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Rathmore continued on, mumbling low enough that Hector couldn’t hear what he was saying.

After a short time, Anicca stepped closer to the Gate. “You are getting lost in your own musings again,” she said firmly. “Rein that wandering mind of yours in, please.”

Rathmore stopped and looked at her. Hector wished he could see the expression on the man’s blurry face. Given how wildly Rathmore’s mood had shifted, Hector wondered if he would get upset with her again or become even more timid.

Anicca left him an opening to respond, but when he didn’t, she spoke up again. “How will any of this help me to reclaim my birthright?” she said. “I’ve granted you the resources you asked for. I’ve bestowed titles and land to you. I’ve given you influence of your own within my court. And yet the years continue to draw on with no destination in sight. No path to my crown.”

“You have a crown.”

“Not the crown of my mother. Not the one that was stolen from me.”

Rathmore scoffed. “Even now, you cling to this idea of vengeance? After all we have built together?”

“What have we built? A palatable place to hide and die in? A little corner of the world to call mine, only because none else know to claim it? You speak of nothing. Empty lands and hollow words.”

“And you speak of greed and ingratitude. What you have is more than most in the world, and yet it is not enough for you. Nor will it be, ‘till you have brought ruin to it all and perhaps finally realized your own foolishness.”

“Again, you speak out of turn.”

“Because again, you push me when you should not. You do not make it easy to love you, dearheart.”

Anicca said nothing.

“You say I speak of empty lands and hollow words? That is your old crown. Nykeir has made it so. There is nothing to reclaim. It has been too long. Your people will not rejoice upon your return. They did not fight for you. They did not weep at news of your death. They do not care. And why should they? You were little more than a babe, hardly out of your swaddling clothes.”

She turned and walked over to Rathmore, right up to his face, and slapped him.

Rathmore just took it.

“Yours are craven words,” she said, sounding not just bitter but almost tearful, too. “Repeating such lies. Why? Cruelty ill suits you.”

“If you think that was cruelty, dearheart, then you truly have learned nothing of the world, even after all this time.”

Next page on the 10th

Thanks for reading, guys and gals. Hope you're doing well. Me, I'm doin' pretty good. Thanks for asking. Damn, you're really thoughtful, y'know that? Wow.

Page 3534

At length, Hector decided that he wanted the memory to resume, but since he still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to pause it in the first place, he didn’t know how to make it continue. He floundered for a bit, searching up and down and all around him, as if he might perhaps find a hidden button somewhere that he could press.

Thankfully, though, it soon started back up on its own. Or had that been his doing, too? Yeah, it probably was, huh? He didn’t see how anyone else could’ve been responsible for something that was occurring his very own mind. Other than maybe Rasalased. But he didn’t sense the Dry God anywhere, right now.

The apparent queen was now quiet, perhaps thinking twice about saying something to further antagonize Rathmore. And Hector couldn’t help feeling rather anxious for her. Rathmore didn’t exactly seem like the nicest guy so far. He wasn’t about to kill this woman, was he?

For a time, the blurry Rathmore seemed to just be staring at her, but eventually, he took a deep breath, rubbed his face with one hand, then exhaled a heavy sigh. “...Apologies, dearheart. I seem to have... overreacted.”

“‘Tis unlike you to speak to me so.”

“Yes, I... let emotion get the rule of me. I suppose I was more frustrated with my results than I realized. Please forgive me, Anicca.”

“Hmm. I shall have to think on it.”

“Anicca, please...”

“Tell me again why this monument confounds you so. I recall you mentioning before that you believe it to be some manner of gateway, yes?”

“Ah...” Rathmore turned away from her to look at the Gate again. “Belief has no bearing on it. It is a gateway. And so much more than that, as well. In truth, calling it a mere gateway may be doing it a disservice.”

“You know this how?”

“I can see it. The full breadth of its divine form and heavenly function. No doubt, when you think of a gateway, you think of a simple threshold which marks the passage of one area into another, but this monument... it can bend those areas as it pleases. It can make them overlap. Or distort. Twist them up and down. Turn them bright and beautiful. Or dark and ugly. Or perhaps something else entirely. Perhaps a ‘bridge’ might be a more apt term for it, in some sense. Ah, no, but even that will not do, naturally... what then... hrm...?”