- 6 -
The narrow road back to the village twisted and turned through the coppice, ran up the mound, crossed a garrulous brook, cut through a sleeping meadow, and spilled in a muddy jumble of stone and grass into the town square. The thick fog hung low in spectral forms over the ravines, and the sky was cloudy and starless.
Tyki and Road walked side by side in silence for a while; or rather, he walked in silence, putting his confusing thoughts in order, and Road wreaked her petulant vexation on Lero, stretching his tiny body to the limits as if he were made of rubber.
"Mistress Road, I will complain to Lord Millennium, lero."
"He doesn't mind when I borrow you from him."
"But you're trying to break me in half, lero! The Earl already had to mend me once after Skinn tried to separate my head from my body because he thought I was a huge lollipop, lero!"
When they reached a wooden bridge, Tyki paused to kneel by the cold invigorating stream and dipped both of his palms into the water. His disheveled mass of wavy hair was in desperate need of tidying, but he couldn't be bothered with his appearance save for washing the dried blood off his face.
Tyki glimpsed the Noah's truth—the end of the world—though he wasn't certain whether it was the same end of the world Road had showed him in her vision, or whether the knowledge changed anything within him, except that the short twenty-something years of his human life seemed to him paltry and petty in comparison to the burden of this ancient truth. It had the weight of an entire world, and its overwhelming presence was now palpable on the edges of his mind. His forehead was crowned with the full row of eleven crosses, and from the depths of his very being came a cold surety that he commanded all powers bestowed on him by his status as the Noah of Pleasure.
What Tyki had done to that exorcist was a point of no return, and there was no changing the course of his fate. Clinging to his old life seemed like a foolish, illusory whim backed up only by the stubbornness of youth.
'But how old am I?' Tyki thought, looking at his quivering reflection in the water, and clutched his head in both hands. 'Twenty-three? Seven thousand? Oh boy, I'm abominably old if it's the latter.'
And again, all he wanted to do was laugh out loud. No matter how he looked at it, the Millennium Earl remained in his eyes a bit of a mad clown.
"Listen, Road, the Earl doesn't need to know that I got a bit carried away back there, right?" Tyki said, rising to his feet. "I've grown tired of his ridicule. What will it take to keep this slip-up between us?"
Little sparks of mirth danced in Road's eyes when she lifted her gaze at him. "My lips are sealed… for a price."
"I expected as much. What can I do for you?"
"My standard rate for bribery is a month's worth supply of candy. I might agree to keep my silence for free, but you'll owe me a favor."
"You drive a hard bargain. However, I prefer to pay off my debts up front."
"Look, as much as I enjoy free candy, I don't want to cheat you. Millennie might know everything already… But let me tell you a little secret. When it comes to us, Millennie's a bit of a pushover." Road pressed a finger to her lips. "Just don't go blabbering about it to anyone else."
The thought deeply unsettled Tyki. "I prefer he didn't know. It freaks me out to think that he watches our every move through an Akuma."
Road bent over a patch of meadow to pick out a purple flower with long velvety petals. "He's not watching over us every single moment of every day, you know. But sometimes an Akuma would show him something in a vision, and he would observe and listen." She momentarily appeared like any ordinary girl, preoccupied with a pretty flower, but the illusion only lasted until she made a terrifying face and, slowly swaying from side to side, began tearing off the petals one by one. "Dead. Not dead," she said every time a large petal whirled to the ground, "Dead. Not dead. Dead… Oh, I'm disappointed." She held out to him a flower stripped of all petals but one. "I think the Crow hasn't died yet."
Tyki couldn't help but laugh. "I could have told you he was still alive because Teez haven't finished devouring his body. But he won't last much longer." Teez seemed to be connected across vast distances, sensing the location of each of the scattered butterflies and transmitting to each other the knowledge of their whereabouts once they completed the task Tyki had set out for them.
While Tyki was distracted by Teez, a small red dot appeared in the misty murk ahead of them. It was joined by another dot and another until a stream of blurry red dots poured down the hill in the direction of the lake. There had to be at least two dozen people in the crowd, but from where he stood, Tyki could discern only shadows moving together in a strange synchrony in the lurid gleam of torchlight.
"It looks like we have guests, Road."
"I think the townspeople found the corpse at the candy shop, and they are not happy about it. But they have no reason to suspect us for now. Let's finish—"
"Someone's coming, lero!"
