Ch.125Ch.8 – And Then There Was Nothing (10)

Even in the back alleys, it was still a place where people lived. Unlike Pollard and Innsmouth, Arkham had wider alleys that were cleaner and more populated.

We entered a nearby café. We settled on a sofa near the emergency exit. Aurora was still trembling and refused to move even an inch away from me.

Perhaps because of this, Emma murmured softly and gently stroked Aurora’s face. Aurora flinched and leaned back in surprise, but soon drifted off to sleep.

Wondering what to do, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. Her soft breathing tickled my shoulder.

“She’ll be fine for about three hours.”

Emma hid her bruised hand.

“It’s nothing special. When you exert force suddenly, blood vessels burst, right? It’s similar to that. It heals on its own with time. Though recovery takes longer if you use too much power for too long.”

This made no sense. A spell that causes bodily harm to the caster.

“Let’s think of it simply. Whether you pay money for bullets or I pay with my health to ward off evil things, it’s similar. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.'”

Emma lightly tapped the table and turned her body toward the wall. A danger signal. A group of police officers passed by outside the café window. Fortunately, the café worker approached our table at just the right moment.

“Two cappuccinos and…”

Emma looked toward Aurora and smiled.

“One ice water. Nothing better for waking a princess, right?”

“Is she really okay?”

The server kept glancing at Aurora.

“She cried herself to sleep after being dumped, so of course she’s not okay. Can you believe it? The guy had three children with three different women…”

“Just so you know, the pharmacy is across the main street. Please don’t make a mess in our shop.”

The server replied curtly and turned away with a grimace. Emma smiled. When the server returned with two cappuccinos and a glass of ice water, and collected the tip, her smile remained.

“That’s fine. Sugar?”

I declined. Emma promptly took my sugar cube and dropped it into her cappuccino with a plop.

“Eating sweets gives you strength, you know. Though I guess you don’t need it since you have her by your side. Don’t tease? Ha. I guess that wasn’t funny.”

Emma picked up a spoon. She turned it this way and that, examining her reflection in both the concave and convex sides.

Strangely, an inexplicable anger boiled inside me. She had crossed a line. Aurora had tried to commit suicide. There was a magician using snake magic to confuse people, and Emma was confronting that magician with magic of her own.

And now, as if nothing had happened—no, as if such things were everyday occurrences—Emma was calmly looking at her spoon.

I had said I didn’t care about Hyperborea, ancient continents, or evil gods. I’d said it didn’t matter whether Emma Scully was Catherine’s twin or not.

Why these things were intruding into our world—I said I couldn’t understand that. Emma smiled faintly and stirred her cappuccino with the spoon.

“Strange. You don’t seem particularly eloquent, yet both my sister and I are quite fond of you, so there must be something there. But your choice of topics is terrible. At times like this, shouldn’t you be making introductions, talking about the weather, or at least discussing common interests? What might be a common interest between you, me, and my sister?”

Fire Breath. It’s Fire Breath. Catherine Scully had entered my mental landscape, and we first met Emma in that terrible scenery.

“I don’t know where to begin. I’m not particularly good with words either. Time is short, doom approaches, and your pretty girlfriend is still dreaming sweet dreams.

I can’t think of any other explanation. Alright. Imagine there’s a notebook in front of you. There’s only one notebook. But someone has already filled it with writing.

You want to write your own story, but you can’t throw away the notebook. It’s the last notebook in the world. So what do you do? Naturally, you’d erase it with an eraser. But whoever wrote in it before pressed so hard that impressions remain in the paper.

That’s the reality of Hyperborea. Erased writing. The world we’re in now is an overwritten, superimposed world. We’re writing new text, but occasionally we encounter old stains.

I… yes. I was… chosen. To put it kindly, I was chosen; to put it unkindly, I’m text written over less-erased words.”

Emma gazed at Arkham’s alleys. Though it must be her first time here, she seemed to like the place. Familiarity. Warmth. Nostalgia. Perhaps she was superimposing scenery she knew onto these shabby back alleys. The appearance only she could see, from before the overwriting.

“My sister and I both had the aptitude. I know. I know how fearful she is. Sometimes I think it’s for the best. My sister sometimes lies. And it’s difficult for a Hyperborean priestess to be a liar.

What does a priestess do? She’s a living, moving seal. The memories written on the paper of the earth are so vivid that they constantly try to revive themselves. The land. Trees. Demons. Ancient things. They’re all the same. Not just the evil gods.

I pull all those things back under the text, erase them, bury them. Worried about my body? Don’t be. If I fall, someone else will be written over me. But no priestess dies deliberately. There’s too much to do, to see, to care for.

That was true for me too. Until I met you.”

Anger welled up. What exactly had I done?

“Ah, that story. But first, would you check if the lovely woman beside you is sleeping well? She has quite a temper, and if she knew what was inside you, she might tear out your ribs and chew on your heart.

