"Huh?"
Vincent's eyes moved to the two other people in the room — one a woman in a black dress dotted with faint starlight, the other, unmistakably, the missing Stephen.
"!!!"
The next instant, Vincent's heart shot straight up into his throat, because he'd just spotted the crystal-clear monocle sitting over Stephen's right eye!
Under normal circumstances, a monocle alone wouldn't mean much — but combined with Stephen's disappearance, and the fact that even the Nation of Disorder had turned up nothing on him, it all but confirmed it.
Stephen had been parasitized by Amon!
This was insane!
He'd assumed all along that Medici was the one possessing and controlling him — and it turned out to be Amon instead?
Wait!
Which meant — when Audrey introduced Stephen to Klein as a bodyguard... she'd effectively introduced Amon to Klein as a bodyguard!
Well, damn.
Audrey, Audrey — you really are the Fool's own cruel little blessing in disguise, aren't you.
But it had been several days now since Stephen started working as Klein's bodyguard — why hadn't Amon made a move this whole time, instead just watching as Klein turned into Chike's descent vessel?
Surely it wasn't because he hadn't noticed?
While puzzling over that, Vincent's gaze shifted to the other woman in black — since her back was turned, he couldn't make out her face, but the dress she wore immediately brought a specific figure to mind:
The Goddess of the Evernight.
In the original story, it was explicitly described that the Goddess of the Evernight seemed to have dressed herself in starlight itself, and the Tarot card that represented her was, fittingly, the Star.
Add Amon's presence into the mix, and it seemed clear enough — this woman had to be that Sequence 0 sealed item, dedicated to the Goddess of the Evernight's own descent, nicknamed the "Mother of the Sky."
For a moment, Vincent felt like a husky that had wandered into a pack of wolves by mistake, trembling in place.
"Stephen..."
Bernadette's voice carried a note of hesitation. "Was he parasitized by Amon?"
"Yes."
Vincent kept his voice low, instinctively. "And I'm suspecting the person he's talking to over there is the Goddess of the Evernight herself."
"..."
Bernadette went quiet, apparently digesting this. After a moment, she asked, her tone strangely distant, "What do you think our odds are of sneaking in here, right under the nose of an Angel-King and a god, without either of them noticing?"
"..."
"???"
"!!!"
Watching the two of them still deep in conversation, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a third person had entered the room, Vincent thought, dumbfounded: Are you two just messing with me right now?
But since neither of them had called him out, Vincent obviously wasn't going to volunteer himself either.
"About that deal..."
Amon said, cheerful. "It's not that I couldn't do it — a Source Fortress delivered right to my doorstep, I don't really have a reason to turn that down. But I'd like a few extra 'bonus items' thrown in."
He spread his hands. "Look, I've already been generous enough to share all my own intel with you, freely. Don't you think it's about time you shared some of what you've found, too?"
The woman in black shook her head. "Honestly, I don't have any leads you don't already know about. Take the Lamp Spirit disappearing, for example — I didn't even know about that until today."
She paused, then added, "I actually went and paid Roselle a visit specifically because of it. But he's deep in the grip of corruption, not lucid at all — he couldn't answer me a thing."
"!!!"
Amon showed no reaction to what the woman in black had said, but Bernadette's heart lurched violently: This woman... actually went to see Dad? When? Who exactly is she?
Bernadette had already been quietly working out how to escape from here — but now she found herself hesitating.
"How did you determine the Lamp Spirit's gone missing?"
Amon smiled. "Simple enough — just go take a look at the Wishing Lamp yourself, and you'd know. Roselle hid it inside the underground tomb built back when Tudor jumped pathways to become the Red Priest, using Tudor's lingering presence, plus those three idiots from Medici, to help conceal it. Not exactly something an ordinary person could stumble onto."
He flashed a grin. "You're probably curious how I know all this, aren't you?"
"Adam told me."
"After all, the whole reason Roselle thought of this scheme in the first place was because Adam told him to. Adam engineered this entire thing."
The woman in black shook her head. "I'm not interested in any of that."
"That's fine — someone else is, and that's who I'm really saying it for."
Bernadette thought: "..." Is he talking about me?
At this point, Vincent had figured out how Adam had managed to return the Wishing Lamp.
"Oh, right."
Something occurred to Amon. "Do you know about that mysterious entity that popped up not too long ago, calling itself 'Lord of Chaos'?"
"Do you think there's any connection between him and the 'Lamp Spirit'?"
The woman in black frowned.
"The Lamp Spirit vanishes, and suddenly a 'Lord of Chaos' shows up out of nowhere — seems like too much of a coincidence, doesn't it?"
Amon puffed his chest out slightly, practically inviting the question. "I happen to have a few theories on that. If you want to know, trade me something you know for it."
"I told you, what I know is limited."
"Then go ask your mother. She's bound to know far more than you'd expect."
The woman in black said nothing more. Suddenly, she turned toward the spot where Vincent was hiding — and, in an instant, the vase was erased from existence entirely, taking the shadow Vincent had been using for cover with it. His body stretched rapidly back into its normal shape.
He could have jumped away the instant the vase vanished, of course — but there wasn't much point in that; better to simply cooperate.
"Huh?"
Right then, Vincent noticed something — at some point, he'd reverted back to Bernadette's appearance.
"Looking for this?"
Amon said, smiling sweetly, twirling something around one finger — unmistakably the "Blood-Draining Wristguard."
I hate Thieves.
"Bernadette."
The woman in black called out Vincent's (Bernadette's) identity directly. "Do you know Lord of Chaos?"
Vincent answered honestly, "He's a god I have faith in."
"What's his relationship to the 'Lamp Spirit'?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me Lord of Chaos's honorific."
"Sovereign of the Realm of Chaos. Restorer of the Unbalanced Scale to Order. Shadow of Order and Rules."
The woman in black considered this for a moment, then asked, "Why did you come here?"
"Because of him."
Vincent looked toward Klein. "He's a follower of Lord of Chaos. I was sent here to save him."
"Pfft."
Amon burst out laughing. "That's interesting."
He shook his head. "This whole back-and-forth is way too slow. Want me to just parasitize you instead, to speed things up?"
The moment he said it, Vincent's body suddenly turned illusory, and a finger-sized, translucent worm dropped from within him onto the ground. He immediately snapped his fingers, and a jeweled sword, hanging upside-down by horsehair, materialized above Amon's head, while a blood-red spear condensed at once in his palm.
Amon was frightening, sure — but anyone bold enough to show themselves openly in Backlund like this generally topped out around Sequence 4. Whether Vincent could actually beat him was one question, but whether he had the nerve to try, and whether he could put up a real fight, was another matter entirely — and either way, he'd just recently faced down four Sequence 1s single-handedly and driven them off.
"Oh, no wonder — a real Queen Mystic temper, all right."
Amon just smiled faintly. "But you might want to think this through. Right now, I'm parasitizing your most capable subordinate. Killing me is the same as killing him."
The instant he said it, his expression suddenly turned frantic, shouting loudly, "Your Majesty, do it! Attack!"
The next instant, his expression snapped right back to that same mocking smile.
Vincent held his gaze quietly for a few seconds, then turned to the woman in black. "Madam, I've just received an order from Lord of Chaos."
"If you'd be willing to help me take down this avatar of Amon's, he might be able to answer some of your questions."
The woman in black nodded, without the slightest hesitation. "All right."
The smile vanished from Amon's face.
To be continued…
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