An Unfinished Work

Sunlight shone through the hole in the sundial, leaving a dark gray dot on the marble face. The tiny spot moved with time until it crossed three engraved lines and slipped beyond the edge of the sundial, declaring that twelve daylight hours had passed and night was descending.

Mors blew away a few stone chips from the sculpture. The handless, faceless Perseus statue seemed to be undergoing a grand transformation. Its form had not only shrunk considerably, but now appeared to be wearing a cloth robe; its features were hazy and indistinct, long hair draped over its shoulders, and an unrefined circle of ornamental details sat across its forehead, difficult to make out.

An unconscious groan, the sort that accompanied a living creature waking, drifted up from below.

Peturabo swayed as he grabbed the chair cushion and hauled himself upright.

His eyes were still fixed on a meaningless point in the distance, golden-red flames reflected in his ice-blue irises, burning without cease.

Then the boy blinked, his consciousness returning from the false space constructed by psychic power to reality. His body ached from lying on the ground too long, and his feet slipped, sending him tumbling into the chair.

Mors waved a hand, and the small stone statue Peturabo had carved earlier flew before the boy. "Your unfinished work. No need to thank me."

Peturabo caught the statue and set it aside. Judging from his hurried movements and the slight change in his expression, he clearly did not want this thing to see the light of day again.

He turned his head toward Mors. His open mouth suggested words were taking shape, but something stopped him from speaking—perhaps the conflict between him and Mors, or perhaps his pride.

"If you walked to the window, faced the sun, and opened your mouth, people would be able to tell two things," Mors said.

"What?"

"First, that you had something to say." He carefully gestured with his chisel near the statue's hands, considering what pose the figure should take. "Second, the time."

Peturabo's confusion came quickly and vanished just as quickly. It seemed that after undergoing such intensive instruction, his speed of thought had improved.

"You're using my face as a metaphor for a sundial," Peturabo said unhappily. "The nose is the gnomon, the mouth is the dial face, and the teeth are the markings."

"Precise and clever. Good boy." Mors smiled, stopped working, and pushed the man-sized stone sculpture aside as easily as if it were foam, then spoke with Peturabo face-to-face.

Starting with the current moment, he chose food as his opening topic. "First of all, I don't know where we're having dinner either."

"Mm."

Peturabo tried to look serious, but no one in this world could truly discuss the merits of salted olives and fresh cherries with the solemnity of a commander discussing opposing battle formations. So the boy stiffly changed the subject.

He raised his chin slightly. "Mors, I'm ready for tomorrow's trial."

"Oh. Good luck," Mors said flatly.

That answer clearly failed to satisfy Peturabo. For the countless time, the boy sank into the excessively profound and complicated depths of his own thoughts, staring at Mors without speaking for a long while. Mors waited a bit, decided he had fulfilled every requirement of conversational etiquette, and summoned the stone sculpture back before him to continue considering the composition of its hands.

Peturabo suddenly grew anxious. "Mors!"

"Mm?"

"You..." Peturabo took a breath, rose from his seat, and strode about, each step forcefully stamping the floor with his sandals, though the floor would not suffer any harm from it.

He walked to Mors's side, entering Mors's field of view. "I debated with them earlier."

Mors had to admit that he was amused. He replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "Oh, I know."

"I refuted them." Peturabo enunciated "them" and "refuted" with particular clarity. Even the most hard-of-hearing elderly person could have caught the emphasis in those words.

"Yes," Mors said.

Peturabo used his gaze like a round gouge and carved fiercely into Mors with it before angrily returning to his beloved chair.

Ten minutes later, just as Mors was about to resume trimming his sculpture with sharp tools, the boy suddenly spoke loudly, intending to complete his small revenge by startling him.

The boy said, "Look, I relied on my own thinking and logic, not on the innate knowledge lost in the fog of oblivion, nor on the gifted abilities you took away. It seems I am still no ordinary mortal."

Mors was not surprised that Peturabo had found a breakthrough here.

To be fair, when Peturabo had drawn a blade and rushed off to hack at the people of Axos, Mors had already accepted that this child possessed one small bright point that could not be concealed by his flaws. Or rather, the boy had finally displayed that tiny trace of individuality that ought to shine in every mortal soul, and like every child his age, he could not wait to hold it before an adult and show it off.

"And I learned all the forging knowledge you provided me. All of it," Peturabo said viciously. "Tomorrow, I will prove myself before Lokos."

With a swipe of his finger, Mors erased a mistaken scratch from the sculpture's surface. His tone was as calm as drinking water. "What exactly are you trying to say, Peturabo?"

Peturabo froze.

"If you don't speak, I'll assume you're wasting your breath on nonsense again."

"Can't you stop wasting your breath on sarcasm for even a moment?"

"My sarcasm automatically selects and moves toward those who deserve to be mocked."

Peturabo angrily walked aside again, grabbed his half-finished little stone statue, and faced Mors as though he were eager to throw it.

Mors smiled at him. Peturabo immediately abandoned his furtive little gesture, hastily tossed the statue back onto the table, and flushed when the collision between stone statue and stone wall rang out far too clearly.

"I didn't..." His tongue and his will fought fiercely.

Mors shook his head, and a smaller chisel flew toward him. "Heh."

That utterly immoral laugh shattered Peturabo's persistence once more.

"Mors!" He continued tormenting the floor by pacing back and forth. "Did my performance not exceed your expectations and break your stubbornness? Did my debate not refute your baseless denigration? Can you still say that I am good for nothing except my gifts? Can't you just..."

He drew a deep breath, enough to make one worry that he might pull every mote of dust floating in the air into his lungs. "Can't you just comment on how I did?"

"You did very well. Your performance was outstanding. Peturabo, you are a good boy," Mors said.

Peturabo's face looked as though someone had poured red berry juice over his head. "You, Mors, you must be... mocking me, flattering me! How can you—what did you say?"

Mors used a little psychic power, for no reason other than to form a layer of ice and help Peturabo cool down. "Mm-hm, mm-hm. You're very happy. I understand."

"I'm not happy."

"Then don't be happy." Mors waved a hand. The frost turned into water, then evaporated and vanished. "But I think you finally understand that if you want praise, you need to ask for it directly. You didn't seriously think I had the patience to guess at your unfathomable childish mind, did you?"

"Mors!"

"I'm not humiliating you. I'm merely saving our time," Mors said without the slightest fluctuation in his voice. In the end, he chose to give the statue a sword-holding pose, which meant he needed to gather some more material.

"You... you have nothing to do and all the free time in the world. What is the point of saving time?"

"Because I made plans earlier. Once you finish your trial tomorrow, I'll leave," Mors said easily.

"Where?" Peturabo blurted out.