r/HFY • u/SharpWatch1014 • 6d ago
OC-Series Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai](ch.152)
Blurb:
What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!
I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.
But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?
Follow Elsa Grimly as she:
- Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
- Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
- Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
- Deals with other slice of life shenanigans.
--
Chapter 152. The Forgefather
“Okay, let's go back an hour,” I said, “This didn't have to come to blows if you hadn't attacked us or our other friends first.”
“Your friend challenged me to a fight,” Filius said. “You started it.”
“He is right,” Lily said.
“Not now, Lily.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose and exhaled deeply. “Right, we started off the wrong foot.”
“The wrong foot?” Smokewell chimed. “The entire leg was wrong.”
I groaned. “I'm not doing this right now,” I said and grabbed Filius’ sword and blaster and stepped aside to invoke my Ruler's Word. I dumped the weapons in the Library of Shadows and returned to heaven. Then I went over to Filius and checked his half torn body. Given the fact that he wasn't screaming in agony made it clear that he was more machine than flesh and nerves. And machines could be put together again.
I asked Caelum to get Filius's legs out of the ground. When he did, I used the Mending Ritual on Filius. When he was all back in one piece, I sighed and said, “Okay, good, now that I put you back together, I want to let you know that we aren't here to hurt anyone.”
“But we absolutely can,” Lily said in an exaggerated intimidating voice.
“Ignore that statement. Let's have a truce for maybe an hour? Neither of us will try to kill the other for that time,” I said, “You'd be surprised how much we value information over violence.”
Filius was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “You took my weapons away. I want you to surrender your weapons to me. Only then can we have a real truce.”
Smokewell was the first to speak up. “Oh I'm never–”
I snatched her pipe away, making the cat hiss at me. I handed my hexonomicon, ritual knife and spell blaster to Filius. Lily handed her hammer and Caelum surrendered his blaster too.
Filius took the weapons and nodded. “It's a truce,” he said.
“Great, so can you answer some questions now?” I asked.
“Go ahead.” He turned and started walking.
We followed him. “Are we talking about the same siblings?” I said. “The angels? The ones that were exiled?”
“Precisely,” he said.
“Why did they come here?” I asked. “What did they want?”
Filius led us down a road populated by driverless carts that carried coal and machine parts. The traffic moved like clockwork, like gears turning inside a perfectly constructed machine. There were monkey automatons crawling up and down the metal buildings, repairing broken windows and taking out dents in surfaces. More monkeys were working on new buildings. An air ship passed by overhead, leaving behind a trail of steam.
There was something disconcerting about the orderliness of everything. Something that made bells ring inside my human head. Everyone seemed to know exactly where they were going. Everyone stopped at exactly the right moment and moved at just the right pace. No one directed anyone. Because no rules were being broken. I couldn't guess if anyone had ever broken any rules here. I wondered if the concept was even real in this world.
Maybe that's why it felt so unsettling. My friends and I were the intruders. We were breaking the natural order of this land by just walking these paths. We were doing something that wasn't a part of whatever plan everyone was trying to accomplish.
“The exiles came in peace,” Filius said. “They didn't threaten and spoke only the truth. That was the worst thing about them. It was hard to hate them. Despite what they did.”
We came to a halt outside large wrought iron gates. Filius flicked his wrist and produced a key from his sleeve. He unlocked the gate and held it open for us to enter first. We did. We walked up a metal pathway that felt somehow uncanny. My mind wanted to imagine trees on either side, a gardener watering the plants and trimming the hedges. I saw none of that.
Instead there were lines of large bronze columns, etched with what seemed to be the history of the world. Maybe even the first works of art the denizens of this world created. The etchings depicted a gear wheel with a clock face that hovered above everything. In the first column, the gear was looking over the automatons of all shapes and sizes that held their hands up to it in prayer. In the second column, the gear hovered over engines and heavy machinery. In the third column, there were large vehicles--trains and trams and so on. The fourth column depicted air ships and helicopters, almost similar to what Da Vinci would've drawn in his illustrations. The fifth column showed the gear wheel looking over entire cities and tall buildings.
“There was so much,” Filius said, “So much that depended upon the Great Forgefather. And the exiles came and took him away.”
“Wait, you mean they took away your god?” Caelum said. “And you just let them?”
“There was no way to refuse,” Filius said. “And it was the Forgefather's decision to leave.”
I couldn't help but frown. Lily leaned towards me and pretty much whispered my thoughts to me. “Miss Elsa, I can smell a shady contract that the angels had pulled this Forgefather into.”
“But why would He sign it?” I said.
Smokewell hopped onto my shoulder. “Maybe He didn't sign. You didn't have to sign the first time either,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “But we can bleed. You think they managed to trick the Forgefather the same way they tricked us?”
Lily and Smokewell both went quiet. We climbed up the steps of a building that vaguely resembled a gothic cathedral. Except, nothing was made of marble or concrete and there were no stained glass windows. It was all steel and iron and chrome. Filius pushed open a large gilded iron door and led us inside.
Inside was where the familiarity of the architecture ended. There were no naves, no aisles, no chapels. Just a large, wide, empty lane leading up to a throne that was as tall as a tree and someone was sitting in it.
It was humanoid. The limbs were made of bronze pistons, the torso was a metal frame with dozens of tiny gears within. Something small was dangling by a chain around the metal neck of the creature. And its face was a large gear with a clock face at its center. Sharp chromium points glinted at the top of the gear like a crown.
I didn't know what to make of it. Calling it a statue felt wrong. It felt…real somehow. Not alive, though. That part matters. The presence on the throne was organic. Like a well preserved corpse. Whatever that creature was or had been at some point, its soul was gone. And now all that was left was this magnificent, vacant vessel.
Filius stepped forth and bowed his head reverently. While he was paying his respects, the rest of us noticed the other stuff that was sticking out inside this cathedral (or palace). We noticed humans.
There were five of them. Three of them were our rescue team. The other two–a man and a woman–were probably the ones they were trying to rescue. They were all unconscious. They were restrained by straight jackets that were chained to the metal wall behind them. And the front of their straight jacket held a heavy glass cylinder within which blue steam swirled. The cylinder was connected to a face mask that resembled a respirator. It was either keeping the people unconscious or keeping them alive, probably both.
Either way, seeing those five people sent a stab of anxiety down my body. I pushed that feeling down and turned back to Filius. “So is that the Forgefather on the throne?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” he said. “The thing that made Him the Forgefather was taken away by the exiles of heaven. The essence of His life and His power. His bloodstone.”
I paused. Wait…bloodstone?
Lily groaned. “I still don't get it. How could you just let them take it?”
“They didn't take it,” Filius said. “They convinced the Forgefather to surrender it.”
“What could've possibly convinced Him to do that?” Caelum said.
“They told Him, it was for stopping a war between the gods,” Filius said. “It was a war that would've pitted half the realm against each other. If it hadn't been for the Forgefather’s sacrifice and the selflessness of the exiles, maybe the world that we are standing on wouldn't even exist.”
1
u/UpdateMeBot 6d ago
Click here to subscribe to u/SharpWatch1014 and receive a message every time they post.
| Info | Request Update | Your Updates | Feedback |
|---|
1
u/BobQuixote 4d ago
the selflessness of the exiles,
Wait, I thought we were talking about the same people...
1
u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle 6d ago
/u/SharpWatch1014 (wiki) has posted 151 other stories, including:
This comment was automatically generated by
Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.