The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 460 - If I Could Eat Memories For Breakfast, I’d Be In Better Shape

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After years of searching, months of being trapped in an Exclave, and of traveling north - Sevra was still hopeful each day, even with the group of cultivators surrounding them like blades pointed inward as much as outward... that tomorrow they’d finally find their Elder. Of course, she had not been told that Thelasi must be alive for the custom-made artifact to work.

However, she had seen so many other examples and knew that Elua’s artisanship was nothing if not precise and functional. She’d been trying not to think of the worst case scenario while hoping enough humanity was left in the Goltbred heiress to have provided solutions, if possible, to that concern.

"Tarem?"

"Mm?"

"Thank you. For not giving up on finding him even after I was... indisposed."

Her brother’s expression softened - and a cackle came from the guarded section of the noble’s warm tent interior. Lady Aarengraf expected their sentimentality present for all to hear was code for something else, considering they had talked about such mundane things to each other this whole time. But still she continued on this quest, her countenance growing sharper as the realization sat in of where exactly they could be headed.

Reports had come in from some of her continental peers about groups traveling to the far ends of the tundra. Patrols sometimes went missing tracking after these rumors. She was a fairly paranoid individual when it came to socialization, as most nobles tended to be... but when it came to fighting? Her Blood was singing with the belief that something big could be about to happen, just like it was vibrating in that little tracker.

The still-armored while resting cultivator felt it every time the ’scout’ checked on the necklace and pendant. To her, it was a tool for keeping track of the whereabouts of their kin... purely so and just like one old book in her collection described. An item type that had also been turned into something that could be used by anyone - an assassin or bounty hunter’s treasure... though in ancient times the bounty was rarely ’bring back in safely’, so they were much the same thing!

However, the noblewoman had asked to test it once herself... figuring that her Element would allow her to use it effectively no matter what. But it seemed well keyed to the Shadow Whisker member... and she knew that these original, single user devices were lost technology. The versions of Blood tracking that people used in this era were definitely not so strong as to reach a quarter of the way across the world.

How *impossible* that was for this woman to have it, if not for the name Elua er Goltbred being involved, did not leave her calm. It only made her more certain that danger and opportunity awaited the end of this expedition. Unlike a normal person with normal stress responses, this actually helped her sleep sitting up even better than normal!

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"There."

Her voice cut through the wind as her spirit anchored back on her body. She pointed toward a rock formation that looked no different from the dozens they’d passed. Except this one had made her spiritual sense recoil just enough to notice. Like touching something that felt wrong in a way you couldn’t articulate.

’Like looking at that thing Tarem retrieved from Elua’s... urk, Breacher breakthrough...’

The idea of it being remotely related to someone of that strength made her want to vomit as she stood. But the tracker had stopped working a while ago... and while at first she assumed the worst, backtracking made it activate again. Proving that they must have stumbled into the ’general location’ that El had mentioned the tracker would lead Sevra to.

Lady Aarengraf raised a hand to her retinue and they began to move into a new encircling formation with no unnecessary noise. Northern-style military training went to work as they descended the slopes without their horses. One of them in particular strode forward a bit quicker than the others, probing the spot with his own spirit before retreating back to brief her on what they found.

"Old style sigil warding from the lost civilization. One of those designed more for containment than defense."

"There were no records of locations up this way. Perhaps it could have been moved, or perhaps..." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Tarem made it down the cliff and moved to stand by his sister, who was listening intently into their talk of how to approach this. Active ancient sigil work was uncommon throughout the world, unless the place had been manned by people recently feeding it essence. However, these designs were some of the few intended to be perpetual and self-sustaining to the best of their abilities, often requiring a team of sigilists to come back to safely dismantle.

’It is always a lot harder to tell whether someone was in there five seconds ago or five hundred years...’

While the containment warding was rarely a trap on its own, it was what was inside the one-way sealed box that could be... concerning. Even if not other cultivators waiting in ambush, other *sigils* and mechanical apparatuses could provide obstacles that they could not prepare for perfectly. Not being able to see past it all was the biggest problem... not that the excited noble cared about that.

