Though Islant's question had seemed casual enough, Audrey sensed keenly that something was off.
Why would she ask me that?
Was the Psychology Alchemists interested in my father?
Or was it about some guest at the ball...
Combined with the faint, hard-to-pin-down shifts she'd noticed lately in the mood of noble circles, this put her on guard.
But afterward, Islant hadn't pressed her further about the ball; she simply went on lecturing as if nothing were amiss, until the class ended at half past two in the afternoon.
"Susie, what do you think?"
Watching Islant leave, Audrey couldn't help asking her big golden retriever.
"All I can tell is that she's a little jealous of you."
The golden retriever's mouth worked, vibrating the air as it answered, "As for the ball, she really does seem to have just been asking on a whim."
True, if she'd really had some purpose, she should have pressed for more details, Audrey reasoned to herself. Or maybe they already had a guess, and just wanted to confirm it with me?
"Audrey!"
Just as she was turning the thought over and over, she suddenly heard Susie calling out to her. "It's that time again, when you have me stand watch outside!"
The time... oh, right, it was almost three!
Audrey looked up at her watch. Sure enough, the hour hand was about to reach three. Today was Monday, and as usual, the Tarot Club gathering was about to begin!
"Thank you, Susie."
She hurriedly thanked the golden retriever. "I'll leave you to keep watch outside, then."
"Got it!"
Susie bounded off happily, nosing the door open and slipping outside. She would keep watch for Audrey, to make sure no one wandered in and stumbled onto Audrey's secret.
With the time nearly upon her, Audrey tidied up quickly and returned to her bedroom. Before she could even sit down, a great swath of crimson light surged up before her, flooding her vision in an instant.
When the red light faded, she found herself standing once more above that vast, magnificent expanse of gray fog.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Fool~"
As always, Audrey rose and, following custom, greeted each member in turn, taking the measure of their state today as she did.
Hmm, Mr. Hanged Man seemed a bit out of sorts, perhaps the ritual he was planning for his advancement to Sequence 5 wasn't going smoothly... Sun also looked weighed down by something, was it about Elder Lovia, or something to do with the Chief... Miss Magician... hm?
What was wrong with Miss Magician?
Once she got a clear look at Fors's state, Audrey was startled enough that she paused even mid-greeting.
It was nothing else, just that Magician Fors looked both manic and haggard.
Or to put it more precisely, she looked like someone who'd stayed up all night on a coffee binge: her body exhausted, yet her mind wound tight as a spring.
She sat irritably in her tall bronze-backed chair, hair disheveled as though it hadn't been brushed in ages, the fingers of her right hand unconsciously frozen in a pinching gesture.
"Good afternoon."
Fors replied listlessly, her voice drifting and faint.
Ever since the battle had ended that day, she hadn't had a proper rest, three full days now, counting today.
Under the terrifying pressure from Miss Angel, she, who had once been as lazily indifferent as a bucket of rocks, had turned into a wound-up clockwork doll, not daring to slack off in the slightest.
Most nights she allowed herself only a few hours of sleep before forcing herself alert again with coffee, working out the outline for her novel.
And so, after three hellish days, she had finally managed to hammer out an outline that would pass muster.
By this point, even Fors couldn't hold out any longer. She'd been about to collapse face-down onto her bed for a proper sleep, but before she could even close her eyes, Mr. Fool had drawn her up onto the gray fog.
I forgot, today's actually Monday.
Fors thought, grief and outrage mingling.
Miss Angel was not someone to be trifled with, and Mr. Fool even less so. And so, exhausted as she was, all she could do was force herself alert and huddle in her tall bronze-backed chair.
She's not going to drop dead from exhaustion on my fog, is she?
Klein muttered to himself inwardly.
Is Miss Magician all right? I'll ask her later, once we get to the free discussion... With that thought in mind, Audrey moved on to greet the next member. "Good afternoon, Mr. Temperance~"
"Good afternoon."
In response to Justice's greeting, Silas nodded back, his expression calm.
Now that the campaign against Mr. X and the Aurora Order behind him was finished, he finally had time to rest.
He'd spent the whole morning at home, idling away the hours with Luna, and planned to stop by the church after the Tarot Club session that afternoon to show his face, and while he was at it, meet the etiquette tutor who'd been arranged for him.
Across the table, Audrey had by now greeted everyone in turn.
"Honorable Mr. Fool."
The instant the greetings finished, Hermit Cattelya spoke up on her own, addressing the head of the long table respectfully. "I've found another page of Roselle's diary."
She called it "found," but in truth it had plainly been supplied by the Mysterious Queen.
"Go ahead."
Fool Klein was quite interested himself. He nodded and took the manifested diary page from Cattelya.
There, written on it, were the words: "What a surprise, the history of the Fourth Epoch that Mr. Door keeps revealing just gets more and more interesting.
"This unlucky wretch, trapped in the storm and lost deep in the darkness, told me that the Black Emperor had died once, and then come back to life..."
What this page recorded, it turned out, was information concerning Mr. Door and the Black Emperor.
So it turned out that, just as the Black Emperor's Profane Card left behind by Roselle had recorded, this Sequence 0 being could still find a way back to life even after being completely slain.
"If the Black Emperor's nine secret mausoleums are not all destroyed, this god who walks among men can, even should he truly die, awaken and be reborn from within one of them.
"And even if all nine mausoleums were destroyed, so long as some remnant of the order the Black Emperor established still lingered, he could return in some uncanny resurrection. Only with the birth of a new Black Emperor could he be erased once and for all, never to appear again."
As a student of history, with his knowledge of the hidden history besides, Klein quickly thought of the once-famous War of the Four Emperors.
And Roselle's diary confirmed as much.
"Back then, the Lord of Storms and the Evernight Goddess chose the Night Emperor, and helped him transfer to a similar Beyonder pathway, namely the Justiciar Pathway. The Tudor-Trunsoest United Empire split apart because of this.
"And the Blood Emperor, Alista Tudor, driven to the brink, made a mad decision: to transfer to an unrelated Beyonder pathway, paying with his sanity, becoming a madman, in order to force his ascension to a true god."
Reading this far, Klein nearly couldn't help himself, and shot a glance down the table at Temperance Silas.
The Red Angel Evil Spirit inside him ought to know these things better than anyone.