The trio enter back to Silvie's house and Silvie opens a closet and starts to take out a heavy wooden crate while humming a song to herself.
James and Melaich look at each other, confused.
Melaich: (Whispering) Should we.... help her?
James: (Whispering) Nah, she's fine. I think.
Silvie pulls the wooden crate in the middle of the house. The crate, now surrounded by the Trio and wooden furniture. The crate is filled with thick flat rocks with jagged edges. The rocks seem to have something carved on their top but it's hard to see without picking it up.
James was about to pick it up when Silvie slapped his hand.
James: Ouch!
Silvie not caring about James,
Silvie: You two (Points at the two), Move these furniture CAREFULLY to a corner.
James and Melaich do as she says, moving the furniture swiftly but carefully to a corner in the house. As they were doing that, Silvie placed specific stones in a circle about 2 meters wide.
Silvie looks at the book she took from the Archives and rearranges the stones by switching their positions or removing the stones and taking new ones from the crate.
James gets curious and turns to Melaich,
James: What's she doing?
Melaich: Those stones are Rune stones. A very rudimentary method of doing any High-class Rune Magic.
James: Oh interesting. Why Rudimentary though?
Silvie overhears the conversation and interjects
Silvie: Cause most people would rather use a Runic Table or a Runic Sphere.
Silvie gets up from arranging the runes in a circle and pulls the crate of runes away from the circle.
Silvie: James, go stand inside the circle.
James: Right
James obliges her and stands in a circle of rune stones. Melaich follows behind, standing in front of James, next to Silvie
Melaich: You can afford a house but not a Runic Table?
Silvie: Hey! I don't deal in Runes professionally. This is a special circumstance, is all.
Silvie goes back to looking at the book, she flips through its pages. She puts her right hand out towards James while her left hand holds the book and flips the pages. She speaks a runic language almost indecipherable to James. He can't even try to recreate that tone or sound that language makes.
It is a skill that only those who are blessed with it possess the ability to speak runic languages.
James thinks about Magic as he stands inside the circle with nothing else to do
In this world there are 4 ways to use Magic.
Magic Affinity. The most common way magic is used.
Runes. Anyone can study runes but You must be born with the ability to actually use Runes. The ability to speak Runic is one of these abilities. However, these people do not possess Affinities
Magic Circles. Circles made from mana ink, it's used in many objects adventurers use to boost their powers or used in Noble houses to suppress mana and reduce the chance of an attack. Anyone can make Magic circles.
Magic Treasures are powers granted to magic and non-magic users by the remnants of the great war. Long ago, after the great war, People realized that certain objects that were collected from the war and reformed contained a special characteristic to transfer a unique set of powers onto the soul of the person who uses the objects.
The effects are described as random, No one knows what one might get from these objects. Magic Treasures are permanent and a person cannot use two at the same time.
James: (mind voice, sulking) I need to save up some coins to buy my own Magic Treasure.
Of course due to Magic Treasure's value, It is very expensive and hard to get.
Silvie finishes her fist chant and a veil of transparent yellow particles surround James inside the circle. Silvie touches on the yellow veil which shows a bunch of words written in runic.
She presses them, reads through the book, writes her own runes on the veil.
Melaich: What are we doing again?
Silvie answers without looking at Melaich
Silvie: I'm trying to scan James's Soul. According to this book, The 'Soul' is just a housing for the real 'Soul'. So what we call a Soul is a protective layer holding the real source of ourselves within.
Silvie continues
Silvie: Beings like..
Silvie sighs and takes a deep breath,
Silvie: Dragonkin, are able to house more than one Soul inside the protective layer without having any adverse effects. Humans however, cannot. If we tried, we'd be dead.
James starts to sweat
James: I'M GONNA DIE!?
Silvie: It doesn't seem like it. Any adverse side effects should have happened within hours. It's so weird.
Silvie writes the final rune and the veil glows sharply for a moment before creating 2 balls, one blue and one reddish-orange from the veil's energy. These balls were illusions, cast by the veil and runes. Silvie picks the Red ball up.
Silvie: Pretty cool huh? This ball is a representation of the Demon's soul inside of you. It's what it looks like if we try to observe it.
James: (Shocked) Oh.. wow uhh. What's the blue one then?
Silvie: That's you. Your soul anyway.
Melaich looks at the red ball of energy in Silvie's hand. Silvie looks back at Melaich all excited
Silvie: What do you think is more important? The soul or the mind?
