While the black cat and Zheng Qing discussed the distant Black Goat,
Nikolas's servant was also studying the Blue Great Fish, the huge black cat, the grayish-white demon that resembled a hairless rat, and the suffocating world stretching in every direction with a gloomy gaze.
Though it was not human,
precisely because it was a servant of the Old Gods, it could sense this world's shackles upon its prisoners more keenly than ordinary wizards, and its hostility toward outsiders as well.
The Black Goat Cub did not belong in the Black Prison.
This place was too barren. It had none of the offerings the Mother of the Black Goat of the Woods, who had birthed countless offspring, desired; nor did it have lambs who believed in the Mother Goddess. Even merely remaining in this dark world consumed a great deal of the Mother Goddess's glory.
Moreover, it was said that this world's prisoners did not hesitate to slaughter servants of the Old Gods as food reserves to survive the long night. One had to know that the blood and flesh of lambs belonged to their master. What those prisoners did was no different from blasphemy.
But today,
it had crossed the world's barrier and followed that White Rainbow into the Black Prison.
To it, this was both a great adventure and a necessary attempt. Beyond the Black Moon, a powerful hunting party was inexplicably pursuing it; within the Black Moon, it could smell a familiar scent.
Every flickering flame on its body reminded it that scent belonged to the Mother Goddess, yet every thought in its consciousness reminded it that the scent no longer belonged to the Mother Goddess.
That clear sense of contradiction forced the Black Goat Cub into the Black Prison.
If that scent belonged to the Mother