Roko's charge through the undead went relatively unchallenged. Perhaps they still haven't recognized him as a threat or perhaps he just moved too quickly for them to react on top of everything. He did think he felt Momo's reinforcement magic entering his body at some point. Figures she would be so on point with everything. With one last leap, Roko slashed through the hand gripping Ereshkigal's neck, doing no real damage but forcing the ghosts of her parents to retreat, finally releasing the dark elf child from their grip. Roko stood there for a moment as Ereshkigal regained her breath, looking between her and her ghost parents who were eyeing him warily.
"So." Roko sighed as he rested the back of Roland's sword on his shoulder, "It might be obvious what I'm about to say but...are you sure these are even your parents?"
"Huh?" Ereshkigal coughed as she looked up in confusion.
"Do you recall them? Do they feel familiar? Sound familiar? Do you feel any sort of kinship with them at all?"
"I...well..."
"Even if you're sure that the ritual worked and these are your parents, can you be sure that these ghosts are saying what your parents want to say?"
"What do you mean?"
"We know that there's some force peeking in on your father. That force has the power to watch him from beyond the veil of Arbrea and control the dead. What's to say your parents aren't just being a mouthpiece being used by this force to get to you?"
"You doubt us?" the ghost of Ereshkigal's "mother" scowled.
"But you have no proof." the spirit of Ereshkigal's "father" retorted, "You have no right to get in between us and our daughter!"
"I'll prove it with one simple question." Roko replied, "What is Ereshkigal's real name?"
"Huh?" both ghosts looked confused.
"Ereshkigal's the name given to her by her adopted father. If you really are her birth parents then you should know her birth name. Her real name."
The ghosts of the parents floated back, unable to answer the challenge that Roko proposed.
"If you've got nothing to say then I'll take Ereshkigal with me now." Roko said nonchalantly, "Clearly you can't be trusted."
Her "parents" screamed tortured screams as their form morphed into more thin, lanky, and boney monstrous forms before they reached out to attack Roko and Ereshkigal. Roko grabbed Ereshkigal under one of his arms and jumped away, the reinforcement magic carrying him safely away. The ghosts of her parents didn't float far but the skeleton did, rearing it's chest up, aiming the flame in its rib cage before firing a spinning manticore at Roko in midair. Roko had no means of changing his direction in mid air and was prepared to block the hit before Varis appeared in front of him and slashed the manticore so hard with his flaming sword that it was sent crashing into the earth and exploded safely away from them. Undead orcs and elves gathered around below Roko, ready to attack him the moment he landed but Varis was on top of that too, landing before Roko and wiping out the horde with one or two swings.
"Looks like it'll be an easy time back." Roko muttered.
"Helena!"
The manticore that was just about to attack an open Helena from the side was suddenly smashed into the ground as Momo landed on top of it, killing it instantly.
"Roko's back!" Momo grinned.
"I know!" Helena laughed almost deliriously, "I saw everything!"
"Let's not let our excitements distract us now." Kaguya warned with a smile on her face, "Taking Ereshkigal away from the epicenter doesn't seem to have stopped the undeads so we still have to figure that out."
"Eresh!" Enlil shouted as he ran past them, "Eresh, are you okay?!"
"Better go protect him too." Helena chuckled, "There's still a few orcs and stuff in his way."
"Yeah I guess." Momo continued to grin, "But I'm just so pumped up now that Roko is back! It's like I'm remembering everything Roko has ever taught me! Like..."
Momo took off, crossing the distance between her and the orc zombie that was about to attack Enlil. She could have swung her sword but instead she just gently placed a hand on the orc's belly. And instantly obliterated it, sending its' torso flying off from its body.
"Now that I think about it, I do recall Roko telling me something about pressurized ice." Helena nodded, "Let me try it."
