Chapter 17
WHEN MIRA TURNED AROUND, Cyril and the others were gone. The lithographs scattered at her feet had disappeared too.
What’s happening to me? Did I warp somewhere else?
The field stretched in all directions, and Mira realized that she was on a low hillside. A hundred meters ahead, at the top of the hill, was one large tree.
In the colorful field of flowers, the tree stood almost as a beacon. Drawn toward it, Mira began to walk. Once she reached the tree, she once again looked at the scenery. Beyond the hill was grassland as far as the eye could see. As the wind whooshed past, she spotted a group of people walking in a line.
Ah. Who could they be?
The group wore white robes with hoods, making it impossible to see their identities. The line extended all the way to the horizon.
Where were they heading? Curious, Mira ran toward the line. Nearly ten minutes later, she had her answer.
As the grassland continued on, there was an enormous manmade structure in its very center. It seemed perhaps too grand to have been made by human hands.
The foundation was four layers of stone piled up like the bottom of a pyramid. That wasn’t anything special, but what truly astounded Mira were the pillars atop the structure. They rose to pierce the clouds.
“But what is it?” she muttered to herself, taking in the structure ahead.
Stranger yet, Mira noticed that there were two structures: one black, and one white.
What’s the story here? she wondered. What had happened to her? Who were the people dressed in white? What was the mysterious structure? It was all so bizarre.
“Maybe I should just ask.” Mira ran to the line of folks in white.
“Oh? Here’s an unexpected visitor.” One individual noticed her before she could say a word. Speaking with a voice neither masculine nor feminine, they removed their hood and continued, “So, what do you need?”
Two twisted black horns grew from either side of the stranger’s head. Mira panicked at the sight and got into a fighting stance. Wh-what’s going on here…?
The horns were very familiar—almost demonic. Mira froze and stared at the person’s face. The stranger had skin as white as porcelain, graceful features, and eyes that sparkled like jewels. They wore a gentle, reassuring expression. They looked so divine that the horns seemed out of place.
“You look surprised. All the travelers who come here these days make the same face.” The person smiled.
Mira had been standing there dumbfounded, but she shook off the daze as the person spoke to her again, trying to make sense of their words.
“‘These days’? Apologies, but…I have no idea what’s going on! Can you tell me anything?!” Mira blurted out, her curiosity finally bouncing back with her composure.
“Sure, I don’t mind.” The person continued moving with the line as they explained what had happened to Mira. According to them, a time-space distortion’s effects had thrown her soul into the past. “You could say that all this is like a dream! Do your senses feel dull, or your movements sluggish?”
“Now that you mention it…” They did. Mira finally realized what felt wrong; though she heard the wind blowing hard around her, she didn’t feel it against her skin.
It was actually eerie—her senses were distorted, unable to truly feel anything. This was just the way it had been when she was in the game. If she focused on her senses, she found she couldn’t bear the illusory nature of it at all. Uneasy, she broke into a jog to keep pace with the stranger.
“How do I return to my time?” she asked.
“No need to rush off. This happens occasionally. People wander in, get stuck for a while, then go back home. Just relax; it will happen when it happens.”
Mira looked around, and the others in line nodded in agreement. She saw smiles beneath their hoods.
“I…see. Then that is a relief, at least.” Mira relaxed at the stranger’s voice and the warmth she felt from the group at large.
“Still, this isn’t exactly ideal,” the stranger responded. “You were sucked into an anomaly, after all. Any idea why this happened?”
The distortion had divorced Mira’s soul from her flesh and tossed it into the past. Having the stranger point that out to her again reminded Mira that it was an anomaly indeed. “Well, I do have an inkling.”
The mana distortion in the Forest of the Devout had caused plenty of anomalies. With nothing better to do, Mira told the stranger at length about the deep fog, loop, monster appearances, and lithographs in the bag.
***
“That seems to be the culprit,” the stranger concluded. “The distortion interfered with space-time, and that lithograph you touched brought you here. Or something like that, I’m sure.”
It seemed Mira was right. “Hrmm, understood. It’s a nuisance, but mana does influence space and time, after all.”
That’s a fantasy world for you, she thought as she mulled over the enigmatic force that was mana.
“Mana is both nothing and everything,” the stranger said cryptically. “It’s a pillar that fixes space as space. I don’t know how it’s seen in your world, but that is our concept of mana.”
“This is getting esoteric…” Mira muttered with a wry grin, realizing that the conversation was straying into metaphysics. “By the way, you seem well informed. Who are you—or rather, who are all of you?”
According to this person she’d met, Mira was in the past. Yet they seemed more knowledgeable than the people of the present. Perhaps Mira simply was not smart enough to keep up, but that was the feeling she got from their conversation.
“No offense, but you look nothing like the people of my era,” Mira added. “Well, most people, anyhow. Might I know the name of your people, if you have one?”
She couldn’t help but look at their horns one more time as she asked.
“No offense taken. We’re called devils.” The being introduced their race, their features like a work of art save for the twisted black horns. The devils’ figures were nearly the same as humans’, but their skin was almost translucently white.
“Devils? Really?” That made an odd sort of sense. The word was surprising, whether there was a real connection to Devils’ Labyrinths or not. Mira surveyed the long line of devils and wondered about the link.
“Sounds like you’ve heard of us.” The person looked at Mira, their eyes glimmering with interest.