No one knows exactly what Fire Breath is. What’s certain is that it’s an extraterrestrial entity that somehow tried to make contact with Earth.

When she couldn’t find a way, she scattered seeds throughout the universe. One of them reached Earth, and some idiots figured out how to call her. Eventually, she began to spread her vines, and left a part of herself inside you.

But vines are peculiar plants. They grow along walls, find weak spots, and eventually destroy them. They grow by wrapping around trees that support them, eventually killing those trees. When the wall collapses and the old tree falls, they die too, crawling along the ground, wailing, withering away.

Not because vines are evil. That’s just what vines are. Fire Breath is the same. Fire Breath is Fire Breath. The trace she left in you is a beacon of hope for her, and she wants to grow using the whole world as her wall and tree. To her, you were less than a sip of water. Rather, the kind of water that intensifies thirst…

That’s why she’s turning the whole world upside down. She’s indiscriminately breaking through the boundaries of the world and dimensions just to find you. Because she keeps growing vines. The vines of Comorium—whose work do you think that is?”

Emma took her last sip.

“I’ve been trying to find where this damn weed grows. That’s when I saw you and my sister. When your consciousness controls you, Fire Breath doesn’t grow. But when you cease to be yourself, Fire Breath grows again.

The problem is… you don’t ‘know’ yourself. Perhaps that’s for the best. If you ‘knew’ yourself, you could define what ‘is you.’ You could cry out like a hypocrite in a noir film, holding up bloody hands and wailing, ‘This isn’t me.’

But you don’t know yourself. So you don’t know what is you. You have no self-awareness, and little self-consciousness. Because that’s what the world wants from you.

The barrier I deployed… was actually borrowing the atmosphere of Hyperborea for a moment. That’s why the magic of this world couldn’t easily penetrate it. It didn’t block everything, but… anyway, the reason you ‘spoke directly to me’ there was because you were one step removed from the order of this world.”

A strange story. A bizarre story. I don’t know how or where to understand this story. Who am I? What is me? It feels like the ultimate insult.

“Angry? Good. Be furious. Cry. That’s how you detach yourself from the world.”

But seeing Emma eagerly awaiting my reaction with sparkling eyes actually cooled my head. Emma clicked her tongue in disappointment.

“Anyway, I wasn’t following you and Crayfield around Innsmouth for nothing. Knowing you weren’t ordinary, I observed you more freely. The reason I’m appearing before you now is partly because the snake god, Yig, is a problem ‘of my era,’ but also because I came to prevent you from ‘letting go of yourself’ while trying to solve that problem.”

I asked how she planned to solve the Yig problem. We had secured one stone tablet, and the other was probably at the Pollard Natural History Museum.

“What else? We steal it.”

Her matter-of-fact statement left me speechless.

“Should I put it more politely? We’ll transfer ownership. The Lord’s things to the Lord, Hyperborea’s things to Hyperborea. I am a priestess carrying on Hyperborea’s legacy and will. When I take possession in the name of the priestess, it becomes Hyperborea’s from that moment. I have that right.

I told you, didn’t I? Yig yearns for Hyperborea but also fears it. It’s his homeland from which he was expelled, a land inscribed with terrible memories. We gather both pieces, place them under Hyperborea’s ownership, and display them at Comorium. This won’t change. They belong there.”

Emma stood up.

“See you at Pollard. It’s not wise for us to travel together. And I know how to take care of myself. Especially if I borrow a little from my pretty sister’s… pocket.”

Emma left the café. She seemed to take only two steps outside before vanishing. As if she had never been there.

“Mmm…”

Aurora opened her eyes. I offered her the glass of water. The ice had melted, but it was still cold. Aurora nestled into my arms.

“I… I… I…”

I told her not to speak. I said everything was fine.

“I… couldn’t… hurt you…”

I didn’t care who was watching or if the server was glaring at us. I kissed Aurora and pulled her hand to my heart. I was alive here. So she was alive too.

“Where’s Emma?”

Aurora blinked. I told her Emma had left us. She said she’d see us at Pollard and had taken the tablet.

“That crazy bitch… so she stole it after all… just wait till I catch her… What? Why are you smiling? Is it funny?”

I couldn’t help but smile. This was the Aurora I knew. I was glad to have her back. I was grateful she had returned to me. In my joy, I embraced her again.

“Excuse me, but you’re making the other customers uncomfortable.”

The server, unable to stand it any longer, glared at us. Aurora tilted her head slightly and rose from her seat. I could see small sparks flying from her eyes.

“…I’m sorry.”

And she apologized.

Astonished by this sight, I looked up at her. Aurora covered her face and pulled me away. Of course, as soon as we got to the alley…

“I’m going to buy this place and fire that woman,” she growled.