Wisps of winter winds gathered in front of Helena's fingers as she closed her eyes to concentrate on the spell. This frost spun around in spirals as they built a bullet of ice that almost resembled a crystalline sword. Opening her eyes, Helena fired the ice across the entire battlefield, punching through the giant skeleton's rib cage and even piercing through the core of fire, continuing on through as it eventually lodged itself into the mountain in the back. The flame core sputtered and grew dim as the ghosts surrounding it dissipated and the giant skeleton holding it fell to the ground, lifeless.
"Oh yeah!" Helena whooped, "That's a new record for my farthest shot! Never doubt Roko!"
"I just got back, why's my name being brought up?" Roko frowned as he returned with Momo, Enlil and Ereshkigal.
"You just got back, why wouldn't we be talking about you?" Helena smirked.
"I want my sword back." Roland chimed in sourly.
"You can get it back after we deal with this." Roko replied.
"I want my sword back." Roland said a little more forcefully.
"Roland, you've got two swords, let Roko use one." Helena said.
"I'm a dual sword user! You're hampering my combat abilities."
"You used sword and shield for the longest time, you'll be fine."
"But that's my sword!" Roland insisted almost petulantly.
"Well Roko needs it! What's the problem?!"
"It's one of my named swords! It's a very valuable and delicate instrument!"
"You dropped it in the middle of a fight."
"That's not my fault!"
"Then who else's fault is it? The manticore? That you killed? With one sword?"
"I was rage boosted." Roland coughed, "And even ignoring all that, I have full rights to demand my sword back."
"You really want to be a pain about this? What do you even want out of this?"
"I want a new hat!"
"A new hat?" Helena frowned.
"That's right." Roland nodded smugly, "I lost my old hat just now so I want a new one."
"Well I wasn't going to bring this up..." Helena sighed, "But didn't you say you spent thousands of gold on that hat?"
"That's not important. Not when we're all pretty well off here."
"That's not the issue. Why are you spending thousands of gold on a flipping hat?"
"Style costs money!"
"But thousands of gold kind of money?"
"That's the price of something that will last!"
"Well, your hat didn't last that long all things considered."
"You can't consider all this normal circumstances!"
"I mean for us it is."
"That's not the point."
"Fine, I'll get you a hat but it's not going to cost 'thousands of gold'."
"No no no, this is important! Stylish fedora costs money!"
"You can get one for way cheaper!"
"But it won't be as stylish!"
"Why should I care about your style?! In fact, I'm going to be honest, you never looked good in that fedora and I genuinely don't even want to get you a new hat."
"What?! I was cool and stylish with that fedora!"
"You were pretentious and annoying with that fedora." Helena retorted, "Ask around and you'll find that no one will miss you having that hat."
"Is that true?!"
Roland looked around at the party. All of whom silently looked away, casually remaining silent to voice their opinions. Including Corissa and Varis who had arrived not long earlier.
"Oh screw all of you!" Roland snapped, "If I'm not getting a hat, I'm taking my sword back!"
"Fine fine, I'll pay." Helena sighed as she held her head.
"Hell yeah!" Roland pumped his fist as he grinned a triumphant smile.
"For the sword. Roko, you can keep it."
"WHAT?!" Roland's face paled, "You can't do that!"
"I bought it with money for you. I can buy it from you with money for someone else."
"That's not fair! That's the sword that was actually legitimately named before me! You can't just-"
Attention finally waning, everyone turned away from the arguing couple to Enlil who was holding his adopted daughter in his arms.
"Are you okay, Ereshkigal?" He asked.
"I...I'm...fine..." Ereshkigal responded though it still seemed like she was far from being wholly there mentally, "I'm...sorry for starting all this..."
"We can discuss what you did later." Enlil said in a very mature mixture of a calm, soothing tone with a strict, foreboding tone.
"At least nothing's in danger now." Momo smiled, "We can take our time suppressing these undeads until they're all gone."
"No we cannot." Brook stated as she stepped into the conversation, "There's something very dangerous that we need to prevent these zombies from obtaining."
"Brea's grave?" Roko guessed.
