Clink!
A golden coin was tossed in the air and caught by a white gloved hand.
Although the sky was dark, the coin’s round shape was clear in the fox’s yellow eyes.
Henry Fox was crouching closely to the ground, next to him were two whimpering small foxes. Three of them fearfully glanced at a tall man dressed in a light grey suit, who was playing with the money that he took from Henry. The mysterious man – the fourth “fox” – was a man who had a fox head.
The creature, who was far from the definition of humanity, raised the bag of gold on one hand, while holding a woman's head on the other hand as if to compare the two objects’ weights. Its golden eyes coldly glared at three fearful hostages. Then, the fox man nodded in approval.
In the wood of old pines that were engrossed in mystery, the darkness that covered all the moon and stars, the interaction between them was chillingly ominous.
Henry heavily exhaled. He had just made a deal with a devil! A fox-devil!
The thief only wanted to scurry away from this place as soon as possible. If the devil only wanted money, he was happy to give it every penny that he had, as long as it did not kill him or his pets. He was the famous thief of Northern Lumovas, the Fox!... Maybe he should change his nickname after this. Anyway, just a few coins, Henry could easily give up on them. The man pulled his long ginger beard in stress.
At that moment, the woman's head smiled eerily. Her two main eyes were focusing on Henry, but the little eyes in the cracks on her face had diverted their gazes on the unconscious bandits lying around.
[https://i.pinimg.com/564x/6e/fd/e4/6efde472a23a0eb30a6a98c771ee6c03.jpg]
(“Ah… I should trade equally…Take them with you to get the bounty reward, will you?”)
As her buzzing voice reached Henry and the foxes’ ears, they trembled in utmost fear. Henry’s jaws uncontrollably shook.
“Of- o- of course… Absolutely!” – He quickly answered.
He had never encountered such a nightmarish monster before. Not its appearance was scariest, it was the interaction between them that actually scared him more. Henry lived in Northern Lumovas which was full of monsters, for which he was familiar with horrible looks and power of those foul creatures, but none of them was intelligent enough to catch him.
[https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1a/3a/9b/1a3a9bc152487ef136878f5ceed1e60f.jpg]
("Thank you.")
The head said politely in her daunting tone, then disappeared from the fox man’s hand.
As the head disappeared, Henry sensed that the surroundings were no longer imprisoning. He looked around. Indeed, the dense darkness wall around them had dispersed. Henry could now see the trails in the woods again. The monster must have withdrawn its power.
The fox-headed man waved its hand to say goodbye. It then stepped back into the pine forest’s shadow and swiftly vanished.
“Gasp! I can go now!”
Henry frantically stood up and ran away with his two foxes…
However, after a few minutes, he returned to drag the unconscious bandits away. Bounty reward was a big money that completely beat Henry’s fear, even though he did not really trust the monster’s words. Of course, he had cautiously checked the surroundings to see if the monster was still there before deciding to get the bandits.
Little did he know, the fox-headed man was still there, hiding on a thick pine’s branch. The fox’s ears twitched when it heard Henry’s grumbles.
“I will report this monster to the Death temple… No, I shouldn’t reveal myself. I’ll tell this to the town’s guards, then they will report to the temple… Urgh, I wonder if I’ll be cursed for giving the devil money. Maybe it can find me again through the smell on my bag! It’s possible… ”
After loading a bunch of bandits on his cart, Henry quickly left in a hurry.
_
Eithne rolled her eyes in silence.
She was too desperate for money, so she ‘pre-claimed’ the bounty reward of the bandits from Henry Fox, a man that she coincidentally found near her place. However, her head had scared him so much that she gave up on having a proper greeting. Out of guilt, she just wanted to leave early so that the poor man could relax, but she should have threatened him not to disclose this matter.
Actually, it did not really matter. The War temple would soon spread her information to other temples to hunt her down.
“I should go before the Death priests find me…”
Eithne swiftly jumped on tree branches to move further from the previous fighting spot. Having a strong body was so convenient that Eithne had completely forgotten the feeling of being a normal human in the modern world who could not even climb a tree. When she found a secluded hole between the tree trunks, Eithne hid herself in there.
“I have to divine about Rigel’s situation. Big fox, please control the body until I awake.” - Eithne told the fox attendant’s soul.
“Sure.” – The fox attendant replied.
Eithne quickly prepared for a divination. She was worried about the weak children who ran away from the killers. Even if the protagonists were less likely to die due to their plot armor, Eithne still wanted to make sure.
“I’ll pray for the Order’s protection this time. Hopefully I won’t be cursed by Fate again.” – Eithne thought.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
She was still traumatized by her previous sudden death.
Her soul let go of the body’s control.
Eithne then prayed:
“Hmm--
Order… I beg for thy grace…
The Order who reigns above all rules
From your eternal throne,
Please guide me through the sea of Fate…
I seek the fate of the lost children,
Whose names are Rigel Solinue, Noori Gynren, Azriel Daneva…
Where are they…”
Darkness unraveled. Eithne then heard a faint sound of metal chains far away.
Clang clang… clang… clang…
She channeled her spiritual power to open all of her nine eyes.
