“You –” something clicked. “You can read it.” I realized. “You can read English.”
Erzili didn’t answer me. Instead, she paced back and forth across the room, muttering words to herself that I realized I could not understand. It was the first time I was hearing a language in Alamir that I couldn’t understand.
“You… lied to me.”
She stopped her pacing, turning to stare at me with amused eyes. “Come now, Janus darling, you were never entirely upfront with Erzili either.”
I grit my teeth. “When have I not been upfront with you?”
“Other than telling me a fake Epithet Skill, you never did bother to mention who exactly your Nightly One was. Darling, were you ever going to mention that you were named by the Druid Sage of Perpetual Insanity? The Avatar of Omega?”
I took a step back. “How did you –”
A book emerged from her chest. Thick, pitch black. No, it was vantablack, absorbing so much visible light that it appeared to be a shapeless darkness in reality. Atop the book, were English words, written, in glowing cursive script:
The Book of Nightly Ones:
The First and Last Records of the Nightmares of Alamir
“This, Janus darling,” she said. “Every nightmare who has ever been named and who will ever be named. Every Nightwitch or Nightshaman. Their names are chronicled within this book.”
I remembered. No, how could I have forgotten? In that first timeline where I encountered Arol and Wunder, they told me about the book, and Erzili herself had attempted to test my knowledge when I said I was named by Mavros Cuvar.
“You…” There were little words I had. “Who… are you?”
I knew nothing, truly of Erzili. Nothing except the words she’d chosen to feed me. Words which, for all I knew, were nothing but lies. Dreams, which were nothing but empty words meant to fool me.
“Erzili is Erzili.” She inserted the book back into her chest, her form once more to a light-skinned, tanned blonde with dark purple eyes.
“That can’t be all there is to it.” I shook my head. “You have a book like that,. You can read Engl – the Antediluvian Hieroglyphs. You know more about the system and the world than you’re letting on. Why? Why are you hiding so much? Or is it… is this just your nature?”
Erzili didn’t say anything. Instead, her form morphed once more. Changed, once more. She kept changing forms, shifting and morphing, until she settled, finally, on the form of a raven-haired woman with dark eyes, and noticeably, an odd, strange tattoo on her neck.
She sighed, placing her hand over the tattoo. “Erzili is… a lot older, than you were led to believe darling. The title of Elder One is not given without merit. And once upon a time, Erzili had a different title.”
“A different title?”
“Once upon a time, Erzili’s title, was the Night Emperor of Lust.”
Chapter 16: Devotion
[Path B: Sunny]
Leaving the Fort behind and returning to the forest gave an odd, strange sense of nostalgia. The scent of grass and trees, the chirps of birds and cries of crickets. Considering the forest had been my home for a long time, while I was crawling about as a worm or skittering around as a skink. In a sense, being able to stand tall and not at the same level as the grass had done a lot to make me enjoy the forest now, rather than loathe it. Now, the forest gave me a sense of tranquility that I could enjoy.
My company, on the other hand, did not.
“So… hot!”
Frosty was an understatement. Trees, grass, and living creatures froze solid from her approach. She left behind a visible trail of frost with her movements. She cursed underneath her breath as the sun began to reach higher and higher in the day, clearly not a fan at all of the heat. It didn’t help that since we had left the Fort, I’d said hardly a word to her, and merely instructed her to follow me and not keep me waiting.
A part of me reveled in the amusement of seeing seven-fingers angrily slice through vines and thorns with a sword of ice, groaning and hissing when her lack of spatial awareness led to the occasional scratch or fumble. Indeed, I wondered how she found herself joining Erzili in the first place when it was so abundantly clear that forests were not her ally.
“How… how much further?”
It was the sixth time she’d asked me that question. I didn’t answer her and instead kept moving, following the direction on my World Map that told me where I needed to go. The range of my map had expanded significantly after Erzili’s geography lessons, and after studying all the maps in her room. I knew far more of Alamir’s geography than I did when I first started, which was something that filled me with a rich sense of confidence.
I turned my gaze to the sun, judging that it was an hour or two past noon. I didn’t mind. Though, I felt I needed to find alternative means of transport. While I could create a metal horse to ride, it felt like a chore. A part of me wanted a vehicle that I didn’t need to maneuver, or something smart enough to not require a step-by-step input for me to control. Unfortunately, Onna’s aura of frosty cold made it so animals would flee long before we caught up to them.
“Enough!” came the Yuki-Onna’s cry. “Enough!” she roared, panting, exhausted, making me shake my head at the very pitiable stamina she had. “Walking all this distance under this sun – if you desire to kill me then do it and let us end this journey!”
“Why would I want to kill you?”
She rose her head, panting. “W-what?”
“I asked a question. Why would I want to kill you?”
“I – I don’t know – perhaps to keep Leader Erzili to yourself.”
I barked a