"That's right." Brook nodded, "If they manage to revive the great archmage Brea, we'd be wiped out before the sun even rises."
"I mean, it's pretty late already." Kaguya said, "I'm pretty sure in another few hours, the sun will rise."
"Do they stop attacking during the day?"
"Well...no..."
"Then why'd you mention it?" Brook said, her scowl practically audible beneath her mask.
"Sorry." Kaguya said, not quite sure why she was apologizing, "At least it seems like your defenses are working well. They haven't been able to breech the grave's pocket dimension."
"That's true. Maybe they can't break through our best protections."
The hint of pride in Brook's voice was undercut as a giant magical seal was suddenly unfurled across the undead army and a rift opened in the sky, dropping a familiar looking elaborate gravestone that fell onto the ground with a thud.
"...So is that my fault or yours?" Kaguya asked.
"Stop them!" Brook cried as she rush in towards Brea's grave.
"I guess I'll help out." Momo chuckled as she ran in to back up Brook.
"Mikado, can you keep going?" Kaguya asked, her knight only nodding before charging in himself.
"Now get out there before I tell Corissa you like her!" Helena said, practically kicking Roland towards the battle.
"Okay fine, anything but that!"
"Did I hear something I'm not supposed to?" Corissa blinked as Roland and Varis headed off to battle.
"It was probably meant as a friend or something." Roko replied.
"Yeah, I thought it might be something like that." Corissa nodded.
"You're not going out there yourself Roko?" Kaguya asked, "Are you still tired?"
"I have both energy from not doing anything for a while and fatigue from the conditions lingering in my body." Roko sighed, "But more pressingly, I think we've been ignoring our little observer here."
"What observer?"
"Look down."
All of them remaining in their group looked down at the magic seal that had been drawn on the ground. At least it looked enough like a magic seal. Its construction seemed alien to them and it looked pretty eldritch, blacking out the ground underneath it. Until they looked again. The seal had formed a shape that was too big for them to see very easily from the ground but there was an eye. Again. This one was clearly different from the one during the raid though. Where the one at the raid looked close enough to human, this one had a pupil of pure black. It was almost impossible to discern if it was a pupil or just a hole in space if it didn't feel so obviously staring up at them.
"Well, so long as it doesn't start raining again." Helena gulped.
"Any chance it doesn't do anything at all?" Kaguya asked.
"It already has." Roko turned his eyes back to the battlefield, "The undead zombies are in a frenzy. Even the elven zombies are attacking much more violently now. But at the same time, they've bunched up all together around Brea's grave. They've stopped spawning anywhere else. So it's clear that their intentions are no longer to kill us. Perhaps it never was about us to begin with."
"They just want to reanimate Brea's corpse." Kaguya nodded.
"Exactly." Roko sighed, "And that comes to our next order of business."
"Which is?"
"Corissa?" Roko turned to look at the princess, "Did you make any progress on that incantation?"
"I..." Corissa looked down guiltily, "I..."
"It's fine if you didn't. I did kind of get in the way." Roko sighed again, "Then onto Plan B. Can you dispel the whole thing with just holy?"
"You think holy can destroy all of that?" Helena frowned, "I mean it does seem pretty thorough as a spell but this is kind of a lot."
"Well even if we can't dispel it all at once, we can let holy take its course and see its limits. Corissa?"
"R-Right." Corissa nodded, now weirded out slightly by Roko's normally blunt behavior.
Stepping up to the edge of the magic circle, Corissa knelt down and touched it, casting holy on the ground itself. The magic seal immediately began to break apart, following up the design of the seal but the seal simply broke away the parts getting eaten before reforming very quickly.
"It doesn't work!" Corissa yelped.
"Plan C then." Roko sighed, "Enlil!"
"Y-Yes?" Enlil jolted up, still trying to comfort his shuddering child.
"This is your research right? How do you shut it off?"
