Thief of Time

Maggots squelched away in the room, and Dia’s nose crinkled up. The Aberration, a mana-user that had transformed under the influence of energies from Limbo, had been trying to do something in this house just minutes ago, only to be forced to stop that ritual with their presence.

“…What are we going to do with this?” Dia gathered up the maggots with mana, and then made a face. “Yuck.”

“We’ll burn them afterwards,” Risti replied. “I’ll go and check on the victim first.”

Dia nodded, and then looked around the room. She was aware of how rituals worked and functioned, with the notion of consecrated items already in her head. There were a few particular items that stood out in the room; the four knives that were laid out, with their points aiming at the woman laid out in the middle.

Other than the silver knives, which now felt like something filthy, there were a whole bunch of other ritual implements that made Dia leery. Other than the knives, there were some human skulls that had been painted in red…or soaked in blood, laid out in regular intervals from one point to the next. Adding on to that horrifying visage were the dying, immovable clumps of maggots that seemed to relish the notion of eating their fellows’ corpse and following their fate just a moment later.

“Maybe we should just burn this place down,” Dia replied.

“Yeah. It’ll make life a lot easier too, right?” Risti shook her head. “But this house is definitely the victim’s. It’ll be a problem if she wakes up without a house. This experience is traumatising enough; we don’t need to screw her even more.”

“…Okay.”

Risti tore apart a few more skillstrips, and then covered herself in mana. “Give me a hand.”

“Got it.” With a practiced hand, Dia and Risti uprooted the various maggot colonies one by one, before isolating them with a film of mana. Those things had to be uprooted with quite a lot of force; something had affixed the various ritual tools to the ground.

“How do we dispose of them, though?” Dia asked. “I don’t think we can burn the tools easily, right?”

“Yeah. But why do we need to dispose of them properly?” Risti asked. “I’ll show you what we normally do when there are too many things.”

She drew out a small knife, and the air rippled. “It’s simple, really. Just as we can welcome objects and beings from Limbo in…”

Risti slashed the air, and a small rip appeared.

“We can toss them out too.” With a grunt, she sent the items into the rip, before sealing it shut with mana. “Well, it’s not so much as a passage, though. Living beings can’t leave it, but it’s a good way to dispose of bodies.”

“Huh.”

“Quite convenient. Thankfully, none of us are murderers,” Risti replied. “Most screenings for new members are quite stringent, and people with problematic thoughts and behaviours…don’t cut it.”

“I see.” Dia looked at the unconscious woman. “What’s going to happen to her?”

“I can’t tell, but that’s none of our business. Being the object of a sacrifice really doesn’t do all that much, if I have to be frank. It’s only being sacrificed that’s the problem,” Risti replied. “Those skillstrips are just to erase the various means that the perpetuator used to get her into such a state.”

Dia nodded. “So…she’ll feel cheated of love or something?”

“Because her fake lover bailed, yeah.” Risti shrugged. “That’s about it, though. Maybe some insecurity issues? But we’re going to put her back in bed, and there’s no evidence that she was assaulted or anything either. Well, I’ll suggest to Farah and tell her to start a public suspicion campaign or something.”

“I think she’ll veto that.”

“Any sane aristocrat would veto such a thing. External labour is cheap, yadda yadda.” Risti shook her head. “Point is, though, that either this mana-user is a mana-user from outside the county, or is a homegrown one. However, the circumstances in which mana-users connect to Limbo usually call for desperation, driving one’s mana circuits in reverse, and…”

“But this is a bona fide ritual for Limbo,” Dia pointed out. “Is it really something an ordinary Aberration can do? And that Aberration must have retained its human form too. Furthermore, it’s probably sentient and capable of logical thought, because it could entice someone or at least knock them out stealthily.”

“…Monsters usually don’t do things stealthily, true. And well, it did know when to flee.” Risti tapped her arms. “Well. This could be a problem, yes? A logical Aberration. Those things are the hardest to deal with.”

“What happens if there’s one?”

“We kill it on the spot, as usual.” Risti made a face. “It’ll be nice if the monster just flees the county, just so that it isn’t our problem, but it’ll be a problem if it comes back for revenge stronger. I’ll go and get the Moons to help me with this.”

“Go for it.” Dia motioned at the woman. “As for her, let’s put her back onto the bed. Let’s hope nothing bad comes out of all this.”

“Yeah…”

There were still a lot of things that needed examining regarding this incident, but they had to be heavy-handed first.

“I’ll go back and fool the others,” Dia added. “You go do that Moon stuff.”

“Mhm. Thanks.”

Dia trotted off. The eerie feeling of utter wrongness had vanished some time ago, proof that the Aberration had put quite a lot of distance between this place and its current location, but she couldn’t help but feel a bit scared anyway. That thing…while she didn’t know how strong it was — it was likely to pale in strength compared to her, anyway — her fear came from the…wrongness of such a thing.

Her heart, therefore, lightened for every step she took.

The rays of the sun warmed her as she returned to the main roads, where carts filled with wheat were heading into the city proper. The Farah county capital outskirts, in the area between the fields and the city centre, was full of wheatmills and other installations that could thresh the wheat and everything.

Dia herself wasn’t too familiar with the procedures, but she did know that the outcome was a succulent piece of bread that just melted in one’s mouth like moonlight at dawn. Her stomach grumbled as her mind relived the image of a piece of softbread stuffed with chicken marinated in lemon and demiglace sauce.

Thankfully, nothing else happened on the way back, and Dia heaved a sigh of relief as she passed through the security measures enacted around the mansion that doubled as Farah’s palace.

“You’re back.” Schwarz, who was sitting in the garden with Farah and Beth, raised a hand. “How was your gastronomical trip out?”

“…I’m starving.” Dia reached out for the small picnic basket.

“What’s in that stomach of yours?” Farah asked. “Fine. Here you go. We can’t overfeed Beth anyway, so just get it into your tummy before she makes googly eyes at us.”

“Got it.” Dia smiled. “I’m a bit tired, though.”

“You should rest, then. It seems that you’ve been quite fatigued for the past week. Is trekking the city in search of good meals this exhausting?” Schwarz wondered.

Beth tottered over at that moment, and then lay down, head on Dia’s lap.

“Kinda. But I think it’s more of psychological exhaustion, if I have to be accurate. You know, from all this crap about Distortions, dangerous people to look out from, from the Red God…I think I’m still suffering some injuries after crossing blades with the Red God.”

Dia sighed.

“That was well-done, now that I think about it.” Farah chuckled. “You held off a Coloured God for a good few seconds. It stands to reason that you’re still tired. Fighting a god has to be that tiring, after all.”

“Makes one wonder how he died,” Schwarz muttered.

“Right?” Dia shook her head. “Beth, I’m going back to wash up, and then a nap later. Could you get up from my lap, pretty please?”

Beth made a sad noise as she got up, and then turned to Dia. “Sleep together?”

“Sure, sure. But stay here with the others first, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.”

Beth nodded, and Dia smiled.

Even though the kid hugged her to sleep every day, Beth still wanted more affection. It was possible that while she had forgotten or locked away the nastier memories of the past year or so, there was still a part of her that remembered the loneliness…

After making a note to bring Beth to her mother’s grave when she grew older, she got up and returned to the mansion. For some reason, she still felt a little dirty, like the time when she rolled in the mud as a kid and felt dirty for the next week or two.

It was probably the effect of coming into contact with those maggots, though.