CHAPTER 11 - THE SORCERESS' GAMBLE

Knock, knock. Two knocks, five, another seven, as if the first one hadn't made Feli jump out and off her seat. "Enter," she demanded coldly, and faced a blurry nothing but someone's tall shadow over her own small, kneeled figure.

"Good afternoon, Miss Sorceress," came a voice light and familiar, yet drenched in a somewhat spiteful demeanor. "Sorry, but I don't particularly remember your name."

"You are… Arle," Feli replied, going off voice alone. "You need not know my name. Speak, and I shall answer."

An uncanny silence fell upon the two of them–how unlike Miss Arle of Islen District, but perhaps it was the still wind that blew down into the cellar combined with the chirps of songbirds innocent that froze her in place. If Feli could have her sight look at the expression on the girl's face to know what she was feeling instead of reading the extreme blur between objects, she would do something about it, but she couldn't. She hadn't the sight to see anything but a dysfunctional mesh of colors and light.

The armor-clad girl coughed, and straightened her posture. "Right, I'd like to ask something. If you don't know that's alright," she said. "You must have noticed the signs… The air is changing. There's a force about and around."

Oh, gods, not this topic.

"I know," she replied quietly, her facing forward and unmoving. "I was first to know and first to pay the price, discounting the past. It has shown its face. It dares show its face not only to Lemres, but to all of Eria."

"Who is it? No, actually, what is it?" Arle asked, although Feli was start to doubt if this was actually Arle. It looked and sounded like Arle, but the girl carried none of her mannerisms, nor was Carbuncle's yellowy, bloblike figure with her… How odd, she thought.

"An ancient darkness… I know not of whom you speak of, or what guise or form it takes," she whispered beyond the faint light of her candle. "But I have sensed it in the spatial flow. It is something that tears apart that flow. It is no being of this time. It is… much more. Much more powerful, much more uncontrolled, much more disorganized. I have no means to stop it but to warn you who ask."

Arle nodded. "That's all I needed to know, and yet it doesn't answer anything," she commented, taking a seat in front of Feli on the ground. "Do you know anything of the above world?"

"No."

"How long have you been trapped underground?"

"Four or five months–it is not that I am trapped, I stay here at my own discretion. Lemres comes by to provide necessary provisions, which is very sweet of him. It remains that I must stay here, as my visions come strongest lower–and the draining fact I cannot see anymore. It is not worth much to do anything placed higher than the cellar in that regard."

"That sounds terrible, I'm sorry."

"Quite alright," Feli responded, her figure unmoving and pale face illuminated by the orange of candlelight. "Why did you ask, though?"

"It's because strange things are going on above ground," the adventurer girl replied. "There's a strange guy who's on the loose and hyper. The royal guard has a bounty on their head, and they've only been around five days, max. What make you of this?"

"How interesting. I have a terrible feeling about this, but thank you for telling me."

After the years between when Lemres unleashed it from the depths of the space-time void and the fall of the Marquis of Salwin, it had finally chosen itself a human vessel. "Is that all you needed to know?" was the last thing she asked to her visitor.

"Yes, thank you," replied Arle, who then got up and turned to leave and Feli remained quiet. She knew that was not Arle, but she did not know who else it could possibly have been. It sounded like Arle, but less cheery, without Carbuncle, and without the… style that made Arle Nadja herself. As if the magician hailing from the slums, of whom everyone knew in name and face, had been possessed by a sinister force.

The thing above ground… What could it be? Where could it be? Little did she leave her enclave; often times she could sense forces moving here and there across spacetime, but time aplenty had passed since she last saw the city in all its parts, so it was very difficult to know what was where and where was what.

It had been a long time since that day, hadn't it? The passage of time was a subjective and mysterious force—one she had not been subject to for what she presumed was a while now. All Feli had now were light, shadow, and stars. And that was all she needed; bare minimum, if anything, but she did wish to have her sight returned to her. She was still not yet used to this feeling of… nothingness.

She mumbled nothing of something to herself, and felt that force rise and fall from the aether. Possessed of a wholly unnatural force, it was—if aether and energy as a whole had an opposite, that was what it was made of. It was plenty likely that this was the force Arle had asked about.

What was more concerning was the residue that was left behind in its wake—of its own essence, that was certain. But it was odd that wherever this dark force went, little bits of extremely powerful, raw light magic followed it. The very same magic as the force that had stolen her sight.

Had Feli the power to leave the cellar and search for the source of this energy, she would do so in a heartbeat. It would be too dangerous to leave two such forces holding pure, uncontained magical power that contrasted each other so violently. But unfortunately, the be-all and end-all was that she could not do anything without her sight, and could not do anything but see into the aether and warn anyone who came by the cellar of the events that could come.

She prayed for another visitor.


Plip, plop, went the rain, as Ringo made every effort to clean the mud out of her dress. It was not even her dress, which made it twenty times worse.