"Shut it off he says." Enlil scoffed, "These are the spirits of the dead you know! You can't just summon them then tell them to go away on a whim! There's a proper consideration for life and sentience that has to be observed or else the spell won't-"
"So he doesn't know." Roko said as he turned back to the field at hand, "Plan D then."
"Roko, it's been how long since you got back and you've got a Plan D?" Helena said, impressed.
"It's not a great plan." Roko scowled, "The undead clearly want to raise the body of Brea. If we can get Corissa to the grave and have her hold sanctuary around it for a while, maybe they'll give up."
"And if they don't?"
"We send someone to fetch someone more qualified. Rivera or even Polaris."
"You're right, it's not a great plan."
"Well, we don't have a grimoire we can pick up so we can't really stop all this as easily as last time."
"When was last time?" Helena scoffed.
"That'd be me." Kaguya chuckled, "Should I get going on that help fetching by the way? I'm afraid I'm the weakest one among all of us so I'm probably the best one to take on this quest."
"If you want." Roko replied, "I'd prefer to do so after we've recaptured the grave first but I won't say no to early reinforcements. If you don't want to leave the battlefield, you can conscript one of the elf workers to do it."
"Hm. Then I'll get one of them started on that right now." Kaguya bowed, "I'll rejoin the battle shortly afterwards."
"I'll just keep sniping." Helena shrugged, "I want to experiment a bit more with this pressurized ice you taught me anyway. What are you going to do, Roko?"
"I would fight." Roko sighed, "But I don't think I'm quite good enough to walk into a mosh pit like that right now."
"That's fine. I'd like to have someone other than Kaguya to help guard me if things start changing. So you can stay back and strategize."
"I sure hope you didn't bargain anything big for this sword then." Roko looked down at Roland's sword he was carrying.
"Bargained nothing. Roland needs to learn to share." Helena scoffed, "Besides, it's not like our opponents this time are that overwhelming."
"You think?"
"Yeah. I mean the manticores seem to be gone so the biggest threat are the undead orcs and they still go down real easily compared to alive orcs. Kaguya said their real threat lies in using the spirits of the dead to cause trauma and stuff but that hasn't really happened yet."
"You don't have anybody that you want to see?"
"Not any who are dead." Helena shrugged, "My birth father's living in a bakery off to the side of Aporia. Nobody I care about has died yet. Everything's good all things considered."
"And you Corissa?" Roko turned to the other princess.
"Ummm...they could summon my birth parents I guess." Corissa replied, "But I honestly don't even remember what they look like. They could summon anyone, call them my parents and I'd probably believe it."
"And I'm from a different world." Roko nodded, "Even if they could summon someone from my world there isn't really anyone I can think of that would fit."
"The others don't seem quite as detached as the rest of us so maybe they'd have trouble." Helena shrugged, "But I think we got this."
"Yeah, it's at least not as hard as previous fights." Roko agreed.
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"YEAAUGH!"
Ereshkigal's scream drew their attention back to her and Enlil only to find Enlil slowly crawling away, the ghost of a gentle human woman seemingly luring him away from reality and his daughter. Said daughter was left scrunched over, trapped in in terror in her own mind as the figures of the people who claimed to be her parents floated around her, demonic in form as they hissed harsh words to her.
"You caused this."
"This is your fault."
"Do you think you'd still be called family after this?"
"Do you think you deserve to live after this?"
"This is my fault." Ereshkigal shuddered, clutching her head with a manic look on her face, "This is my fault."
"Corissa!"
"Y-Yes!"
Roko charged with Corissa following close behind him. He wasn't sure what he could do against ghosts but he knew Corissa probably could do something. He was coming along because-
A flash of lightning struck the ground in front of them, calling them to halt as a large figure broke out from the earth, beginning to stand in front of them with weapon in hand.
This. In case some sort of enemy appeared in their way. That was was he expected. What he didn't expect was to see the imposing form of an undead Waur looming over him.
"Why did I open my big mouth?" Roko scowled before Waur's uppercut sent him flying into the air.