Key to the Void: A self-made isekai

As it turned out, I did not have to worry about how to tell Nymph we had to go. A few hours after I woke up, Eirlathion came in the room with a face I could only describe as forlorn. He absolutely looked like the entire world had just ended. Considering the content of that demon’s whispering last night, I had a pretty good guess as to what had him looking like that.

He simply stood there, in the middle of the room, silent for the longest time.

I see. He must be thinking about how hard Nymph took it last time the subject of us leaving the village came up.

After looking at him for a while, I decided to help him out. I took several steps out, making myself look as important as I could, and then looked off to the side.

“Nymph!” I called out.

“Ah! Uhhh… yes?” She popped up, having her projection actually sprout from the floor as though she was hiding down there.

[Eirlathion just talked to some messengers from the queen.] I told her. Nymph just nodded. Eirlathion, though, snapped his head up in absolute shock.

[Asaren? How… how did you know about that?] He asked.

I just nodded at him. [Information. That is something I am good at.] I will just leave it at that for now. Leave it a mystery. Let him assume it has something to do with some kind of magic or something. Makes it a lot easier than explaining the whole deal with a demon disguising itself as an angel and feeding me poisoned prophecies which I am analyzing and attempting to separate the useful information from the hidden poison.

Eirlathion looked sufficiently stunned and baffled by that declaration. I just turned back to Nymph and continued on. This was going to definitely be the best way to present this.

[I will need to ask Eirlathion for more of what happened, but it is supposed to have something to do with an Envoy from the queen coming here.] I told her and then looked to Eirlathion. He nodded.

[A lord of the defense committee.] He said in confirmation.

I nodded at that and looked back over to Nymph. [The people who left the village did not matter. This was going to happen no matter what we did.] I told her. [We made the right choice, but it did not matter. The best choice for us now, to survive, is that we need Eirlation to help us leave the village.]

I made sure to emphasize the ‘to survive’ part of that. Judging by the fact that Nymph only responded with silence, I guess she got the message. I was not going to tolerate bratty behavior on this one.

[I do not want to leave angry at each other.] I told her. [Until Eirlathion has things ready…]

GROOOOOOOOOOOO…

My words were suddenly interrupted by a long and deep resonant sound. It sounded almost like some kind of whale song, and it came from a long way off.

“What was that?” Rolwen demanded, looking in the direction of the wall the sound seemed to have come from.

[What was that?] I repeated Rolwen’s question in Elvin, looking to Eirlathion who seemed to have a stunned look on his face.

[The queen.] He said with a slack-jawed expression. [It’s… this soon? I hoped we would have had more time.]

“The what? What did he just say?” Rolwen asked.

“I don’t know that word he used, do you know Asa?” Levin mirrored his’ request.

“He said it was the queen.” I told them.

“That was the queen?” Rolwen demanded. “It sounded like a sky whale or something! Did he mean the queen of dragons or something like that?”

“Can you ask him, Asa?” Levin asked. I am not too sure if it was because he was not confident with the language or if it was because he was keeping the fact we were hiding them also having past life memories, but I was willing to play along either way.

[Do you mean that was the queen of the fey?] I asked Eirlathion. He seemed to be dazed for a while, so I had to call out to him again. [Eirlathion! Do you mean we just heard the queen of the fey who made that sound?]

[Ah!] He jumped. [That…]

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOO….

Another long and resonant cry cut him off.

[Uhhh… y-yes. That was the queen of all the fey creatures who live in the eastern forest.] He said.

[What kind of fey is she?] I asked.

[The fairy queen of the east is the single most powerful fey in the entire world.] He said. [She is a “galmustar” of the blue- “Rusentu” clan, and one of the only gods that have a presence in the physical world.] He said with a suddenly hesitating look on his face. [Do you… know what all of those words mean?]

‘Galmustar?’ There’s that word again. I’d been meaning to ask Nymph what it meant.

“Did he just say a god?” Levin asked with a mouth that could catch flies.

“Is Galmustar is elven for dragon or something?” Rolwen asked.

“Yes, it is.” Nymph answered.

“What does ‘Rusentu’ mean?” I asked, turning to Nymph for more information with the unfamiliar words.

“It means Jade. He said the queen was a blue-jade dragon.” She answered.

“The fairy queen is a freaking DRAGON GOD!” Rolwen shouted. “This is nuts! This just went so many levels above Shakespear’s fairy queen.”

Yeah, so much for the Seelie court.

A part of me wanted to go up and see this dragon god fairy queen, but suddenly the message Samarael gave me last night sprung back into my mind.

[Eirlathion. What kind of fey is the messenger who was sent here?] I asked him.

