Thief of Time

The world seemed to spin around Claud as he made out the vague outline of a demolished cake, and thoughts filtered into his mind as he got up slowly. His condition was horrible through and through; his body now weighed like it was made out of some truly heavy metal, and as if that wasn’t enough, his head now felt like an inferno blazing on and on.

“Ugh.” Claud turned to his side, where Lily was gripping his arm tightly. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, and her face was pale. “What was I doing?”

He looked around again, and the outline of the cake vanished. The two of them were lying into a bed of shadow, and darkness poured down on the two of them, a stream of power that eased the debilitating pain in his head.

Claud grabbed his head again, and then tried to recall the events that had occurred. He could vaguely remember something about the Indigo God, and that they had tried to get him to decipher a book that had been handed to him by himself. In the course of doing so, however, something had triggered, and Claud had been affected, which was why—

“No, that’s not it…” Claud touched his pounding, throbbing head. “That’s not it at all.”

He focused again, and then realised that this wasn’t the correct sequence of events. In fact, he had managed to recover from that, so…

“That can’t be it.” Claud looked at Lily, and then wiped the sweat off her forehead gently. “What knocked the two of us out?”

He patted her head gently, willing the pain she felt to ease, and then frowned.

“Hmm. Authority, I suppose?” Claud muttered. “Right. Right before all this happened, we wanted to ask the Indigo God about time, who promptly obliged. Something about cake too, I think?”

“And then you two just fainted directly three sentences in,” said a mellow voice. “It’s good that you two are fine.”

Claud jumped as a shadow appeared in front of him, before remembering that he was probably back in the Black God’s Divine Kingdom. The image of the divinity lugging the two of them back into his Divine Kingdom popped up in his head, and Claud felt his face burn.

Lowering his head, he said, “I apologise for our shameful behaviour.”

“Eh, don’t sweat it. We’ve all gone through the same experience of hearing things that we couldn’t quite hear yet. Why, back then, I remember Absolute Iniquity just dying on the spot…huhu.” The Black God shook his head. “I’m glad you two are okay, though.”

“I suppose all that can be attributed to you,” Claud mumbled.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Your lover is quite surprising, though. She mustered up enough strength to resist the impact of those words for a few seconds.” The Black God paused. “You just fainted on the spot.”

“Huh.” Claud patted Lily gently. “You’re awesome!”

Lily made a sleepy groan, and then snuggled up to him. “Pat me…”

“Is she sleeptalking, or is she already awake?” the Black God wondered. “Well, whatever. Come on down whenever you two are ready. I’ll send you back to the material world with a letter for Schizel. Maybe he has something for the two of you.”

He paused. “He definitely has something for the two of you, rather. That aside, though, I am still thinking about why that person only wanted me to hand the book to you and nothing else. The debt we owe him goes far beyond that, but he only wants me to deliver a book.”

“Isn’t that a good think?”

“It’s not, for me.” The Black God paused. “Surely there must be something else that he wanted me to do. The fact that I still can’t think of anything is making me frown.”

Claud thought for a moment. “Why not a ‘help me’ card or something? If we need your help once, you can provide it or something.”

“Mhm. That might work, I suppose. Still, one must really wonder what this entire book business is about,” the Black God muttered. “And I can’t read it at all to boot, which makes things a lot harder to guess. Well, you two rest up a bit more first. I will try to think about something to make this summoning thing work.”

Claud nodded, and the Black God vanished.

“Claud…hungry!”

Before he could turn to look, Lily nibbled his arm for some reason, and Claud rolled his eyes. From the looks of it, Lily was now just dreaming, so things were quite fine.

“Right, the little meeplings.” Claud reached into his pockets, and then pulled out three shapes, who were all snoozing away with little meeps. Crown woke up at his touch, but before it could meep away, Claud shushed the little guy and pointed at Lily.

“Meep.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Claud replied. “Sorry for neglecting you three and all.”

Crown tilted and fell on its side, before rolling over to Lily’s head and making a nest in it.

