Chapter 56: Staying Careful, I Said
[ Choose one relic of the ancients (0/1) ]
Before anything else, I sat down cross-legged in the middle of that white hall.
I was alone, and I was going to make the most of it. Too much had happened for me to carry on as if nothing had, and it was time to take stock of a few things after a first trial that had been rich in surprises.
There was Chloé, to start with.
That woman who claimed she couldn’t interfere with time often, the way she had, and who’d come anyway, simply, just like that. But why? To free Seorin from her mind control? To teach Alice a spell? For both, for something else, for none of the reasons I imagined?
I ended up turning it over far longer than I should have, but I had time here, and I kept working the thing from every angle as if handling it enough would eventually make it give something up.
Nothing.
All I got out of it was that it had to affect some event in the future, or something of that order — a small gear that would turn an entire machine no one had identified yet. And that the spell she’d taught Alice almost certainly wouldn’t end with its use on Adam.
Finding nothing further on that front, I moved on.
The doubt I’d had back there, in the warehouse, seemed far more reasonable now.
Other heroes, other participants, had died in this tower from what I’d heard. And just now, I’d seen why. Interventions from outside the trial, things that weren’t programmed, something that should never have happened and that the tower had been forced to recode in a hurry right in front of me.
This tower was well built, though. The simulations, the loops, the precision with which it had replayed the fall of an entire city thirteen times over without a single false note. But I’d seen it with my own eyes: it wasn’t infallible.
So maybe? Maybe something had contaminated it, some kind of virus, some filth that had worked its way into the gears and bled through into what it produced. Maybe it only affected the scenery, the extras, the details that didn’t matter.
Or maybe it affected us.
Our minds, our judgment, that way we’d all had of pushing everything one notch too far without ever noticing. And if that was it, if something was working on our heads gently while we believed ourselves masters of our own choices, then it was by far the most serious danger in this place, because we’d never see it coming.
Keep that in mind. Whatever you do, don’t forget it.
That said — and here I was honest with myself, since there was no one around to hear it — there was a much simpler explanation available.
Maybe I was making excuses for myself.
Maybe there was no virus, no contamination, nothing external to blame, and I’d simply gone from a writer’s life in front of a screen to a life of blood and killing in far too little time. Maybe beheading the same man several times over to settle my nerves wasn’t the tower, but me. Maybe I’d become a little more unhinged than I cared to admit.
It wasn’t out of the question.
So I might as well stay careful, since caution, at least, had never killed me.
Next subject: Lazaüs.
I knew he was dead in our present, that what I’d fought was only a copy, and that technically none of that blood had ever been spilled. But he’d spoken of a perfect creation, of an ultimate being he’d shape with his own hands, and he’d spoken of it as something that was coming.
So? Did it already exist, somewhere in this world? Had he had time to reach his goal before he died? Or was it nothing more than the fantasy of an old demon eaten away by disgust with himself, a promise he made to himself to bear being what he was?
Impossible to settle. On that one I could only stack up hypotheses, so I set the subject aside while adopting the blackest version available: there would probably be, somewhere in the future, an enemy as strong as the Calamities. Possibly worse. On top of everything else.
And then there was Lamielle.
The first vampire of this world. Vampire empress. She ruled over an entire region of mountain ranges where, from what I knew, a considerable number of vampiric castles stood. And on top of that she held a Calamity’s seat in the demonic empire.
Add the two together and you get one of the most influential creatures in the demon world. And one of the strongest.
And that was exactly where the problem lay.
Why had that woman recognized me?
Why had she addressed me formally, when she’d just spoken to a millennia-old high demon the way you’d speak to a servant? Why that mark of respect, in her voice, in that formal address that slipped out in the middle of her surprise? As if she already knew me. As if my presence here wasn’t merely unexpected but wrong.
And the worst of it — the worst, the part my mind kept knocking against like a fly against a window — was that it hadn’t even been the Lamielle of our present who recognized me.
It was the one from the past. The one from several centuries back. A copy reassembled by the tower out of an event that had taken place before I was born, before I was summoned into this world, before anyone here could possibly have heard of me.
So how? How was that even possible?
I really took my time on this one. I examined the idea from every angle, ruled out the easy explanations, followed each thread back.
And as always, every hypothesis opened three more, which opened nine, and after a while there was nothing left but a tangle of possibilities not one of which stood upright for more than ten seconds.
It was driving me insane.
"Damn it!"
My voice cracked across the white hall and died without an echo.
What is this? What the hell is this? And this hellish world — how am I supposed to survive in it?
I was on my feet in a bound, unable to stay seated another second.
Look at the level of that vampire. A little girl. A little girl who doesn’t lift a finger and an entire city snaps in half on the pavement. How am I supposed to beat that, one day? How?
No. Worse than that.
How is all of humanity supposed to fight against that?
I took three steps, came back, ran both hands through my hair and gripped hard enough to tear at my scalp.
Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it damn it.
And that perfect Demon King — THAT DAMNED DEMON KING. You’re telling me he’s stronger than that monster? Stronger than the thing Lazaüs bowed his neck to like a scolded boy? Stronger than the rest of the world put together?
And that he’s perfect, on top of it?
You’re kidding me?
"You son of a bitch!"
The shout came out on its own, aimed at nothing, at the ceiling, at the hall, at a being thousands of kilometers away who would never know I’d existed.
My fist went out in the same motion and met empty air, because there was nothing to hit here, no wall within reach, no table, nothing but white light and glass display cases waiting politely for me to decide on my gift.
I stood there, arm still extended, breathing in ragged bursts.
The silence came back.
Damn... I lost it again.
And then, without my deciding on it, it came up out of my chest.
"Ahahahahah... ahahhaha... ahahahah."
A laugh, broken, coming out in bursts between breaths, with nothing to do with anything funny. I doubled over, one hand on my stomach, the other pressed over my eyes, and stayed like that a while, hiccupping alone in the middle of that spotless hall, thinking that if anyone saw me now, they’d have no doubt left about my condition.
Then the laugh went out, as stupidly as it had come.
And what remained, once it had passed, was very calm.
All right.
This world is a world of madmen. Then I’ll become mad enough to survive in it.
I straightened up slowly, wiped my face with the flat of my hand.
I had no more time to waste on unanswerable questions or indignation. There was only one thing to do, one, and it was sickening in its simplicity: get stronger. Much stronger. Strong enough that one day, somewhere, it would be that vampire buckling under my pressure.
At any price.
My eyes went a deep black, and I felt my mind erase, one by one, the invisible limits I’d set for myself on entering this world. Those little lines I’d never mentioned to anyone, the things I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do, wouldn’t become, wouldn’t cross.
They went quietly, and it didn’t cost me anything.
There was only one thing left, the way there was in my trances. Strength.
Except this time, it wasn’t madness talking. Well — maybe a little. But it was mostly a choice.
A choice that came from having none.
The paradox of choice.
Anyway.
I let my arms drop, and my gaze came back to the hall, to the rows of display stands stretching out until they lost themselves in the white.
There was only one point left to handle. The last on my list, and the most puzzling of them all, the one I’d saved for the end because I didn’t know which way to take hold of it.
Alice was strong enough to kill Lazaüs?