"HISSSSSS"
Sliding through a small crack in the wooden panels, Juno was trying not to kill himself from the pain. Unsurprisingly, falling dozens of meters did not make for a good landing. It was just as he hypothesized!
'Sigh, my genius… it's sometimes frightening.'
Beyond the pain, he had other problems. One thing he had failed to consider was how little space there was to hide in the castle halls. Sure, it was difficult to notice him since he was a small snake that could partially hide within the carpet, but still. He felt exposed.
It was also very difficult to move through the carpet, so overall Juno was in a bad state.A few minutes after leaving the throne room, Juno realized it didn't matter how he hid or moved—there was no one around, and the few people present moved slowly. Even though they were clearly at least Awakened, it was obvious that old age had still caught up with them.
'It's so annoying not being able to look at them. I want to see their faces and features—why do I have to keep looking slightly to the side? Ugh.'
Seeing an old Awakened was actually quite interesting. In the novel, it had been mentioned repeatedly that the Nightmare Spell hadn't existed long enough to truly observe how Awakened and Ascended individuals aged—or whether Transcendents could even die from old age at all. Most of the oldest known Awakened were around seventy, and even then they acted like they were in their fifties.
Yet here stood a king who looked far older—frail, worn, and unmistakably aged.
If the limits described in the novel were accurate, then this man should have been well into his two hundreds.
That alone was unsettling.
Especially if he is an Ascended.
'...How far is this guy's room?'
…
After damn near 30 minutes of undignified slithering, Juno got his answer. Very far.
It turned out that the inside of the castle was much larger than it seemed from the outside. Not being able to tell why, Juno tossed this up to him being small thus having a different perspective of things. The halls were long and grand, which now instead of looking impressive was incredibly subdued. Thick drapes the color of blood. Marble like floors below the plush carpets. Paintings of scenery and people, some looking detailed whilst others did not.
Sadly, Juno observed this all from ankle height, which was quite sad because it was a very poor way to do reconnaissance.
What he did gather, however, was useful.
Barax's Kingdom - the name he gave this place in honor of its leader - was young. It had seemed like it was a town that grew and grew, until it could be described as a small nation. The way Juno knew this was from Barax and his advisor, Troilly, conversation. These old people seemed no different from the ones on Earth, because as they walked they reminisced about the past.
They paused at paintings every so often — Juno couldn't see any of them, only looking around old legs stopping and the subtle shift in their voices that happened when something caught their attention. It was deeply frustrating. He was essentially attending a private gallery tour from inside the carpet.
What he could understand was sparse, but he tried anyway.
The kingdom had started as nothing more than a town, almost two ago. Barax spoke about the early days of the town the way people spoke about something they built with their own hands - a type of pride that was solidified through trial and tribulation. Troilly would add dates and events every now and again, which never told Juno much but still. The dates did help Barax though, letting him talk more about himself. But the conversation between them was still peculiar. They had the rhythm of two people who had been having versions of the same conversation for a very long time.
The Queen said almost nothing. She walked slightly behind them, maybe tired from the day or about to collapse under a heart attack. Could Awakened even get heart attacks? Besides the point, the only thing Juno got about her was that she was the one who made most of the paintings.
Still, Juno followed them all, sliding through the thinner edges of the carpet where the pile didn't fight him as much, and listened.
Most of it was genuinely unimportant. The name of a street that no longer existed. A merchant they had apparently both found insufferable. The year a particular tower had been added to the castle's eastern wing, which Troilly remembered differently than Barax and which neither of them seemed willing to concede on.
But then, near a painting at the far end of a long corridor — one that prompted a longer pause than the others — Barax's voice shifted.
It became quieter. Not sad exactly. More like careful.
"I was standing in the courtyard when it happened," he said "Just below sixty. We had absolutely no importance to Him."
Troilly's response was measured. "And yet it came."
"And yet it came." Barax repeated it like a private joke with no punchline. "The seed just blew right into my hand. It didn't say much, just that it was doing its duty in arriving here. Said not to ask questions."
A pause.
"It did," Troilly said.
"And we didn't," Barax agreed. "For a while."
And then they moved on, as if the conversation had concluded naturally, as if for a while were a perfectly satisfying ending to a sentence and not a door left deliberately half-open.
Pissed as hell at the cryptic ending, Juno begrudgingly filed the conversation away.
'A seed, eh? Heart God had a lot of things to do with plants and trees, so a seed talking and flying somewhere is easily in the realm of possibility. The question is, why? Why the hell would one of the 6 Gods personally send a seed, no matter how small, over here? Weird…'
He didn't have the answer. But he had the shape of the question now, and that was usually enough to start with. Back home he had always been better at the board than the books — just give him enough time and he would be able to line up all the pieces in a way that made sense.
Luckily, the pieces here were becoming clearer by the minute.
An ancient king who had been personally favored by a God. A kingdom that had grown from nothing under that favor. And now, somehow, a situation in which that same king stood in his throne room and smiled when told his God had gone silent.
'Did you really lose that favor,' Juno thought. 'Or perhaps that is the story with which you have come up with.'
What a profoundly stupid decision that was. Juno had no particular reverence for gods — the Gods of Shadow Slave were dead and distant, and reverence for imaginary people back in his world seemed stupid to him — but even from a purely practical standpoint, pretending to discard a divine patron seemed like an extraordinary way to accelerate your own collapse.
He let the thought sit without pushing it further. There wasn't enough information yet. Pushing a position before you understood it was how you lost games that should have been won.
The hall finally ended at a large set of doors, dark wood and iron fittings, attended by two guards who opened them without being asked. Clearly a practiced ritual. Barax and Troilly exchanged a few last quiet words on the threshold — the only part that Juno caught was Troilly reminding Barax to take his new medicine — and then the advisor bowed and peeled away, disappearing back down the corridor.
The King and Queen passed through the doors.
And after a couple seconds, unnoticed by anyone, a small white snake slithered into the royal chamber just as the door was closing.