“Hmm. Well, you guys can go join Crown too, I suppose…”

Claud spent the next ten minutes amusing himself with the sight of Crown trying his best to tuck the two little shapes into her hair, before turning his gaze to himself. The hollowness in his chest had returned in full force for some reason, and the fact that he was on a very comfortable bed that simply begged for him to sleep in was not helping either.

Yawning once, Claud looked at Lily, whose eyes fluttered open in that instant.

“…Where are we?” Lily asked. “And why do I have a headache?”

“Did I disturb you?” Claud asked.

“No, I just felt something rolling around my head…oh. It’s you guys.” Lily plucked out the three meeplings and popped them onto the bed, where the two sleeping fellows promptly woke up.

As they meeped amongst each other, Lily rubbed her head again. “It hurts. What happened?”

Claud explained to her about how they had listened to information that had knocked them out a moment later, and then checked on her current state again. Lily seemed quite fine, if nothing else, and after checking extra thoroughly, the two of them rolled off the bed and straightened their clothes.

“We’re going back, I suppose?” Lily asked.

“Yeah. We didn’t really achieve much here, sadly.” Claud rubbed his nose. “We did at least figure out where this book came from, though. But that’s not really useful right now, is it?”

“Well, that Distortion thing…”

“The Black God already knew about mana-folders and all, so I don’t think we really did that much.” Claud shook his head. There were a lot more things he wanted to say, but he, Lily and the Black God had made sure to dance around that particular topic without addressing it outright. No one had confirmed who the Fourth Bearer of Destiny was, and he wasn’t ever going to admit it either.

That was for the best, and Claud, who had judging from the Black God’s methods so far, was certain that there were definitely some mechanisms to deal with an Omen that had revealed themselves. He wasn’t interested in triggering those mechanisms, and the Black God had no desire to do so either.

“Alright, your clothes are all straightened out now.” Claud tugged on her robes, and then nodded. “How about me?”

“You’re fine too. Let’s leave, then.”

“Yeah.” Claud gathered the three little fellows and turned to the door.

The Black God, who was waiting outside, nodded at them, before doing a doubletake at the little meeplings in his hand. “Those are?”

Claud glanced at Lily once, and then said, “Sentient shapes, apparently.”

“Sentient they are, indeed.” The Black God looked at the little fellows, who bounced around on Claud’s shoulder in reply. “How is it that I didn’t detect them?”

“Hmm. They don’t think much, I suppose. And they were sleeping happily for the past few days.”

“Don’t think much…” The Black God looked at them, intrigued. “True. I can’t sense their sentience much. If I didn’t see them myself, I wouldn’t have noticed. Hello there, little ones.”

“Meep!”

“Meep.”

“Meep!”

Lily giggled. “That’s Crown, Throne and Sceptre. They’re all…artificial lifeforms that we picked up, and they’re all adorable.”

“Mhm.” The Black God extended a palm, and Throne bounced once. “Don’t worry. I don’t bite!”

The little sphere bounced once more, and then rolled over to the Black God’s open palm, and the divinity made a few intrigued noises.

“Is there something interesting about these little fellows?” Lily asked.

“Yeah, actually.” The Black God popped the sphere back onto Claud’s shoulder. “They’re…actually living beings that have the innate ability of immortality, if I had to describe it. But rather than it being due to the corrective ability of lifeforce, it’s more of innate immortality. Interesting, but we can’t replicate it.”

“Meep?”

“You three just escaped the fate of a dissection by a divinity,” Claud replied.

“Oh, please. What am I going to dissect, a bunch of shapes? No, I’m talking about the lifeforce within them. It’s at a permanently fixed value. They can’t die on their own…and I believe they can even resurrect.” The Black God frowned. “How’s that possible?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, none of my business, anyway. You should keep them safe, though.”

“Yeah.” Claud was a bit surprised that the Black God didn’t recognise Crown, who was apparently a Divine Life Companion, but if he didn’t recognise Crown, Claud wasn’t going to say anything either.

After all, those meeplings were actually quite a huge deal…