The familiar figure in red-and-gold uniform pushed apart the bushes and entered the clearing. The Crow looked dreadfully pale, as if all color had been drained from his face, and he could barely stand on his feet, drawing shallow, labored breaths. He must have been in considerable pain because his fists were tightly clenched, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Tyki felt, through the butterflies he had carried with him, that the harvest of new Teez would soon emerge from the man's body which was fast approaching its natural end.
"Did you do as you were told, watchdog?" Tyki asked coldly. The useless man was getting on his nerves.
"I wanted to go to the church, as you told me, but I couldn't get there unnoticed in this commotion. The entire village is in an uproar. What happened?"
"Why do you care? You won't get to watch another sunset in this village or any other village." Road gracefully climbed on her umbrella and swung her legs in the air. "I think the townspeople surrounded the candy store, Tyki."
"My patience is running thin. You have until sunrise to bring us that Innocence, or I'll reconsider our deal," said Tyki and, with his hands his pockets, strode off into the darkness.
The cloudy sky was twice lit up by distant lightning, and from the black nothingness came a quiet rumble of thunder.
The commotion near the pastry shop was growing more boisterous by the moment.
Tyki and Road stood at a safe distance away from the circle of smoke and torchlight and idly observed the bustle. Tyki leaned against an enormous stack of hay, soft as the softest of pillows, and Road perched up on her umbrella, quietly humming something to herself.
A villager was speaking to the crowd in an enthusiastic and authoritative tone, swinging his arms, but Tyki was too far away to hear the words, nor did he have any interest in what he had to say. The stormy winds picked up, carrying around torn-off leaves, sticks, blades of grass, dust, sweet and over-sweet smells of nightly flowers and fanning the flames of torches. The fog billowed around the contours of the lake shore in chimerical forms. It was a rare kind of night when destinies charted their course.
Although Tyki went along with Road's plan, he couldn't perceive anything remotely interesting or dangerous about the boy's Innocence and has grown weary of Road's idle pursuits. He would head to the church soon and end this drawn-out show by himself if he had to.
"Hey, you! You don't look like you're from around here. What are you doing loitering around at night after there's been a murder?"
A small throng of four or five farmers armed with pitchforks, axes, and crude hammers rounded the corner of a street and faced Tyki with the brazen confidence of the ignorant.
"Move along, or things will get ugly." Tyki lazily pointed towards the lake.
"Is he threatening us?"
"I don't recall seeing him around town before. Where did he come from?"
"Maybe he's the murderer."
The farmers drew closer, surrounding the heap of hay from all sides, and Tyki saw their hesitant and anxious countenances made more menacing by the glow of torchlight.
"Did you see his face? It's definitely not human. And what's up with that girl?" A shaky voice came from behind him, and an attack immediately followed—the stout elderly farmer thrust his crude pitchfork through the haystack with an unsteady hand.
"Oh my, what a killjoy," Tyki said mockingly, staring at the rusty three-tined pitchfork that protruded through his chest without causing him the slightest bit of discomfort. The metal teeth glowed with the distinct purple hue of the Dark Matter.
An Akuma cannon shot once, and the farmer stumbled backwards, succumbing to his knees. The rest of the farmers threw down their improvised weapons at once and with enviable swiftness took to their heels, pursued closely by the Akuma that was summoned by Road.
"There's no reason to get our hands dirty fighting humans," she said, twirling her umbrella in the air. "They cannot touch us with their simple weapons. My Akuma will take care of them."
The elderly farmer's body collapsed in a heap of dust under the onslaught of deadly Akuma poison, and the torch he was still clutching in one hand rolled underneath the stack of dry hay. It blazed up instantaneously from top to bottom, shooting up swarms of red-hot sparks in the air. The strong wind carried the sparks onto the thatch roofs of nearby huts and shacks, scattered them across yards dotted with withered grass and shrubs, and playfully blew them inside open windows where the fires latched onto curtains, tablecloths, and wooden furniture. In mere minutes, an enormous conflagration bloomed in the heart of the village, showing no signs of abating as the fires advanced towards the outskirts.
Tyki couldn't see everything that was happening, but in the ensuing chaos, emblazoned with the bright flashes of the firestorm, people were running to and from their burning homes, clamoring, carrying water from the lake and trying to stomp out the small fires.
Tyki slipped his hand into his windswept curls. "Don't you think we overdid it a bit, Road?" The scorching fire raged all around him, but it was of this world, so it couldn't even singe the fabric of his blouse.
"Mistress Road never makes mistakes, lero," objected Lero with unwavering confidence.
"Do you always have to be such a toady?"
