Chapter 670: Luggage Elf [Bonus - ]
The damp earth smelled of crushed wild clover and ozone, but beneath Ther’Abella’s cheek, it tasted like bitter humiliating ash.
She tried to twist her hips.
She tried to channel even a thread of her starlight foundation down into her thighs to lever herself upward, but the heavy boot planted between her shoulder blades didn’t give so much as a millimeter.
It felt less like a man standing over her and more like the root of an ancient mountain had been ripped from the earth and dropped squarely onto her spine.
"Nngh...!"
A strained muffled hiss slipped past her grit teeth as dirt gritted against her lips.
Every time she tried to expand her ribs to draw a breath, the pressure increased by an exact agonizing fraction of a pound.
Behind her back, both of her wrists were gathered into a single calloused hand, twisted backward and pulled up toward her nape in a vise-like grip that had her shoulder ligaments singing in sharp hot agony.
"I wouldn’t squirm if I were you," Silas’s voice drifted down from above, he didn’t even sound strained from suppressing her. "Your joint capsules are about two degrees of twisting away from popping like dry twigs... Answer the question, or you’re going to lose the use of both arms before noon."
A cold prickly jolt of genuine fear struck the base of Ther’Abella’s skull.
She had stood guard beneath the World Tree for three centuries and she had spent four hundred years afterward alone on the outer rim, killing things that wanted her dead.
Ther-Abella knew the difference between a blusterer making idle threats and a person who treated violence like an accountant balancing a ledger.
The man pinning her into the dirt wasn’t angry... That was the terrifying part.
There was no bloodlust radiating from him, it was just a flat certainty that if she didn’t provide a satisfactory answer, he would snap her limbs, toss her aside, and go about his afternoon without losing a single second of sleep.
’Curse him...’ she thought, her teeth aching from how hard she clamped down. ’Curse this usurping brute...’
Before she could force out a defiant retort through the dirt, a soft, amused voice chimed from the edge of the transit dais.
"Lord Sy," Aeliana spoke, her tone as light and refreshing as a spring breeze passing through willow branches. "You may release her... That is Ther’Abella, She is Lady Aki’s First Hero."
Silas paused as the suffocating grip on her wrists loosened instantly.
"Oh," Silas said, blinking down at the silver hair splayed across the turf. "Aki’s hero?"
He let go of her hands completely, though the boot remained firmly stationed on her back, keeping her pinned to the ground like a pinned beetle.
"Then why the hell did she just try to put an orbital starlight lance through my nose?" Silas asked, genuinely baffled.
He glanced over his shoulder toward Aeliana, who was standing with her hands tucked demurely into the wide sleeves of her pale green robes. "If Aki finds out her primary summon spent her first afternoon picking fights with the me, she’s going to have a breakdown or something... I’d rather avoid that headache."
"I am not merely a summon!" Ther’Abella snapped, finding her voice the second the pressure on her throat eased.
She turned her head sideways, spitting a mouthful of loam and crushed grass onto the sod, her blue eyes burning with righteous fury. "I am of the Viridian Guard! I stood among Lady Eluned’s sworn protectors for three centuries! I held the north gate of the sanctum when—"
Creak!
Silas casually leaned an extra twenty pounds of weight into his heel.
"Oof—!"
The breath was shoved straight out of her lungs in a sharp wheeze, cutting her grand pedigree off mid-sentence.
"I didn’t ask for your resume," Silas said flatly, looking past her toward the High Elf princess. "Aeli, translate... Why is she trying to take my head off?"
Aeliana couldn’t hold it in anymore.
A bright musical laugh bubbled past her lips with her pointed ears twitching with unmasked amusement as she stepped down from the marble dais.
"She served in Lady Eluned’s Viridian Guard," Aeliana explained, her silver-green eyes dancing with mischief. "And to put it plainly, Lord Sy... she is simply consumed with bitter jealousy over the fact that you managed to marry Lady Eluned."
Silas stared down at the back of Ther’Abella’s head.
"Oh," Silas said, his lips twitching into an amused smirk. "She’s jealous."
