Thief of Time

The Moon Emissary made angry growls as he left the room, and Dia made a face. No one needed to ask to figure out that the Moon Emissary hadn’t managed to extract any useful information from the Dark Herald locked up inside, and no one was certainly foolish enough to even speak right now.

Beth’s wide, round eyes blinked as the Moon Emissary stormed out angrily, and then opened her arms. “Hug!”

“There, there…” Dia carried the little kid, and then frowned. “Hey, has the others been feeding you food outside of your mealtimes?”

Beth looked at Dia, and then snuggled into her tummy, hiding her face.

“Okay, seems I need to yell at them, then,” Dia muttered. “Why is everyone feeding you? If you grow any heavier, it’ll be hard to carry you around, okay? I can’t hug you that easily either!”

The baby trembled, and Beth looked at Dia. “Really?”

Dia nodded seriously, and then squished her cheeks. “See?” They’re extra squishy now! Gotta drop all that snacking, alright?”

Beth pouted, and then nodded.

“That’s a good girl.” Dia glanced at the others, who were obviously looking away from her, and she rubbed her head. What were they thinking? Dia did not believe that they didn’t know that everyone else was feeding the kid too, and little Beth was both too polite and too greedy to refuse…

“Ahem.” Lloyd walked up to Farah. “Milady, what should we do with the prisoner?”

“Leave him here, I suppose,” Farah replied. “The Moon Emissary can handle anything related to the Dark; we’ll try our best to ignore this guy for now. Besides, the prisoner can’t escape anyway, and it’s the Moons who were planning to capture this fellow. No need to take all that heat for this cause.”

“You do know that I’m the person who’s behind his capture, right?” Dia asked.

“That’s different. You were acting as the Moons’ instrument. The Dark is unlikely to take much of an issue with you, although you may face a small obstacle here and there if you ever traverse into Dark territory,” Farah replied. “It’s fine, really.”

“Really?” Dia asked, poking Beth’s cheeks gently.

“Really, really.” Farah shrugged. “That’s how it works, usually. Besides, it’s not like we’re ill-treating him.”

“I’m the fellow who smacked him into the middle of next week, though…” Dia made a face, and then squished Beth’s cheeks again. “Do you think I’ll be fine?”

“Dada!”

“Oh, come on.” Dia rolled her eyes. “Anyway, what are we going to do now? Just pat our butts and sit here?”

“It’s an extended vacation for us,” Schwarz replied, segueing into the conversation quite smoothly. While Dia wanted to glare at him for overfeeding little Beth, there was no point in nagging at the three of them right here.

Yet, anyway. It would do to talk to them in private against overfeeding a child instead, since she didn’t want to undermine them in front of Beth too much.

Shaking her head, Dia closed her eyes. “Well, an extended vacation is indeed nice, I suppose. We don’t need to handle that many things, and we’ve tossed all the bothersome issues to Nightfall. Even the lower-level members of the Seekers of Life are partially under his control…should we be concerned about this?”

“We’re getting lifestones every month, and to be honest, I think the current purpose of the Seekers has already been met. We’re either hexa-folders or closing in on that level of power already, for one, and we also don’t really need to care about our authority in Licencia anymore.”

“Indeed,” Risti added. “We’re on good terms with the ruling authorities there anyway, and there’s no benefits to spurning us either.”

“Is that so…”

Dia had a few doubts, but the two of them did make some sense, so she didn’t press the topic. Before she could say anything else, though, Risti got up and made a sign at her, a sign that only Dia picked up.

She pondered for a moment, and then rubbed Beth on the head again. “Alright, down you go. Schwarz, Farah, don’t give her food after the main mealtimes, unless she’s really hungry.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry.”

Dia nodded at them, and then got up. She looked around the mansion that doubled as the Farah Palace for a few moments, and then followed Risti in silence. None of the others seemed to care about her actions as she left, and she stepped into the nice garden that surrounded the mansion a minute later.

“Over here.” Risti waved at her.

