Chapter 84: Praying

At that moment, my cheeks were burning so hard I was fairly sure they could have lit a lantern. I stiffened where I sat, and I didn’t dare turn my head to look at any of the four people currently sharing this very small boat with me.

On the outside, I let my face settle into something I hoped resembled fear. Wide eyes, tight jaw, the expression of a man who genuinely believed a giant horned sea lion was about to end him.

On the inside, I was praying.

’The Supreme Angel of Fate;

You Are The Grace of Destiny;

The Spirit of Time;

I, Edmund Rhys, the one who woke you from your dreaming, humbly beg for your notice. Should this punishment be the kind that ends me, let the threads of fate turn it aside. I will remember this debt.’

It was, admittedly, a shameless thing to do. I had known the man for maybe ten minutes total, and half of that had been spent unable to speak. But desperate times, and in my defense, the alternative was answering the question out loud.

Questioner’s laughter rolled across the water again, bright and greedy. "Hehehehe."

I swallowed and lifted my chin. "I choose the punishment."

The laughter cut off.

The giant horned face turned toward me slowly, the four curling horns tilting down, and for the first time since he had surfaced, something that looked a great deal like genuine annoyance crossed his features. He had clearly been looking forward to my answer far more than to my suffering.

"You... don’t want to answer?" Questioner asked, and there was an actual pout in it. "That was the best part."

"I’ll pass," I said.

"Hmph!" The water around him churned. "Then take it!"

The sky above the lake tore open.

A bolt of crimson lightning came down, wound through with thin, intricate threads of silver, and struck the black water with a crack that made my teeth ache.

It didn’t stop there. It zigzagged across the surface, skipping from ripple to ripple, racing straight for our boat with a speed that left no room for so much as a gasp, its light throwing five stark shadows across the hull and turning every face in the boat the color of old blood.

Theodore cursed. Sera grabbed the side. Arthur threw an arm across Mary’s shoulders on pure reflex, and Mary, to her credit, didn’t even flinch.

I stared at the lightning bearing down on me and thought, very clearly, ’well, that’s that.’

It vanished.

It did not dissipated and did not faded. It simply vanished, one instant crackling a hand’s width from the bow, the next simply gone, as though it had never existed at all.

The water rippled quietly where it should have struck. No smoke. No smell of burnt air. Just a faint, silver shimmer that hung over the surface for half a heartbeat before dissolving into nothing.

Nobody moved.

Then I looked at Questioner.

The giant sea lion had gone completely rigid. His wide eyes were fixed on the spot where the lightning had died, and every hint of smugness had drained out of his face, replaced with a terror so complete that it was almost comical. He looked like a man who had just caught his own reflection wearing someone else’s face.

"W-well!" Questioner squeaked, voice climbing several octaves. "The questions are over! Game finished! Goodbye!"

He didn’t wait for a reply. He flipped backward, and his enormous body vanished beneath the black water with a splash big enough to rock our boat hard to the left, sending all five of us grabbing for the sides again.

The ripples spread. The lake settled.

The silence afterward was almost peaceful.

’Huh,’ I thought, staring at the empty water. ’So his authority actually works in this realm too.’

That was a lot to unpack. Ouroboros had left the world of the tree behind us, vanished as a knot of starlight, and yet a fragment of his will had reached across all this distance to swat away a Beast Lord’s punishment like a fly. I couldn’t begin to guess what that meant for what he could do in the real world.

’This place really is nothing but mysteries stacked on mysteries.’

I let out a long breath and finally looked around at the others.

They were all looking at me.

All four of them, in a perfect half circle, with expressions of the purest, most innocent curiosity I had ever seen on human faces. Not a single eyebrow twitched. Not a lip curled. It was terrifying.

"...W-what’s the problem?" I asked.

They didn’t change expression in the slightest.

"So," Theodore said pleasantly.

"Who was the star," Arthur added.

"Next to you," said Sera.

"In your dream," Mary finished.

I stared at her.

’Not even you, Mary. You barely talk. I’ve spent an entire month of my life getting maybe six full sentences out of you, and this is what you choose to spend one on?’

"Haha," I laughed, and even I could hear how hollow it sounded. "Well, I don’t think I actually remember it, honestly. Dreams are blurry, you know? Hard to hold onto."

"Hm," said Sera.

"Convenient," said Arthur.

Mary tilted her head, and there was a small, dangerous glint in her eye. "Should we put him in a Spirit Barrier? He can’t lie inside one, can he?"

"Oh, that’s brilliant," Theodore said, clapping his hands together softly. "That is the very first thing we do when we get off this boat."

"You wouldn’t," I said.

"We absolutely would," Mary replied, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, she actually laughed, quiet and clear, and it was so unexpected that I almost forgot to be mortified.

The boat rocked gently beneath us, black water lapping at its sides, and I stared at the far shore, still impossibly distant, and wondered whether there was a way to make the crossing take considerably longer.

A day, maybe. Two, if I was lucky. Long enough for four people to forget, entirely and permanently, that any of this had ever happened.

Theodore caught me looking and grinned like a wolf that had just smelled blood.

"Don’t worry, Edmund," he said cheerfully. "We’ve got all the time in the world."

I very quietly began to pray to Ouroboros again.