The silence of everyone around me was loud. They’d all more or less figured out I was not in any kind of mood. Even Arthur, the small dog kid, behaved himself.
In a way, it made me feel guilty. But fuck all that. At least I’d managed to think things through.
‘Ephe,’ I said in my head, ‘Give me my current stats.’
[Certainly.]
[Elio is outside the Range of the Spikes.]
[Initializing Status Details.]
[Initialized.]
[...]
[Completed.]
At her last word, the details slammed into my head all at once, making my eyes shoot wide from the sharp pain of my nervous system throwing a tantrum at being overwhelmed. Still, despite the headache, the numbers looked nice... if not for one singular thing.
Subject: Elio Welchia
Status: Alive; Angry
Species: Human?
Energy: 74/200 - Near Exhaustion
Age: 28
Health: Stable
Mental State: Unstable
Physical Condition: Adequate
Reign Index: 0.28%
Reigncraft: Seed - Level 3
Abilities:
- Law of Continuance
- Veilstep - Level 3
- Denial - Level 2
- Law of Separation
- Free Slot: 1
Passive Abilities:
- Law of Truth - Level 3
- Language: Westgod Terminia; Helnuro; Elvish; Vampta; Lakeesh
- Impaler Lord - Level 3 (18/100 for Level 4)
- Free Slot: 1
Current Directive: Escort your guests back to the Ashtara Kingdom.
Current Optional Directive: Take all the Beastfolk to Safety.
Wonderful, wonderful, and some more wonderful, no? This is the definition of what I call decent progress.
One quick, small, tiny, little, out-of-nowhere question. What the FUCK does ‘Human?’ mean?
‘Ephe, my dear,’ I said sweetly inside my head, ‘Pray tell me, why is my humanity put into question?’
[...]
‘Ephe, my beautiful sass machine, do tell.’
[...]
‘Ephe, I swear to the Gods one day I will find you-’
“We are here,” Stevin sighed, worry poorly hidden under his voice as he interrupted the start of an argument between my All-Powerful Schizophrenia and me.
The edge of the forest stood before my eyes, my first true taste of reality in this place. Yes, the savages, the Castle, the elven village… they were all real, but not in the way a proper civilization should be. I wanted markets. Proper food. And finally, after far too long on the road, beds. Covers. Pillows.
My mouth was watering just thinking about them.
“Then,” I finally said, my gaze sweeping over the vast green field past the treeline. “As we discussed earlier, the beastfolk will pretend to be adventurers that Enna rescued after being lost for a long time in the Great Velvet Forests.”
They all nodded. They already knew their roles and how to act. They looked strong enough, so as long as people from the... You know what? No. I’m not saying it. I refuse to jinx this.
“As for you, Airina, you are a companion of mine, aiding Enna in finishing her quest,” I continued, turning to the next in line.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Yes, Your Grace,” she said sharply, confident in the lies she had prepared inside her mind. Let us hope they held true to her expectations.
“As for you two…” I muttered as I turned to the last pair in line. “We go with the truth.”
“Even the ‘captured by savages, almost eaten by a snakebird’ part?” Stevin asked, stress in his voice, but an amused smile tugging at his lips.
"You can leave that part out," I said with a faint, genuine smile, the first one I could remember showing off since Julia died.
The lad was decent, despite his strange antics, questionable food choices, and deeply concerning manipulation tactics.
…And I will stop listing there, or I might accidentally talk myself into hating him. For now, though, the boy was the most decent of the entire bunch.
"Now then," I swallowed, curious to see what the world beyond the Great Velvet Forests looked like. "Onward."
One whole day of fields, creeks, dried-up rivers, and absolutely fuck all in sight had finally passed.
I had expected a glorious city sprawling before my eyes as a reward for the hundreds of miles I walked through forests, but all I got was weeds and the unfiltered fuckery of the sun blazing above my head, making it difficult for my poor, sensible eyes.
This is exactly what the ancient philosophers would have called the definition of bullshit.
“Your Grace,” Enna said, ruining my mood further simply by existing near me. “You are squinting like you are in pain.”
“The sun,” I replied, refusing to explain further. A mistake, realized two seconds too late, because each one of my companions, even the small dog boy, interpreted everything through the doctrine of Stevin’s deranged propaganda.