"Break it open."

This wasn’t the first ancient ward they’d encountered in the tundra reaches though usually what was found ended up being empty chambers. Lady Aarengraf watched with arms crossed, axe in hand as her retinue maintained positions. Her sigilist worked as they guarded him, letting his essence flow into precise points along the sigil’s edge that had been proven to destabilize it ’safely’.

"Almost through."

"Set. Do it."

A final pulse made the entire rock formation ripple and deform like like foam being misted with water, dissolving like an illusion even though it was more akin to physical matter made to take certain shape... than a spiritual effect convincing someone that it existed at all. Revealed was a depression perhaps eight feet deep and three times as much round, containing much of nothing except a suspicious stela. But at the center, past that slab of text, was another hole that was a bit unusual for these places.

Tarem was moving towards it before anyone could stop him, making some of those there who had been part of his initial capture wonder why he hadn’t just ran for it back then. To those warriors, they actually had to take a beat and wonder if they could have caught him.

"Elder!"

Jumping into the hole, he found the older man who’d once been an impressive Peak Primalist now looking more like a desiccated corpse than a cultivator. His skin was stretched thin and tight over bones, instead of obvious muscle. Hair was gone completely. But his dark eyes - when they finally opened at the touch of reality - still held startlingly lucid awareness.

"Tarem? No... it can’t be, you’re older... than when I just saw you a minute ago."

The voice cracked, unused for who knew how long - but it was still somehow recognizable to Sevra at that distance. Bravely pushing past the guards and dropping to her knees beside her two family members, her hands hovered over her great uncle as if afraid touching him might cause him to crumble. She hadn’t known what state he would be in, but imagining this was beyond her.

"You’ve been missing for years."

He blinked slowly at the information before his gaze moved to the woman who’d spoken. However, part of him seem to look through her to another time. Another Memory. As he had existed in through meditation all this time.

"I was just... the market. Watching your mother haggle over practice blades. She was so stubborn about the price... but Little Shadow, you haven’t been born yet. Or... no. You’re just older too. Forgive me. I know what is happening, even after five years stuck here, but Memory blurs together when you live inside them to stay sane long enough."

While his mind was sharp, his body was light in the worst kind of way. A cultivator’s physical energy accumulation was a finite resource that had to be replenished through consumption. The reason most could not achieve Breacher on the continent was because they failed to optimize the input to output ratios, usually through inefficient conversion of the energy from food sources causing a diminishing return on rate of growth.

Going without eating had cannibalized even that foundation for the man. He’d burned through his own accumulated physical energy just to keep his critical organs working. Five years trapped in this specific place, meditating and reliving the past in real time in between sessions of doing all he could to make himself just a bit more slim on energy use.

He’d shed the process that created his hair and many other functions that remotely strained growth and repair functions. Refined his breathing to not use as much energy expelling air beyond what little oxygen his brain truly needed. Overall, he was on a path to something like an efficient hibernation that would only be useful in similar starvation scenarios... out of necessity entirely.

"We need to get him warm. Fed. His essence field is also unstable..."

One of Aarengraf’s men stepped forward with a water skin and traveling rations at the sound of Tarem’s voice. But the sigilist, who had been trying to read the flat piece of stone with its chiseled letters, raised a hand to stop him. His face darkened as he retreated back, pulling the other man along.

"Lady Aarengraf. That stone is a warning we should listen to."

Golden eyes narrowed as she began to parse the Old Tongue script so common in places like this. But the lettering was clearly ’new’... with words that seemed placed more like someone who barely knew the language nowadays, rather than how things were often laid out on real old finds. Moreover, it seemed like something very, very specific to this situation.

"To Any of... Ouras at this Place. The Memory-Eater must not be Freed. Astralism endangers the Restoration of Fate. Let him Fade. Do not Risk the Sacred Ouras- oh, it’s Knowledge, but not the normal kind. A strange word. The Promised... Awakens soon. Well, I’ve read more cryptic things in my life, but only a few."

None of them did the noble from the North ever treat lightly, nor did she now. Her grip strength increased on her axe handle, like it had for many of her followers.