[TLQ-B2] 7. The Garden (Patreon)

VII

The Garden

The tip of the boy’s sword swayed as he waltzed across the grassland.

‘Ruelle,’ I thought.

It must be a coincidence, no? Naming a child after the Goddess of Light wasn’t uncommon. As a matter of fact, Ruelle and variations of the names were the most popular name to give to girls.

And yet I was following him. The situation was just too strange. From the way Grandmother spoke, no one else should’ve been in this place. Not only that, but I was being offered ‘lunch.’ Any normal person would mention that being a thing if they sent you into a sealed chamber to complete a task. A ‘by the way, since it will likely take you a while, I arranged for lunch to be served every day you spend in that place…even though time passes differently and you’re mostly a spirit.’

…No. It didn’t make any sense at all. Had Grandmother not known about this? The proposition seemed impossible. She’d created the chamber.

‘With the help of the spirits of the land,’ I added. If the chamber could only be used once, which was likely, then she wouldn’t have tested it herself. Meaning this could be an extra task the spirits put into the ritual.

Or a trap.

My gaze narrowed. Though we were walking, the plane changed around us as if we were moving at the top speed of a cart. Titan didn’t make a comment of it, so it must be normal.

“Titan,” I said.

“Hhm?” the boy’s hair trailed in a non-existent wind as he turned.

“About lunch,” I said. “Is anyone else going to be there?”

“Most of us,” he said. “Though David is not showing up. Father Lloyd sent him on a special mission up north. Something to do with a disturbance around the barriers.”

Father Lloyd? I kept my expression neutral as I wracked my brain. Thoughts of an elder man with long white hair in flowing robes crossed my mind. His fond smile beamed. His laugh was heavy but sonorous—music to the ears. He was who we Children considered our Father.

‘These memories…’ I thought.

Placing extra tasks in the ritual was one thing. But how had they managed to inject memories into my head? For that, they would’ve needed to meddle with my soul. Something like that wouldn’t have escaped my notice.

‘So many things are off.’

The speeding landscape slowed down. Green blurs (of the grassland) morphed into duller, staler colours. The warm hue of sand, the bare white of stonework. The fresh smell of upturned earth wafted over us. Buildings formed, too. Single story structures in the dozens with arcs and smooth polishing.

Roads carved through their centre and split the village in two. Smiling men pulled ox carts full of foodstuff, and waved at their fellow men and women, who returned their greeting with even broader smiles.

Rays pierced through the small cluster of clouds overhead and fell on my shoulders, which my dress exposed. I relaxed on instinct.

“Titan, welcome back!” A girl on the side of the road giggled.

“Good day, Chelsea. How’s Doug?”

From her answer, that was her cat. Apparently, the fellow had trouble eating lately.

“I’ll ask Joy to take a look, okay?” Titan said. “She’ll fix him up in no time.”

Joy was…another one of the Children.

I frowned. Who were these ‘Children?’

‘Father’s chosen.’ my memories answered.

I side-eyed Titan. The well-muscled, towering boy had more things going for him than his physique. It was faint, but there was a presence near his navel. More specifically, inside.

‘A core. He has a core.’

My eyes widened. It was my first time seeing someone else that had one in this realm. Not even Leah had one, and the mage was a fanatic at slinging all manner of spells.

I almost identified him here and now but decided against it. He may be able to sense it. Later, when I found an opportunity to be discreet.

Controlling my breathing, I returned my attention to the road. Everywhere Titan walked, the villagers stopped and greeted him. Some greeted me, too, albeit it with less gusto.

“It’s because you’re seen as such a downer,” Titan sighed after finishing another short conversation with a villager.

My brow rose.

“You spend more time speaking to statues than people,” he continued. “It scares the townsfolk.”

“I’m merely focusing on my tasks,” I said. The urge defend myself wasn’t wholly my own.

“I know. However, that doesn’t mean you should neglect the villagers. It’s our duty to protect Kreed, but also to keep its citizens happy.”

I didn’t respond.

‘Kreed.’ The capital of the foulbloods, which were the faction ruling Vrost from the far east. They were mostly a non-factor, given how isolated we were, so their rule over us was mostly in-name, but the fact remained we were their vassals.

‘Foulsbloods are a race similar to elves in apperance.’ But with greyer skin.

The villagers were all human.

‘Am I in a vision of the past?’

Or an alternate timeline? The Duchy’s technology wasn’t much more advanced than this—I had plans to change that soon—plans which begun with getting Winterforge under my control. The goal was some ways away since, unless I had a good excuse to annex the village, the courts of Vrost would have my head if I so much as stationed soldiers around Winterforge and spit in their general direction.

Our paved road opened up into a square. A market square, from the looks of it. Stalls were set up around the sides and banquet tables in the centre. The stalls were unmanned as were the tables. Except for a single one.

Ten children chatted, plates in front of them topped up with bread, slices of different kinds of meat and lettuce. There was a big pot simmering on a stove. I studied that. The pot was sitting on an iron holder while the flames heating it from underneath appeared from thin air. As far as I could tell, no one was casting a spell either.

Titan headed for an empty seat.

