“Do you see anything?”
Barty the Fox asked Eithne.
Eithne – a decapitated head blankly replied:
“Do you think that I can look further than you? You are holding me so all I can see is the direction you face me to.”
“Oh.”
Barty held Eithne’s head as tall as it could, on the tips of its toes.
“Yeah, the view is better up here. But I don’t see anything.”
Eithne said.
They were looking for one missing corrupted eye in the pine wood, and that small object had been completely out of their sight. Eithne decided to use divination. Seeing the sea of Fate too often sickened her, but what else could be done in such a situation?
Eithne repeated in her head all the misfortunes she encountered in the sea of Fate, to avoid making stupid mistakes again in divination.
‘A safe divination, I beg the Order. Where’s the eye?’
At this point, Eithne was too tired to pray in long lines to the Order. She spoke the mysterious castle’s ancient language. Perhaps the Order had a mutual feeling with her about long prayers, They let her quickly receive the divination result. In her mind, Eithne saw the scene where Barty was holding her head up high, and ‘Eithne-from-one-minute-ago’ said: “Yeah, the view is better up here. But I don’t see anything.”
Even her sarcastic tone was repeated exactly the same.
‘Now that’s strange.’
Eithne frowned. She tried to reset the divination, but still getting the same result, just like watching a replaying video of them at that specific time. Having watched herself saying the exact same thing five times, Eithne ended divination and told Barty the Fox about it.
“Someone is interfering with your divination.”
Barty gave a conclusion based on her description.
“Someone has distorted your divination’s target.”
The situation became more serious than they thought.
It was imaginable that the sea of Fate was similar to a recording system, and somebody was hacking their way in her searching input. That person was impossible to be the Primordial Serpent, since She was already captured by the Order.
Eithne squinted her eyes.
The name “Primordial Serpent” or “Mother of Void” did not appear in the general history that Eithne Noceur had learnt. If there existed a particular party that was helping the Primordial Serpent, she suspected it would be a mysterious, likely very ancient, individual or group. It could be a cult worshipping the oldest God ever. If anything, they probably had noticed Eithne’s existence and been targeting her.
“How strong must they be to interfere with my divination?” – asked Eithne.
“They must be either a group of high-grade priests or a demi-god.”
Barty replied. The Fox balanced Eithne’s head on their hat so that their hands could be free to do the contemplating pose. If Eithne still had her body, she would do the same.
“I honestly have no idea who they are. I didn’t witness how the Primordial Serpent grew in this world, so I don’t know Her acquaintances.” - Barty sighed.
Eithne noticed the Fox’s strange choice of words.
“Witness Her growth? Did you witness Her birth?” – She looked down at the Fox’s pointy nose from the top of its hat.
“Technically, yes.”
“Do you know her age?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m also wondering.”
“Huh…”
“When She was born, I fell into a long slumber. I only woke up because the Order told me to help you.”
“…”
Eithne observed the Fox’s flickering ears, wondering what might be the thing that Barty’s body action indicated. The hairy face of a fox was hard to read.
“Do you know any way to stop the disturbance in my divination?” – Eithne asked .
“With my current power, I cannot do anything. My power will always equal your power. The stronger you are, the more capable I am. You are weak so I’m quite useless right now.”
“….”
Eithne looked at the bright clear sky above her head, trying to ignore Barty’s remark.
Ha! Sorry for being weak.
“Anyway, you can use instruments or artifacts to protect your divination from interference. But as you know, I’ve just woken up from the castle recently. I know a lot about divination techniques because the Order taught me, but I’m clueless about the outside world’s magic technology. Therefore, I will count on you to tell me about it.”
Eithne kept her eyes on the far sky, silently hiding the comment that she wished to say: I don’t know either.