"No, Tyki's right," Road said in an unusually dispirited manner. Her face was alight with the wrathful reflections of the fire, but much like Tyki, she was invulnerable to it. "Millennie's going to be so upset with us."
The church bells rang desperately, with an ear-piercing pitch, calling for aid. And then the sky overhead burst open with cold, hard rain which began to subdue the beast of fire—its sparks drifted away in soft random, faded, and were trampled into liquid dirt.
Over the hills and ravines, hopping along and humming a merry tune, with a top hat in one hand and a cane in another, traveled the Millennium Earl without rest until he found a small town on the edge of the lake.
The Earl quit his journey and with an air of discontentment about him, glanced at the carnage: at the smoke rising over the fields to the pale sky, at the corpses of several villagers who were crushed under a collapsed two-storied building, at the unhinged door which creaked forlornly in the wind—and shook his head in disbelief.
Tyki and Road stood near the charred ruins of a house, watching the sunrise through the rain and smoke. Road opened her umbrella over their heads although the oblique torrents of rain couldn't touch either of them.
"I see you've played to your hearts' content, my darling children," the Earl said in a testy voice, turning to face them. "I told you to destroy the loathsome Innocence, not burn down the whole village. Do you want to attract the attention of the entire Black Order before we are ready to operate out in the open?"
"All of it is Tyki's fault—"
"Road's at fault—"
"None of it is Lero's fault, lero!"
"That remains to be seen," said the Earl, deftly gripping the umbrella by the handle as he slipped out of Road's hands and, crying, rushed to his master. "Do the two of you have anything to say in your defense? How can you explain your failure to destroy one pitiful shard of Innocence? I expected more from you, Road."
"Lord Millennium!" Road ran up to the Earl and impatiently flung her arms around his neck, embracing him warmly. "We destroyed another shard of Innocence, you know. Doesn't it make you happy?"
Tyki fancied that the grin on the Earl's lifeless face was wider and cheeks rosier when Road demonstrated her affection for him, but his momentary confusion passed, and he shook Road off his shoulders.
"Why do you think the destruction of some second-rate piece of Innocence will bring me joy?"
"Lord Millennium, Tyki and I are so close to finding that Innocence you sent us here to find," Road said in a particularly whiny voice. "Tell him, Tyki."
"It's as Road says, Lord Millennium," Tyki said with an impatient wave of a hand. "And cut us some slack, will you? These foolish villagers interfered in our business. That's why this whole place burnt down."
"You and I are going to have a separate conversation, my boy, after this adventure of yours." The Earl shook his finger at him. "But for now, please, put on something decent. You wouldn't be allowed into any reputable place looking like that."
'That's some nerve he's got,' Tyki thought to himself, catching a brand-new black coat and a top hat that the Earl had tossed to him. But he slipped into the long coat, swept back his hair, put on the top hat, twirled it dashingly, and said—half-serious, half-ironic, "As you wish, Lord Millennium."
"Don't wait for us, Millennie." Road cheerfully waved her arm. "Come on, Tyki, don't fall behind. It's time we end this game."
And as though right on cue, a loud explosion was heard in the distance.
The church was badly damaged by the fire and by the mysterious explosion. The roof sank in one place, and through the hole, a patch of bright-blue sky glanced curiously into the gloomy quietude of an empty building. Several stained-glass windows remained intact, and the sun retracted bizarrely through the motley, flamboyant patterns depicting saints blessing and healing sinners. Vibrant, elongated, and distorted, these orange, green and blue patterns—like fluid paint-smears—stretched across the wooden floor, illumining the way into the depths of the church where a white rectangular altar stood.
A tragic scene unfolded in front of the altar: the Crow knelt on the floor, bleeding from the wound on his leg, and in front of him stood a young boy immobilized by two rows of his yellow spell cards. The child cradled a bright-green spark of Innocence in his hands, only something was wrong with it: the gears were spinning out of control, and the light pulsated erratically, now bright like a small sun, now barely a glimmer.
"I can't… suppress it… much longer," the Crow wheezed, turning his head at the sound of Tyki's and Road's footsteps echoing under the vaulted ceiling. "Whatever you were planning to do, do it now, or this Innocence will blow up."
"Do you want to do the honors, Tyki?" asked Road. "After all, I destroyed the Innocence of the exorcist you killed last night."
"Are we keeping score, Road?"
"You'll never catch up to me, so don't even bother."
Tyki grinned, raising his hand until it was in front of his face; tiny, dark-purple lightnings crackled between his fingers.