[What?] He seemed surprised at the sudden turn in the direction of the questions. [Uhh… there were three messengers. All of them are fairies.] He said.

Fairies. No good. We will be in danger if we meet them. Fairies can fly. They might very well even already be sitting on top of this very tree to get a view of the queen themselves.

I shook my head. Am I seriously following that demon’s message down to the word? But still. In this situation, it is best to assume we really will be in danger if we are discovered.

Levin got rather disappointed when I told him how we shouldn’t go outside. Rolwen too, although he only showed it on his face and didn’t voice his protests. I couldn’t tell what Tia thought, but she seemed to go along with me pretty easily. Actually, she almost seemed afraid. I didn’t really get it, but I guess fear should be the correct response to a dragon that overwhelmingly powerful.

As for how overwhelmingly powerful, all of us were completely shocked when Eirlathion told us she was in the middle of moving an entire city with her magic. Apparently, she was moving it to someplace called the scar of heaven which had especially dense spirit energy, but was also the location of a hole that went straight to the underworld.

Almost as shocking was the story behind this scar of heaven. It was apparently made by an event called the “heaven fall.” A colossal amount of spirit energy came down from the sky and tore into the ground, boring a hole deep into the underworld and sweeping away the entirety of the forest around it. It had hit with so much force that the soil was stripped down to bedrock for miles around the actual ground-zero impact site.

The thing that was even more stunning was that this did not happen hundreds of years ago or something like that. No, this event was fairly recent. It was just over four years ago, to be exact. Apparently, it hit the very night Tia and I were conceived.

Tia and I looked at each other when we heard that, and an unspoken message passed between us. Eirlathion was a bit surprised when I immediately started asking about the gestation times for humans compared to elves, but it seemed like he was starting to accept my story about being some kind of information specialist because he did not take very long to start filling me in.

He said that an elven gestation time was eight seasons, and a human gestation time was somewhere around three seasons. It seemed like they did not keep track of time in months, but rather in seasons and half-seasons. In other words, an eight month calendar.

I had no idea how many days were in a half-season, so I couldn’t really compare the length of a year to Earth, but it should be roughly the same if the human gestation time was three full seasons. That is exactly three fourths of a year. In other words, nine months.

The timeline added up. Levin and Rolwen were a little over a year older than me and Tia. We always figured we were all conceived at around the same time and that gestation times between humans and elves were just different, but this was the first time we heard that our conception correlated with a disastrous event like this.

We continued asking questions while being occasionally interrupted by another long whale-call like roar from the queen. Or rather, I asked a lot of questions and relayed the occasional question Levin and Rolwen asked in English as they had suddenly decided to pretend they didn’t know Elven for the sake of not letting Eirlathion hear them sounding too smart for their age.

Nymph also happily joined in and answered what questions she could, eagerly butting in before Eirlthion had the chance to speak any time I asked a question she knew the answer to.

The heavy atmosphere of earlier had almost turned happy for a moment as we were keeping the subject to things that were informative. Information about the wider world out there that we were going to need in order to get by from now on.

Somewhere along the lines, Rolwen caught on to what we were doing and would gently nudge Levin every time he started to talk about something that could be a dangerous subject, but eventually we couldn’t avoid the topic any longer.

We had to discuss the plans for our move out of the village. I gave Nymph the stair-down when I brought up the subject. She backed off meekly and sulked the whole time Eirlathion was going over the details.

“So, we are going to move to this nomadic human tribe that worships fairies?” Rolwen asks to confirm what he had just heard.

[I did not hear a lot about what kind of people these Hidan are.] I said, prompting Eirlathion for more details.

He nodded his head. [The Hidan are a people who prize the strengthening of the body and spirit. This is in an effort to be reborn as a member of the fey. The greatest hope and aim of the Hidan is to gain a powerful enough spirit during the human life they live to become a great fairy and serve the queen directly in the next. Almost every great fairy who is under the war committee was of the Hidan in the previous human life.] He said.

“Wait wait wait, wow! Humans reincarnate as fairies?” Rolwen asks.

“Well, not normally.” Tia said. “However, fey are formed from spirit energy that comes from humans. Spirit energy is the energy of expectation and faith made real. If these Hidan seriously believe that fey come from humans being reborn, then that’s exactly what is going to happen.” She informed us.

“Seriously Tia, why do you have to wait for the big serious moments to drop the biggest bomb shells?” I said with an exasperated tone.

[Are you well Asa?] Eirlathion asked in concern.

[Yes, I am well.] I said, perking back up. Yes, I just found out that fickle human thoughts and beliefs have the ability to alter the very nature of fey spiritual existence, but other than that I’m fine.