The War temple was not an expert on divination and related magic tools. Mostly, what the War priests knew were combat-related tools and psychology to predict the opponent’s next move very accurately so that it could almost resemble a divination. Eithne seriously needed to do deeper research on Peace temple and Death temple to see if they were good on this, but as soon as she realized her current state – a decapitated head having a face of a ‘dead priestess’, accessing higher level of information was extremely hard. If she was still priestess ‘Eithne Noceur’, she could just send a letter to other temples to inquire about this.
‘Why do I regret having left the War temple?’ – Eithne thought.
Come to think of it, the life before she abandoned her “home” was much sweeter than the life she had now. The War temple had clean bedrooms, toilets, cooked food, stable allowance, and a scary High Priest. But hey, scary High Priest couldn’t do anything to her if Eithne had done nothing wrong. Now she could not even remember why she had insisted on leaving the temple by all means.
‘That parasitic Primordial Serpent must have messed up my brain back then.’
Given that the Primordial Serpent used to take up half of Eithne’s soul, it wasn’t fallacious to suspect her behavior was manipulated by the “other half’s personality”.
When Eithne found out the existence of the Primordial Serpent, she had discovered abnormality in her way of thinking. Talking about the past, her opposing attitude to the War temple was abnormally strong, but logically, Eithne shouldn’t have too much resentment toward the War temple if Demir Noceur had not wronged her yet. She used to be very afraid of the High Priest, that just a glance from him could startle her for a whole day. Moreover, Eithne possessed an odd tendency toward uncontrollable violence and hatred- which she initially thought was the dark power’s side effect. Her aversion toward the War temple became clear when Hesata – a War priest stood in her way of killing. At that time, all her fear and indignation had strangely magnified, fueling her to run away from the War temple.
Eithne knew that the Primordial Serpent was not on good terms with God. She recalled the vision of the sacred War temple, where Eithne picked up a strange mirror and recognized her half-eaten soul by the vicious Primordial Serpent. The hostility and struggle from the Primordial Serpent’s soul toward the War temple which Eithne sensed on that day strengthened her speculation that the War God who she used to doubt was a real deal, and the Serpent was much weaker than a real God.
‘My personal dislike of the War God must have added up with Primordial Serpent’s feeling. I was dramatic in everything…’
After the Primordial Serpent’s corruption had been tamed in her mind, Eithne realized how differently she could have acted if she was truly herself in the past.
‘Oh well.’
Though Eithne was reminiscing about the convenient life, she couldn’t change the reality so she quickly gave up. She couldn’t just blame the Primordial Serpent on everything. Her stupidity should be counted in.
After all, Fate had designed an inescapable path that she was too scared to turn back…
Barty shrugged.
“Well, if that eye succeeds in finding a host, karma will bring it back to you eventually. Right now, we can only pray for our luck to meet it again before things go too far.”
Eithne shut her eyes. Oh, the stress from everything was causing her hair loss. She wanted no more of this hassle.
Barty proudly stated:
“At least you have me and the Order on your back. The people wanting to kill you can’t find you through divination because the Order protects you. You could’ve have died long ago with your negligence.”
Exhaustion corroded Eithne’s emotions. What Barty said was true and she accepted how weak she was, but it didn’t mean she was happy with this outcome.
She took a deep breath as if doing so could free her from the troubles. However, the harsh reality existed like a heavy boulder on her head, squeezing out from her mind just the craziest thing to say in this situation.
“Karma… how do I increase the karma’s power?” - She murmured.
“Hm?”
“How do I increase the karma power so that the eye is pulled back to me immediately?”
“Do you want to die??”
Barty knocked on Eithne’s head.
“Ouch.”
“Don’t be impatient to solve everything. Do you even understand what karma is?”
“Surely not as much as you do…”
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“Then don’t be stupid and listen to me!”
Eithne obediently kept silent and lay still on Barty’s hat.
“Karma is the consequential force generated by a creature’s actions and accumulated through a soul’s current life and perpetual transmigration. Good deeds will give you good karma which will attract luck in the future, bad deeds will bring bad karma which push your fate toward misfortune and conflict. Fortune or misfortune, which one can happen first- is random. You can rely on a God to delay deadly disasters, but you can’t escape from them forever. That’s why you need power to overcome bad karma.”