"I am not—!" Ther’Abella snarled, her face flushing a furious, incandescent crimson that burned hotter than her starlight mana. "I am defending the honor of the High Seat! Lady Eluned is a paragon of celestial grace! A sovereign jewel of the ancient lineages! And she is bound to a—a—"
"A guy who just folded you in half with two punches?" Silas offered helpfully.
He shifted his weight and smoothly lifted his boot off her spine, stepping back to give her room.
The crushing pressure vanished.
Ther’Abella dragged in a deep burning lungful of mountain air with her chest heaving as she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees.
Every muscle along her ribs throbbed with a deep hollow ache where his bare knuckles had driven into her solar plexus, but her pride refused to let her stay down.
"I was off-balance!" she hissed, whirling around on her knees to glare up at him, her silver bangs sticking to her sweaty forehead. "You caught me mid-stride! If we engaged at true range beneath the open heavens, I would have—"
Pat! Pat!
Ther’Abella froze.
Her jaw clicked shut an her blue eyes went wide as saucers.
Silas had leaned down, his face split into a warm disarming smile and casually patted the top of her head twice, exactly the way one might comfort an overzealous guard dog that had barked at the mailman.
"Hey, it’s alright," Silas said, his voice dropping into a tone of gentle earnest approval. "It’s good that you’re looking out for Eluned. Honestly... As her former guard, it’s your job to be suspicious. A lady such as herself shouldn’t marry just anyone, and checking out the guy to see if he’s actually got the spine to protect her is exactly what a loyal soldier is supposed to do... I respect it..."
Ther’Abella sat completely paralyzed on the grass.
Her brain simply refused to process what she was hearing.
’Wh-what?’
She had expected him to sneer... She had expected him to draw a blade, demand an oath of submission, or brand her with a punishment spell or something.
Instead, his calloused hand was resting gently against the crown of her skull with his palm radiating a faint soothing warmth that somehow made the lingering starlight static in her meridians settle into quiet submission.
’What... what is wrong with this man?!’ her thoughts screamed, her cheeks burning so hot she felt dizzy. ’He’s patronizing me! He has to be! No sovereign treats an assassin like a petulant niece! Why isn’t he angry?!’
Before she could slap his hand away, Silas’s posture shifted.
He stepped inside her space, bent at the knees, hooked his thick right arm under her waist, and hoisted her straight off the ground.
"Whoa—hey!"
Ther’Abella let out an un-warrior-like squeak as the world flipped upside down.
In the span of a single heartbeat, the proud silver-armored veteran of the Viridian Guard found herself slung over Silas Graves’s right shoulder like a fifty-pound sack of winter potatoes.
Her legs dangled down his chest, her breastplate clanked against his back, and her face hung suspended behind his hip, staring directly at the damp heels of his boots.
"Put me down!" she shrieked, her hands frantically pushing against the small of his back. "Unclasp me this instant, you uncivilized brute! I am an elite officer! I have a name! I have rank!"
"Yeah, yeah, you’re an elite potato," Silas said cheerfully, adjusting his grip so she wouldn’t slip.
He turned toward Aeliana, gesturing with his free hand toward the winding stone path that cut through the rolling green hills. "Aeli, lead the way. Let’s go see what Aki’s been cooking up."
Aeliana stood a few paces back with her arms crossed beneath her bust.
Her silver-green eyes lingered on the way Silas’s hand was casually bracing Ther’Abella’s armored thigh, and for a fraction of a second, her lips pursed into a tiny unmistakable pout.
’Lucky bitch...’
A subtle sharp flicker of territorial jealousy rippled across her ethereal features before she quickly smoothed it over with a practiced angelic smile.
"Yes, Lord Sy," Aeliana purred, her voice dripping with melodic pointed sweetness as she stepped into stride beside him. "Let us go~. It would not do to keep Lady Aki waiting while you collect stray guards."
’Let me down! Let me down, curse your entire bloodline!’
Ther’Abella was throwing her entire weight from side to side, her armored boots kicking uselessly at the empty air.
She tried to drive her elbow into his ribs but Silas’s arm remained clamped around her middle like a band of forged dwarven steel.
His stride didn’t stutter and his breathing didn’t hitch either.
’Damn you!’
He walked with the effortless rolling gait of a man carrying a light satchel through an orchard, completely ignoring the fact that a high-tier Viridian warrior was throwing a full-blown tantrum against his spine.
