"Alright, with that both of you are now bound to this necklace. You can only be 50 meters from the necklace at any time otherwise you will be petrified again. Any questions?" The priest asked them.
Gregory took the necklace offered, "No, hey Chronos and you must be Lyla. It's good to meet you. I couldn't see much when I was a statue."
He nodded at Lyla as he walked out of the side room, still carrying Sariah over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"Um, can you put me down now?" Her face was as red as a tomato.
Setting her down Gregory put the necklace over her head and made sure it wouldn't come off easily.
"Make sure you don't lose that; you don't move around as much as I do, if I'm getting too far away call me back." He said while her face, somehow, became even redder.
"If you two are finished flirting, we need to check your gear before we leave." Chronos interrupted them.
"Unph."
Lyla promptly jabbed him in the ribs for disturbing them.
Checking their gear, they found that everything was exactly as they had left it. All they needed was a few easily replaceable spell components for Sariah.
Leaving the medics they made their way towards the front gate, passing by the supplies tent to refill Sariah's spell bag. When they left the middle ring of the camp Gregory thought it was time for answers about what was going on.
"So, what are we doing?"
"We're being sent out to gather statues for the next plan. I think command wants to find some elites to keep the swamp lord busy while a separate team destroys a crystal it's guarding. Still not sure what will happen when the crystal is destroyed."
It only took Gregory a moment to see a major problem with this plan.
"Ok, how are we going to bring the statues back? ... Sariah won't be able to carry one, I'm not sure if Lyla can carry one, but at most you can carry 3 and I can only carry 1 if we want to stay combat capable."
Lyla responded to him, "We're going to use decommissioned weapons chests, they can shrink non-living objects to a tenth of their size. With Chronos carrying a chest we should be able to bring back a couple dozen statues with a single trip.
Whether we can find that many statues is questionable. It was in the section of the board that Chronos didn't read, he wanted to make sure you two were safe."
"Really? Well, I'm not exactly a details kind of guy." Chronos shrugged as he spoke.
When they reached the front gate, the guards handed them what looked like a square box with shoulder straps. It opened like a chest and had several shelves with small tie-down ropes on each shelf; the door similarly had several pockets for storing statues or other objects.
Counting the number of tie-down ropes they could store 30 statues in total, but even inside the vortex Chronos had seen before there hadn't been that many statues.
Chronos added one more rope to tie the shoulder straps together across his chest before putting it on.
"Good luck out there, and if things become too difficult just come back. We need everyone we can get right now." The guard called as they entered the forest.
"We will. No reason to risk ourselves before it's necessary." Chronos called back.
Moving through the forest Gregory took on the job of scout while Chronos led their party with Sariah in the middle and Lyla in the rear watching their backs.
Even if he had to stay within 50 meters of the group Gregory's senses were better than Chronos' right now, letting him see anything within 100 meters of himself.
At first, they didn't see any dark beasts or shadows gathering together but after an hour Gregory had them change directions to avoid a fight. As they moved through the forest, they had to change direction three more times.
What the paladins had said at lunch was true, the dark beasts were becoming more active on the nearby islands.
That didn't leave them much time to gather statues before the dark beasts staged a major attack, maybe a day if they were lucky.
Reaching the far side of the forest Chronos discovered that they had a problem.
"The horizontal island has moved. We can't go back the way I did, we need to find another spot to cross over."
"I can see a river connecting to the next island over there. Think we can use it?"
Looking in the direction Sariah pointed they saw a small river crossing over the void to the next island.
Reaching the river, they found it was only 3 meters across and maybe 2 meters deep, but it could support a few downed trees placed on it and lashed together to form a rudimentary bridge. As long as the river remained gentle, and no islands broke it then the bridge would still be here for them later.
"If they're still there then we have two more small islands to cross before we reach the village island where the vortex is." Chronos commented.
As they traveled, they saw several flying islands in the distance. They were too far away to reach but they could see statues on most of them.
The islands all seemed to be floating in unseen currents as most of them followed each other, very rarely they would see an island going against the current, but they couldn't tell if it was being pulled by some creature or if it was caught in a different current.
"Hey Chronos, take a look at that island." Gregory was pointing at an island that looked like a small mountain.
It was covered in stone with barely any vegetation and Chronos was fairly certain that he could see ores on its surface.
"That island isn't from Dracon Fen or Averest forest. Is this place just randomly thrown together or are there more tears in the world?" He asked
Lyla replied to him, "I'm sure there are more tears in Faengsel, whenever they show up in history there are always a bunch of them. Finding out there is one in the mountains is good luck for the church, it narrows down the search area for the diviners."
"Geez, what's going on in the world that places like this are showing up all over the place?" Sariah couldn't help but complain.
This time Lyla didn't have a good answer but told them what she did know.
"There are several thoughts on this subject. Some priests think that an enemy of the three Goddesses is attacking this world in order to steal their power, others believe the world is slowly dying and that creates tears, but the latter isn't really accepted by most priests.
Others think that this is a challenge from the gods to help mortals grow but given how much destruction happens every time a tear forms few agree with them, instead they say it's a punishment from the gods to discipline those that sin against the gods. However, the church has proclaimed that it's not a punishment at all, although they refuse to say what is actually happening.
The mages believe that our world exists too close to the plane of darkness or plane of hell which causes these beasts to appear periodically, however I disagree with them. Creatures from the plane of darkness aren't this destructive while the hell plane wouldn't bother doing things in a roundabout matter like this.
Some mages even speculate that it's a dead world colliding with our world of Faengsel that creates the tears and dark beasts, like some kind of remnant grudge or life energy becoming reality. Unfortunately, nobody knows for certain what is happening, or if they do then they aren't telling anybody." She finished talking as they crossed another island and made their way to the last.
"Why didn't you tell me this before when I asked you?" Chronos looked offended that she had kept so much to herself.
"You asked for knowledge not speculation. Besides, even if I told you this it has no value so there's no point in knowing it." She replied.
Chronos just gave her an "Are you kidding me" look, which she pretended not to see.
As they approached the village island, Chronos noticed more trees and rocks drifting about than the last time he was there.
Were they being drawn to the crystal on the central island? Or were the dark beasts trying to form a bridge for the swamp lord to cross?
Either way it couldn't be a good sign, if anything stopped them from reaching the crystal they might never escape the void. They would need to take action before their enemy could.
"Let's hurry, I don't know how long the swamp lord will be separated from us and I don't want to be here when it gets off the central island."
"I agree." His friends replied together showing their own worries about the situation.