"It is over for us!" Amitie cried out, whimpering at Ringo's side as their motley trio of party-crashers struggled to see how this situation could be salvaged. "Nina is sure to have our heads! I mean, she let me off the hook pretty easily 'cause of Raffina, but they'll detail you when they find you!"

"I think the word is detain, Amitie," Arle corrected her with a forced chuckle, but even she too could not help but contemplate their circumstances. It had not been several days, much less even half a week since the three of them plus Ecolo had jumped out a window as a means of escape from the Duchess of Hallieu, Nina. It would prove wise if they did not incur the capricious young lady's wrath—but as it turned out, they did exactly that.

The trio were currently sheltered at the top floor of Ringo's house in Trerid District—a safe decision, actually, considering their assumptions—with the permission of the redhead's grandmother. Nobody suspects three girls hanging out in a room. Ringo hated to lie to her grandmother, but she did not have much of a choice. Adapt, or face imminent doom.

"How are we ever going to return our dresses?" Ringo asked. "You know that no matter how much mercy is in Raffina, she won't stand for us to destroy her clothes."

"Well, we haven't yet, and I'd say we should keep it that way," Arle replied, watching the streets intently from the window. "We can sneak back in. Or have Amitie return them."

"Me!?"

The blonde shouted a little too loudly, and promptly covered her lips with her palm. "I mean, I guess I could! I got them, I should return 'em."

"That's what I was going for."

"How's it outside, Arle?" Ringo asked, lifting up her borrowed dress for any more signs of muck—still aplenty, but nothing a good wash couldn't fix. "They can't still be searching, can they?"

"Oh, they can. They sure are right now," the ginger-haired mage replied, her squinted blue eyes reflected in the glass. "The royal guard is rabid. But it doesn't exactly seem like they're looking for us. That's what Silv told me, anyway."

"Oh… right…."

She had totally forgotten that the three of them were at the least of the nobility's worries. Not to be presumptuous, but she was pretty sure that escaping the clutches of a misunderstanding was a far lighter crime than thievery and attempted murder.

That being said, where was Ecolo, anyway?

They had disappeared ever since Ringo had been left in the care of the wizard-doctor Rozatte and with the little prince Tee from the country far away. The memory was hazy to her—she fell unconscious, saw that weird shadowy thing again, woke up in a cot for a couple seconds before passing out, woke up again and normally, had tea, and heard that Rozatte's medicine was stolen and used in a murder attempt, with Ecolo being the prime suspect-

Wait, that wasn't hazy at all. She remembered every detail perfectly!

Then why…?

"Ringo?"

"Whuh!?"

Ringo jumped, then Arle, then Amitie off the bed and onto the ground, her back clashing with the wall as she let out a pained groan. "Owwww… That scared me!" the blonde cried out, before getting up to dust herself off. "Geez, you yell pretty loudly when you're outta your headspace!"

"Oh gods, that's my bad," Ringo quickly apologized. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Don't worry about me! I'll be fine, pinky promise! It's on me, anyway, for getting your attention so suddenly."

"Yeah, I was just thinking a little."

"About what?"

Ringo's mouth fell open to speak but no words came out of her throat. How could she possibly explain the situation to them? Arle likely wouldn't think too much of it, but with Amitie having connections to the higher order of classes… things looked fairly. dicey.

"I was thinking about how odd it was that I survived," the pigtailed girl finally let out. "I mean, I'm sure the two of you magicked your way to safety, but I… I was in the sky, I blinked, and I was suddenly in an apothecary."

"I didn't see it. I was kinda busy trying not to get splat on the ground! I'm sorry," Amitie apologized, thoughts running through her brain. "But wow! That is weird! I'd never think that you could teleport, Ringo!"

"I can't. I don't think it's possible for ordinary, regular people like me to teleport."

"Then someone teleported you! Also, that is not true! I've seen people teleport! Where and how, I don't know, but I remember it from somewhere…" Amitie rambled on as Ringo had realized the connection.

Let's say her hunch was right—Ecolo did bring her to the apothecary. And with that weird black shadow's talking about their only being capable of appearing-disappearing magic, it could only—or probably, at the very least—mean that Ecolo's magical prowess was limited to teleporting objects and people, and not just simple magic tricks. Ringo could also be thinking too much into this, but then again, it wasn't out of the question. In fact, it was likely the singular answer—and from this she could very well assume that Ecolo teleported into the castle, did something dumb, and left. Teleportation was a freaky power.

Ringo sighed, and set down the muddled dress. "Well, at any rate, I make it a point to organize everything I know. It's all just one big haze, so I'd rather try and connect the dots where I can."

"If this is what you call organized, I guess I can't stop you…" Arle breathed out, staring up at the wall above the redhead's bed, plastered all with papers and strings and theories that were presumably connected to each other. Theories people would consider insane—such as Ringo herself coming from an alternate universe, or having been timeskipped due to Maguro's existence, or that the black shadow had come straight from the darkness of Lemres, due to his being a comet warlock. Half of them made sense. Half of them didn't, and were about to, now that Ecolo was in the picture.

