Free Web NovelChapter 481: Arc 6, Chapter 97: Hallow to a New Age
"Uhm, excuse me, are you sanctioned to do that?" a nurse with a clipboard got in between Hotaru and Peter Werner who was laying in a hospital bed. His lower legs were in casts, being suspended by cables while he remained awake and aware.
Hotaru’s brilliant blue eyes were duller; slight bags had formed under her eyes and her shoulders were only up because her hands were in the process of forming droplets of blue rainwater. "I have a healing affinity..."
"Doesn’t matter, he is currently our care," the nurse continued to defend.
"It’s okay Ms Kinoshita. I don’t feel like walkin’ anyway," Peter smiled.
"It ain’t about walking, it’s about going to work. Cult’s putting in work, we got no time to slack," Morgana told. Her injuries were covered up by a few patches of cotton and she stood by the bed.
’Did she get a wink of sleep last night?’ Fumeko’s arms were crossed as she kept her eye on the redhead while Asobi and Tiffany stood behind her. She glanced out the window of the hospital, where ambulance carriages were parked.
"Really?" Peter mocked. "Where’re ya gonna work Morgana?"
"I’ll work in my goddamn house if I have to."
’We don’t have the luxury of giving up. But we’re three detectives down for now. Morgana and Heath are here, and the others are not in Dolpool...’
Morgana sighed. "I’ll say a word for you at his funeral."
"I had someone write somethin’ down," Peter pointed to a folded-up letter labelled ’Quinn’ on the bedside table, which Morgana took and pocketed.
"Clank-Clunk-Clank!"
An armoured hand grasped onto the doorframe of the private hospital room; parts of the red armour were poorly put together. It was an un-helmeted Ben who panted and sweated, "Ahg, agh, phew... Found you guys."
"You got my letter?" Fumeko turned.
"Jotou’s missing, I know... fuck," he held the wall and caught his breath. "I got some rest at a nearby hotel, then left early in the morning from Bonlousse, got to Feldspar Hotel, but y’all weren’t there," he had to pause to breathe.
"Sorry, we came to check on Mr Werner and Detective Aetherton as soon as we could," Asobi replied.
"Actually, yeah, it’s better that everyone’s in the room," Ben held out a folded-up piece of parchment.
Fumeko warped into her palms and opened it up. In beautiful calligraphy, "An eye for an eye, but blinded be my sight. Woe to my kin who shall continue the fight. Find the truth when west weds north, let the spire’s toll be the sign to cease meddling henceforth," was written in a succulent shade of blood.
As the scent of iron hit, Fumeko’s brows furrowed at the armoured man, "Where d’you get this?"
"In a carriage while I was on my way. Some greenish bird dropped it and flew off. It reminded me of the lizard-lady who... killed Colwyn," he looked down as he told.
"The cult sent a riddle?" Tiffany said. freewebnovel.cσ๓
Morgana and Hotaru quickly went to eye the note in Fumeko’s grasp. ’Is this... dad’s?’ Her thumb inched away from the blood.
"We need to go somewhere to find the truth. So, we need to solve it!" light bulbs popped up above Asobi’s head as she pondered.
"I don’t know what the hell the answer is," Ben admitted with a shake of his head. "I assume it’s talking about your dad, ’woe to my kin’—I mean it sounds like a threat to get everyone to stop going at the cult to me," he spoke to the brunette.
"An eye for an eye; Beauregard for Detective Namora, Jotou for the Briar Prince?" Hotaru guessed.
"No, they ain’t counting that new god from South End," Morgana denied. "It’s only for the detective, I’d bet they want to keep the Blade as a hostage so that none of us act."
"Means they want us to find Kaz someplace, he’s prolly beat the fuck up as an example," Mr Werner uttered from his bed.
"Blinded? You don’t think they took out his... eyes, right? That’s sorta the best thing a detective uses," Asobi squeaked.
"Could be a blindfold," Hotaru said hopefully.
"What’s the most famous place northwest of Dolpool?" Ben added.
’... ...! It says when west weds north. Northwest would mean where.’ While Fumeko kept rereading the riddle, her gaze also encompassed the gift wrapped around her wrist. ’It’s eight thirty-seven. ...!’
"Nine a.m." Fumeko held a hand to her chin. "The clock hands point directly west and north on the face."
"I-I was thinking that too. Northwest is too simple of an answer, and I doubt they would do something momentous at twelve forty-five," Tiffany agreed.
"It could be like ten or ten fifty or something too," Ben shrugged.
"Doesn’t matter, we just need to be there to get my dad," Fumeko glared at the parchment. ’There is where being the problem. Spire’s toll? Like a bell? A clock with a bell doesn’t narrow it down!’
Morgana tightened the belt around her coat and was already marching out of the room. "Come on kid, let’s go get him."
"There’s so many giant clocks in Dolpool that ring, where are we possibly going!?" Fumeko replied.
"The only that could be called a spire," Tiffany figured out.
"Mandragora Clocktower," upon realization Hotaru quickly took her purse and left the place alongside Asobi who followed behind.
’Where the hell is that?’ "Mandrake Borough," the brunette answered herself.
"Get Kaz the same room as me, would ya?" Peter Werner lied his head down and grunted.
Ben took a deep breath and straightened up his posture, "You comin’?"