“Now that’s theory. In reality, there are many more variables which can change the karma flow. An action needn’t be specifically bad to lead to big conflict, a big conflict isn’t necessarily bad karma. Every action will have its consequence in Fate. Karma represents causes and consequences. It’s also a connection between you and something – for example, the missing corrupted eye, which you shall destroy or tame in the future.”
“Karma between you and the Primordial Serpent will come to you someday, and you will have to be the one who ends it.”
“…”
Barty the Fox was lecturing without pausing. Eithne could stay focused in the first few minutes, but then her attention was gradually chipped away by tiredness after a long battle with the Primordial Serpent.
Slowly, Eithne closed her eyes to give in to sleepiness.
It took Barty ten minutes later to realize that the head on its hat had been unconscious. The Fox grumbled:
“Gyah! How can you sleep during my lecture? It won’t be good for you if you ignore my words!”
“Is my voice as sweet as a lullaby? I thought only Amongratus talks people to sleep. Urgh, turns out I’m boring too.”
“Waaaaake uppppp-----”
Eithne flinched when Barty shook its head. However, she was defeated by sleepiness again. Before her mind shut down, Eithne pondered.
‘Karma was something accumulated from past lives. If my previous life is fabricated by the Primordial Serpent, then where did my karma come from?’
If her past life wasn’t real, what did she do to deserve the hardship she had now?
For what reason did she have to suffer?
Too bad, Eithne had already fallen into deep sleep before she could get mad about this.
Barty called her a few times but did not hear her reply, so it couldn’t do anything else besides adjusting her head’s position on its hat. The Fox then continued their mission alone.
Tap…
Tap…
Tap…
Tapping their cane on the ground, the fox-headed man jogged between the pines throughout the night. Their back was straight so that the woman’s head on their hat wouldn’t fall. Their steps matched the snoring rhythm of cozy squirrels in the wood, and the rusty dead leaves smashed under their feet didn’t disturb any midnight’s dreaming bird. The walk came to an end when morning arrived, and the Fox sat down on a fallen thick pine log at the unnamed wood’s border.
“Do you still want to see Raphael or not? Wake up.”
Barty knocked three times on Eithne’s head.
As Eithne slowly opened her eyes, the small Stero town was already right before them. Rowdy human sounds reminded her that it was not a dream. Gray smoke could be seen floating from tall chimneys and a vigorous peal of bronze bells could be heard echoing from the town into the wood. Barty’s nose quivered when it smelled humans. In the morning, the people’s smell was a mixture of bad morning breath, bodily secretion and lingering breakfast remains. Unlike the capital city where the nobles strictly followed etiquette, the locals in Stero town were mostly farmers and hunters who cared less about their appearance due to harsh weather. Not taking a shower in one or two days was normal, so Eithne and Barty could only blame their overly sensitive noses. They were near the pine forest, so the human’s pungency had been partly tempered by the frigid morning mist.
“I’m awake.” - Eithne replied to Barty.
Twenty steps away from where they were sitting, a group of merchants from the south was traveling on the road to the town’s main gate. They had three horse carriages to carry their heavy loads.
The wooden carriages’ wheels pressed on the rocky dirt path, crunching the soil under them.
Click… clack… click… clack… crack…
Even though the day was bright, nobody saw a fox-headed figure who perched a woman's head atop of their hat. Under the Fox’s feet, a murky puddle of darkness writhed, wherein many blinking eyes swam around like tadpoles. The dark domain was shrunk around Barty and Eithne to swallow all the noises they made, whereas the bizarre eyes were deflecting the light cast on them like little mirrors. Currently, they were almost invisible to normal gazes.
“Nice work.” - Eithne complimented.
Barty was controlling the dark domain.
Eithne had never thought the intractable dark domain could be so obedient as it was now. The dark domain originated from the Primordial Serpent’s power of Void, which always evoked her inner cruelty so she found it hard to control.