“Right. In my time, the main use of the word ‘devil’ is in ‘Devils’ Labyrinths.’”
The Primal Forest Mira had visited on Solomon’s request was one such labyrinth. Monster subspecies patrolled the halls of Devils’ Labyrinths, and treasure chests reappeared after enough time elapsed. Only the quality of the artifacts waiting to be found matched the potency of the enemies lurking deep within. Devils’ Labyrinths were very difficult places to traverse.
“Wow, they named labyrinths after us? That sounds exciting.” A surprised smile came to the devil’s face.
“They’re very unique labyrinths too.” Mira’s lips curled into a mischievous smirk. Then, out of nowhere, she felt the sensation of being lifted. “Whoa!”
She looked down in a panic and noticed that she was fading like a ghost.
“Oh. Looks like you’ll be home before long.”
“I see… So this is how it feels…”
Mira’s senses, thoughts, and consciousness faded. It felt less like waking up from a dream, and more like falling into one. Realizing that she was being drawn back to her own time, she struggled against the sensation so that she could keep learning about what was going on here.
“We’ll talk more soon!” called the devil. “See you then!”
“What is that supposed to mean?! Wait!”
Mira fought to follow the talkative stranger. She realized they’d stepped into the white structure she’d seen from afar.
Is it some sort of altar?
Mira had thought that the structure looked like one of those fictional space elevators. But now that she saw it up close, she realized it was something else entirely; the devils were climbing a massive staircase.
“What is this place? Why is everyone coming here?!”
Alien magic circles, symbols, and mathematical formulas covered the square floor. Countless lines of light ran up the towering pillars.
“This is the gate of reincarnation. We’ll be reborn as new beings,” the stranger said, with the gentle expression of an enlightened monk.
Mira could hardly believe it.
“Reincarnation? What will you become?” She watched as a devil just a few places ahead walked to the gate, transformed into faint light, and disappeared.
“Everybody who reincarnates in this white gate becomes an angel.” The stranger stepped forward, closer to the gate.
“An angel?! Then what about the black gate?!”
Just after Mira asked the question, vertigo again overcame her. She was overstaying the time her soul could remain here. Some colossal force was pulling her consciousness away, and she struggled to hear the stranger’s answer.
“Every…black…demo—”
As she was dragged to the future, Mira saw the same hexagram she had spotted earlier etched in the floor.
***
Mira looked around the blue flower field.
“Hrmm. It seems as though I was just talking with somebody.” She had the strangest feeling that she’d had the most remarkable conversation, but the details were fleeting.
Then she heard a familiar voice she couldn’t identify. “When the time comes, you’ll remember.”
“Who was that?” She searched for the voice; it was so clear that she couldn’t imagine it was a hallucination.
Now she recognized the flower field. The korpokkurs were performing a ritual to disperse the mana distortion. Emella and the others were fighting the monsters spewing from said distortion. Cyril had finished fighting a fiend.
The voice Mira had heard in her head, however, didn’t belong to any of them.
I can’t have imagined it. Somebody said I would remember “when the time comes.” Guess I’ll just have to wait…
Although Mira had forgotten what her soul experienced, the fact that she’d had an important conversation remained in the corner of her mind.
“Mira, handle that big guy over there!” Cyril shouted while Mira was lost in thought.
She looked up and saw undulations in the sky spawning another fiend. “Right. On it!”
No matter how much she tried, Mira couldn’t recall what she and the voice had talked about. Somehow, though, she knew that she could trust whoever it was. She only had to wait for the answers to become clear.
Right now, she had more pressing concerns. She put those thoughts in the back of her mind, threw down the empty sack in her hand, and faced the fiend.
***
Emella and the others continued to handle smaller monsters while Mira and Cyril took care of the larger fiends. The process seemed to go on forever. By the time the korpokkur sisters finally completed their rite, the pile of corpses was taller than Cyril.
Uneko and Etenoa raised their leaves aloft, and dazzling light filled the vicinity, driving away the darkness of the distortion.
“Whoa! What’s happening?” shouted Emella.
Zef was equally startled. “What the heck did they just do?”
When the group could see again, the fog had lifted, and they realized they were in a grassy clearing in the forest. With the distortion gone, the area had returned to its usual state. The blue flowers had disappeared as well.
Neither Mira nor Cyril’s party had ever encountered this phenomenon, so they had no idea why that had happened.
“I had a feeling those blue flowers weren’t from around here. They must have come from somewhere else, like the monsters,” Flicker hypothesized as she surveyed the area.
“Yeah, but…nah. Well, it’s like, you’re kinda half right,” Etenoa replied. She seemed satisfied with a job well done as she walked back to the group. “The flowers are still here, they’re just like, not now, y’know? The time boundary gets totes fuzzy in mana warps.”
That made sense; the adventurers felt like they’d stepped back from another time.
Mira was unsure whether she should be surprised that, despite Etenoa’s ditzy attitude, the korpokkur knew exactly what had gone on. Meanwhile, Uneko busily investigated the area to ensure the rite had gone as planned.
The party had solved the problem…for now. They checked to make sure there weren’t any monsters wandering around the area before they returned. The cargo itself was just too plentiful and scattered for them to gather alone, but at least now it was safe to enlist Noland’s help.
On the way back, whenever the party spotted normal blue flowers growing in the forest, a chill ran down their spines.
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