A Sense of Dark
Chapter Six
by PenguinKye
October 12, 199X—9:55 AM
"He does not appear to recall anything of it," I said, and even in the phone, I could see Unmei's perplexed and wrinkled brow.
"There are things not right in the world," she said. "It is the way of the Powerful to know when the order of our world has been disturbed. We cause disturbance, and we learn the pattern of our people's wake. We know that something has been tipped which should not have left its rest."
"You think that it must be this great tipped power of yours?" I asked her. "Are you certain it did not come from within his own mind? Shock would not be out of the question, considering preceding events."
"It is not him," she said. "Not unless there is something more wrong with him than I suspect. I have met your boy, in your thoughts and words. I humbly suggest that I have learned his strength, and he does have strength. He would not be so overwhelmed by tortures of the body that he would slip into such a delirium as it would have to be."
"You did not, I think, know him at Rosenkreuz."
"Indeed I did not, but my judgement stays: the trouble which infects him is not from within him." I considered.
"It is an exterior force, then. You are among the powerful, Unmei-sama. Can you not see who it is who tips the scale?"
"No," Unmei replied. "We do not know yet what has caused this unrest. We worry, for to be so blind when such a great power is upon us is something we have never before experienced. Those of us strong enough to withhold our services and selves from Eszett ought to be strong enough to know every Power in the world."
"And yet you don't. Hm."
"I am sorry."
"No, no. I do not blame you. It is merely an unpleasent curiousity. I suppose you have no idea what to do about this, then?"
"If the presence has left," said Unmei, "then there is nothing to be done. Wait and see, good sir. I know this to be what you are best at."
"Yet I didn't see this coming. Well," I said, "I guess this means we're all being blinded by something or other."
"I would say so."
"Thank you for your help, Unmei-sama."
"What help I could give to you, Mr. Crawford, I give gladly, as to one of my own. We respect you, and your kin, although you are the hands of Eszett."
"We are only hands where we choose to be. I daresay we could be among your kind, now, if not when we were younger. We needed them once, but the hands as they are now are liable to creep off from the wrists and strangle the body themselves. We choose Eszett as a convenience."
"This, sir, is why we respect you in spite of it."
"Ah."
"Goodbye, Mr. Crawford."
"Goodbye, Madam."
There was a click, and I was left with very little answered for me. Wise might the separatists be, but even when they did know what was going on, they were too cryptic by far. I had the feeling from our conversation, however, that all they knew was that they were jumpy and they had nothing to jump at.
Unsatisfying, to say the least.
I stood and left my desk, shutting my door behind me with a soft but piercing click. It was uncomfortable to have the apartment so quiet. Nagi, of course, was always quiet, but Schuldig was quiet from poor condition, and Farfarello was quiet with anger (the worst kind of anger for him to have—one never knew when he was going to jump out at one). It was as though the house were dead, and I, Brad Crawford, was the only person left to walk in the suffering silence.
I did not particularly like this feeling. The dead were all very well, but the living shouldn't sound like them.
I sought to see what our quiet bunch had in store for them. I hadn't seen Schuldig's various troubles, after all, and I did not like the idea of something else, and possibly something worse, sneaking up on us without my having seen it. I thought to leave the house. There came the odd occasion when I could not see the forest for the trees; with the subjects of my queries in such close proximity as our home demanded, I could not see what lay ahead of them. If I left them, I could perhaps open the channel for their futures. I could not control my visions absolutely, but I could guide them.
But my people aside, I ought to have found other things, and it would not be their presence that warded those things off. It was a rare hour in which some unasked for snippet of future did not lodge itself inside me. Yet now, I sought, but I did not find. There was nothing, not a glimpse, not a taste, not a whisper, not a tingle of foreknowledge about anything.
I pressed my mind with all the might I had, yet even then, I was met only with silence, darkness and the unknown secrets of things that had not happened.
"We know that something has been tipped which should not have left its rest," she had said.
Even those too powerful for the powers of Eszett could not perceive it.
I leaned back in my leather chair and ran a hand through my hair. It did not matter how far I walked if my eyes themselves were blind.
Notes: THANK YOU to Bladderwrack for leaving a very kind gasp R E V I E W. I mean, as long as I have chapters, I'll put them up...but I really would like to know what people think. ;; (And yeah, I know the chapters are really short...sorry about that.)