Chương 449: Chapter 444 - Fair play

"Patience, Baroness," Yamina's voice answered.

"It shouldn't be long now." Yamina watched the man, glancing to the side at the spot where his gaze seemed to be focused. She held still for a moment, then cast a light detection spell, but found nothing there as far as she could determine. And yet his words made it clear there was a dimension to this interaction she was missing entirely. Something outside her perception that had, apparently, played some part in her winning the wager. The thought irked her. She disliked being unable to grasp something.

It was an unfamiliar and unwelcome experience. But she could accept it. It would be the height of arrogance to assume she could account for every variable an entity of this nature might introduce. What bothered her more was that she had seemingly misread the situation and stumbled into the correct solution anyway. As willing as she had been to accept the wager on those terms, she still did not think her read of him had been fundamentally wrong.

Was it truly the case that he couldn't see the result of the coin before it landed? He had more or less admitted that he knew the result. What other mechanism could he have employed to produce the same outcome? She turned over the possibilities one by one as the man watched her with quiet amusement.

"You will understand one day," he said.

"Until then—" He pushed the spellbook closer towards her.

"I believe this is yours." Yamina looked down at it. Her hand moved slowly to the cover, fingers tracing the sigils pressed into its dark surface. It felt like worn leather, yet oddly smooth beneath her touch.

"Have you ever heard of Lorchen the Erudite?" the man asked. Yamina's brow furrowed slightly as she looked up.

"I have not." His smile only deepened.

"I imagine you wouldn't. She was, by all accounts, an acutely reclusive wizard. Very little was ever written about her. You would be more familiar with the name of one of her disciples — Aubrienne the Enlightened." Yamina's breath caught, her eyes sharpening. Was this tome a direct primary source connected to the founder of the Rising Isle?

"As the story goes, Lorchen was a wizard concerned less with reshaping the world than with understanding it," the man continued, "and she herself once received teachings from a rather mysterious individual going by the name Meneth. Many of those teachings may be preserved inside that very book, if you're lucky." Scarlett stilled at the familiar name, one she hadn't heard in some time.

"Meneth?" Yamina said.

"The Zuverian divinarch?"

"Who knows?" He shrugged.

"Perhaps they're one and the same. Perhaps it's mere coincidence." Yamina held his gaze, then let her eyes fall back to the spellbook. She moved to open it. The cover didn't shift. She looked back up at him.

"It doesn't open."

"I never said that it would, did I?" he replied. Something close to a scowl crossed Yamina's expression. If he had lied, there was no guarantee she would leave this place at all. Her life was already in his hands. If these were her last moments, then she at least needed to—"Don't worry," he added.

"I'm no cheat. It simply happens that I have a few minor conditions I'd like settled before you open that book."

"What conditions?" Yamina asked cautiously.

"It would be mildly inconvenient for me if word of our meeting today were to spread before the appropriate time, so we'll call these the hoops you need to leap through if you want to speak about my involvement today." He raised one hand, four fingers extended.

"First and foremost, you must have dealt with Fate and fulfilled your role."

"…You'd call that a minor condition?"

"Let's not focus on the pedantry." One finger lowered.

"The second condition is that you may only speak of that book's origins with someone who's already accurately identified who you received it from. The third is that you may not directly or indirectly recount or record these events for anyone else to learn from, but they must be aware of them. And lastly, you may only speak of these matters in the presence of another volume that has passed through my proprietorship." Yamina regarded him for several long seconds.

"If your intention was simply that I never reveal this to anyone, I would have preferred if you just said so." The man let out a low chuckle.

"I can simplify the terms if you'd like. But as they stand, they leave you a touch more leeway once they are actually fulfilled, don't they? So, do you accept?" She was quiet for a moment, turning it over, before finally inclining her head.

"I do." If these were only demands related to revealing the details of this encounter, they would not overly restrict her.

"Excellent. A pleasure doing business with you," he said. The book suddenly flipped open beneath her hands, and Yamina's eyes fixed on the first page. It was dense with layered annotations, diagrams, and glyphs in at least three different hands, each bleeding into the next like a long conversation. A rush of excitement threatened to get away from her, and she only barely kept it contained.

"I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours, young miss," the man said, the gold coin once more rolling idly over his knuckles.

"And I do mean that." Yamina pulled her gaze from the open spellbook.

"... You expect me to leave now, I suppose?"

"Our business is concluded. I don't have much more to offer." He tilted his head slightly.

