Return (Part 2)
“Since you went out of your way to call me aside, Yohan, I trust you have something of true import to say.”
“……”
Lobelia was smiling, but her tone was a sheer threat. How petty could she get? She spent half her days dumping every ounce of unwanted aggro onto me, yet the moment I asked for a word, she acted so high and mighty.
“Is there… anything in particular you are curious about, Your Highness? Ask away, and I shall answer.”
“Did you not claim you had something to tell me? Then use that clever head of yours and speak your piece—fittingly, and in good measure.”
“……”
Fittingly, and in good measure. In other words: figure it out yourself and make it good. The absolute worst kind of order imaginable. For the first time in my life, I felt a deep, secondhand sympathy for the imperial head chef, who probably had to endure impossible demands like ‘prepare something light yet hearty, subtle yet bursting with flavor.’
I had to carefully curate information that would actually prove useful to her. After all, with certain secrets, knowing too soon could be far more lethal than total ignorance. And frankly, some things were just a massive headache to explain. If I wanted to explain who the Playwright of Ex Machina really was, I would first have to explain what a computer was. Even if I tried, it wasn't as if Lobelia would easily grasp concepts like algorithms and microchips. Seeing is believing; it would be infinitely easier for her to understand once she saw it with her own eyes.
Truth be told, at this point, there wasn't even that much left that I could freely disclose. Now that both Cult's identity and Vidar's true colors were out in the open, the only major adversaries Lobelia remained blind to were the Playwright and the Judge. Yet I was equally hesitant to blow the whistle on Tillis, the Judge. That woman was an absolute lunatic. If she caught wind that Lobelia had unmasked her, she wouldn't stop at slaughtering the princess—she would track down the informant who leaked it and butcher me too. As she stood right now, the number of beings in this world capable of stopping her could be counted on one hand.
The Playwright was shelved for the aforementioned logistical nightmare. That left only a handful of high-grade revelations I could safely hand over. I would have to cash in one of those chips.
“The Oracle.”
“Hm?”
“Are you not curious about the real Oracle, Your Highness?”
This was probably the intelligence Cult craved above all else. Naturally, I didn't actually know where the Oracle was hiding right at this very second—she had barely made any appearances in the original game. However, I did remember the time and place of her debut. Yes. All I needed to tell her was when and where she would appear.
“Now that does pique my interest. Especially coming from the very Oracle standing before my eyes, claiming another exists.”
“Could you please drop that, Your Highness?”
“I think not. You, of all people, have no right to quibble over terms clearly stipulated in a binding contract. You signed it, did you not?”
“…At any rate, the genuine Oracle will make contact with Your Highness in the near future.”
“Define ‘in the near future.’”
“The near future is… the near future.”
“You are begging for a thrashing.”
Lobelia raised her hand and squeezed it into a fist. A sickening crunch echoed from her palm, like something solid being crumpled into a ball.
“…Before the first semester ends, Your Highness will clash with the devil-worshippers of Lemegeton outside the academy grounds. Not long after that encounter, she will show herself.”
“Better.”
Only after I provided a reasonably specific scenario did Lobelia finally uncurl her fingers. From her palm fell a mangled, unrecognizable chunk of… something. What even was that? It was so thoroughly crushed that I couldn't even guess what it used to be.
“And?”
“Pardon?”
“Surely that cannot be all. Are you not going to provide a physical description?”
“I don't know it…”
“Then that poses quite a problem, wouldn't you say?”
Wow, I really am in trouble here… I genuinely didn't know what the Oracle looked like. To me, she was just some suspicious NPC shrouded from head to toe. Yet Lobelia clearly had no intention of accepting ‘I don't know’ as an answer. I had to squeeze out something—anything.
“First of all, she wears a deep hood, so her face is entirely obscured.”
“And?”
And? That was the whole point—you can't see her!
“Uh… I believe she wore a circlet embedded with a blue jewel over that hood. Which is why her face remains unseen.”
“Like that person over there?”
Lobelia pointed over my shoulder. I turned around on instinct. There, standing in the flesh, was someone who matched my exact description down to the last detail.
A black robe. A deeply drawn hood. A circlet set with an azure gemstone. She stood there with so little presence she felt like a living shadow.
