Greed starred deeply at him for a long while, almost solemnly. His flames passively burning then suddenly flared, as his laughter erupted like a wave crashing against the shore. The fire growing hotter caused the room to become more humid, and Epsilon could feel the back of his throat slowly growing dry.
"What a joke! This is all just so funny!"
Bob on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He seemed startled, almost afraid.
"I don't just grant wishes because its the only way I can be freed from this thing. I grant them because I'm being forced. Whatever the user wishes.. I must carry out to my absolute ability. No matter how long it takes."
That rule had screwed him over quite a bit. Things that looked simple enough were stretched out for annoying amounts of time. It was inconvenient to say the least. Letting out a deep sigh, he continued.
"Your last wish was... actually. How about I just show you?"
Raising a hand, he sharply snapped his fingers, causing the friction to generate sparks. Having some trouble, he repeated that motion again, and again, and again, until the repetitive sparks soon ignited on their own, becoming a tiny ember.
Blowing on it ever so slightly, the tiny flame gently danced down in the air, slowly making its way towards Bob.
He should've been excited, and yet, with every moment that it passed, with every inch closer that the flame came, he felt a tiny sense of dread.
Till now, he was able to recall tiny flickers of his memories in the past, as well as some of the people he cared about. But now, guessing what happened to them was obvious.
But most importantly.. he feared, that maybe it was his fault?
He who had been so desperate to gain everything back, was terrified of his own past.
"You carried me almost wherever you went, so my memories of that time.. I'll show them all to you right now. I believe it should also kick start the return of your own."
And finally, the flame touched the floating spirit. At the moment of contact, it seemed to be snuffed out almost instantly, without even a chance to fight back. The pale yellow flame was snuffed out immediately.
There was only silence. Until a voice bellowed.
"Remember who you once were, Mizar Polemos, the False Supreme."
**
There was a long period of silence after that. Bob remained unmoving, and unchanging, as if trapped in some kind of trance. When Epsilon opened his spell runes, he tired to check the contract he had made with him.
Contracts: —
But there was nothing there.
"I think he'll be busy for a while, so lets continue on with our conversation."
But before that though, Epsilon noticed something alarming. He had made a note of it before, but it was far too big to ignore anymore.. or actually it was far too small?
He asked cautiously,
"Are you shrinking?"
He was once tall enough to seem even greater in size than the ocean dweller which they had ran away from before.. but compared to back then, he was a drop in the water right now. Still quite large, but not to a grand scale.
Greed seemed surprise, but taking a look at himself, he couldn't help but let out a quiet laugh.
"Baha! I didn't even notice. Thanks for pointing that out. And here I was thinking that I had a bit more time."
He raised an eyebrow,
"A bit more time?"
"My Aspect to grant wishes is quite costly, so even as a Sacred I shouldn't have been able to live this long... not that it helped me break out of here. This lamp had prolonged my existence, but now that I am freed having granted his last wish, my existence shall come to an end. All that time which I have avoided, is at long last catching back up to me."
Epsilon felt a chill from those words. But it wasn't his sudden incoming death that made him tremble.. no it was the fact that he was actually sacred??
The already mighty presence before him, despite having drastically shrunk in size, suddenly grew even more vast.
"Didn't you say you were supreme before??"
"I said I was amongst the first. I was still a supreme when I got trapped inside this thing, so I had plenty of time to eventually rise higher. Despite that though, I still couldn't get out.. nevertheless touch holy. Not like that matters anymore. I'm too weak to even do anything now."
And then, another wave of info hit him like a truck.
'It's possible to rise in rank without the spell?'
Well on second thought, that didn't seem as surprising. Bob had to have become a supreme somehow, and he had made it obvious that he had never possessed the spell. Or at least, he didn't regain a memory of him using it before. Or maybe he had kept that from him too.
"It's nothing be sad about, really. I'd rather be dead than be stuck in here a year longer. That is if the shadow realm is still functioning.. I can't tell these days anymore. Anyhow! Lets finish our conversation from before. What were we talking about again...?"
Epsilons eyes gleamed. Right now he was staring at a treasure chest of information, a living relic of the dream realms past. He had to dig out as much information as he could. If he could sell it all, god knows how much money he would.
But there was one big thing he had to get out the way first.
"Seras! Can you tell me about her? You know about her, right?"
He had brought up her name first, so the answer was obvious. The sudden change in his expression gave him the answer that he needed too.
Greed seemed to hesitate for a moment, before answering,
"Yes, that is right. As far as Nephilim go, she is the worst of the worst.. I'd rather not talk about her at all, but if she's dead, there's no harm in it I suppose."
"I heard about an incident in Frior that she caused, but I don't think you'd know about that. Just know that she.. killed a lot of people in quite the gruesome manner. It did cause quite a scare, I should say. She was stopped by her father Erlking of course, but she wasn't punished harshly despite the atrocity. It was so bad, that even the war empire was demanding her head."
"She was quite the sheltered child despite her origins, although, I'm sure her father wasn't too keen on having her around too. But he protected her nonetheless."
"Whether it was out of guilt and shame, or from the pressure of her own people though, she ran away. The last anyone had heard of her, was that she was spotted somewhere near the mountains with that unbearable mist... Thinking about it now, Nether was messing about in that area. Perhaps they've met."
The short tale was a bit less then he'd have liked, but still, it gave him some context behind the Nightmare spells runes.
'Frior.. is that where the Fey lived? And a massacre too. I suppose she was hated for a reason other then that, but she does sound quite deranged already. Her father must've been quite powerful too if he was able to stop her.'
But that also didn't make sense. She felt remorse for what she did, so she ran away? But the nightmare spell said that she despised them for making her leave. Did that make Greed's story incorrect then?
'Or is the Nightmare spell lying? Can it even lie?'
None of the dots were connecting. Perhaps greed wasn't the greatest person to ask. There was something else he had obtained from this though, something unexpected.
'Nether.. Nether.. didn't Anvil mention them? The Daemon of destiny? Is that the Daemon who killed Seras?'
Lost in his thoughts, he felt a light finger tap against his shoulder. Looking back, he saw Ki Song glaring at him strangely.
"Is something wrong?"
"No.. it's just.. I don't even know how to feel anymore. How are we going to explain any of this to the others??"
This whole situation was a way too strange. How many awakened would've encountered such a being, nevertheless as a Sleeper?
'Well I've met even worse as an aspirant..'
What would this mean for the future?
Shaking his head, he moved on to his next question.
"Can you tell me a little about Erlking too?"
"Oh sure! Which one? The first or second?"
He seemed to choke on his own saliva in shock, coughing once as his breath hitched, eyes widening while he scrambled to recover. Hurriedly asking, the words tumbling out a little too fast,
"...there's two!?"
Before he could get a reply, the sounds of the earth shaking, suddenly interrupted them. The ancient walls groaned as the ground lurched, their weathered stones shuddering like a waking giant. Dust sifted from above them, as new cracks spread throughout the palace treasury.
He figured that it was the Chimera queen causing another ruckus.. but the earthquake this time went on much longer than the last. And this one, was even more powerful. So much so that he had lost balance, and both he and Ki Song fell to their knees.
Panicked, he spun back to look at her, only to find her terror far outshined his own. Her fact had gone pale, eyes fixed and trembling.
When she spoke, her voice barely held together.
"The explosives were set off."