“Huh,” one the children said. “You’re early. Usually takes you longer to drag Illya out of her cave.” A girl wearing a set of thick spectacles. She was on the chubbier side and had freckles. Rosalind, her name was.

Titan chuckled. “I got lucky today.”

There were two free seats to the left of Rosalind. Left empty on purpose, for that was where Titan and I always sat.

…

Interactions between me and titan surfaced in my head. I stared after the boy as he sat beside Rosalind, who elbowed his side and raised her brows, drawing an awkward chuckle out of him.

“Your food is going cold.”

I turned. A boy sipped gingerly from a bowl of soup. Liquid leaked past his lips, slipped down the side of his neck, and fell on his robe. A heartbeat passed until I realised I couldn’t describe a single one of his features. No. It’s not that I couldn’t. It’s that I couldn’t see him. Every time I directed my gaze at his face, my mind returned the image of some average looking person. But the image was blurry—a projection of many faces I’d seen over the course of my life.

‘It’s not an ability.’

I also couldn’t sense his presence despite looking at him. If he hadn’t spoken to me, I wouldn’t have even known he existed.

‘Fearsome.’

Dirk. The child whom Father had designated the dominion of assassination. Dirk wasn’t even his real name—no one knew what it was.

Inclining my head, I stepped past him, took my seat, and eyed my plate. ‘I’m not really a fan of bread.’ I’d figured that out after having dinner in Xun’s tower. At first, I thought it was because military bread was stale and old, but he’d served us freshly baked food, so it was not because of the freshness of the product. I didn’t hate it, just didn’t love it either.

Titan must’ve caught the change in my expression.

“Want me to grab something else for you?” He’d already shoved a large piece of bread in his mouth, so he mumbled his words as he chewed. A crumb fell from his mouth onto his chest. He’d noticed it but didn’t bother looking down.

My gaze remained on him. Their appearance wasn’t alike, but that was such Lucian behaviour. He cared not a lick about our clan being royalty or the territory of pretence that came with that status. I couldn’t count how many times he and my father had fought because the idiot decided to embarrass us during an official meeting. The remembrance made me huff. Though it created headaches for us, his antics were quite funny and enlightening if I was being honest. The number of faces I’d seen my Father make, which I never thought were possible…

My lips curved. “At least finish chewing, you dunce. You’re embarrassing me. Also—” I plucked the crumb from his robe and ate it myself “—don’t waste food.”

I took my utensils in hand, cut up a slab of red beef, and dressed my bread.

‘Ah,’ I thought while applying a layer of butter. I’d gotten so lost in the memory I acted as I would with Lucian.

I glanced up. Forks had stopped midway to their targets. Chewing had paused. The entire table stared at me, then turned to Titan, who flew into a cough and slapped his chest.

“Hold on, I got you!” Rosalind jumped to her feet. She was too short to reach Titan’s chest, however, so she had to stand on the bench as she helped him expel the bread stuck in his throat.

‘Well,’ I thought. ‘What’s done is done.’ I continued eating.

I stifled a moan. “This is good.” It was better than anything I’d eaten before, though I still didn’t like the bread.

My stray comment surprised the table more than my previous actions did, it seemed.

A burly boy (Grimjow) wearing a half robe that showed his chest spoke up. “Oy, oy, did a demon possess her?”

“I don’t know,” another disbelieving soul at the table went. “She usually ignores anything we say.”

“Katana…” Grimjow said.

The girl in question had a wholly red eye that fixed me in place. “She’s not possessed.”

Grimjow turned to another seated further down the bench. A petite figure whose entire face was wrapped in bandages. “She’s not being mind-controlled either,” she said in a soft voice.

A discussion sparked, led by Grimjow, and the Children bet on what could’ve gotten into me today. The entire time, one person in particular was keeping their wide eyes on me.

She was the sole person at the table of similar height as Titan. Her dress was unlike that of the others. Golden threads were woven through the fabric into swirls. Her pupils were piercing, their colour similar to the threads. Her face wasn’t that striking. Prettier than regular, perhaps, but nothing to write home about. But the halo over her head cast it in a beneficial light and lend her a presence a more sculpted face wouldn’t have.

‘Ruelle,’ I thought at once. There’s no one else that could be.

My heart slammed in my chest as she continued to stare at me. Sweat loosened the hold on my utensils and a droplet passed down the small of my back.

‘That’s her alright.’

Every Child at this table had a domain ascribed to them. Hers was that of Light. The Holy medium, which was the antithesis of my own. There was not a lick of ill intent behind her gaze, yet I was breaking out in a cold sweat because the mere presence of her element was an affront to my own.

My eyelids narrowed. ‘So the deities are real.’ Or were real, at least. There was no telling if this place was real, even if it did feel too authentic not to be. But even if I assumed it was, this could be millions of years in the past.

I’d never visited Kreed, but it certainly didn’t look anything like this.

A girl beside Ruelle shook her out of her stupor, and she quickly wrenched her head away. I swallowed my food and continued eating. Not a single priest in the modern day had ever confessed to seeing or hearing of Ruelle.

So, if she had existed at some point, where did she go, and how did she become the goddess of an entire faith?

I mulled over that question as I continued eating.

Perhaps it was time to fish for some answers while I was here.