From the dark, the light manifested brightly in front of her eyes. Eithne’s soul entered the twisting light, then the light expanded into a wide space like she had travelled to a separate world.
She found herself floating in midair. Like a god looking beneath her feet, she saw a wide area of pine forest was destroyed by a hideous monster with long arms. Then, she saw the little children were swallowed by the monster.
In the tragedy, a miracle happened. Two strangers appeared to save the children, and they brutally killed the monster. Eithne faintly heard their voices. What she heard was just enough to know who the saviors were, as if Fate had specifically filtered the sound to suit her question.
“Are you… the Death priests?”
Eithne was relieved. Rigel and his friends had been rescued by the Death priests, then she did not need to worry anymore.
“I have known enough.”
She was about to end the divination, when she noticed the faint sounds of metal chains.
Clang… clang clang… clang…
Clang… clang clang… clang…
“I wonder where it came from?” – Eithne tried to listen to the sound. “I think it’s above my head.”
She looked up but only saw a vast blue sky. There was nothing unusual about it.
“Hm..”
Eithne decided to venture around a little bit. With the Order’s protection, her courage was boosted. Her soul floated up to the sky, until the illusion of the world beneath her feet gradually dispersed. The higher she went, the clearer the sound of chains was.
The series of crisp clanging continued in a lazy rhythm.
Clang… clang clang… clang…
Clang… clang clang… clang…
The blue sky gradually disappeared in Eithne’s vision as she flew higher and higher. She imagined the darkening blue stratosphere like how she saw in television in the modern world, but on the contrary, it was becoming brighter and warmer. The sky’s hue was seeping toward the warmer shade of yellow, then orange, then red…
Eithne stopped when she entered the sangria red sky’s level.
In front of her eyes were countless of humongous crimson chains stretching across the space above, like an endless borderline to stop the venturers from entering the other side of the space.
“Could this be… the Order’s chains?”
Eithne felt the power from the gigantic chains was connected to her somehow.
She guessed it was the power of the Order whom she prayed to.
Occasionally, the chains slightly swung and clashed against each other, producing the sounds that Eithne was pursuing.
Clang… clang… clang…
Eithne’s soul approached the chains. Each chain ring was as huge as an elephant, scaring her who was very small compared to their size. However, the chains did not completely cover the sight behind them. She could still take a peek through a chain’s gap.
She saw a sky full of crimson threads falling down. Eithne noticed a similar thread also extended from her heart toward the boundless space above. She could not see where those threads started from, but she could see millions of them withered into ashes in each second, replaced by other millions of new threads sprouted down.
When Eithne focused her gaze at the threads, her nine eyes started to receive different images. One was about a dog happily chewing a bone, one was a newsboy running in heavy rain, one was a rich widow flaunting about her wealth, a laughing criminal on his last trial, a weeping child in mud, an ant carrying a tiny breadcrumb, a cat licking its tail, a swimming frog, and many other faces…
“Is this… the Sea of Fate?”
Eithne speculated. She closed seven of her eyes to prevent herself from breaking down for receiving too much information.
The crimson threads were the fate lines of all the creatures in this world. They would intertwine occasionally, representing the fateful encounters of lives.
Eithne looked at the magnificent net of destiny in awe.
“It was like a dream…”
The sea of Fate was not dormant. As if the space was windy, the threads of lives would frequently sway like the wide grass fields trailing on the hilltops. Whenever a ‘wind’ went by and the threads swayed in waves, several threads would be uprooted toward the ‘wind’s direction’ and withered into ashes.
That meant some lives had been lost in the sea of Fate.
Eithne silently witnessed the ashes lightly vanished in the space.
Those threads all seemed too fragile.
A sense of insecurity circled in her mind. Eithne observed her own destiny thread, which was similarly thin.
Eithne could see a complicated net of many other threads intertwining with her fate. Unlike many other threads, her destiny line was branched into three bodies, including the nine-tailed fox attendant, the fox attendant in the mysterious castle, and her original body with only her head remaining.
When Eithne observed the closet threads that intertwined with her thread, many faces appeared in her head.
“… Some insects that I accidentally stepped on, two foxes, the ginger-haired man, … Hesata, Demir, Aubrey, Rigel, Azriel, Noori… Huh!?”
She saw a tall statue-like figure wearing a simple draped garment, whose head was holed in the middle… Its hand reached toward her. From behind the figure, two monstrous human faces flew to her direction and opened their pitch-black mouths.
“The unknown God!”
Eithne’s irises shrank. She quickly retreated from the chains to stop seeing the illusion, but the monstrous heads had become real.
CLANG!!!
The teeth of two heads bit onto the gigantic chains.
Eithne held her breath.
“They are on the other side!”
Thankfully, the unknown God’s monsters appeared in the sea of Fate. She was separated from them by the Order’s chains.
Eithne saw the illusory world of divination started to crumble. Her soul felt back to the ground, going farther and farther from the crimson red sky. Colors flew backward from her eyes – orange, yellow then the blue sky, and the entire scenery of the pine forest where three children were talking with two priests broke down. Everything went back to the original darkness.
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