Black Judgement

"What were you looking at just now, Mors?" Peturabo asked. With the entire ritual over, the cut on his hand had nearly stopped bleeding.

"You sensed it?" Mors toyed with a piece of fruit on the plate before him. After playing with it for a long while, he took a bite. "Your senses are getting sharper and sharper, Peturabo."

He raised a fingertip and pointed at the golden cup in the goddess statue's hand as it was being removed, disrupting the structure of the blood cells within it and using complex energies imbued with certain occult significance to counteract its original symbolic image, guarding against any possible problems.

"Stop speaking in riddles." Peturabo said unhappily. The fingers of the hand he had placed behind him on the table rested upon the letter the soldiers had delivered earlier.

The fury of having been maliciously deceived by the Kardisians had not left him. It had merely transformed into a source of drive, lending strength to the beat of his heart and the flow of his blood.

"Is someone planning the foolishness of an assassination again? Whose malice did you guard me against? I would like to know."

Mors looked at him in surprise, then continued eating his unknown fruit. "Turning words of thanks into that—now that is a remarkable talent of yours."

"You have once again opened with remarks meant to belittle me."

"Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, warn, and encourage—do not ask me who Saint Paul is. In any case, it is not me." Mors used psychic power to keep his words clear and intelligible while he ate fruit and spoke at the same time.

Then he tossed the pit into the empty plate, rose to his feet, and circled Peturabo to the other side of the iron chair.

"I was checking whether anyone had cursed you with sorcery," Mors said.

Peturabo raised his head, his face showing profound skepticism.

Mors added, "I believe I gave you hints about what sorcery—let us call it that for now—actually is. If you failed to grasp them, that was not my fault."

"So it seems you did nothing," Peturabo probed. Having studied Mors's scattered folk sciences for years, the skill he had mastered best was verbal sarcasm. "Other than making a mystery of it."

"You can practice a few more times on Harkon how to provoke someone's anger." Mors spoke easily. "To tell the truth, I have already chosen my words as carefully as possible to tell you the truth. But do not forget: they could see you in the first place. Do you enjoy the panic and pain of being watched so much that you want them to discover you again? My wise Peturabo."

Peturabo furrowed his brow. The greatest mercy time had granted him was that years of frowning had somehow failed to leave three vertical lines between his brows.

He quickly stopped asking questions. Clearly, his mind had already filled in and constructed a theory sufficient to satisfy himself.

The young man rose from his chair as well. Since the weight of the iron exceeded what his muscles could bear, he could not casually shove the wicker chair aside as Mors had. He could only squeeze out through the gap between the chair and the table.

Perhaps that was why, while the others had yet to depart, he had never left his iron chair.

Peturabo stood some distance from Mors, because he was half a head shorter.

The young man gravely skipped over the subject. He cast his gaze farther away, toward the end of the earth. Sunlight deepened the shadows on his face into something unfathomable, while golden-red fire blazed within his deep-lake-blue irises.

After this scene continued for more than ten seconds, Mors confirmed that Peturabo was waiting for him to ask.

He patted the back of the young man's chair, then swayed as he sat down in the iron seat. Peturabo stepped forward, entering his field of vision.

Mors propped his head on one hand against the armrest and smiled.

"What has made you so anxious, Peturabo?" he said softly. "What has made you want to make such a great move against Olympia? Do you know that if you spent another ten years building machines, the entire planet would willingly kneel at your feet?"

"Will you still be in Lokos ten years from now?" Peturabo asked despite himself. He gripped one pointed corner of the iron chair, paused, then continued, "You gave me a riddle, Mors. I have been trying to solve it."

Mors selectively ignored Peturabo's first question. "It sounds as though you solved it, or you would not have come to boast to me."

"Your second riddle. The riddle of the moon," Peturabo said. "While consulting all records and documents in Lokos, the documents available from certain other nations, and during my exchanges with the Pelekontia Nine Sages, I deliberately took note of and organized every relevant document and research summary in recorded history."

"At the present stage, Olympia's local research mostly consists of cataloguing astronomical events, with theology and religious symbolism as its primary areas of investigation. This was obviously wholly at odds with your expectations, Mors. Therefore, I examined the specific characteristics of planetary motion, replanned and defined the moon's many related phenomena, compiled commonly used datasets, assessed and compared the results of formulaic calculations under typical methods, and explored the more advanced lunar orbital models and calculation methods of recent years from different perspectives. In the end, I reached two conclusions."

"First, the moon truly is a satellite of Olympia: a celestial body centered upon Olympia, moving periodically around Olympia along a closed orbit, with a diameter vastly different from Olympia's."

Peturabo explained the definition of a satellite with a solemn expression, then added, "Oh, and I assume you know that Olympia is a spherical planet."

Considering that on humanity's world of origin before Old Night, people had spent countless years—and even the lives of several pioneers—determining that the moon was not the home of the moon goddess from every people's myths, and that the ground was not endlessly flat, Mors felt Peturabo had done rather well.

"Second, the moon underwent an orbital shift several thousand years ago. The cause is unknown. It may have been an impact, a drastic change in mass, or a change in the gravitational environment. This is not an unusual occurrence, but this orbital shift coincides precisely with another important event recorded in historical documents."

At this point, Peturabo spent some time observing Mors's expression, attempting to infer whether he had said anything wrong.

Naturally, Mors's unchanging expression only gave him a sense of the frustration posed by the riddle itself. Yet Mors did not refute his observation, which was itself silent encouragement.

"Black Judgement." With heavy disgust, Peturabo spat out the term.

"A color, a noun. Years ago, you gave this riddle to the person I was then. 'The last time their shadows fell upon this world, slaughter and enslavement descended upon the heads of tens of thousands.' This exactly matches the description of Black Judgement in Olympia's legends. When the Judgement descends, countless people will die."

"This is why I must unite Olympia as soon as possible. A fragmented Olympia cannot resist a fallen people who have fully inherited ancient technology and, for unknown reasons, delight in entertaining themselves with human blood."

As Mors listened to Peturabo repeat word for word what he had told him ten years ago, the corners of his lips lifted slightly. "And I can tell you that they have not only fully inherited the technology of the Dark Age, bringing more than a dozen nearby planets under a reign of terror, but their genes are undoubtedly an extension of humanity itself, rather than originating from a more external Xenos race."

He looked up at the position of Olympia's satellite, invisible in daylight, knowing that the war-governing aspect of Peturabo's nature had finally found an excuse for its emergence into this world.

A tool, a weapon.

Its flaws and virtues were both too much like humanity's.

As he thought, Mors continued, "When I first detected their existence, I assumed they might be connected to another fallen Xenos empire. The facts proved that I had merely overestimated humanity."

"That also cost me all interest in dealing with them, though if you wish to hold Olympia in your hand, sooner or later you will have to slaughter them all."

"I wish you an early success in helping this planet leap into the ranks of spacefaring civilizations. You see, I have always told you everything, child."

"I have completed my naming ritual," Peturabo said, his expression taut.

"All right. Congratulations on becoming an adult, child so concerned with age. Go put your abilities into the war of unification. I have no interest in adding another formal, tearful farewell."