The darkness condensed like fine ink under the Fox’s feet, however, the best Eithne could do was spread them out like a fog around her body, not to mention the rebellious eyes of corruption that she newly obtained- which one of them had escaped.
The Fox just needed to press their shoe on the ground to make those nasty eyes acquiescent.
Barty the Fox was obviously content with her compliment. It snorted loudly.
“Hmph! Watch and learn. You’ve defeated the Primordial Serpent’s shadow in you, so you should be able to use their power.”
“You are the best!” – Eithne smiled.
Undoubtedly, the Fox was knowledgeable as an ancient existence.
“Eeeee…. - Whatever, I’m tired now. Can you take control of the body?”
“Alright. Switch my head in.”
Barty detached their fox head and placed Eithne’s head on their neck. When they were connected, Eithne immediately understood how to control the dark domain like the Fox, as if they shared the same memory.
What a cheat!
Eithne tried to balance Barty’s head on her head but she could not.
“Keh don’t drop my head!” - Barty squeaked. “Just put my head in the subspace pocket.”
What a shame, Eithne couldn’t learn the head-balancing trick. She had been amazed by how long Barty had kept her head on its hat. Barty strongly disapproved of her second try to put its head on hers, so Eithne put the fox head into the subspace.
“I’ll sleep now. Don’t wake me up in one hour.” - said Barty.
“Okay.”
Eithne smiled.
Quickly, she could hear Barty’s soft snoring. She carefully closed the subspace pocket, only then she quietly mumbled.
“How the hell it can use my power?”
Eithne’s smile crumbled.
She had never seen Barty use the dark domain before. Did the Fox not bother to hide their strength anymore? But this dark domain here clearly connected with her soul, so it was truly her own dark domain, not Barty’s original power.
Barty could use her power without her knowing. It had been using the dark domain during her sleep. Eithne must use a divination trick to borrow Barty’s ability, so she suspected that the Fox had undergone the same process to temporarily get her power. However, this speculation didn’t seem right since Barty didn’t suffer identity loss like Eithne did.
“What the hell?”
She let her face sink in her hands, sighing in stress.
Not just being able to use Eithne’s power, Barty could select a certain memory to put in her head like sharing a skill - and she didn’t have a chance to decide whether to accept it or not.
‘They have more control over me than what I can ever imagine. This’s insidious! They can take my power if they want. Showing off their ability is clearly a warning for not betraying them!’
This made Eithne confused why Barty even needed her if they were already overpowered like that. However, Barty said that the Order still chose Eithne to take the throne in the mysterious castle.
‘What do they actually want me to do? Why is the throne important?’
Eithne was so frustrated as she did not get the meaning of the throne. The mysterious castle with the golden throne was said to be the Primordial Serpent’s old territory, but now it had been taken by the two unfathomable godlike existences - Order and Chaos. Yet bafflingly, the Order wanted Eithne to sit on the castle’s throne.
The meaning of ‘sitting on the throne’ that the Fox said shouldn’t be interpreted as ‘making Eithne the ruler’. Barty had never promised Eithne any position, but it promised power. What if they only needed a strong puppet on the throne? What if the throne was a plate, and she would be a sacrificial chunk of meat on it?
Besides the godly existences, Barty the Fox also caused Eithne’s headache. Did they seriously only need her to follow the wish of the Order?
Barty’s words echoed in her mind:
“My power always equals yours.”
‘Equal my power? Then am I Barty’s power storehouse or something?’
She remembered having had awakened Barty the Fox by transferring Chaos elements to their body in the castle. It seemed that Eithne would strengthen Barty by the same method again, but they could actively take the Chaos elements themselves, no need for her action of transferring. Still, it was hard to understand why the Order did not make Barty the Fox - the God’s direct agent - strong from the start.
‘Everything in that castle are painfully complicated. Sitting on that throne wasn’t different from sitting on hot coals. At least I have gotten out of it. … Always equal my power? Sounds as if they are mirroring me.’