“What’s all this about?” Dia asked, looking at the bed of Moonwheat next to her. “Mhm. This seems to be a decorative breed of Moonwheat. Interesting.”

“Bad news,” Risti replied. “Naturally. I’ve detected traces of Limbo in the county. A negative mana reaction…small and controlled. However, I’m certain we’re the only members of the Eternal Bulwark here, which means that there are some folders that are tapping on Limbo somehow.”

“So we need to extirpate them,” Dia replied. “Got it.”

“Not that easy. Unfortunately for us, it seems that this fellow is conscientious in his or her use of energies from Limbo,” Risti replied. “Either that, or a manifested Distortion is capable of doing that. I can’t tell which is which just yet.”

“Why?”

“Manifested Distortions can use energies from Limbo skilfully,” Risti replied. “I only discovered that after that gigantic Distortion swallowed everyone in Licencia. Those meteors? They were energies from Limbo, only that they were purified. Unless you were there in person and sensitive to these energies, you wouldn’t have realised.”

Dia touched her head and ran through her memories for a moment. Those memories, however, were not that vivid anymore, so she couldn’t really say anything about it.

“What were the signs?” Dia asked.

“I used an artefact,” Risti replied. “Take a look at this.”

She pulled out a weird circle that was made of metal. In the centre of the disc were two dots of light that were glowing brightly, and not too far from these two dots were a bunch of others.

“They represent you, me and everyone around us,” Risti explained. “However, you should have noticed a few special dots, right?”

“The black one represents the Dark, the triangle made of three colours the Moons, and…this eight-pointed star...”

“Represents the energies of Limbo,” Risti replied. “There’s one dot here, but I’ve been there, and the only thing I found was a residual maggot.”

“Maggot, huh.”

“It’s hard to tell. The target used their corrupted mana for a second or two, and then moved to another place,” Risti replied. “Clearly, they have a strong enough mind to retain their own thoughts about the whole thing, although I must doubt their sanity partially.”

“Why would you doubt their sanity?” Dia asked.

“If a maggot fell out of me, I’d have started screaming or at least panicked a bit,” Risti replied. “Assuming, of course, I didn’t know anything. At any rate, a normal person would have panicked a few times and left some trails here and there. Instead…”

She shook her head. “Either this Distortion or mana-user has faced this situation multiple times and has grown used to it before we arrived, or they have a heart of iron. Or it’s a Distortion, but I can’t really wrap my head around it. In fact, Distortions also give off energy signals that are quite close to that of Limbo, which makes things a bit hard to differentiate. I had to cross-reference a few times to make sure that this person was actually a mana-user…”

Risti rambled on to herself for the next few minutes, before Dia cleared her throat.

“So, what should we do?” Dia asked, before she could drift off-topic or something. “Are we going to hunt for the Aberration?”

“Yeah.” Risti nodded. “Gotta do that, before that bugger starts a cult or kills a lot of people out of pure insanity. We’ll have to keep this under wraps, though. None of the others must know what we’re doing.”

Dia nodded. “It’s going to be tough, to say the least. And there’s little Beth, who’s bent on following me around. It’s a good thing that you guys are learning to make your own presences known, though. She’s warming up to the others too.”

“Mhm. She’s an endearing little kid, that’s for sure.” Risti shook her head. “Anyhow, I’ll continue my search first. Once I get more concrete results and pin down our target, I’ll let you know.”

“Mhm.” Dia looked up into the sky. “I feel like we’re all screwed, though. This world is falling apart.”

“Why else do you think the Trial of Aeons was held?” Risti replied. “After all, the Trial of Aeons was targeted at building a bridge to a new world formed through a Cosmic Egg. The fact that the Omen monopolised it is probably making all the divinities lose a few days’ worth of sleep.”

“An Omen-designed world, huh. Is it going to be this easy to infiltrate too?”

“We’ll find out once the Cosmic Egg hatches, I suppose.”

[End of Book 13: Danger Distorted]