"Yeah, yeah," Fumeko rushed out the room, but not before Tiffany grabbed her wrist.
"I-it could be a t-trap, we can’t be caught off-guard," she told.
’I guess...’ Fumeko’s vision became clearer. "Thanks, I shouldn’t blindly go in," she nodded.
Tiffany adjusted her eyepatch, nodded back and was yanked by the brunette before she had to run.
_
Each tick on her watch sent her mind whirring through a new set of possibilities. Stuck in a single carriage that was speeding into Mandrake Borough, she was dead silent and as still as a corpse; the only thing that shifted were her eyebrows that wrinkled.
’...What did I eat today? ... ...Coffee for breakfast. Toast with... Did I finish the toast?’ Her mind imagined a half-eaten slice of toast on a plate in a hotel, with an indeterminant colour of jam or butter.
’The cult has access to automobiles. They can’t be easy to store and maintain...’ Just like that, her thoughts hopped again. Loose connections, paltry evidence, shoddy guesswork.
Nine was not struck yet, there was still time. And yet time to do what she could not even presume. ’Why don’t I just blink there? Maybe not too close, on the chance that it’s a trap-’ The carriage slowed down to a stop.
"Why are we stopping?" Fumeko snapped to attention.
"Is something the matter?" Hotaru checked with the driver.
"Traffic jam madam, sorry," he replied.
"Are we close?" Fumeko said louder.
"Uhh, probably a few minutes ’round the bend, but there’s a crowd," the carriage driver stated.
’A crowd?’ Three minutes left on the clock. "Woosh!"
"Fumeko!" Asobi called out.
Out the window and onto the streets. Carriages and cars were lined up both ways down the road, with some that attempted to cut a lane, but ended up causing more of a congestion. Buildings on either side blocked her view.
She blinked forward, in and around as far as she can see. Not even a few streets away, there were citizens that impeded her path. Fumeko scoffed and blinked up onto the roofs.
Like sardines in a tin, people shuffled about. It did not help that a market of a few stalls popped up in the morning. Her eyes continued to scan; and there it was.
Around a hundred or so metres tall, was the gothic clocktower with exposed gears and a large phoenix at the tip. ’That’s the one we saw when we left for South End. The time’s wrong.’ She checked her watch.
All the pathways leading to it were jam-packed; she stood and thought, while her view of rooftops gave a direct path to it. Even so, the only place that seemed devoid of people, was right around the clocktower itself...?
Maybe that was just how far she could see and there were people there... ’Why are there this many people? Where are they scrambling to go? ...! The Burntish time must be on the eastern face, the other three clock faces are other time zones.’
"Woosh!"
Blinking closer and closer towards the east-facing side of the clocktower, she noticed nearly everyone was looking up at the face. "DING. DONG."
The gossip, the chatter, the masses, were battling the sound of the bell.
"DING. DONG."
Nine o’clock, the morning of March twenty-fourth, Wednesday. Fumeko landed on the closest place not in the crowd, that being on the roof of a café that faced Mandragora Clocktower; she glanced up.
The bell tolled again. Fumeko’s eyes widened, her shoulders dropped and she froze.
A corpse was pinned to the face of the clock, with bloodstains oozing down the face from empty eye sockets. A muscular figure had its arms and legs spread like a sacrifice, pinned by something against the gears.
Gravity made the body sag; the breeze flapped his white shirt covered in blood. Once the gears shifted into the correct position, the blood smeared across the metal spelled out ’FACE YOUR TRUTH’.
Fumeko felt... nothing. For those split few seconds where the bell rang again and again, thundering against her senses, she could only stare at her father’s dead body.
Finally, the long hand ticked a minute and the tolling stopped yet the corpse remained. The tears in her eyes were not a response, rather a sign that she needed to blink.
All the sound that was drowned out now came back and she felt blood running through her skin again. A breath is all she took and she leapt off the-
"Tf!"
"Ngh-h!" shadows did not form at her feet. What did form was the rapid rush of wind as gravity made her fall off the roof, onto an awning of the café which she sank into.
She tossed and turned and rolled off the awning. "Duff!" "Agh!" Fumeko fell onto the table below, slamming her chest into the wood. She winced from the pain, but rolled off still.
People around her gasped and turned. Fumeko took to her feet and ran into the packed crowd of onlookers. Many shouted and scolded as she squeezed in between them desperately.
Her boots stumbled across shoes and legs as she pushed and shoved her way through. An opening, an out, away from the heat and smell of densely packed people—not that her senses were even bothered in her rush.
"Hey, watch out!"
"SMACK!" "Tng-wng-wng!"
Fumeko ran face-first into an invisible wall. She wrenched her head back and groaned in pain. Stumbling back a step, it was now obvious why the vicinity around the clocktower itself was uncrowded.
As she bumped into it, a thin white sheen of energy rippled like a bubble, outlining a transparent magical barrier that encased the clocktower under a lengthy dome.
She placed her hands against the wobble of the barrier and watched as two smaller ripples rebound throughout it. Fumeko snarled and unsheathed her dagger, to the dismay and panic to the people around her.
They shouted and pushed back into the masses as the brunette pierced the barrier with the gleaming purple blade. The tear in the barrier turned into a gash and within seconds, it deteriorated from the stab’s origin.
In those same seconds, Fumeko dashed towards the wide-open entrance of the clocktower...
