Chapter 526:
Long Ago?
“WELL, THAT WAS QUITE the disturbing diary.” My father eyed what was left of the paper disgustedly.
Fische shrugged his shoulders. “Sure was. But it doesn’t add up.”
Zinal nodded at Fische. “Yeah…when was it even written?” He looked around the room. “This room is awfully bare.”
I looked round the room. Aside from the desk opposite the door and the shelves next to it, there was nothing else in the space.
“Everything on that shelf is destroyed,” Zinal lamented, fingering the fragments of paper left on the shelves. But the moment he touched the dust-like paper, it vanished into thin air.
“It disappeared?” Zinal blurted out in confusion.
Fische frantically grabbed his arm. “Are you hurt?”
“Huh? Uh, no, I’m fine.”
Fische sighed in relief. “Don’t go around touching things.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t think it would disappear.” Zinal looked back at the spot where the paper fragments had been.
“That was a fair assumption. Why did it disappear?” Fische ran a finger along the shelf and shook his head. “Not a trace left behind.”
“I don’t like this room,” my father interjected, a sour look on his face.
The room definitely was disturbing. Something was off about the passage of time in this church. When we looked from the outside, some of the windows were broken, and so was the door. Yet when we stepped inside, the chairs were still in such good condition they could be sat on. And that giant painting, with its vibrant, unfaded colors, looked as though it had been finished recently, but the diary in this room had crumbled away. We still weren’t entirely sure about the desk and shelves, but they looked only slightly damaged, and a little repair work would make them usable again. Everything shared the same space, yet time seemed to pass differently in each area.
“Let’s get out of this village,” Zinal said. My father nodded in agreement.
After we left the room, I took another long look at the painting.
“Ivy…what’s wrong? Something on your mind?” my father asked.
I nodded. I was thinking back to what the diary said. The church “beyond” and the summoning circle operators…
“Do you think the people in robes are summoning circle operators?” I asked.
The men joined me in at the painting and stared at the robed people who were under threat. A closer look revealed what looked like chains under the folds in their robes. It was drawn in detail but too small to make out entirely. Still, that was what it appeared to be.
“Do you think the shadowed figures on the right and left-hand sides of the painting were the ‘bastards’ the diary talked about?” I asked.
If only there were no summoning circles… Did the diary writer mean that their life span wouldn’t be so short that way? We must prepare… But whoever wrote the diary seemed happier about “making it on time” than they were upset about their life span shortening. So I got the sense they were already “prepared.” Then whatever they were “preparing” for…it had to be something more important than their own life.
“If the battle in this painting actually happened, there has to be some record of it,” Fische said. “But there is no such record, so why would they put a painting like this in such a prominent spot in a church? This is the most important area of the church, so it makes much more sense to assume that the battle in this painting really happened. Then again, there’s no record.”
Fische was absolutely right. There was no record of it, but the painting’s placement in the church made it safe to assume that it depicted something very important. A war erased from history. If the crown erased it from the records because it was an inconvenient truth, some of the survivors surely left something behind. And if they had, Zinal and his men would have found it. This just didn’t make sense.
I looked around the church. My father was sitting in a chair. It really was sturdy enough to hold a person. I let my gaze wander along the line of light to the window it was coming from, which was broken. The passage of time in this church was inconsistent. The passage of time? That’s right. What if this village was founded much earlier than we’d thought? I looked at the painting again. No records were left behind, and records were maintained by the kingdom, so it would have to have happened even longer ago…
“What if this battle happened before the kingdom was founded?” I suggested.
Zinal and Fische yelped in surprise. I looked at them. “If this happened before our kingdom was founded, it wouldn’t be in the records, would it?”
Oh, except the people who were around would have left something behind. There weren’t any legends… Maybe all of humanity almost went extinct? That would explain why no one inherited the summoning circles today. The words “If only there were no summoning circles” tickled my brain.
“What if the summoning circles were erased…by the operators?”
I sensed hatred for summoning circles in that diary.
“Now that’s a crazy theory,” Zinal said.
His words sent a shiver down my spine.
“Ack, I’m sorry! Did I scare you?” he asked apologetically.
I smiled and shook my head. “No, uh, I think I was just obsessing a little too much over this.”
“Before this kingdom was founded… I didn’t even think of that,” Zinal murmured.
“But that theory makes everything fall into place,” Fische said, looking at me. I nodded in agreement, and he patted my shoulder. When I gave him a curious look, he explained, “That’s not the sort of thought a normal person would have. Don’t say things like that around anybody but us.”
Ah, now I see.
“Got it.”
“But wow, before this kingdom was founded… It just might be possible. Ivy, what made you think the summoning circles were destroyed by their operators?”
Fische looked meaningfully at me, and I returned his stare. It was just a random thought that popped into my head. Was that okay? Well, I guess I’ll tell him anyway.
“Because nobody inherited the summoning circles.”
“Ah, I see.” Zinal nodded.
“We can see from the diary that whoever wrote it was a summoning circle operator who detested the circles,” I said. “Also, we know that summoning circle operators were assembling and trying to accomplish something…and that they would need to be prepared.”
That was all the information we had, so we couldn’t be entirely sure of anything.
“And since they wrote, ‘If only there were no…’ it makes me think maybe they were trying to erase summoning circles from this world. Just a little idea I had.”
“You’re right. The diary did make it seem like they hated summoning circles,” Zinal said.
I looked at the robed figures in the painting again. “Do you think the robed people in this painting are summoning circle operators? It looks like they’re under threat, and they’re in shackles.”
“Ah, you mean this,” Zinal said, touching part of the painting. It was the bits of silver that could be seen between the robe folds. “They were forced to fight since they could use summoning circles, and the more they used the summoning circles, the closer they came to death. I certainly don’t blame them for hating summoning circles.”
The real mystery was why they’d become summoning circle operators. If they would be forced to fight wars, they shouldn’t have become operators to begin with, and yet they had.
Clunk.
“What was that noise?”
We suddenly heard something fall. Zinal hurried out of the church, and we ran after him. I nervously looked for my creatures and saw they were following behind us.
“Sora, Flame, Sol, hurry.”
Ciel would be okay, and Fische was carrying Toron’s basket. No problems.
“It’s falling apart…”
I followed Fische’s gaze to see that one of the houses had completely crumbled to the ground.
“This place is dangerous. We should leave,” Fische said.
Zinal swooped Sol off the ground, my father picked up Flame and Sora, and we all ran for the gate.
“Ivy!”
“I’m okay. I’m right behind you!”
As we ran all the way to the gate, we heard sounds of destruction behind us. We slipped through the gate and ran into the forest. Once we had gotten far enough away, we stopped and turned around…to see that the gate had fallen as well.
“That escalated quickly,” my father said.
Zinal sighed heavily. “Maybe us coming into the village messed things up.”
“Pu! Pu, puuu.” Sora was struggling in my father’s arms.
“Dad, I think you’re holding Sora too tight.”
“Huh? Oh, sorry.”
My father loosened his grip. Sora bounced to the ground and looked back at the spot where the village had been.
“Sora?”
“Puuu?”
Was Sora perplexed by the sudden destruction of the village?