Thief of Time

“Are we all set?” Claud asked.

“Set,” Lily replied. “The Dusk Daggers are sitting in a shop not too far away from the Julan main house now.”

“And how did you get that to happen?” Claud asked, curious. He hadn’t been paying much attention to Lily’s plotting, since he was busy making his own preparations for the past few days.

“I sent a letter and told them to wait at a certain location, if they wanted to find out the true culprits behind the recent kidnappings,” Lily replied, a smirk on her face.

“Devious. Are you sure those” —Claud brought two closed fists together and then opened them up— “flowers would reveal their targets of investigation?”

“I’m ninety percent sure,” Lily replied. “It’ll be a good way to thank them for taking the trouble to come down to Julan. I know a bit about how the Folders’ Association works, and generally, the bigger the scoop, the better the rewards.”

“Lucky them, eh?”

It didn’t take long for the two of them to get up and leave, and once they were outside the inn, Claud reached into his pockets and took out a skillstrip for Flight.

“What, are we flying back?” Lily asked.

“I figured that we might want a nice view before we leave,” Claud replied. “Of course, it’ll be nice to reach the next town before midnight, so…”

“Do I get to be the passenger?” Lily asked.

“Sure,” Claud replied. “I don’t know where to hold when I’m on top anyway.”

After enduring some light smacks for his ambiguous words, the two nodded goodbye to the city guards, who had been very helpful in providing some juicy bits of information to Claud, before scurrying away into a nearby patch of undergrowth. Handing his backpack over to Lily, Claud tore up the skillstrip, and took to the skies once she was seated on his back firmly.

Hovering high above the city, Claud took out the detonator-thingy and gave it to Lily. “Here. I figured that you should do the honours.”

Lily let out a sigh and shook her head, a sound somehow evoked sorrow and relief within Claud. “What a gentleman.”

She pressed down on it.

A monstrous roar shattered the silence of the night as the entire freaking mansion shot to the skies, propelled by an earth-shaking explosion. As it continued to rise, the building crumbled away, turning into a cloud of dust at its highest point. It didn’t end there, however.

Moments later, a pinprick of scintillating light pierced into Claud’s eyes, ballooning into preposterous proportions. A heartbeat later, the mansion grounds themselves vanished from view, and Claud was forced to look away as the blinding light turned night into day for a few moments.

“By the Moons…Lily, how long did it take to prepare all these?”

“A year or so,” she replied, her eyes fixated on the blooming flower of heat and light. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? With that, everyone from my family, every last one of these monsters, are dead.”

Claud felt a chill run down his spine. He could sense a relief mired with sorrow in those words, a feeling that he had felt earlier, only far more pronounced this time. Just what did Lily see and experience? He wasn’t quite sure, but it couldn’t be anything healthy for a child or a teenager — and Lily wasn’t all that old, from the looks of it.

He turned back to watch the flower of flame wither away, leaving behind a huge swathe of land where the Julan main house used to be in, and a question came to mind. “How did you ensure that nothing happened to the cellars of the Julan mansion?”

“My explosives were designed to project upwards force and momentum,” Lily replied absent-mindedly. “That way, it would only destroy the ceilings of the cellars, while clearing away every obstacle that could have prevented access. If my calculations were perfect, the explosion should reveal the foundations of the Julan mansion without destroying the…bodies within.”

“I see.” Claud took a deep breath. “You must have prepared for a long time.”

“Yes,” Lily replied. “You just so happened to give me a reason to come to Julan, that’s all. And since you wanted to help me make sure that these murderers would never recover from my attack, I was more than happy to offer you every bit of help you wanted.”

“I suppose you want me to keep this a secret.” Claud didn’t refer to the group he was supposed to keep this a secret from, and Lily also didn’t need him to say it out loud.

“Well…” She shifted around on his back. “Can you?”

“As long as you don’t say anything about the true nature of my trading runs,” Claud replied.

“Right, about those…do you want a sidekick?”

“You mean, like those sidekicks from novels like Red Cowl?” Claud asked. “I mean, it’ll be nice if I had a bomb or two, but your talents are more explosive than stealthy.”

“I can make other things too, though.”

“Keeping that a secret from the others will do,” Claud replied. “I…well, I like working alone. And I don’t do these runs often either. This is the only one I did this year; most of the time, there’s better ways to get lifestones.”

Claud found himself lying naturally once more, but he wasn’t ever going to tell anyone about the number of times he embarked on such journeys this year. Colidra, the old storyteller, already knew the exact number through his sleuthing; Claud wasn’t going to let someone who had access to both sets of information smoke him out.

“Oh. That’s a pity.”

“It isn’t,” Claud replied. “Besides, we’re now part of the Moon Lords. Resources flow in on the regular. Why do I need to risk my life to steal things? It’s only because I think we need some start-up funds that I actually decided to head over to Julan.”

“Right. If you say so, then.”

For some reason, Claud had the feeling that she didn’t quite believe his words, but he didn’t press the subject. After all, backing down was also a good way to convince others; only someone who was anxious about being outed would try to deny any connection whatsoever.

It was possible that she was suspicious about him being Tot, but it would not go beyond a passing thought. After all, the Thief of Time was supposedly someone from the Third Godsfall; there was no way under the Moons that a piddling one-folder by the name of Claud could be him.

“Do you have anything else you want to do?” Claud asked.

“None. Let’s go.”

Nodding, Claud infused mana into Flight’s spiritual structure, and the two zipped off into the dark sky. Behind them, the fires that ravaged the southernmost part of the capital city continued to burn, but that was nothing of Claud’s concern. Passing by cloud after cloud, the master thief looked up at the three Moons, before letting out a sigh.

Lily had essentially destroyed her own family by her own hands. Granted, she had a reason, but having done it herself, instead of using due procedures, had to have an effect on her psyche. Claud, on his part, could not imagine killing his own family, even if they did the greatest wrongs, but Lily…

What had exactly driven her to this? What exactly did she witness?

With such thoughts stewing in his mind, Claud continued to fly towards the north.

Halfway through the duration of Flight, Claud looked up. “Hm?”

Lily, who had been silent the whole time, had patted his shoulder. “There’s…something ahead of us. I think it’s a monster or something, I’m not too sure. But I can sense a…rather significant presence.”

Claud tried to sense the huge presence Lily had mentioned, and felt a small chill run down his spine as he felt it a moment later.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a tri-folder. To be more precise, it’s a monster that has three mana circuits,” Lily whispered.

Claud considered her words for a second, and then beckoned at her to follow him in a retreat. Taking slow, cautious steps, the two gradually distanced themselves from the overwhelming presence.

“We’ll camp here for the night, until that monster leaves,” Claud whispered. “Do you need a tent?”

“You have a tent?”

“I have a small sleeping bag,” Claud replied. “But it’s dangerous to sleep on ground at night, so…”

“Dangerous?”

“Yes. It’s better to sleep on a tree, but for obvious reasons, sleeping bags don’t exactly go well with that.”

Lily made an odd sound. “…Can you teach me how to do that?”

A guttural roar came from the direction of that ominous presence, and Claud nodded hurriedly. Locating a nice big tree in the forest around them, the master thief briefly explained about what kinds of branches were suitable for sleeping on — broad branches that still had leaves — and then directed her to one of them.

Lightning tore through the night sky, and clouds began to gather.

“Get close to the trunk,” Claud whispered. “And make sure to keep a hand on it at all times. I think something’s about to happen.”

“Got it,” Lily whispered back.

Barely seconds after she replied, rain began to fall.