Eithne repeated in her head Barty’s words several times, trying to understand the underlying meaning.
‘…Always equals my power… Change alongside with me…’
While murmuring, she slowly looked down on the Fox's body.
Realization struck her mind, as she had just discovered that the body was strangely similar to priestess Noceur’s original body frame. It did not have any organ to define sex, but the body’s height, the length of arm, the size of shoulders, even the shape of hands, of knees, the bony wrist joint and the curves of the thumbs… were strangely familiar.
The oddly specific details on her old body that even Eithne sometimes overlooked them throughout her life, were all replicated on this new body.
She squeezed the arms to feel the realistic flesh, enduring a natural bodily discomfort that almost brought her soul back to the past, before she became a monster-like existence. Eithne’s head didn’t feel alienated from this body like before. It had only been seven days since Eithne borrowed this body, but the bodily difference between her and Barty was rapidly disappearing, to which her head developed a sense of belonging to Barty’s body like she found a home, settled down and didn’t want to leave.
‘This is wrong. I shouldn’t belong to this body! This body isn’t mine.’
It could be better for Eithne if she could save time and effort from generating a new body if she could just take Barty’s body. The temptation to do so, however, was a dangerous trap.
A horrendous thought burst out from her head in anxious mumbling:
“Throne!” - Eithne’s eyes shook. “It’s … the throne!!!”
The mysterious castle’s appearance had changed to adapt with her personality and power when Eithne sat on the throne and connected to them. It could be seen that the castle reflected her.
Barty the Fox represented the power of the mysterious castle. Their power also reflected Eithne’s power. They were perpetually connected to the nine-eyed throne, and Eithne had seen their Fate line rooted from the throne rather than the sea of Fate like normal creatures. To borrow Barty’s body, Eithne connected her fate thread with theirs to make the fox attendant her ‘avatar’.
However, before being her ‘avatar’, they were always the nine-eyed throne’s ‘avatar’.
‘This body… is always the throne itself!!!’
She had always been ‘on the throne’, and the real throne never left the mysterious castle.
Eithne gritted her teeth. In a short second, she could feel the invisible, tiny threads that tied her head down to Barty’s body like blood veins. Those ‘blood veins’ were the Order’s finest chains!
Though in different manners, Eithne was already tied down to ‘the throne’ like the Primordial Serpent.
“Fuck sake!!!”
She growled.
“Why have I only realized it now?”
Eithne did not want to end up like the Primordial Serpent, chained forever on that fucking throne!
Gasping for breath, she recalled the scene at the mysterious castle’s grand mirror portal, where cold crimson chains ensnared the Primordial Serpent on the nine-eyed golden throne. That magnificent mirror had left an indelible impression on Eithne that she couldn’t help but constantly think about it. A similarity between Eithne and the Primordial Serpent was they both sat on the same throne on the opposite sides of a mirror, but Eithne was still safe while the Primordial Serpent was completely crushed by the Order’s cruel chains on that throne. However, there was no guarantee that everything would stay the same, as long as Eithne was still stuck on that throne.
Eithne touched her neck. Her skin perfectly mended with this body’s skin. She wanted to dig her head out using fingernails, but the hands she was using belonged to the Fox so it didn’t follow her self-harming order.
“Goddamnit!!!”
Eithne had just realized she could only remove her head freely when Barty the Fox allowed her to do so. She had been locked to this body.
Back in the castle, Barty was the one who suggested Eithne connect their Fate threads together. She had been confident that ‘Barty’ was an innocent servant in the castle before they awaked as the Fox, that she had stepped into their trap voluntarily.
‘I couldn’t imagine an object like the throne can have its avatars back then!’
No wonder Barty’s body was changing to copy Eithne Noceur’s appearance. As a part of the castle that reflected her, Barty’s body changed to match her head.
“…”
Eithne hugged her head, sighing heavily.