"Stay back!" the boy yelled. "I'm warning you! I won't—"
The gears around the Innocence shattered, freeing a wave of pure energy that swept through the church and collided with Tyki's Dark Matter. The impact sent a ringing through his ears. Tyki felt strange—a bit light-headed, but also serene like all worries from the world had disappeared—and for some unknown reason, he remembered:
…A tall, lean boy, with short black hair over a high, untamed forehead and eyes as bright as a hawk's, sat on a porch of a large mansion. An older long-nosed gentleman, sporting a strong clean-shaven jaw and wearing an immaculate dark suit with a monocle attached to his front jacket pocket, approached the boy and leaned towards him with a smile.
"Come here, my boy. What's your name? Tyki? You look oddly familiar, Tyki, but I cannot recall where I've seen you before. Isn't it an uncanny feeling, knowing that you should know something, but not knowing what it is?"
The vision vanished just as it came to him, like a mirage. Tyki put his other hand forward, channeling forth a Dark Matter pulse, and the light emanating from the boy's Innocence exploded and died out. The altar and the wall behind it were annihilated, wooden boards and railings cascaded from the storey above them into the opening, and the old building careened with a heavy creak, threatening to come apart. The pair of gears—an empty shell—rolled across the floor of the church and crumbled into fine dust. The child buried his face in both palms and, his thin shoulders trembling, began weeping.
'What was that just now?' thought Tyki, distracted. 'I saw myself as a boy, but someone else was there with me. Who was it? Could it be…'
The Crow, who never told them his name, crawled over to the boy, coughing up blood with every uncouth movement. "I kept my end of the bargain. You took away his Innocence," he said between the coughing fits. "Now, let him go in peace."
"It's true," said Road," but there's still a matter of your debt, Crow."
"Lemme go! I want to see my brother! Where's my brother?" The boy came to his senses a little and wriggled out of the Crow's arms.
"Your brother died in the fire, remember? I couldn't help him. He's in the undercroft where we left him."
"I don't believe you. You're lying to me, just like all those men lied to my father because he didn't have any money."
"You need to go now, boy." The Crow pushed him towards a hole in the wall. "Please, understand that if you stay—"
The Crow shuddered from head to toe, froze mid-movement, and then moved again, not as one whole but hundreds and hundreds of separate pieces of him, in synchrony. The new harvest of Teez has finally matured.
Tyki glanced at the boy who hurried to hide under a bench. Humans with their small tragedies, who feared loss and pain, struggled with futility against winds of change, were like flickering lights in comparison with the absolute, all-powerful seven-thousand-year-old entity within him. Though their plight deserved some sympathy, perhaps, Tyki Mikk couldn't conceptualize tragedy: the word was a hollow abstraction that held no personal meaning to him even before the Noah inside of him came awake. He observed tragedies and struggles from the sidelines, himself never a participant in any of them.
A long shadow fell on the floor behind him. Tyki lifted both hands with his palms opened upwards. "Teez, come to me," he called onto the Earl's golems.
Two vortexes of enormous purple butterflies rose towards the vaulted ceiling, their wings flapping heavily, and rushed, askance, towards him to be sucked into his palms. The last bit of daylight was swallowed by the quivering, swirling mass of wings, legs, and bodies.
"You just had to scare the poor child, Tyki," said Road, but there was no heartfelt sentiment in her voice.
With the last Teez absorbed, Tyki stretched his slightly numb fingers. The thought of how to carry Teez with him came to him with the deeper understanding of his abilities.
The boy from the fisherman's memories crawled out from under the bench.
"Can you take me to my brother?" he asked, sniffling. "I saw you do things. Scary things. But I'm not scared. I know you can help me."
Road squatted down near the boy. "Can we help him, Tyki? Does he even know what he's asking of us?" She slipped a finger under the child's bony chin and turned his dirt-smudged face left and right. "Well, do you know, child?"
"I want you to give me back my brother."
"You, humans, are frail and mortal. Your bodies break, and you die."
"That's not what the priest told us. He came to my family because he knew that we were poor, and that my brother could die from sickness any day." The boy looked at Road with childlike defiance. "He was a fake priest, with a black mark across his forehead, so I used my power to make him disappear. But he told me that when it gets really bad for my brother, I shouldn't despair. He said that there was a man who could fix everything. Do you know this man?"
"Who would have guessed? There's a job here for Millennie as well." Road smiled softly and hummed into the boy's ear:
The Lord Millennium will come back for you…
Running far away won't help. He will find you soon—
Ask him for your brother's soul. That's what you can do…
