Chapter 797 (2/2)

Or more accurately, a submarine carrying a nuclear payload had chased him down and hailed him.

His first instinct was to say fuck this and burn the whole place to the ground. But he restrained that. This much energy could be used. And now, more than ever, Randidly was intrigued by the prospect of what the Oracle wanted. Was this an ambush? Was Randidly being brought below in order to be killed?

That seemed excessive. If the Oracle truly controlled this force, then she could have struck without worrying about the consequences. Perhaps it was a threat, against the Oracle? Someone keeping this waiting army here as an insurance policy? Perhaps, but Randidly had no way of knowing.

He was aware that the leadership of the Spear-users and the Wights were intimately related, but more than that…

While his thoughts swirled around him, Randidly continued to descend.

Below darkness was fire. Honestly, it was a smoking, stinking hellscape. Randidly wrinkled his nose as he arrived to be assaulted by sulfur and charred carbon. The ground was smoldering quietly with a desolate sort of resignation. Randidly honestly had no idea how this ship continued to be seaworthy.

But, amongst the grey rocks and small flames, he found the Oracle.

She was a small woman, smaller than Randidly had expected. She looked like a child, with her hair in a boyish bowl cut. Her hair was black and her eyes were crystalline and translucent, like diamonds. When Randidly walked down the stairs and slowly crossed the smoldering wasteland, she smiled. “Don’t like it? I find it keeps me grounded.”

Despite her young age, Randidly was absolutely sure that she was the Oracle. Even standing in front of her felt difficult; there was an image hanging over her that seemed to constantly push at the fabric of the world around her. The ground near her warped and shuddered underneath the pressure.

Randidly inwardly believed that the Oracle was lying. She did not like this place. Who could? It wasn’t that she wouldn’t prefer another location, it was that a place like this was all she could safely be near. Her ridiculously powerful aura would slowly erode anything else.

About ten meters away from the Oracle, Randidly stopped. He bowed slightly. “Well met, Oracle. I am Randidly Ghosthound. Why have you brought me to the bowels of your ship?”

The Oracle’s laughed like a clear bell. “Isn’t it obvious? To warn you, Randidly Ghosthound. Your closest confidant has betrayed you. You waste your time heading to the Death School. Better to return and defend Hastam from the threat of the Wights.”

Very gradually, Randidly’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the Oracle’s smiling face. His closest confidant had betrayed him? Now the Oracle directly said what Platton had danced around. Randidly was aware that Shal was sending him away. But it hardly counted as a betrayal. He needed to be in the Death School to obtain Acri and Sulfur. Even now he could sense that he was growing nearer to them by the day.

Yet why did the Oracle warn him off…?

“Let’s dispense with the ominous warnings,” Randidly growled. “I don’t care for the shadow games. You are carrying an army of Wights on this boat. Why should I listen to anything you say?”

The Oracle blinked and then chuckled. Her smile was sly as she looked at Randidly. “You are more perceptive than I expected. Why should you listen? Because you know me, or at least my brand of magic. You have the touch of karma on you; you encountered Lucretia, did you not? She was my daughter. Truly, of my flesh, daughter. So you understand that what I say carries weight. Can you not feel it, down here in my kingdom?”

For the first time since they had met, the Oracle’s expression shifted into something close to bitterness as she gestured to the scorched ground and scattered fire. Randidly’s brain slowly parsed apart the information that the Oracle had provided. She was Lucretia’s mother?

Could he even believe that? Everything the Oracle had said so far needed to be taken with a grain of salt… Perhaps this was the sort of Oracle that could only lie?

But on the other hand… It certainly would explain the familiar thread of karma that the Oracle exuded…

The Oracle’s eyes flashed. “Fine, you are too stubborn an ass to respond to the stick. How about the carrot then?”

Randidly’s eyes narrowed dangerously. The muscles of his jaw twitched. These manipulators were all the same. Threaten you, and then attempt to pretend they were doing you a favor by tricking you.

This time when the Oracle laughed, it was a cackle. She rocked back and forth and revealed her age with a hacking, coughing laugh. At the edges, it was more than a little mad. “Oh, don’t make that face. You know what you are, Mr. Ghosthound. Sir Ghosthound? My Liege, Ghosthound? What sort of Crown do you wear, I wonder? But I don’t offer you the internal answers you seek; what I offer is a story. The story of… the Spearman, Auto Rach.”