"Unless you're interested in another wager?" She considered him. Eventually, she closed the book and tucked it under her arm. She stood, straightened her glasses, and gave the man one final look. He offered her a small, easy smile. She turned and took her leave. Scarlett watched as the younger Yamina crossed the tavern and walked towards the exit, but she didn't move with her, and the scene didn't begin to fade. The people around the tavern carried on as normal. She turned her eyes back to The Other.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The man raised a hand towards the barmaid passing nearby, and when she came over, he gestured towards the half-finished trencher and the tankard in front of him.

"Thanks for the meal and the space," he said, "but I think I've had my fill." She smiled and leaned over to clear them, then headed back towards the counter. He flipped the coin once into the air and caught it in his fist.

"Why don't you have a seat?" he said, to no one in particular. Scarlett watched him, not moving.

"I'm being polite," he added.

"I don't have much to say to you, so if you don't want to talk, I'll leave." Eventually, Scarlett stepped over to Yamina's empty chair and sat down. It was an odd experience. Unlike other Memories she'd been drawn into, she didn't have the sense of a proper body here. In part, she'd felt like she was observing through the younger Yamina's perspective, but at the same time, she'd been observing from the outside, and now that the girl had left, she felt almost like she was dissolving slightly at the edges.

Things weren't quite solid, and that included the chair beneath her. The man opened his fist and set the coin on the table. The act revealed the one-eyed jester. He looked at it for a beat, then passed his hand over it, and the coin was gone.

"You lied to her," Scarlett said.

"I lied?" He glanced at the empty seat opposite him.

"No, I don't think I did."

"You claimed you could not see the future."

"Not strictly what I said, but that is what my words implied, yes."

"Yet you are currently speaking with me. In the future." At first, she had thought he could see her simply because this was similar to a Memory, and past experiences had already shown that certain existences could at least partially perceive when they were being recreated in those. But the older Yamina telling her the outcome of the coin flip beforehand had confirmed that this was something more than that. Scarlett had, through The Other, directly interacted with the past.

"There is a distinction between seeing the future and knowing what will happen," the man said.

"Are you claiming that you are merely predicting what I will say right now?" His brows ticked up slightly.

"No. Only that there is a distinction. In the end, this is more like picking up a misrouted call than reading tomorrow's letters. But if you want a proper altering of time, we both know the right person to speak to." Scarlett thought about disputing him, but then shook her head with a quiet exhale.

"Did you plan today?"

"Believe it or not, I didn't." He flicked his wrist as the coin reappeared between his fingers.

"Or at the very least, I didn't plan for your appearance. I'd say that was Yamina's doing, but I suppose she never really had a choice in it either, so maybe it's better to chalk it up to the universe's ineffableness."

"I find that hard to believe," Scarlett said.

"You find many things hard to believe, Amy," he replied simply.

"It's one of your more reliable shields." She frowned slightly, but didn't rise to the jab. She was aware that Yamina and the others could hear her. Her gaze went to the coin moving over his fingers.

"What is the significance of that coin?" she asked instead.

"Do you use it to decide between your personas? Between The Other and Aurelian?" The man paused as the coin passed between his thumb and index finger. He turned it back and forth slowly.

"Is that what you think?"

"I do not know what to think. I still have no real sense of what your motivations are, or what your purpose even is. They do not follow any logic I can make sense of."

"That's an unfortunate limitation of the more mortal parts of your perspective," he said, then smiled.

"Don't worry, I don't hold it against you." Scarlett looked away from the coin.

"You have no intention of answering any of my questions today, do you?" She could tell. He really was just 'being polite'.

"If it's the right question, I don't mind answering. But it's unlikely you'll land on the right question." Her eyes stayed on him, then moved to the tavern's exit.

"You gave Yamina a book."

"She did receive a book, yes. That much is true."

"Why?"

"Did you not listen to our conversation?"

"It told me nothing I did not already know or suspect."

"Then me repeating it now won't tell you much more." Scarlett turned back to him. The man shrugged, scratching at the stubble on his cheek.

"If you're curious about what's inside hers, ask for yourself. There may be a few things in there that'll catch your interest, but personally, I don't think it's as interesting as yours. That said, everyone has their own tastes."

"I still do not know what mine contains," Scarlett said.

"Well, I can hardly be blamed for that. If you were truly desperate to know, you could have simply made Rosa tell you." She was quiet for a moment. Distantly, she was aware of her hand resting on the table, drumming without thought.

"Perhaps I will," she murmured.

"Perhaps." The man yawned once, covering his mouth.

"Though I imagine you'd be hard-pressed to say it's done you any good yet." Scarlett's expression stiffened.