“Since when…?”
Why was she watching us? Don't tell me that's actually the real Oracle?!
My thoughts tangled into a chaotic mess. A person who shouldn't exist here was standing right before me. Had my interventions, intentional or not, already derailed the original future this drastically? There was no telling where or how the butterfly effect had rippled out to cause this. Yet one thing was undeniably clear…
“She does not appear amicable in the slightest. I sense hostility.”
And that hostility was aimed squarely at me—and no one else.
Why in the world me? …Though, to be fair, in my desperate bids for self-preservation, I had peddled quite a lot of insider information about people and future events. Above all else, the biggest divergence of all was that I had kept Ariel Ether alive. If altering the flow of destiny had struck a nerve with the Oracle, her rancor toward me was entirely understandable.
“Why not attempt to resolve this through conversation first? Even I would be incensed if someone were babbling about me behind my back.”
“Excuse me, Your Highness, you're the last person who should say—”
“You were the one who claimed you had something crucial to share. I merely listened.”
Huh. Come to think of it, this was different from previous encounters. Until now, I had only ever leaked secrets about scumbag criminals who deserved a dozen executions. The Oracle wasn't a criminal in the first place, was she?
“So it was you who acted so recklessly as to advance the hour of great catastrophe.”
A delicate, feminine voice drifted out from beneath the hood. In that single instant, another piece of data logged into my mental archives.
“A woman. How unexpected.”
Lobelia looked genuinely taken aback, having apparently presumed with absolute conviction that the Oracle was a man. No doubt teasing me as her personal ‘Oracle’ all this time had ingrained an unconscious bias in her mind. I hadn't known either way, but her gender revelation hardly shocked me as much as it did Lobelia.
“You wretched impostor.”
“Bullshit! Blame me for whatever else you want, but that accusation is completely bogus!”
I have never once called myself an Oracle! Never! I denied it every single damn time, but none of these bastards ever believed me!
“To resort to foul vulgarities without provocation… What a man devoid of dignity.”
“Your Highness, she's an enemy.”
“That judgment is clouded by personal resentment. While there is hostility, I sense no murderous intent, so why not talk it out like civilized people?”
“And just who do you think put me in this—!”
“Are you implying this is my fault? The fault of me, Lobelia Vicious van Miltonia, Third Imperial Princess of the Miltonia Empire?”
“…Perish the thought.”
The future of this Empire is pitch-black. And my own future is already shrouded in darkness.
“Impostor. I shall grant you a single chance. A contest. Let us settle through duel which of us is the true Oracle.”
With a crisp snap, the Oracle drew something from inside her cloak. While I couldn't be entirely sure, it looked an awful lot like a tarot card. How absurd.
“What, are you suggesting we have a bet on who reads fortunes better?”
BOOM!
In that split second, something whistled past my ear and struck the boulder behind me, obliterating it into powdery rubble.
A trickle of blood traced down my cheek. The card that had rested in the Oracle's hand was nowhere to be seen. As if nothing extraordinary had occurred, she slid another card from her robe.
Ah. She's THAT kind of fighter? When she said ‘duel,’ she meant an actual, literal duel to the death?!
“…I concede.”
“Are you not giving up far too quickly?”
“How on earth am I supposed to beat that? Your Highness, she pulverizes boulders with playing cards!”
What the hell was that woman on?! Even if I swung a sword backed by all the offensive magic I could muster, I couldn't generate destructive force anywhere close to that!
“A base fraud through and through—quick to surrender. If you have gleaned any lesson from this encounter, refrain from impersonating me ever again.”
“Hold on just a minute! Who on earth told you that garbage? I never claimed to be you in the first place!”
“Someone of my standing has no need to rely on physical ears to perceive the truth.”
“Cut the bullshit! If you never heard me say it, how can you claim I'm impersonating you?!”
Are you seriously framing me as an impostor based purely on circumstantial hearsay?!
“Wait. I, for one, am not convinced you are the Oracle. At least from where I stand, Yohan appears far closer to the genuine article.”
“……”
At that crucial juncture, Lobelia poured oil straight into the fire. She had the audacity to look at the real Oracle and escalate the situation by insinuating she was a fake! Does this woman genuinely want to watch that lunatic murder me right here on the spot?!