Melaich: I Uhh.... I'm not so sure. (Thinks for a minute) Soul is who we are, but Mind is what we can do. That's what I think
James interjects
James: I'd love to have a very philosophical debate about the human soul but can we fix my issue first? Can you remove the demon inside?
Silvie looks back at the red ball, taps it and a bunch of runes appear on the veil. She looks at them all and looks back into the book, flips pages and begins to rummage through them, looking through them.
Silvie: You're... not gonna like this
James: Lay it on me
Silvie: We can't separate the Demon from you...
James: What!?
Silvie: NOT without killing you! The Protective layer has already adapted to the housing of a second soul. If we remove this soul, the layer will collapse your soul, which is, in my opinion, FAR worse than death.
James: Holy shit
Melaich chimes in, intending to light the mood
Melaich: Congratulations James, Your dreams of not dying alone have finally arrived. In a weird.. fucked up way.
James throws his hands up in defeat.
James: What can we do then? I'm not gonna live with this piece of shit for the rest of my life
Just as James says that, his right hand starts to produce flames slaps him. James is quite shocked. Silvie looks back at the Red ball which starts to change intensity in real-time.
James: (to his right hand) You asshole!
James fights with his right hand in the circle
Melaich laughs at the situation.
Melaich: (while laughing) I'm sorry
Melaich continues laughing as he sees James fight his own hand.
Silvie: There is one thing I can do though
Silvie draws 6 runes onto the veil. These runes glow brightly. Sparks from the veil hit James and James screams in agony
Melaich: James!
Melaich rushes to James but Silvie stops him.
Silvie: Just wait. It needs to happen
The sparks disappear and James stops screaming, He's out of breath, on his knees not knowing what the fuck just happened. James look up at Silvie
James: What the hell was that!?
Silvie: I've placed a mini Seal over the Demon's Soul. It can't exert Physical control over you anymore. You might still hear its voice and see it in nightmares but that's all it's going to be.
James looks at his right hand that was on fire, which now begins to go back to Normal. James gets up from the ground, stands up as he dusts himself.
James: Well, better than nothing I suppose.
Silvie: I've taken a copy of your Soul Layer in here. You can step out now.
James nods and steps outside the veil. Melaich comes up to him.
Melaich: How do you feel, spry?
James: As Always
Silvie closes the books and turns back to the two.
Silvie: I still need to research more into what's happening with your soul. If you just sit somewhere for a while and help-
James cuts her off,
James: I can't sit without doing anything. I need to be active, ready for action, IN ACTION
Silvie walks a few steps in front of James and kicks him so hard that he falls back a few inches.
Silvie: You still have a Demon inside of you! Have some brains and sit the hell down.
James stands up
James: Ouch, Ouch... FINEE. I still need to bring the horses me and Melaich left near that cave entrance so I'll do that and come back
James opens the door and leaves before Silvie could say another word. Just as Melaich was about to follow James, James pops up again,
James: And Meliach, stay with Silvie.
James leaves, going out of view from the door frame. It's almost midnight.
James travels for an hour or two by flying through the air and gets to the cave entrance. James finds the two horses he and Melaich rode. One is black with white spots. The other is brown.
James: Aww, Speedy!
James hugs the head of the black horse and turns to the brown horse.
James: Hiya Horsey. I'm so sorry for leaving you both here. So much happened
He looks at the still brightly glowing cave from the distance. This time it's surrounded by royal knights instead of Demon Parade members. The grassy ground has no more dead bodies but the dried blood still exists.
James: Huh, Someone else must've found the cave and told the King. I wonder who?
James take the both horses by their leashes and chants,
James: Vayu-Chatee
James's hand glows, 3 Glowing platforms of air form under each of them and as James moves his hand, so do the platforms.
James flies it back to Orliave outskirts. He places them in a field of grass.
James: Wait for me, Just for a minute
James swiftly flies back into the town for his 3 AM supplies, in this case, Hay Bales. James buys the Hay bales from an irritated and annoyed shopkeeper who did not want to open his shop at 2 AM in the morning but James's offer of paying triple for Hay bales certainly piqued his interest.
James flies back to the Horses who were waiting and throws the hay bales and hay to them.
James: Enjoy. Sorry for letting you stay there alone.
James looks at the Horses eating the Hay peacefully. But something feels off. James instinctively shifts his head to the left and dodges a quick arrow.
James looks back, to where the arrow was shot from.
On a tree away from James, was a brown haired, brown eyed.... elf, with a bow who stared back at James with killer intent.
James looked back with a confident look and a smile on his face, with a confident look
James: Just what I wanted, heh
James pulls out his sword, ready to fight the Elf