Had everyone heard the voice inside the light?
Orphen wasn’t sure. The flames definitely burned his skin and made it hard to breathe, but the pain wasn’t unbearable, almost as if they had been held back.
“It comes... The time of the pact...!”
Deep Dragons! Orphen placed the voice resounding painfully in his mind.
The heat wave blew through in an instant. Orphen looked up, chasing the whirls of sparks as they vanished—the forest was catching fire all around him. Strangely, the swaying flames didn’t seem to be spreading. The small streams and underground water from the nearby lake were preventing that, but the flames weren’t dying out either. They illuminated individual spots around him as if they had cut out small sections of the world from the darkness. The roots of trees, sections of the surface of the lake, leaves dancing on the wind, the frenzied hind legs of small animals as they darted into the dark to hide.
The flames seemed both random and as if all gesturing toward the same direction in tandem. Orphen watched as he leaped over countless torches. The wind must have been blowing. There was a place where sparks mixed with grains of sand in the air. There was a lake. If circumstances weren’t what they were, it would probably be beautiful—giant trees grew close together, mixed with smaller ones, their roots all extending down into the lake.
There was something above the lake.
There were torches above the lake as well. Illuminated by two large flames was a being with the shape of a woman, her hands clasped in front of her chest, her eyes downcast. Long hair, far longer than the height of her body, extended upward as if she hung from it, though the hair wasn’t taut, so it was more likely that she was simply floating. The light didn’t reach all the way up into the air, so he couldn’t see where the hair descended from.
She was far away. So far that he couldn’t distinguish the figure’s face.
A pack of black wolves stood at the edge of the water, staring at the figure.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of black wolves, staring at the woman with their green eyes—though it wasn’t as if they couldn’t enter the water. Deep Dragons were originally aquatic creatures, it was said. But the wolves were waiting for something.
The pact... When it comes into effect...will they challenge the goddess to battle? Orphen asked himself, running toward the lake. It was perfectly plausible that Leki and Claiomh were among this group of Deep Dragons. Fortunately, the dragons were focused on the woman above the lake and didn’t seem to mind him approaching them.
He glanced up at her. The woman above the lake. He’d seen the same thing before. But that was at an underground lake, and it was just an arm...
That’s the goddess... The goddess of fate, who would fully invade their world three days from now.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
Sand whirled above the lake. It was likely what was burning on the water’s surface, having fallen down and piled up there. He ran through the Deep Dragons, which obstructed his path as much as the trees did, trying fruitlessly to find Claiomh anywhere. He thought about calling out to her but decided maybe that wasn’t a good idea since she’d left without saying anything to him.
Just then...
“She’s not here.” The lord’s head abruptly intruded on Orphen’s field of vision, his face utterly composed.
Orphen stopped, asking, “What?” with a slight sense of regret.
“Though Leki is among this pack somewhere.” The lord indicated the group of Deep Dragons after squeezing through the small gap between two of them. “Claiomh Everlasting, however, has separated from Leki and entered the sanctuary proper.”
“Why?!” Orphen shouted impatiently, but the lord suddenly changed the subject instead.
“So you finally caught up. I’m relieved for now.”
Orphen opened his mouth to shout again, irritated at the lord’s clumsy dodging of his question, but he shoved his emotions down before he could actually raise his voice again. He knew that the lord would only answer questions he wanted to.
“If you were just going to wait for me here, then why did you go ahead in the first place? Because of you—”
“Precisely because of that situation, you were able to defeat Jack Frisbee and come to terms with what was to come, were you not?” the lord said breezily. “Was that wrong?”
“...I just can’t bring myself to like you.”
“That is inevitable. It seems easier to guide you through provocation than by earning your trust, after all.”
Ignoring the inhuman lord’s every sarcastic comment, Orphen questioned him, “Where’s the entrance to the sanctuary? Are the Thirteen Apostles all right?”
“Pluto’s already defeated the sanctuary’s final defensive unit and infiltrated the sanctuary proper.”
“Where?”
“I’ll take you there.” The lord beckoned him and started walking.
Orphen wasn’t exactly raring to follow him, but he did so anyway.
The lord walked toward the lake. The flames hadn’t gone out, but the forest had regained its silence, the shadows of the fire dancing quietly around them.
It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Orphen eventually noticed signs of fighting on the ground. Marks, almost like tears in the earth. Disabled Red Dragons. And empty husks that were once members of the Thirteen Apostles...
The lord made no moves to stop and observe any of them, merely striding over the lumps of earth torn out of the ground by the explosions. It probably hadn’t been all that long since the battle occurred. Scorched air, the mist from the lake, and the whirling sand were all competing to dominate the atmosphere.
The lord turned around to him. “Be careful. We’re almost at the lake’s edge.”
“I know.” Orphen groaned, looking up at the woman floating above the lake. They weren’t terribly close to her yet, but they were closer than they were before.
“That’s right. That’s the goddess,” the lord said unnecessarily. Then he added, “It’s said that there are three goddesses of fate, but who knows how they think of themselves.”
“...She’s not moving at all.” Aside from her hair swaying in the wind, the goddess didn’t budge.
The lord smiled at Orphen’s observation. His usual wan smile. “Her eyes aren’t even open. Either she’s perfectly confident that she can get through the barrier the whole way this time, or...maybe she’s merely showing us a few days of compassion.”
“Are the Deep Dragons going to attack her?”
The enormous black wolves surrounding the lake were simply staring up at the goddess. But their gazes had the power to bring any substance under their control, to subjugate and destroy whatever they wished.
Almagest’s smile faded for just a moment. He looked around pityingly and said, “If they came at her with everything they had right now, they would simply be wiped out instead. The Deep Dragons know that.”
“Then...”
“They’re waiting for their chance. For the moment the goddess fully breaks through the barrier. They hope that in the few days before then, there might be some opportunity for them to land at least one blow on her. That is the Deep Dragons’ pact. Childman Powderfield promised Asraliel that humanity would give them that opportunity. And strangely enough, Asraliel believed him, despite his words being completely baseless two hundred years ago.”
Orphen shook his head when he heard that name. “It’s because Master believed it himself.”
“I wonder about that. Still, the Deep Dragons have believed it all this time and accordingly they wait here now. So they rejected my pact and believed in the previous lord instead... Things may still work out, but it’s still rather frustrating for me,” the lord spat, almost self-deprecatingly. He didn’t sound all that frustrated, but he probably wasn’t lying.
Orphen pointed ahead without responding to him. They were right up against the edge of the lake now. If they went any farther, they would fall straight in. They stood on the shore, almost a cliff overlooking the lake, and the lord peered down at the water’s surface. Orphen had no idea what he was checking, but he nodded to himself and said, “It’s here.”
“Where?” he asked, though he had an idea already. He approached the edge of the cliff and looked down as well at the dark water. There was something like a stone pedestal underneath the surface.
“That’s the entrance to the sanctuary. To be more precise, it’s a teleportation device.”
He could see the device under the dark water because it was faintly luminescent—complex Wyrd Glyphs flickered on its surface, signifying something about its functionality. Together, they formed the complicated composition of a teleportation spell, but they also resembled the glow of a flame beckoning moths to it.
The lord must have read his mind. “If you jump from here, you’ll be transported inside the sanctuary before you touch the water’s surface,” he prompted Orphen. “Of course, normally it wouldn’t activate, but someone inside released the controls.”
“Who?”