“Do you possess any proof that you are the Oracle? Yohan here has already predicted the future with unerring precision.”
Ah. I see. Lobelia was aiming to squeeze information out of the genuine Oracle. By the looks of it, the cloaked woman was about to vanish into thin air, so Lobelia intended to milk whatever foresight she could before that chance evaporated.
“Lobelia Vicious van Miltonia.”
“Yes?”
Whether she had fallen for Lobelia's provocation or simply indulged her, the Oracle spoke of the future she perceived:
“You will fail.”
“In what manner? I would prefer a more detailed explanation.”
Even when told she was doomed to fail, Lobelia didn't so much as blink, calmly demanding specific details. I already knew it, but this princess truly was no ordinary creature.
“A burning imperial palace. Corridors hung with corpses. An audience chamber stained with blood. Emperor Abraham will sever your neck.”
“Good. That certainly carries far more credibility than the nonsense I usually hear. Most of all, the part about His Imperial Majesty taking my life.”
“……”
“That said, when having a conversation between persons, should you not at least show your face?”
“There is no need for you to know at this time.”
“Having secrets may be charming, but harboring too many invites suspicion.”
Lobelia clenched her fists. Did she intend to take her alive? Arcs of crimson lightning crackled and danced across her knuckles. Yet, at that very second—
Craaaack!
Spiders of fractured space raced outward, centering on the Oracle before our eyes. It was a surreal spectacle, as though we had been gazing at her through a pane of glass that had just shattered.
Shatter!
The fissures swallowed her figure whole. With a crystalline crunch, space broke apart, and the Oracle dissolved into nothingness—as if she had been merely an image cast upon a broken mirror.
“Now that is a rare trick…”
Lobelia reached out to catch even a single fragment of the shattered space, but the shards melted into thin air before her fingers could brush them.
“Haah…”
Lobelia pressed a hand to her forehead, then sank straight onto the grass.
“Are you alright, Your Highness? The Oracle didn't do something to you, did she? Can you stand?”
“…This is the first time I have ever seen you fret over me so.”
“If my sole bodyguard collapses in the middle of a perilous forest, my own neck is on the line, isn't it?”
“Spoken like your true self. Haha…”
She lowered her hand from her brow and gazed up at the canopy above. Wait, is she actually injured?
“It is merely that too many abnormal events have transpired all at once as of late. I find myself somewhat fatigued. And most of those troubles, I might add, stemmed from you.”
“That is terribly unfair.”
“Keep nursing your grievances, then.”
First the business with Cult, then the suffocating war of nerves between Ariel and Yuna… and now the Oracle had personally manifested. Unlike before, too many unpredictable variables were exploding simultaneously. There hadn't even been time to formulate a proper response. If some group had simply launched an outright terrorist attack, we could have just traded blows and called it a day. But these complicated entanglements were a whole different nightmare.
“Could you lend me your shoulder for a moment?”
“…Are you really that drained?”
“Just help me to my feet.”
“Well, if that's all…”
I draped the slumped princess's arm over my shoulder and hoisted her upward. She was lighter than I expected. Or maybe that was only natural. It wasn't as if Lobelia's frame was drastically larger than Ariel's. I had probably just perceived her as imposing because of her overwhelming presence. Once she was back on her feet, Lobelia let out a quiet sigh.
“Contemplating what lies ahead gives me a pounding headache.”
“I feel the exact same way.”
“Hearing you say that, it seems you and I share quite a few similarities.”
“Not in the slightest, Your Highness.”
Where did she get off trying to lump us into the same boat? Undeterred by my flat rejection, Lobelia smirked and pressed on.
“No, you are surprisingly—”
Or rather, it would be more accurate to say she intended to press on. Lobelia froze mid-sentence, her lips sealing shut as she stared straight ahead. Still supporting her weight, I belatedly followed her gaze.
“Ariel. This… is a misunderstanding.”
“…Yuna. Whatever you're about to say, could you please just… not say it, and keep quiet?”
Standing right there was Ariel, staring at us with a completely stunned, blank expression—and beside her was Yuna, sporting the devilish grin of a cat that had just found the world's most entertaining prey.