Chapter 1240 — Return and the Distant Horizon

Before the towering, mountain-like throne, the figure of the unexpected visitor vanished in the blink of an eye into a sudden whirl of grayish-white sand, scattering like a phantom into nothing. The great black-bound book lying quietly atop the stone pillar seemed to freeze in astonishment for several seconds, and only when the wind rose again did Wilde's somewhat puzzled muttering drift from its pages: "It seemed as though someone was here just now..."

Hardly had he spoken when a voice, faintly languid yet majestic, came floating down from high above: "What did you say, Mr. Great Adventurer?"

At that, Wilde "looked" toward the throne before him. Upon that towering, soaring seat, the Lady of Night reclined lazily in a long gown black as the curtain of night, the grayish-white, rift-like patterns all curled quietly at the hem of her dress.

"Ah, Lady of Night, you've returned?" Wilde asked instinctively. "Where did you go just now?"

"I? I have been here all along, only dozing a little," the Lady of Night said unhurriedly. "Mr. Great Adventurer, were you asleep as well just now? Something about the way you spoke struck me as strange."

"I... perhaps I was dreaming?" The voice from the black-bound book carried obvious confusion. "I cannot say for certain... I seemed to see a visitor who had strayed into this place, and I spoke with her about something. She seemed a rather interesting girl, but then suddenly she was gone, and I cannot recall the particulars of our conversation... I also saw the throne empty, with you nowhere to be found, and I thought you had gone to the border again to deal with that fellow."

"Then it seems you truly are muddled with sleep, Mr. Great Adventurer," the Lady of Night's voice carried a hint of laughter. "It is not so easy for a 'guest' to appear here. If the mind of any sentient being did happen to slip into this place, I would certainly be the first to notice..."

At this the mistress of shadow paused briefly, then spoke with a trace of anticipation: "I recall that it is your turn to tell a story this time... Shall we continue the one from last time? About that river of ice flowing at the bottom of the magma, and the spirits within the ice river..."

Wilde's voice was somewhat helpless: "My lady, though it pleases me greatly that you enjoy my stories so, could you not appreciate ones a little more reasonable and rigorous? Even I find the tale of the magma ice river and the spirits absurd beyond measure... If it truly comes to that, shall I make up a new one for you?"

The Lady of Night laughed, and her laughter seemed to dispel the chaotic gloom that perpetually shrouded this desert sky. She lowered her head, like a dark cloud blanketing the earth suddenly descending in height, and deep within that vast, distant, and hazy shadow, Wilde saw a pair of amber eyes brimming with amusement yet bearing majesty, gazing down upon him.

"Mr. Great Adventurer, I have seen far too many rigorous and reasonable stories. In this tedious place, it is the absurd and the outlandish that are more interesting, is it not?"

...

Amber jolted awake. She opened her eyes and realized that the hard sensation beneath her body was no illusion — she was lying flat on her back upon the floor of the room, while the familiar chair had toppled not far away. It seemed she had fallen from the chair, and in the course of that fall had sunk into a peculiar dream — a fleeting instant magnified within the dream into an adventure lasting hours and a wondrous conversation, and then, as her body struck the ground, she had been startled from the dream.

"Is falling a shortcut to waking from a dream..." Amber could not help but recall the words she had heard before the throne, but soon she noticed the sunlight spilling into the room through the gap in the curtains — she remembered clearly that when she had first begun studying those grains of sand, it had still been a sunlit afternoon outside, and yet now... the glow of approaching dusk was pouring into the room.

"It seems those hours of experience were real, at least the passage of time was real..." Amber rubbed her temples, trying to clear her somewhat clouded head as quickly as possible. "Was I squeezed out from 'over there'?"

She mumbled to herself, using her own muttering to prod her mind awake, but in the very next second she seemed to sense something amiss, and her gaze suddenly fell upon her fingertips.

Scattered grains of sand lay about on the floor where her fingertips had touched — grains all coated in a grayish-white hue that seemed not to belong to this world. A kind of blurred grayish-white texture spread outward from those grains, "dyeing" a large patch of the originally dark brown floor grayish-white.

"...Oh heavens..." Amber's eyes flew wide in an instant as she realized that this time her reckless meddling might have gone too far — but just as she stared fixedly at that sand, an inexplicable sense of "connection" suddenly surfaced from the depths of her heart, making her feel that the sand scattered on the floor was no mere dead matter, but... as though it were an extension of a portion of her own power.

She stared intently at the sand, sensing that faint "connection" rising from her heart. It was a most subtle sensation, somewhat like her ordinary perception of the Shadow Realm, and yet far more concrete and distinct than that. She even felt she could control every grain of that sand, could even...

She gave a soft snap of her fingers, and the sand upon the floor vanished in an instant as if it had been a waking dream, while the grayish-white that had "dyed" the floor likewise restored itself bit by bit.

Amber opened her mouth, then looked again at her fingers, as though still unable to believe what had just happened. Then a thoughtful look came over her, and after a long while of pondering and sensing, she reached out and rubbed her fingers lightly — a wisp of grayish-white quicksand surfaced out of thin air like water, falling to the floor with a rustling sound. The quicksand gathered more and more, and that grayish-white "domain" spread swiftly through the entire room...

"Oh no, blast it..." Amber snapped to her senses in a flash, hurriedly halting her summoning of the sand, then flusteredly "recalling" it once more — fortunately nothing went wrong, and within half a minute the room gradually returned to its normal state.

Once everything had been restored, Amber sat somewhat dazedly on the floor. She remained in that state, pondering in place for who knew how long, before she finally slapped her thigh: "Well now, I've really become formidable!"

Then she sprang up from the ground and, all excitement, made to dash out the door: "Then this is something I've got to show off to Old Zongzi..."

She rushed headlong to the door, but at the very instant of pushing it open she seemed to recall something and stopped short. Struggling to suppress her somewhat excited mood, she muttered to herself: "No, no, I still need to test it more, figure out just what this thing is first. And more importantly, there's the intelligence — that book that calls itself Wilde..."

...

Cold wind swept across the desolate wasteland beneath the curtain of night. The clear, cold starlight of millions of years shone down upon this land as ancient as the starlight itself. Victoria stood upon the towering walls of New Agundor, looking inward at the crude yet magnificent houses arrayed in rows, their countless lamps and lanterns illuminating this lone city that sheltered all living things through the cold winter night. Then she looked outward beyond the walls, at the wilderness stretching away under the starry night, the rolling land scarred everywhere with the scorch marks left by war. Everything in the distance seemed already swallowed by darkness and cold, and only the ruined hulks of enormous factories or palaces silently proclaimed the former glory of Talrond.