"It has not." He chuckled.

"If you say so." He leaned back, then tilted his head.

"I've been curious, what do you make of having upgraded your veins? Does it feel good, finally being rid of third-rate ones?"

"…I presume you were the one responsible for that Echo," Scarlett said.

"Only indirectly. A stray remnant of what had once been, once undone. My friend wasn't always as thorough as he should have been when going through one of his moods. I found a few of them drifting around, so I thought they might as well serve some purpose."

"Did you choose that Echo for a particular reason beyond improving my mana?"

"I didn't choose it. It simply happened to align with the criteria your system had set out for you."

"A system you designed."

"While technically true, I don't have quite as much direct involvement in it as you're afraid I do, Amy." Scarlett made a low, dismissive sound.

"I do not see how I am supposed to take that on faith."

"Nothing is forcing you to," he said.

"Since you no longer wished to be bound by the system's traits, I've seen to it that nothing will compel your will going forward. I don't expect gratitude for that, but I wouldn't say no to an acknowledgement."

"You expect too much." Scarlett studied him for a while.

"Tell me the criteria for unlocking the other Echoes. They are currently dormant."

"No acknowledgement, then? Fine." He clicked his tongue.

"Unfortunately, I'm not here to walk you through the system's particulars."

"No, you were here simply to 'meet' with Yamina Ward. Out of 'genuine interest'."

"You say that as if you doubt my words."

"Would you not?"

"Hmm. Fair enough." The man gestured loosely around the tavern.

"But as unlikely as it may seem, and as cosy as this establishment is, my interest in her was genuine. After all, she is not an existence I anticipated." Scarlett wondered whether she could believe that. Whether she could believe there wasn't some design behind his involvement with Yamina that she simply couldn't see yet. It was difficult because she still couldn't place him. From what she'd seen, The Other could be the kind that deceived purely for its own pleasure.

Or the kind that arranged things from a distance and dressed the outcome up as fate. Or simply the kind that was entirely candid about what it wanted and had long since stopped considering what that cost anyone else. She'd seen something of all three, and none of it had resolved into anything she could fix a name to, not least because his actual motivations remained somewhere she simply couldn't reach. Something faint moved across the unhurried expression on the man's face.

"I see now that it would be a little unfair of me to leave you with only that," he said.

"Coincidence and loose ends rather than any real design — you'd be disappointed if this was all there was to it, and I find I'd rather not leave things on that note."

"What do you mean by that?" Scarlett asked.

"Simply that I'll leave you a parting gift, in honour of our meeting today. Consider it a nudge in the right direction, since you seem intent on putting off your other quests until every last piece is in place." He clapped his hands together. A couple of men at a nearby table glanced over with mildly puzzled expressions. He acknowledged them with an easy, unbothered smile, and they looked away. Scarlett didn't follow that. Her attention had already fixed on the quest window that had appeared in front of her.

[Side questline: Spectre of the Unseen — Eidolon of the Void] {The forays of the divine draw near the Material Realm as they once did in ages past, but far too slowly. Meanwhile, the shadow of a divinity that should not be stirs ahead of all else, and with it, something is foretold} [Objective: Learn Eidolon's identity] [Reward: —] [Failure: —] Eidolon. It was the same name that Adtia, goddess of the night and the moon, had warned her about. The supposedly dead god-pair that wasn't dead.

Now even The Other was pointing her towards it? She turned back to him and found a pair of dark eyes already watching her.

"You'll have your chance to learn more when you return to Elystead," he said.

"I won't help you more than this. Even this much could be considered giving an unfair advantage." Scarlett stilled.

"Unfair advantage?" she repeated.

"You speak as though you are supporting this Eidolon."

"No more than I am supporting you. You're welcome to decide how much that actually amounts to." Her eyes narrowed.

"…What is Eidolon?" The man was quiet for several seconds. Something settled and faintly compelling crossed his face. Then he stood.

"The same as you, Amy. An emergent outcome." Scarlett moved to follow, but before she knew it, she was simply standing in an empty tavern. The noise, the people, the hearthlight — all gone, save for the system window floating in front of her. She stood there for a few seconds, then let out a slow breath. She needed to go to Elystead. Setting that aside for now, she glanced around the hollow shell of the tavern, expecting it to dissolve at any moment. The scene had clearly run its course.

Her thoughts drifted back to what Yamina had said before this started, and she paused. Hadn't the woman expected this to take days? It hadn't even been an hour. What exactly had she been so worried about?

"Yamina," she called, testing the air. There wasn't any response. She blinked. Oh.