Once it was all over, there was no question in Mora’s mind that she would be killed. Knowing she would never see them again, the faces of her husband and daughter rose in her mind. Forget about it, she told herself. She didn’t deserve to see them anymore. From this point on, Mora would fall to the depths of villainy. No—she had been a villain already, for quite some time now.
The elder Saint stood. Then she used her power of mountain echo and yelled, “ADLET! THE SALTPEAK BARRIER HAS BEEN EXTINGUISHED!” She paused a moment, and then called again, “COME BACK! THE BARRIER HAS BEEN EXTINGUISHED!”
Their four lights swayed as the group made their way through the Ravine of Spitten Blood. Adlet, Rolonia, Goldof, and Hans were sprinting full speed toward the Bud of Eternity.
The Saltpeak Barrier had been extinguished. Mora had said just that one thing, and afterward, there was no further contact. Adlet’s heart pounded with anxiety as he wondered why she wasn’t communicating.
When they emerged from the ravine, the pitch-black shape of the mountain rose in the distance. Adlet noticed the Saltpeak Barrier, which had been covering the whole mountain, was indeed gone.
“Meow. She didn’t say it was broken. She said it was extinguished. What’s that mean?” asked Hans.
The barrier had not been broken or breached—but extinguished. Adlet couldn’t imagine what had happened. The mountain was quiet. He could hear no fiends’ voices, no sounds of battle, no nothing.
Mora stood on the mountain, a little ways up from the Bud of Eternity, as she watched the east. She could faintly see four lights. It looked like it would be a few minutes before they would reach the mountain. She shouted one more time, “ADLET! YOU’RE NOT HERE YET?!” The four lights stopped for a moment and then started running again. They had heard Mora’s mountain echo. “TGURNEU RAN AWAY, AND THE OTHER FIENDS FOLLOWED IT. BUT…AGHH!” She cut her message off there and paused again. It would probably seem unnatural if she sounded too calm about what was going on. “BUT A FIEND I’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE…HAS ATTACKED THE BUD OF ETERNITY! DAMN IT!” Mora pretended to be gathering her words once more. “HURRY! THE FIEND IS ATTEMPTING TO BREAK THE BUD OF ETERNITY!” she yelled, and then she made a lot of noise, smashing a boulder and punching the ground. The noise would suggest a fight going on there. It was a quiet, dark night. Silence would make them suspicious.
After hitting the ground a few more times, Mora turned to look behind her. Two of the seven fiends Tgurneu had sent were still there, waiting. Both of them seemed to be superior and intelligent beasts.
“You two pretend to fight here. Yell as if you’re attacking. Understood?” The fiends nodded. “After about five minutes of fighting, kill yourselves. If you break your word, know that your efforts will have come to nothing.” As Mora punched the ground again, she thought anxiously, Will this deception really work?
The four lights neared the mountain. A little closer, and they would be within reach of her clairvoyant eye. Mora breathed out a long breath and calmed her heart. Then she began the final stage of her ploy to split up Adlet’s party. “FREMY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! COME BACK! WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION?!” she yelled. Of course, Fremy hadn’t gone anywhere. She was sleeping inside the barrier of the Bud of Eternity. “FREMY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! … ADLET! HURRY BACK! FREMY HAS FLED!”
“Where’d Tgurneu disappear off to?” Hans muttered as they scrambled up the incline. Adlet was wondering the same thing. The Saltpeak Barrier’s disappearance was not the only peculiar thing here. There had been so many fiends, but they were now all gone. Adlet could faintly hear the sound of fighting—but it only sounded like there were a few. Why had the enemy made their move all of a sudden? In just thirty-odd minutes, during the time the four of them had run from the hill to the mountain, the situation had changed dizzyingly fast. Unnaturally fast.
Unnatural. The word ran through Adlet’s mind. It couldn’t be that all of this was a lie, could it? But now was not the time to be thinking about that. Whether this was real or fake, they still had to get back as quickly as possible.
“FREMY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!”
Something had happened again. Adlet wanted to say, What is it this time? as Mora’s call to Fremy reverberated through the mountains.
“ADLET! HURRY BACK! FREMY HAS FLED!”
When Adlet heard that yell, he stopped automatically. “What?” Fremy has fled. For a moment, he didn’t even understand what those words meant.
“Addy, you can’t stop. We have to hurry.” Rolonia tugged Adlet’s hand. But he didn’t move. Hans and Goldof were forced to stop as well.
“FREMY HAS GONE TO THE SOUTHWEST, THE DIRECTION TGURNEU FLED! I DON’T KNOW WHY!”
“Meow! What in the heck is she doin’?” Hans said carelessly. Goldof said nothing. He seemed like he was thinking of something, but then again, maybe not.
“HANS! GOLDOF! HEAD SOUTHWEST AND FOLLOW FREMY! ROLONIA AND ADLET, COME TO MY AID NOW!” Mora’s mountain echo cut off.
“Fremy…it couldn’t be,” Rolonia muttered as she gazed toward the Bud of Eternity.
“Meow…so is she the seventh, after all? That answer just don’t seem clean to me.”
“No way she’s the seventh,” Adlet shot back. Fremy must have had some kind of idea, or if she didn’t, maybe Tgurneu was controlling her. “Hans, Goldof. Can I ask you two to take care of Fremy?”
Goldof nodded. But Hans shook his head. “Naw, Fremy hates me. I think it’d be better for you
