Thief of Time

After being told that the two of them didn’t quite have plans for a widdle Nightfall baby — which, in Dia’s estimation, would have precipitated a split within the Seekers of Life over who should be the child’s godparent — Schwarz looked a little sad, necessitating other people to help cheer the bartender up.

“I had hoped to pass down my skillset to your child,” Schwarz muttered.

Nightfall glared at him. “Excuse me? My child would be a noble scion. What do you mean, pass down your skillset? The only one that I’d consider qualified is the paranoid spook who has vanished for a long time.”

“What? Claud?” Schwarz looked at him. “Why? Why him? He doesn’t have any skillset!”

“Oh, but he does! Look at it from my point of view. He’s a professional guard. Maybe even a spy or something. He’s cautious and paranoid. I’d like my child not to be assassinated at ten years old, you see.” Nightfall bobbed his head. “Claud is perfect for that.”

“True,” Dia muttered. “Besides, he and Lily are hexa-folders.”

“Exactly.”

The duo paused, and Caroline turned to Dia. “Sorry. I think I heard you say that he’s a hexafolder. The two of them. Did you mean something by that?”

“They have completed six mana circuits and are working on their seventh?” Dia replied. “The conventional meaning.”

She glanced at Schwarz and Risti. “Did I stutter?”

“Loud and clear, Dia.” Risti raised a thumbs-up at her.

“So…those two are actually hexa-folders?” Count Nightfall touched his head once. “Wow. I’m…a bit dizzy. Hmm. Not sure what to think of that.”

“Is it really that unbelievable?” Dia asked. “I mean, we’re also minimally tetra-folders, you know. And I’m close to my fifth mana circuit. In troubled times, the strength of most combatants rise. We’re just proof of that axiom.”

“We should work a bit harder, then.”

“What have you guys been doing in the past year?” Schwarz asked. “I mean, there’s been a general surge in combat ability ever since the ancient battlefields were unsealed. Lifestones are popping up all over the place. Many Named folders have grown in strength too. Now, the average Named are tetra-folders.”

“To answer your question, we’ve been busy trying to make sure that the city runs smoothly. There’s been a general shortfall of crops and everything, plus handling a bunch of random problems that inevitably crop up when Istrel is isolated from the other territories. Did you know that a good amount of fertiliser is imported from the Lacuna Dukedom?’

“Really? Damn.” Dia shook her head. “First I’ve heard about that.”

“Yeah. Figured. Anyway, we’ve been trying to keep law and order too. A few funny fellows think that—”

He fell silent. Nightfall’s eyes seemed to look into the distance, and Dia recognised that gaze as something that the nobles tended to use when they were tapping into the shared information space they had.

“Something happened?” Caroline asked.

“…Yes.” Nightfall shook his head once. “The…Schwa Dukedom has vanished. The entire territory that used to be Schwa — the dukedom capital, the lower nobles and their territories…another dome has appeared over the entire place.”

Dia felt a chill run down her spine as her gaze shifted over to Risti, who had abruptly stilled. Caroline held her head once, and then looked at her husband.

“The entire territory has vanished?”

“Perhaps,” Nightfall replied. “Istrel and Lustre are flying over personally to examine this new development. At any rate, however, Schwa…has ceased to exist. We will hear from them soon enough.”

“Purple dome.” Schwarz looked at Dia and Risti. “It’s like what the Trading Board mentioned.”

“You know of this phenomenon?” Nightfall asked. “What’s it about?”

“Not much. We got news from Claud and Lily that a purple dome opened up in the Vacuos county capital. It seems to be a lot smaller than the one that appeared here, though,” Schwarz replied. “However, they emphasised the fact that the five grand skies had appeared and were gathering power to shatter that thing, only for them to stop at the very last moment.”

“Stop at the last moment?” Nightfall paused. “Hmm. The five grand skies are also under their own restrictions. It must mean that this purple dome is one of them.”

“Restrictions?” Risti looked at the count. “What restrictions?”

“Well. It’s an old legend that I got from Mister Colidra.” Nightfall folded his arms. “The five grand skies apparently cannot act against humans. They also cannot act against aspects of humans. Uh…they cannot act against Bearers of Destiny conventionally, unless they betray their humanity or something.”

