Jeanne raised her eyes to glare at him, pressing the sword against his neck, unmoving. Her pale golden pupils were like two burning coals, shooting out a scorching gaze that could burn a man to ash. She didn't speak—she didn't need to. That terrifying look said everything.
"Alright, I was just kidding," the black sorcerer said, raising his hands in surrender.
Jeanne snorted and sheathed her sword.
"If you die here, I will commemorate you with your real name," she said, her tone calm.
She says that as if I'm about to die any second. Does she replace her knight protectors this quickly? Sassel rolled his eyes. "Can't you offer a more optimistic blessing, Miss Jeanne?"
"There are no blessings, black sorcerer," Jeanne said, her eyes fixed on him, her low breaths condensing on her pale lips. "Before every mission, I am prepared to give my life. Even if my soul is burned to ash."
"Soul burned to ash..." Sassel was taken aback for a moment. Aside from killing each other as enemies, he hadn't had much contact with people from the Cross Church, especially an inquisitor, who was a rare sight.
"Don't you hope for salvation and miracles after death?" he asked with curiosity.
Jeanne's expression gradually flattened.
"If a faith can only be firm by displaying miracles and granting salvation, then that faith is nothing more than a dog begging its master for food." As she said this, her eyes held not a flicker of emotion.
"That doesn't sound like something a person with your experience and age would say," he said, calling her out directly.
"...You're right."
Jeanne looked away, her expression unhappy, but she didn't deny it.
The black sorcerer stared at her silently for a moment, then let the matter drop, turning his attention back to Viola's movements.
The black cat had slipped into the shadow connecting to the hall, as if walking into a vertical lake. The shadow trembled slightly as the cat's body entered, its surface rippling faintly. Sassel bent down to follow.
In the hall behind them, more and more people began to spin.
Everyone sang in sharp, hoarse voices, then danced even more frenziedly. In the center of the spinning circle, the master of the house would occasionally stop to wave his hand. With every wave, the people's dancing grew faster, and their cries became even more inhuman.
—Dance now, leap up,
—Fly from the old castle, fly from the cell,
—Fly from the prison that holds us!
"After we take care of the master of this house, I'm burning everything in this hall."
After their earlier conflict was resolved, the inquisitor's expression had once again soured at the sound of the singing. She tapped her sword hilt impatiently, her eyes scanning the dancers with utter revulsion. "There should be a limit to how disgusting things can be. While I don't expect to completely eliminate filth like this, at least under my watch... such a nauseating presence should be thoroughly purified."
Sassel ignored her complaint. He just bent over, squinting for a moment at the black fog before him. The cat had vanished completely. If he looked with his naked eyes, there was still only a corridor behind the fog. The spell lines that probed the air's vibrations passed directly through the black fog and connected to the same corridor, not to the place the cat had gone. Shaking his head, he stepped into the shadow at the junction of the corridor and the hall. The darkness surged forward and accepted the black sorcerer's body.
And with that, the world around him completely changed.
Color was erased, leaving only simple lines. Everything was smeared onto a dark, blurry mist. It was like some paintings look when the artist has just finished the line art and hasn't yet had time to add color. The sounds from the hall suddenly slowed, then rapidly stretched and distorted, like a person falling from a cliff whose scream vanishes into the abyss. Silence gradually fell, leaving only the barely perceptible sounds of laughter, shouting, and singing—very faint, like the waves of a distant sea crashing at the bottom of a cliff.
On this black canvas, Jeanne, now depicted in white lines, also stood up.
Other than the small entrance that one had to crouch to crawl through, there was only an endless black fog behind the inquisitor.
There was nothing.
Perhaps we're getting closer to the dream.
"There are strange things in the fog," Viola said, stopping in front of him. Its eyes, outlined in white on a black background, stared at the black sorcerer as it simply recounted its daily memories. "Some may be hostile, some may not be, but those things aren't controlled by the master. Most of them just wander around aimlessly. But if one of them is successfully controlled by the master, it will start moving from the fog toward a certain location, and eventually enter the house from somewhere I've never seen."
"This place is so bizarre," Jeanne said, looking the white-lined Sassel up and down with a frown. She looked down at Viola and asked, "According to you, those things from before also came out of here?"
"No..." the cat replied. "They were outsiders who fell in here. My father was among them. The transparent things and the dolls are the ones that came out of here."
"...Sorry."
"I can't believe you just said you were sorry," Sassel said, shaking his head, his tone teasing. "I thought you only had that one sour face for everyone."
"Hmph... It is merely what the Lord teaches," Jeanne shot him a look with a faint, cold smile. "I can distinguish between those who deserve kindness and those who deserve death."
They continued to follow Viola.
This was a wetland. White lines of varying thickness outlined puddles of all sizes, scattered across the black, damp ground, like nooses strewn in a pool of black water. The shallowest of these puddles barely covered the soles of their feet, while the deepest went past their knees. Occasionally, a few lotus leaves floated on the water's surface, holding a few drops of dew. Atop their thin stems rested motionless, flat human faces. Everything was silent. Even the faces, drawn in rough lines, had their eyes closed as if in a deep sleep.
"Have you ever read that book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?"
Sassel was bored. He had thought they would see the master of the house right away, but the road was much longer than he'd expected.
"Black sorcerer, I believe I told you I'm illiterate," Jeanne spat. "Are you trying to provoke me?"
"Your parents never told you the story when you were a child?" he asked casually.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jeanne glared at him, her expression extremely hostile. "Around the time I was supposed to start learning to read, they joined a dark cult and nearly burned to death with me in tow. Do you think my parents told me any stories?"
"Oh... sorry," the black sorcerer shrugged. He decided it was best to end this topic now.
Jeanne clicked her tongue but said nothing more.
They continued walking toward the endless horizon. The sky was also pitch-black, blending seamlessly with the ground, like a single, flat canvas, making it difficult to distinguish any direction.
From a very shallow puddle came the sounds of wailing, cursing, and shrill, low moans. They had just walked past that pool; it wasn't even deep enough to cover their feet. A few white-lined splashes rippled, and an adult woman, thin as a bamboo pole, emerged. Her eyes were not drawn with pupils, just two empty black sockets. Lines streaked down from beneath her eyes; it was impossible to tell if it was blood or tears. They had seen this woman before—she was the pregnant one in the hall.
She crawled slowly out of the puddle. Her legs were severed below the knee, leaving only two bare thighs on the ground. Her ten fingers dug into the wetland, trying to move forward, but they only sank deep into the soft mud, her nails filling with dirt, unable to move at all.
The black sorcerer casually tossed a very weak ray of magic at her.
The ray passed directly through the woman and into the puddle, like a beam of light passing through a pane of glass.
"...This thing has no soul," Sassel said. "Perhaps it's just an anomaly of the dream."