Fool

Chapter 39: Fool

"Look, although my reputation in this world is utterly ruined, I often think I am the most extraordinary person in it. Look at it, think about it—wherever I sit, as long as I say a few words and raise my eyebrows, putting on a little show of manipulating people, everyone will smile happily not only on their faces, but with their hearts brimming with joy as well, saying that I truly am a fool, a madman."

"Look, the creases on their faces smooth away layer by layer. Even the sea is not so still in the wind! When they see me, their faces change, as if they had drunk fruit wine from the mountains and forests, chewed the gods' herb of forgetfulness. Not a trace of misery remains. That is how normal people ought to be. They are happy, and I am happy; I have fulfilled my purpose! So you strange creature who refuses to laugh and refuses to cry, you who scold me with that stubborn expression—could you also be a fool, a madman?"

"I am not a fool, Cruz," Mors said calmly.

The disinherited Prince widened his cloudy eyes. Slowly, the corners of his mouth pulled upward. Bone-white teeth emerged past his lips, starting from their tips, until his gums were soon visible.

He chuckled as he climbed up from the floor, reaching to grab the hem of Mors's robe.

Mors took a step back. A spark of psychic energy flashed, and fire immediately ignited at Cruz's outstretched fingertips, scorching hot.

He screamed in agony, clutching his fingers as he fell back to the floor. His round eyes stared at Mors, while strange violet fissures, like scars, ran across the center of his pupils. Hearing the scream outside, Andos wanted to intervene, but after hesitating again and again, his trust in Mors kept him from barging into the room.

"It hurts so much, you inhuman thing," the mad Prince cried. "Father, let me kill a few people, tear them to pieces, and I will not hurt anymore! You used to fawn over me so! Since I became a fool, you would rather show respect to a tyrant, kneel before dead souls, living plagues, inhuman evil ghosts that have died a thousand times over!"

"Hasn't its face already told you what kind of mistake it is? Its clothes are all false. It comes from the same source as those eyes in the river of stars, in the sky, in the vast ocean—the eyes that have always been there!"

Mors had no desire to communicate with someone who had lost his mind. It would only add to his irritation. He waited for Cruz to calm down while surveying the furnishings in the Prince's room.

The usurper had not restricted Cruz's food, clothing, or daily necessities. Lokos did not have such habits. Other than items with overly sharp corners that might allow the mad Prince to injure himself or escape, the room lacked nothing.

The most abundant thing in the room was stacks of paper—not the thin white paper Peturabo had recently developed, whose edges were too sharp, but the coarse, soft, pulpy paper Lokos had used in the past.

Every sheet was covered in indecipherable writing and drawings made in charcoal. Some of the drawings had been freshly made with blood. As for the older bloodstained drawings, although nothing supernatural had occurred thus far, servants still came regularly to collect and burn them.

Mors stepped over the clutter on the floor and used psychic energy to suspend the papers in the air. "I appreciate that you have maintained hygiene good enough for a madman, Cruz," he remarked softly.

Cruz rolled halfway over on the floor and licked his injured fingers.

Different patterns had been drawn at the centers of different sheets: a gigantic eyeball, a burning tree, a withered venomous snake, severed limbs reassembled after being broken apart. Cruz's artistic skill was truly difficult for Mors to look at, so much so that the sheer awfulness of it seized his attention for a moment.

"If no one can understand your drawings, you only have yourself to blame, fool." He flipped through the mad Prince's scribbles. "They are too ugly. Who could understand them?"

"But there is one thing I should praise you for. Your control of psychic energy is surprisingly excellent—so excellent that I did not come sooner to kill you." Mors bent down and spoke softly to Cruz. "I always thought the one living in Lokos was merely an ordinary little psyker, Cruz."

Cruz began to cry.

"Stop crying, fool. Why did you want to see me?" Mors tossed the scribbles onto the Prince's face.

"Haha, idiot! You came here as my guest, yet you insist that I wanted to see you. How can you be so smug, so full of yourself?"

The mad Prince suddenly changed again. In a towering rage, he tore apart every scribble that had fallen on him, then crawled up and viciously stomped on them. "You ungrateful wretch! I gave you my eyes, and yet you are still so greedy! You still fantasize about wanting this and wanting that! You cursed by the gods, exiled, deceived, pitiful, self-important thing!"

Mors sighed and considered whether he should knock Cruz unconscious and read his memories directly.

"Why six people?"

"I saw you come like this, and you came when you heard that number! Isn't this precisely how you will die, fool? And you still ask me why six people? Then I ask you—where did those six vultures fly over? I did not see them! They never let me see them!"

"I am losing my patience for translating your mad ramblings, fool."

"But that is what I saw." Tears streamed down the Prince's face again. "So many voices, so many shadows. I saw picture after picture."

In a panic, he dropped to his knees, gathered the scraps of paper from the floor, and hugged them to his chest. "They are all here, all here. I will tell you everything. Save me, please! Are you happy because of me? I beg you, save me! I do not want to see anymore! I do not lie! No one can make me falsify anything, but they all say the people I see are fake! Eyes, ears, mouths, noses, bodies, consciousness—I do not want to cry anymore!"

"I have truly had enough," Mors muttered to himself. "Must psykers all speak like this? Can't they learn from me and use simple, comprehensible declarative sentences instead of hurling out one damned riddle after another?"

He did not want to bring his wicker chair here, so he condensed water into a block of ice and shaped it into a seat, then sat down, relying on his immunity to heat and cold.

"You stupid prophet." He rebuked him sharply. "What year is it now?"

"It is the year seven hundred and ninety-nine, monster." The Prince obediently knelt on the floor, clutching the scraps of paper. "Today, the star will rise. Everyone is watching it climb toward the top of the cliff. Its hands are bleeding."

"What year is tomorrow?"

"It is the year eight hundred and nine, monster. On this day, the star is very angry. Everyone is shouting for it to change its name."

"What year is the day after tomorrow?"

"It is the year eight hundred and forty-nine, monster. On this day, the sun falls upon the mountaintop, and the star leaves with the sun. How utterly unwary its cheers are!"

"And after that?"

"It is the year nine hundred and ninety-nine, monster. On this day, the star loses to time, and fragments of the star fill the sky. It loses so miserably—whose mistake is that?"

"And finally?"

"It is the next millennium, monster. On this day, the star burns everything on earth to death, kills them all, because we defied him! My poor sister—she loved him so much, and she died alive in his palm!"

Mors abruptly rose to his feet. Ice crystals shattered and rolled across the floor before evaporating in the intense heat. He seized Cruz's cheeks viciously. Violent sparks of psychic energy raced along their neural connection, directly burning away most of the mad Prince's memory regions. At the same time, he seized every phantom in the projection of his soul and cut them apart, tearing them to shreds. Flames rose in reality, mercilessly reducing every sheet of paper on the tables, walls, and floor to ash, along with portions of stained fabric on the furniture. Nothing was left behind. Ash from the fire scattered everywhere.

The mad Prince collapsed to the ground, convulsing without stop. His miserable howls finally drove Andos to push open the door and rush inside. "Mr. Mors, please do not..."

He looked around the room, then slowly finished his sentence. "...hurt him."

"Let us go," Mors said coldly. "Your brother truly is mad."

"Isn't he possessed by a demon, as the Church says?" Andos asked worriedly.

"No." Mors turned and strode away. "He merely saw too much."

Behind the door the servants were closing, the mad Prince's muttering continued. "The one holding his chin high is pride. The one covering his face is sloth. The one wearing a flower crown is vanity. The restless one is fanaticism. The one adorned in gold and silver is celebration. The host is happiness... He is here! His spirit has descended! You must look!"