Though Melissa looked surprised, luckily, from the way she spoke, it sounded like she accepted it. Then again, I felt a bit guilty that I had come across as vulgar then. Not many people peeked in on our training sessions, but we sometimes had a couple of onlookers in the peanut gallery. I needed to keep myself in check.
But right now, that didn’t matter at all.
It was just fortune-telling—or so I’d thought. But now, I was starting to wonder if the party magicians and hustlers on the street were capable of the same ability.
Then again, if you thought logically about it, Melissa didn’t use the same techniques as them. More to the point, her prophecies lined up perfectly with the future—one she couldn’t be cognizant of. And for a brief moment, it seemed like she had left her body, too.
“As I thought…you’re not her.”
“You said the same thing before a couple times. What do you mean by that?”
Right. We still had that question left unanswered.
When I heard Melissa’s prophecy, the emotion that struck my heart was more than panic and shock. I’d felt something else—baffled. The whole thing was just unfathomable.
Melissa’s divination had read the other future, even though Mylene was me now. In other words, the message was clear: Sulberia is the harbinger of destruction.
At the very least, as long as Albert was brought up properly, we could avoid civil war. And as for the direct cause of Eltania’s demise—Colorne—at present, I didn’t see any sign of my relationship with Colette souring.
But the Hair of Sulberia—Mylene—was a different person now. I thought that meant the Hair of Sulberia would no longer bring about Eltania’s demise. So it was strange that the prophecy hadn’t changed.
Even if the first part of the prophecy had remained the same, if the next card had been a card that denoted Gods of the Moon—like the Moon or Snake card—that would have made sense.
But since the prophecy was unchanged…did that mean I was still going trigger Eltania’s demise? It was also possible that the Lord Eltania, who’d given the prophecy Himself, noticed something had changed.
“She—the Mylene Petule I first met—was a horrible person. If anything irked her, she would scream at everyone within earshot to get her way. But it was more than that she simply didn’t follow the rules of the social contract. The way she carried on, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she thought that she was a god who should make the rules. I had more than enough evidence to foresee she would grow up to be a horrible person.”
Just as I started to sink into a sea of thought, Melissa’s scathing critique of Mylene brought me back to reality.
“But you’re not like that. You know how to put on a nice facade out of basic courtesy to your fellow human beings, and you have a solid work ethic that drives you to train hard every day. Plus, you have Prince Albert’s and Princess Colette’s respect. I doubt with every fiber in my being that she could have achieved that.”
“Shit, ya don’t pull your punches, do you… Though you went a little too easy on Albert.”
I snorted in disdain. In a way, Albert’s position hadn’t changed from before.
“The prince…he used to be pious. But he isn’t anymore. He puts his faith not in Lord Eltania, but in you.”
But it seemed she had noticed the change in him. I thought “puts his faith in” was putting it a little too softly, but I guess it was only proper to show restraint when talking about the prince of your kingdom.
“Besides, you’re quite cunning. You know how to put on a mask, and I could tell you were trying to slack off at the Genius Festival.”
“Damn, you noticed?”
“I may not look it, but I love to cook. If you bake a bunch of bannocks in advance, you can sit back and relax the day of, right?” Melissa gave a double thumbs-up.
Ya know…I thought she was a ditz, but she’s actually rather observant. I wasn’t sure she would have noticed if she didn’t happen to be into baking. Still, I thought my sudden change of attitude in class had resulted only in a little surprise from my classmates, yet she was able to read a little more into it than that.
Shit. She’s shrewder than I thought.
“There’s one other thing.”
As I slumped forward on the table and let my eyes wander in annoyance, Melissa’s voice grabbed my attention.
“A certain event brought about a change in His Word… But I couldn’t believe it.”
Like a rock flying at the calm surface of a lake, Melissa brought the conversation back on topic. Her porcelain-white fingers fell silently onto the cards like snow.
“Sulberia will bring war to the world—that prophecy received a second part one day. I couldn’t believe it in the moment, but no matter how many times I read the cards, it came out the same.”
She spoke slowly, her hands gliding like the peaceful waters of a lake as she flipped the cards.
What the hell is she talking about? I kept my skepticism to myself as I watched her work. And the card she revealed to me was—
“A…scale?”
It was a balanced scale. But that was just a roundabout way of saying it. It couldn’t possibly be the literal meaning. The words that popped into my head were “equality” or “balance.”
“Harmony. With that word, the prophecy takes on the opposite meaning. In other words, you are going to prevent the world’s destruction.”
“Shit, the world? Okay, ridiculously large scope aside, why’s that your interpretation? It could also mean something like the Hair of Sulberia flattens the world like a pancake.”
For some reason, I rejected her interpretation. Sure, I had taken steps here and there to change the fate of the world, since it would suck if war broke out, but still.