No matter how much Sian tried to coax and persuade her, Dranvi wouldn’t leave on a Journey. He went to On the Rocks with Dranvi several times, trying to show her the splendors that would come of going on a Journey, but any hint of interest she might have shown soon faded away, her expression making it clear she’d already decided they would separate.
It was around that time when word in the castle began to spread about how strange Dranvi’s work had become and the Dearth March appeared at the outer walls of Park City.
Both could feel the end coming, to the point there was no need to even bring it up.
One day, Sian made one last attempt, taking Dranvi to On the Rocks. The pair sat with Gaff, and the trio shared a meal, not thinking overtly about how this was their last supper together, but well aware that it probably was. Their conversation went from how they had met to their life together thus far, their voices fading into the atmosphere of the room. They spent their time together pleasantly and chatted jovially like new friends who’d only just hit it off.
Sian skillfully snapped a match stone, producing small flames in the air. He used it to light his pipe and take a puff. It tasted good, and he knew for certain he would never experience this flavor ever again.
Sian cast away his future. That’s what determining one’s own view of the world meant. He decided to live in the present while always shouldering the past. To not depend on an uncertain future, but live where he stood, no matter how much his body and soul would change or how his position or standing could shift.
He decided to become a Nomad.
Sian was not one who waited for things to come to him. He was one who sought and pursued—and set out with sword in hand.
“At the end of my long Journey, I learned of the Girl of Reason. I solved that mystery, raising it myself,” Sian said, peering directly at Adonis. “That enigma was called the stone egg. In Denariland, they call it the Stein der Weisen. The Philosopher’s Stone.”
Both men were already on their feet, facing each other with swords in hand. Adonis wasn’t confident he could shatter his sword, though. Sian’s overwhelming sense of presence pressured Adonis, beating down his spirit. Trying to resist that, he asked:
“Don’t tell me the Girl of Reason is God’s…?”
Sian flashed a brutal smirk. “In the ancient Age of Gods, they believed in one true God who ruled over one true paradise and was behind sending out Deus Ex Machina. The rest of it you will have to discover on your own. Or else, die here.”
All emotion drained from Adonis’s face, and he charged forward, swinging Rusty Nail.
How long had it been? Adonis couldn’t tell in this place where day and night had no meaning. He fell to the floor, Rusty Nail gripped in his fingers. A strong stench of blood filled his nostrils, and his left arm was numb with pain.
He was in so much pain that at this point it all came across as hot numbness. Looking at his arm, he saw it had been half torn off and was still holding on to the sword’s hilt. Lying face up, Adonis heaved a deep sigh.
“Of all the children I’ve taught thus far, you are by far the most moody and stubborn,” Sian said. He also let out a sigh as he began to heal Adonis’s arm.
Strangely, Sian actually approached to apply the sacred ashes and bandages himself, but Adonis shuffled back, rejecting him.
“A child of yours…?” Adonis sneered.
The next moment, everything went white. Sian punched him, no questions asked.
“If I didn’t feel for you like a parent, I wouldn’t even bother punching the likes of you.” Saying this, he finished treating Adonis’s arm, then smacked it over the covered wound. “Did that hurt?”
Adonis wasn’t capable of uttering a single word anymore. All he could do was shake and roll around in pain. But the whole time, he never let go of his sword.
“Hmph. The pain goes to show you’re still alive. Relish it,” Sian said with a smirk, before turning his back on Adonis and walking toward the door that had appeared before him.
Pushing past pain and agony, Adonis got to his feet, intent on stabbing Sian in the back. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any openings to attack, though. The man’s guard was constantly up. Sensing Adonis’s intentions, Sian briefly turned around to look and flashed a smirk.
“I’ll kill you someday,” Adonis whispered as the door closed shut and then dematerialized.
Somehow managing to stand upright, Adonis downed the meal that appeared before him and dragged himself to the bath, covered in bandages. A terrible pain shot through his body as he slipped into the water, but apparently the bath had sacred ashes mixed into it, because as he slipped into the water with a groan, he saw his wounds heal rapidly.
A miracle cure made using the corpses of Solists as a seedbed…, Adonis thought, recalling what he knew of sacred ashes.
He bit his lip. The memories of the days he’d spent spreading the ashes of the deceased filled his thoughts. A jolt of pain ran through him—he unintentionally picked at his wounds over the bandages.
“It hurts…” The words left his lips unbidden.
He let go of the wound, watching his blood dance within the water. Pain was just an illusion, and a stark reminder that interacting with others only brought misery and anguish. It was vexing.
Gripped by such bitter emotions, Adonis felt like he couldn’t stay there another second and rose from the bath. A new set of clothes had been prepared for him at some point. The clothes he was getting every day gradually changed in color. The shade this time was between yellow and red.
Dranvi was probably doing it to alert him to the passage of time. Maybe the color of the clothes was changing in accordance with his progress in the training, or perhaps it simply reflected the time of day. And although there was no way of confirming the time in this closed-off space, Adonis was oddly content as he put on the clothes.