“I see,” Enna muttered, immediately moving away from me.
You could see the guilt gnawing at her. The doctrine in her skull fought everything she actually knew about me, leaving her stranded in an emotional stalemate where she couldn’t apologize and couldn’t move on all at once.
So she kept her distance. Sulked from afar. Asked the bare minimum and then retreated as if proximity might turn her into ash from the Vampiric Evil-God being she thought I was.
But strangely, the silent cat woman, Silvien, drifted into Enna’s abandoned place beside me, walking straight ahead, ears twitching, eyes forward, her tail swinging in perfect counterbalance to each step she took.
Don’t ask how I know.
But with evening soon approaching, I moved past the elf and the cat woman by my sides and walked toward Stevin, who walked a few feet in front of me.
“How much longer until I can sleep on a proper bed?” I asked, looking at the endless sea of bugs and weeds.
Stevin laughed. “I assumed you would prefer the forest, Your Grace, but do not worry. This zone is more like a gray area, a few miles of nothingness to keep the population away from the dangers of the Great Velvet Forests. You see that hill in the distance toward the mountain?”
“Yes,” I nodded, squinting my eyes further, despite being well into the afternoon, “What of it?”
“In a way, that is the real border,” Stevin explained, “Past the hill is the border town of Embel. A small place, but good enough to rest for the night and pick up some things along the way.”
Finally, some music to my pale ears. And from what I could figure out, we were less than a few miles away from the hill itself.
But it was weird that during this entire day of walking, we hadn’t seen a single person.
“If we are that close, why haven’t we seen anyone?” I asked, following my worries.
Only for Stevin to shrug as if it didn’t look weird. “Perhaps people are busy, but that only means we are in luck. Best not to draw too much attention to us.”
“I assume, but why not?” I followed up, head turning toward the boy.
“Because he is afraid,” Enna spoke from behind us, almost making me jump from the scare she gave me. “The town’s lord is a retainer of his House.”
“Here goes the red witch and her big mouth,” Stevin clicked his tongue. “Don’t you know how to shut the fuck up once in a while? It was so nice to have you silent for a few days, I almost started thinking you are a decent person.”
“And I almost forgot you are a bitch,” Enna hissed, drawing closer to him, until I turned my head to the two of them, breaking the fight that would have ensued with nothing more than an annoyed stare.
“We are taking him back either way,” I spoke, intervening. “It doesn’t matter how early his father finds out or not.”
“Then you ought to know, Your Grace, we have walked a mile east of the normal roads,” Enna pointed out, “Walking through weeds like cutthroats and bandits.”
“Both of you are of the same bloody yolk,” I chuckled exasperated, speaking through my clenched teeth, “I’ve never seen such specimens in my entire life.”
With that remark of mine, they both fell silent, heads down as if I had cursed their mother. But it didn’t matter. They will get past this as well, as they always did.
My mood was ruined either way, and the sun didn’t help either, so any sense of guilt that I may have been feeling at one point was all but gone now. All I wanted was to get to that bloody town, eat a decent warm meal, and sleep on a decent bed.
And so, we walked without further events for another hour, circling the hill until, finally… There it was.
Surrounded by battlements and a thirty-foot-wide, water-filled moat, with a massive gate reached by a bridge as its only entrance, stood what I could only describe as a basic medieval town, a border fortress, and the first line of defense that any force advancing from the Great Velvet Forests would have to conquer or bypass before pushing deeper into the Kingdom.
The town was more than sufficient for what it needed to offer us.
But there was, as always, an issue. A big one that seemed nobody batted an eye at, making me question if it was the harsh sun that made it difficult for me to notice it earlier.
Beside the blue sky above, stretching toward the remainder of the Ashtara Kingdom, shattered pieces of Golden Glass were scattered across the sky itself, with blinding yellow light swirling between each fragment, swallowing whatever blue managed to show itself past the chaos. It was as if the fabric of the world was shattering.
And, just as I was about to open my mouth to question what the fuck I was witnessing, Ephe explained instead.
[Fracture 7-A Observed.]
[The Broken Law of Justice is Observed.]
[New Directive: Detect the Cause of the Fracture.]
So that was one of the things I somehow needed to fix to bring my Julia back to me. Of course… easy.
Scratch my earlier point. This is the definition of bullshit.
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