“…Aaaaaahh!!” Eugeo screamed and bolted upright. He frantically rubbed his clammy hands against his shirt. After several shouts and much hasty friction, he finally realized that it was not blood smeared on his palms but sweat. He was lying on the ground in the fetal position.
It was just a dream. And yet, the wild beating of his heart and the sour sweat exuding from his skin showed no signs of calming. The remnants of a horrifying nightmare stayed stuck to his back, chilling and unpleasant.
I’ve hardly even thought of Mom and Dad since I left home, he realized, then clenched his eyes shut and panted. Back in Rulid, his mother was so busy with fieldwork, taking care of the sheep, and doing all the housework that she hardly ever had time to dote on Eugeo like that. At the time of his oldest memories, he was already sleeping in his own bed, and he’d never had a problem with it.
So why would I have a dream like that now…?
He shook his head, trying to dispel the vision. A person’s dreams were decided by the whims of Lunaria, the moon goddess. There was no meaning to that nightmare, surely.
Once his breathing was steady again, his mind turned to the question of where he was. Without uncurling his body, he lifted his eyelids.
The first thing he saw was a dark-red, stunningly deep carpet, woven with an intricate design. He couldn’t begin to guess what the textile merchants in District Five of North Centoria would charge for such an item. He gradually raised his head, but there was no end to the carpet. Only when his head was fully level did he finally see a wall in the distance.
The “wall” wasn’t wood paneled or made of stone blocks. It was an arrangement of golden pillars made to look like gigantic swords, connected by massive sheets of glass. That made it less of a wall than a very long, continuous window. In any case, he doubted that even the emperors’ palaces made such decadent use of valuable glass.
Beyond the glass wall was a carpet of clouds glowing blue in the moonlight. So this chamber was located above the cloud layer. Hanging in the night sky above was a full white moon. A stunning canopy of stars sparkled around it. The rays of light coming down from the display above were so strong that Eugeo was late to realize it was still the middle of the night. Based on the position of the moon, it was probably just after midnight. So while he slept, the date changed, making it the twenty-fifth day of the fifth month now.
He looked straight up. Far above, the ceiling formed a perfect circle, with no sign of any staircase up to the next floor. Did that make this the very top floor of Central Cathedral?
There was a vivid painting on the vast ceiling: shining knights, vanquished monsters, mountains jutting from the earth. It seemed to be a depiction of the creation of the world. There were even crystals embedded into the surface here and there, twinkling like stars.
But based on the content of the painting, there was one absolutely pivotal figure who was not present in the center, where she belonged: Stacia, goddess of creation. That part of the painting was done all in white, leaving a bizarre void that drew attention away from the rest of the work.
After puzzling over that for a bit, Eugeo got up from his hands and feet, then spun around in a panic when something brushed his back.
“…?!”
He gaped. Right behind him was the side of a shockingly large bed. It was circular, like the room itself, and nearly ten mels in diameter. Four golden pillars supported a golden canopy, with several layers of fine purple fabric hanging between them. The bed itself was wrapped in a white sheet of what looked like silk from the eastern empire, which shone softly in the moonlight coming through the window.
And lying in the middle of that bed was a single figure. The sheer hanging fabric blocked the light, revealing nothing but the general silhouette.
Eugeo sucked in a sharp breath and jumped to attention. He’d been here for at least a few minutes, and he hadn’t sensed the other person’s presence at any point. That was hard enough to believe, but even more difficult was the realization that he’d been sleeping against the side of the bed for hours. How had that happened…?
At last, Eugeo recalled the most recent memory from his vague, jumbled chronology.
That’s right…I fought against Commander Bercouli…the hero of yore. I used my sword’s Memory Release to freeze us both…and just before both our life numbers ran out, some little man dressed like a clown—Prime Senator Chudelkin? He waltzed in and said some very strange things. Then he crunched the ice roses with his shoes…and…
That was the end of his memories. Perhaps the clownish man had brought him here, but the reason was unclear. Without thinking, he rummaged around his waist, but there was no sword there.
Plagued by a sudden sense of vulnerability, Eugeo squinted at the figure on the bed. Was it friend or foe…? But this was Central Cathedral, and likely the top floor, at that. Nobody he found here would be an ally.
He considered sneaking right out of the room, but his desire to know the identity of the sleeping figure won out. No matter how he stretched, though, he couldn’t make out the face behind the hanging fabric.
He held his breath and put his knee on the bed. It sank deep into the white silk, like a layer of powdered snow, and Eugeo had to reach out and prop himself up on his hands. They, too, sank into the smooth fabric.
The memory of that terrible dream and the sensation of its enveloping bed returned to him in a flash, and he shivered. Eugeo put his other leg on the bed and slowly crawled toward the center.
As he crossed the impossibly large bed, Eugeo had to wonder: If the bed beneath him was filled with the finest, softest down, how many feathers would there be in total? When he carefully collected the loose, fallen feathers from the ducks the family kept out back in Rulid, it had taken half a year to make one thin, shabby blanket.
He stopped just before the sheer hanging curtains and listened closely. At the very edge of his hearing was the sound of smooth, regular breathing. The mystery person was still asleep.
Carefully, so carefully, he slipped his right hand under the curtain and lifted it, achingly slowly. When the light of the evening finally landed on the interior portion of the bed, Eugeo’s eyes bulged.
It was a woman.
She was dressed in a light-purple nightgown—the same color as a Stacia Window—hemmed with silver thread, with pale and delicate hands folded atop her stomach. Her arms and fingers were as slender as a doll’s, but the swelling mounds pushing up the gown were rich and full, and he hastily looked past them without lingering. At the wide-open neck, her skin was smooth and dazzlingly white.
Lastly, he looked at her face. Instantly, he felt as though his soul were being sucked out of his body. He went into tunnel vision, unable to sense anything else.
What incredible perfection. She didn’t even seem human.
Alice the Integrity Knight had an unassailable beauty, of course, but hers was still a beauty that existed within the human spectrum. And that was natural—Alice was a human.
But this person sleeping no more than a mel away was…
The finest sculptor in Centoria could spend his entire life in pursuit of total mastery and still be unable to create such beauty. Eugeo couldn’t think of the words to describe even a single feature of her face. He would say that she had “lips like flower petals,” except that Eugeo did not know of any flowers with such delicate, pristine curves.
The lashes on her closed eyelids and the long flowing hair that spilled over the bed looked like molten silver. It gleamed coldly in the blue darkness and white moonlight.
Like some kind of fly lured by sweet nectar, Eugeo was stunned, unable to think. The only thing filling his empty head was the desire to reach out and touch that hair and cheek, to feel them with his own skin.
He slid forward a bit more on his knees, until a scent like nothing he’d ever smelled before rose into his nostrils. His outstretched fingertips were closer…almost there…on that smooth, flawless skin…