Chapter Intermission.0 The Girl and the Boy Gods’ Games We Play Long, long ago, more than ten years in the past… The boy called Fay Theo Philus had been recognized as a gaming prodigy from a young age. But it was not the case that the boy, Fay, had simply come into the world as a game-playing genius. He’d had a partner to play with. “I was playing with Sis again. But I still couldn’t beat her, not even once!” The person who made the perfect opponent for him also happened to be the greatest teacher of games in the world. Only the boy knew about this older girl, this “Sis.” He didn’t know where she’d come from or where she would go. She was a beautiful young lady with bright red hair. They played card games, chess, billiards—she challenged him to every kind of game, and over thousands and thousands of losses, the boy began to improve. “That’s great, Fay! You’re getting stronger and stronger.” Praise from Sis was all the reward Fay could ever want. “You couldn’t beat me at first, but you persevered and got better. That makes me very happy.” Those days were like a dream. It was, one might say, as if they had a world all their own, enclosed in a shimmering soap bubble. A time for games that belonged only to them. But it didn’t last long. One day, with no warning, the girl vanished, and he never saw her again. That was why Fay was searching, even now. So he could tell her that he was who he was because of her. So he could say “thank you” to the red-haired young woman. He wanted to see her one more time. “The girl I’m looking for has bright red hair.” ……… ……………… …A dream…? What…what brought those memories on? I remember being asked to do a test run of the gods’ games… Then I jumped through the Divine Gate… The game would be starting soon. Everyone was waiting for him on the other side of the dive. In the Elements. That was what he’d thought anyway. “—?!” Fay gasped as his eyes snapped open. He’d jumped through the glowing gate, and yet he found no Elements on the other side. He found nothing at all. It was pitch-black; he couldn’t see a centimeter in front of his face. He couldn’t feel the ground under his feet, and when he thrust out his arms, his hands found only emptiness. He felt like he was surrounded by something warm and viscous, a substance somewhere between air and liquid. He was floating in the middle of this absolute darkness. If this was an Elements, he’d never seen anything like it. Was this where the next game was to take place? If so, his friends couldn’t be far.
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“Leshea?” he called. “Leshea!” There was no answer. No mote of light penetrated the blackness; his voice seemed to vanish as if it had been sucked away. “Pearl! Nel! Captain Ashlan?!” There was no response from any of them, nor could he see them anywhere. All he heard was the faint sound of his own breathing. No other voices, no footsteps. What kind of world is this?! Am I the only one here? Where did everyone else go?! After a moment’s thought, a single possibility bubbled up in his brain. Could it be that he had it backward? Maybe everyone else hadn’t gone anywhere. “Maybe I’m the only one who was sent here…” “This is my Elements.” Words, all spirit and power, sounded forth. The voice seemed to echo everywhere at once as it spoke. It was full of compassion that reached to the marrow of Fay’s bones, and love, and a pinch of sorrow. “I tampered with the Divine Gate. I caused it to draw you, and you alone, into this place at the moment you passed through it.” “—?!” Fay’s breath caught. This whisper of a voice—was it a god? He felt the voice, a comfort in this world of darkness, but he saw no one. “Who are you? Are you the god of this Elements?” Fay asked. “………” The voice did not answer. “You said you tampered with the Divine Gate. Does that mean you’re the one who messed around in Anubis’s maze, too?” Still there was no response. But that cold silence was more eloquent than any answer. The voice said I’m the only one it pulled in here. So is everyone else in another place? Okay, but why just me? There was one thing about which Fay felt certain, surely by intuition. The god who had been whispering to him had no intention of starting a game. Suddenly, the voice returned. “I was wrong,” it said. “You were never supposed to be able to clear that labyrinth game. The only thing that could have allowed you to do so by brute force was the snake, Uroboros. So I ejected them from the game, even while knowing that to do so would be to alert them to my presence.” “That was you?!” “As I said, it was a misjudgment. Uroboros was not the threat.” There in the lightless world, the god whose name Fay didn’t know and whose body he could not see spoke calmly. “You. You were the true danger all along.” Shudder. Fay felt his blood run cold, a chill that went down his spine to the tip of every finger and toe. It was not a feeling of intimidation or oppression. No, the voice was as comforting and mild as could be. That was what was so frightening about it. It was capable of planting a seed of terror beyond human understanding; the power in it was impossible to miss. And then the voice said: “You will sleep here awhile.” “—?!” Fay’s breath caught again as he was assaulted by a terrible dizziness. He felt his head swirling, as if he’d been hit with a hammer. By the time he realized it was a magical, irresistible sleep called forth by the god, his consciousness had already half slipped away. His consciousness… He tried to hold on to it, but it was going, drifting out of reach like a slip of paper…flying away. S…sleep? Me? What are they…planning to do with me? “In all the world—no, in all Elements—this is the safest place of all. A place where you can rest and be well,” said the sweet voice, lulling him to sleep. “I want you to go to sleep.” “You…what?!” “There are no cares, no discomfort. Because me, I love games more than anyone at all. You, your friends, all humans, this very world, and the gods: I cherish them all. Because I cherish them, I wish to protect them. And that is why the gods’ games cannot exist.” “…?!” Fay made a half-voiced sound of shock. What did that mean? Why shouldn’t the gods’ games exist? He tried to ask, but his mouth wouldn’t move. The god’s sleep enchantment left him unable to twitch a finger; all he could do was float there in the viscous dark. “When you awake, nothing at all will have changed in the human world. Only, the gods’ games will be gone. That will be the one, single difference.” “…………” This was no joke. Even in the grip of an enchantment that threatened to sap his waking mind away, even as a haze intruded on his vision, Fay glowered as hard as he could at the void that was speaking to him. You drag people into a place they never wanted to go and then try to force them to sleep? Yeah, I don’t think so! Worst of all, though, was knowing how desperately the others must be searching for him. How desperately they must be waiting, not knowing he had been shunted into this alternate dimension. He didn’t even want to think about it. “You may feel free to hate me; I don’t mind. But I do what I must…” The god’s voice got farther away—not because the god was growing more distant, but because Fay’s consciousness had nearly been snuffed out. He was rapidly sinking into the sleep to which the god had invited him. “Fare thee well. May you be happy in the world you find in the future.” At that moment, as Fay slipped into the very lowest depths of a dream from which he would not wake, he thought he heard a voice. No… It was a memory. “I’ve never given a human an Arise before.” “Sis…?” “My name is—……… Until you—………—once more, my blood will protect you from every catastrophe that might befall you.” “So this power, this Arise, is called May Your God: meaning, you have the divine love of the gods.” The darkness bounded backward. Fay was surrounded by extraordinary vermilion flames, burning away the sleep enchantment that threatened to rob him of his consciousness. A Superhuman Arise, of the type “May Your God.” It repelled everything that tried to harm Fay, even malice, curses, fate, and the interference of the gods themselves. A blessing of temporary invulnerability granted by one god in particular. “Impossible!” the god shouted from the void before him. A god’s power, leveled at a human, pushed back by the blessing of another god. There was an audible crack from behind Fay as the lightless Elements shattered. “Ahh! Don’t go!” A hand—a hand reached for him through the darkness. A god reaching out to grab Fay’s hand before he could escape this Elements. The arm was that of a girl wearing the uniform of the Arcane Court. Fay just caught a glimpse of elaborate gold embroidery on a black field. “You mustn’t leave this—” The hand grasped empty air. Even as he heard the voice cry out from the shrouded world… …Fay was freed from the Elements of this unknown god.