Chapter 16 – Another One To Read Letters

They arrived at the beach after passing through the forest into the raging storm that had gotten ten times worse. Flying back to the ship was a battle against the wind. Fominel wrapped her with his cape, but the wet fabric didn’t help much with the cold. At some point during the flight, she passed out in Fominel’s arms. The next time she was jolted awake, they were landing on the weather deck.

She heard him mutter something about going back for Seris after dragging her halfway into the living room and quickly igniting the hearth. Darya lay in a growing puddle of water all alone until she passed out again. The next time she woke up, Seris was huddling next to her for warmth, and Fominel was putting more logs into the hearth.

Things were a lot better the next time she woke up. She was warm and dry for the first time in a while. Her dress and bandages were still damp, but the cold storm was a bad dream lying next to the orange warmth of the hearth.

Seris and Fominel were already up, already stripped down to their undergarments for more warmth. Her own dress smelled earthy because it was thoroughly drenched in mud. All the dirt and debris had dried straight on her skin. She felt disgusted enough to pull herself out of her dress.

She pushed the dress off her like an insect coming out of the cocoon before realizing she was completely nude. For the second time, she was wearing no undergarments. This was a nightdress. She had fought Sarka wearing a nightdress.

What the hell was I thinking?

Darya curled herself into a ball, feeling a lot better with the warmth radiating on her exposed skin. Seris tossed a towel on her before she embarrassed herself even further with an old man in the same room.

“We all need a bath, but you need it most!” She said, messing with Darya’s mud-caked hair strands. Her fingers came out brown and dirty.

“Drink this,” Fominel said, pouring a scalding cup of tea that he’d been preparing all along.

It had to be cooled for a bit longer, but it warmed her from the inside.

“I have to look for my sword,” Fominel said, sitting down next to her with his cup.

“No way you’re going out in this storm, Fom!” Seris said, blowing on her cup. “Just wait an hour or two, it’ll be safer to fly when the storm lifts.”

Darya cleared her throat, joining the conversation. “She’s right, Fom, wait for the weather to clear. You shouldn’t go alone either.”

Fominel grunted. “I’ll wait, princess,” he said. “I think it’s time for Seris to clean you up.”

Her next bath was an unglamorous wash with few buckets of hot water that Fominel had prepared for them. Darya was too comfortable to tweak out about the naked elf this time. She fell asleep in the tub as Seris cleaned everything. Her hands rubbed places that would’ve made Darya blush a bright shade of red if she didn’t pass out with a satisfied sigh.

She snapped awake when something poked her nostril. It was Seris shoving her pinky inside to clean them. Darya blew her itching nostrils, and blobs of mud burst out of them.

“You have mud in all sorts of places!” Seris exclaimed, watching Darya rub her nose.

“Well, I got stomped face-first into the dirt,” Darya said after washing her face. The water had turned lukewarm and brown. She didn’t want to tell Seris to cycle it because she knew they had no more hot water buckets to spare. She wasn’t ready for the freezing ocean water yet.

The fight with Sarka was a nightmare. Suddenly, she remembered the ring.

“Seris! Where is my dress! The ring’s in the pocket!” She said.

They had salvaged it out of a severed digit of Sarka’s amputated hand. She couldn’t trust Seris or Fominel to keep it anywhere on them since they were spooked by it. She wrapped it in a handkerchief and shoved it in her dress. She had forgotten all about it until now.

“It’s still got Dreagan stuff on it!” Seris said, pointing at a bucket where her muddied, dirty dress had been shoved in to soak. The ring was laid on the handkerchief next to the bucket.

Sarka had stopped talking abruptly when the ring was removed from her finger. It had something to do with mana flow. Soulstone needed to be part of a living host to be active. It had been working off the residue mana in the severed Dreagan flesh.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Can you clean it up later?” Darya asked.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” Seris said. “You shouldn’t wear it. We don’t know if it’s cursed!”

“You promise me you won’t get rid of it?” Darya asked more sternly.

“Well, I can’t toss it into the waves and lie to you like I wanted to do…” Seris said with a pout.

“You planned that far already?!” Darya exclaimed. It was as she feared. She couldn’t trust these two with a ring they were afraid of. “What changed your mind?”

“Well, take a good look at it. That thing’s worth a lot!” Seris said excitedly.

[Inspect]

Item: The Ninth Soulstone Ring
Category: Jewelry
Weight: 0.03 lbs
Worth: 28,550 Gold
Effect: None
Stores the full or partial soul of [self] into the soulstone.

The value had to be super inflated. In the VRMMO, an item that cost this much would’ve been a joke. Anything with a gameplay function priced at this value would’ve broken the game economy. It wouldn’t even have been worth the effort to implement it, considering the target crowd being the top 1% of the whales.

Storing a soul in a stone had no MMO gameplay behind it in the first place.

This was a real relic of Vainfall.

Seris had told her this ship cost more than one hundred and sixty thousand in gold. This ring had a number, the ninth, which probably determined its rarity.

“I nearly fainted when I first saw it!” Seris said eagerly. “We could sell it! Also, you said Sarka might help us locate Emil and Rossarie. Fom thinks so as well.”