"You may have a point," Ringo admitted, looking up at the mess of everything on her wall. "But, hey, it's legible, and I think it all works out!"

"What do any of these mean, by the way? Is it all about your memory gap?"

"Yeah, actually. I've been trying to piece together what happened to me during the last decade," Ringo explained. "Last I recall, some lady was talking to me. Called me a princess and whatnot… and that was it."

"No waaay! Are you like, secretly rich, Ringo!?" Amitie exclaimed, leaning forward. "It's like in those storybooks! Like, where an ordinary girl discovers she's secretly royalty! You know?"

"No, I'm certain I've always been just… average. That's what Grandma told me, anyhow."

"Awwww."

"That's so weird. I'd never think someone would call you something like that," Arle noted. "I've never even heard of there being a princess in this country aside from Rulue. And I've been around for all those ten years!"

"When did Rulue become princess, again?"

"Thirteen years ago, last I checked. I'm not big on rich people drama."

"Oh, wow! That's around when I was born!" Amitie piped up. "Man, all of this is so confusing to me. Ringo's not a princess, obviously, because Rulue is. Then… then who's the lady who told you that?"

"I'm not sure. I've never heard her voice before," Ringo replied, dejected. "I don't even know when in the timeline this happened!"

"You have a timeline?" Arle's jaw dropped at the statement, and then she fixed herself up. "I guess I can understand. It'd be hard to understand memory gaps without one."

"Yeah, it helps out a lot, actually. I can pinpoint exactly where my memory starts to work and where it doesn't."

"Well, let's not focus on what happened before," Arle commented, refocusing the matter at hand. "Let's settle what's happening now! We are being hunted down!"

"We can always just apologize," Amitie suggested. "Nina will understand! Of course she will!"

"I don't think we know that," Ringo responded. "The probability lowers when we factor in Ecolo's involvement. Did you see the posters outside?"

"The posters don't exactly mean anything, do they?"

"Well, they're on the run, and they're capable of breaking into the castle interior. Hard to think they're not involved with the attack on the castle guard."

"Well, currently, our most important objective is to evade capture. Just because the green guy is wanted dead or alive doesn't mean we're out of trouble, either," Arle said. "Stay alert. Don't do anything too crazy."

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Sure," was all Ringo could muster, her mind fixated on proving Ecolo's innocence. There were so many secrets that they held, and so many more questions she had—who were they? What relation did they have with the black shadow? What happened to them while the castle was under attack, assuming they were uninvolved? Ringo loved a good mystery! And even more so, because this mystery was a two-in-one special that also dealt with her weird memory thing.

"You don't sound so sure."

"Well, I'm not saying it's over for us, but… Just think about it. We might be captured by association. If we sneak around it's suspicious, but if we just go by every day it might be dangerous."

"Which is why I'm saying I'll apologize for us!" Amitie shouted. "I'll clear it all up! It worked for me! It can work for you two, too! In fact, we'll fix it up by tomorrow or the day after!"

"When the entire upper class hates my guts? It's a bold move," Arle pointed out. "But… I guess. Anything's worth a try. I'll come with you for good measure."

"Now that is a risky venture," Ringo countered. "They'll take you in on sight!"

"Well, our case is pretty solid, I think! I promise it'll all blow over!"

"I mean… if you're confident in it. That's all that matters."

"Will you come with us?"

Ringo slowed her breathing. Would she? She had already been knocked out once for no comprehensible reason, was kept in the confines of a room made for an academic junkie—right up her alley, but not in this case—and talked to someone who claimed she wasn't a ghost. Anything that can go wrong will, after all.

"Uh… I don't know about that," she finally mustered, scratching her head. "For my personal safety I think I'm better off staying here."

"That's true, but… What'll you do?" Amitie inquired. "You're gonna be okay on your own? Pinky swear?"

"Yep, yep. I've got a faint idea as to what I want to do, anyhow."

"Ooooh! Like what!?"

"Mystery-solving, of course!"

The two girls' eyes glimmered in interest, and Arle sighed with relief. "Well, if you think you've got it, I'd say go for it," she finally said, relenting to her strange little whims. "Again, just don't do anything crazy."

"Got it. No breaking into castles or bargaining for cake, yep."

"But can you buy me a cake!?"

"Of course, Amitie."

Cheery conversation drowned out all remaining thoughts of them being put up for capture, if that hadn't been overshadowed by the massive target on Ecolo's head. And now, Ringo would seek to look behind that target and question the strange waiter directly—surely they could provide her with some sort of inquiry as to the circumstances of the attack? And while she was at it, maybe she could ask about the thing that happened at the harbor, and what they were capable of, and other such things.

Rain pitter-pattered against the dark exterior of Ringo's home, and despite the lights emanating from her candle and the laughs within her room, shadows seemed to crawl right over to her front window.