“Betray their humanity?” Schwarz asked. “How does one do that?”

“Commit all sorts of evil deeds, probably. Also, it’s a bit interesting that Bearers of Destiny may not fall under the concept of being human, isn’t it?” Nightfall asked. “Intriguing, really.”

“What about the other divinities?” Dia asked, thinking about the time she and the others saw Holy Son Mendas, the Holy Son of the Red God, killed by lightning from the heavens. Mendas was the wielder of Absolute Confinement, and had relied on it to protect himself.

The five grand skies, however, had killed him all the same. Maybe it was because Absolute Confinement was used not for its intended purpose, but this incident proved that the five grand skies could smite down someone who had “betrayed their humanity”, if she were to cite Nightfall.

This was why the whole thing about the purple dome didn’t make sense to her. However, if that purple dome was of human origins, and not from Limbo…that didn’t make sense either, though.

The Blue Moon of Wisdom, after all, had said that there were ways in which the agents of Limbo could infiltrate their world.

The infiltrators couldn’t be of human origin, right? The five grand skies would have struck down without mercy, and yet Claud had told them that nothing of the sort had happened. Unless Claud and Lily threw their lot in with Limbo or they just wanted to lie for the heck of it, there was no way they would relay fake information to her.

Dia didn’t know what to make of the information Nightfall had thrown out. Risti, however, seemed as if this information had nothing to do with her, and her face looked as worried as Schwarz’s and the others.

…She probably wasn’t faking it, though.

“It seems like these incidents will become more and common for the foreseeable future,” Risti muttered. “Count Nightfall. Be careful, and look out for your citizens. Take heed to not anger them, nor to exploit them. Mark my words well.”

“My citizens?”

“I believe normal people can create phenomena like this,” Risti replied. “While I do not quite understand the underlying mechanisms behind the possibility, I am certain that everyone here has a potential to harbour a little purple dome inside themselves.”

“Hmm. What makes you say that?” Nightfall asked.

“Instinct,” Risti replied. “But it’s on you, really.”

“…Okay.” The count shook his head. “Anyway, depressing news aside, let’s talk about what happened in the past few months outside Istrel.”

“I’m not sure what made you brush it off as depressing news, because the Moons and the Dark fought a war that we didn’t see much of until the end. Lots of people died, though. Dia killed a Bearer of Destiny and became something magical called the Salvation Star, and then she entered the Trial of Aeons.”

Risti paused. “Did I miss out anything?”

“Uh…I think that’s pretty much all we did,” Schwarz replied. “Yeap. The rest of us didn’t do anything much, though. A shame.”

“It’s hard to say whether you guys are just screwing with me.” The count narrowed his eyes for a few seconds. “A lot of things happened, then.”

“You could interpret it that way…” Dia rubbed her nose. “Anyway, that’s pretty much what happened when we went out into the Nihila Sovereignty. It wasn’t all that exciting, though.”

“You participated in the Trial of Aeons, right? What do you mean by that?” Nightfall asked.

“I spent that one week with Nero, Clarissa and the Thirteenth Bearer of Destiny having tea, eating desserts and talking about the Thief of Time,” Dia replied. “Seriously. It sounded exciting, but I assure you that there wasn’t much going on. The Thief of Time stole the Cosmic Egg and vanished into thin air. Nothing else happened.”

“Eh…”

“Yeah.” Dia shrugged. “I know. It was supposed to be a bloody brawl, but everyone ended up having tea while the bigshots in attendance tried to figure out what happened.”

“That’s so boring.”

“Exactly.” Dia shook her head. “Our visit to the Celestia Ruins were even more exciting than that. At least we got some free loot, visited a unique market there, and then came across a small brawl. That was literally more exciting than the Trial of Aeons.”

Count Nightfall let out a sigh. “So, nothing much. Oh well. Do you have a record of events that happened in the past few months?”

“I do,” Schwarz replied. “You want it?”

“Can I?”

“Well, you can make a copy and return the original to me afterwards,” Schwarz replied. “Make sure that our little group is still tax-free, though.”

“Sure, sure…”