay on the ship and watch!" She flew forward, leaving behind only an ethereal clone of herself that rushed back to the wheel, taking chase.
"Oh, mom found it!" Lia giggled, hurrying to the sloop's bow with the rest, watching without blinking their eyes.
As they were flying at a breakneck speed, suddenly the trees moved, and with a swoosh, a greenish light shot up from below them, taking to the sky. It was a six meters long, lizard-looking wyvern, flapping its wings… flying away, zig-zagging in the air. It was clearly fleeing from Reyra, who locked onto it immediately.
"Its aura is… nasty!" Keily said, shivering, trying to stay calm as they were flying behind them, easily keeping up, getting a whiff of the unnatural feeling it left in its trail.
"This thing… has to be way stronger than anything I was introduced to in the Academy!" Sion gulped. He wasn't unfamiliar with their auras or strength, but this was on an entirely different level.
"Undead magical beasts are dangerous. They retain their natural advantages over us, boosted with their debilitating auras!" Ceiline commented, watching the glistening, emerald-colored scales on its body. It flew silently without looking back. There were no roars, yelps, or crying, nothing that showed any emotion, but all of them felt it was running for its 'life.'
"Just as mom told us… flee or kill." Lia grinned, "It knows it has no chance!"
"I felt no others in the vicinity." Reyra's light-clone said from behind, "This one is alone. Have you looked at how it flies?"
"It flaps its wings with precise, measured movements. It saves as much energy as possible!" Ceiline said immediately, "No real animals can do something like that!"
"It moves its body like an experienced mage. At least at the 5th Tier." Reyra agreed, "That is why Undead can be dangerous. Even a magicless human corpse can display the precision of a mage after standing back up! I'll immobilize it, then we touch down, and you can inspect it from close!"
"What?!" They yelped, turning around, then back as the real Reyra was flying in front of them, only a few hundred meters apart.
"I'm here, you scaredy cats!" Her clone laughed, "This is the best chance for you to all experience what it is that we do! Get used to it ahead of time! Now watch!"
As she said it, they could only see a blinding light bursting out in front, and two beams of light penetrated the wyvern's leathery skin that was its wings. The beams were followed rapidly by others, like bullets from a machine gun, and after a few seconds, it looked like a mouse's leftover dinner, full of holes. Strangely, the wyvern never let out a word of pain or made a noise; it simply lost the ability to fly, plummeting downwards, crashlanding in the forest, clearing away many trees in the process, sending echoes of loud crunches in all directions.
"Stay where you are!" Reyra scoffed, and pillars of light descended from the sky, pinning the wyvern down. Its head was locked in place first, then its front, hind legs, and tail before bigger pillars penetrated its body, nailing it to the forest's ground. Its blood, which started to seep out, was strangely glowing as if it was filled with mana, visible to the naked eye.
When their ship landed, and they got off, Reyra stood there, watching the wyvern floating above the air without blinking her sapphire-like eyes.
"Ugh!" Keily kneeled over as soon as he got off the ship, gasping for air and unceremoniously throwing up.
"Bloody hell!" Sion groaned, holding his head, wincing, his knees almost buckling too, finding it hard to breathe.
"Now I don't want to get down…." Lia murmured, and Ceiline couldn't help herself but nod in agreement.
"Off!" Reyra's clone walked behind them and picked them up by their scruffs like a cat, throwing them off the ship.
As soon as they were out of its protective barrier, the feeling coming off the restrained Undead was horrible. Lia landed on her butt, holding her mouth, trying not to breathe in the chilling, cold air she felt. It was odorless and not actually cold, yet it made her stomach turn as if someone was parading around with rotten fish just next to them.
"This is way worse than the one in school!" Lia moaned before Reyra's clone dissolved, covering them in a veil, finally dispelling the horrible feeling they were having.
"Do you think if you meet one while traveling, it would stop and let you adjust?" Reyra's real body asked, not turning back at them. "You would be already dead. Even if it is this injured."
"..." None of them could say anything, especially after she continued.
"Not just dead… but standing back up again in a few hours."
"I'd rather… burn myself!" Keily groaned, standing up and wiping his mouth, and he was the first to walk forward, to take a look at the giant lizard lying before them. It was utterly still, not bothering to struggle. It wasn't even breathing. Only its eyes were moving, looking at them. It was filled with an unnatural, green light. Unblinking. Cold… indifferent.
"That would be a good choice." Reyra nodded. "Especially for you!" She looked at Lia and Ceiline for a brief second. "I told you about their connection before… well, there is another one!"
"Hm?" They looked at each other as they walked up to stand in line next to Reyra and Keily.
"Everyone who ever died from a House always returned as an intelligent Undead. Without exceptions…"