’He is a monster,’ she realized in mortified despair with her fingers clawing helplessly at the thick linen of his tunic. ’He isn’t even circulating mana to hold me! This is pure unrefined physical power! How does a mortal man possess bones this heavy?!’
"Man," Silas murmured, tilting his head back to take in the sprawling vista ahead. "What a nice place."
The territory didn’t look anything like the rugged grandeur of Blessed Land.
Where his own domain was defined by what made it special, this new land felt vibrant and impossibly bright.
The sky above was a soft, twilight lavender, dotted with gentle pulsing constellations that cast a pearlescent sheen across the rolling hills.
The grass was a deep, vivid emerald, swaying in rhythm with a warm floral-scented breeze that carried none of the bitter chill of the Umbral Basin.
As they crested the first low ridge, Silas’s eyes caught a massive circular platform carved from pure crystalline quartz, ringed by spiraling silver pillars that looked like frozen water fountains and roses too.
"Is that her summoning altar?" Silas asked, his eyebrows lifting in genuine appreciation.
"It is," Aeliana confirmed, gliding gracefully over the cobblestone path. "Lady Aki’s one is a bit different from ours... She said that standard gray stone was ’aesthetically offensive’ to potential heroes."
"She’s not wrong," Silas chuckled, shaking his head. "Look at that... It looks way more luxurious than mine. Mine looks like an ancient sacrificial slab where you butcher goats while hers looks like a royal garden pavilion."
Well what mattered at the end of the day was what you pulled.
The perimeter of the quartz altar was blanketed in cascading beds of flowers.
Giant velvety roses in shades of deep violet and pastel peach spilled over the silver balustrades, their petals dusting the flagstones with glowing spirit pollen.
Beside them grew clusters of delicate bell-shaped blossoms that hummed with a soft chiming melody whenever the breeze caught them.
"The floral arrangement was Eluned’s gift," Aeliana noted, a fond smile gracing her lips as she lightly brushed the petal of a passing rose. "Aki begged her for half a day, and you know how weak Eluned is when it comes to that girl but I must admit, it gives the territory a remarkably serene atmosphere... Perhaps we should consider planting decorative flora around our own altar in Blessed Land, it would soften the imposing architecture."
"Not a bad idea," Silas agreed. "Remind me to talk to Eluned when we get back... A few flowerbeds might keep the place from looking like a military fortress all the time."
Over his shoulder, Ther’Abella let out an exasperated, muffled groan.
"Are you two genuinely critiquing landscape design while you treat me like luggage?!"
Silas casually tapped the flat of his hand against her armored thigh.
"Hush now, potato. The adults are talking."
"I am seven hundred years older than you!" she shrieked into his back.
Silas merely laughed, his gaze already shifting toward the horizon and there, nestled in the center of the valley beneath the shadow of a crystalline cliffside, stood the Keep.
Silas’s mouth slowly curled upward, his lips twitching as he struggled and failed to maintain a straight face.
"Well," Silas remarked, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. "That’s... certainly a statement."
The structure was undeniably impressive.
Like his own Keep, it stood five full stories tall, constructed from heavy seamless stone blocks that spoke of defensive stability.
It was broad at the base, tapering into elegant sweeping towers with high arched balconies, graceful spires, and an abundance of wide diamond-paned bay windows that caught the starlight like polished gems.
One of the other differences was the color... The entire building was painted a soft pastel baby pink.
The window frames were trimmed in gleaming white marble, the high conical roofs of the corner spires were tiled in shimmering rose-gold slate, and fluttering from the highest parapet was a massive, silk banner bearing an embroidered crest... a smiling white bunny wearing a golden crown, surrounded by a ring of sparkling stars.
"It’s pink," Silas stated.
"It is," Aeliana replied, her composure breaking as a quiet snicker escaped her. "Lady Aki informed Eluned that if her Keep looked like a brooding dungeon, she would refuse to sleep in it... She personally mixed the mineral dyes for the outer masonry."
"Honestly?" Silas smiled, shaking his head with genuine affection. "It looks great. It’s totally her... A lot better than some grim, soot-stained fortress where you expect gargoyles to start weeping blood."