Chương 325: Chapter 324 - A Call From Who?

Lucid looked at the pendant and saw it flare with red light. Ayame noticed immediately.

"This pendant," she repeated slowly, her gaze moving between the object and his face. Lucid looked uncertain, weighing whether he should speak in front of her or not. He decided on the latter. He turned and moved briefly toward the kitchen.

"Uh, I gotta look for a hammer." A stupid excuse. Alice confirmed this assessment immediately.

"A really stupid one. She probably knows what it is." Lucid continued from the kitchen into the lounge, looking around at the carriage interior. Two floors, one main staircase, an emergency ladder tucked along the rear wall. He grumbled, furrowing his brows.

"Is it him?" Alice said. Lucid paced back and forth, finding himself in the control room. Arthur looked back at him without comment, which somehow made it worse. He paced again past the kitchen. Ayame looked back from where she'd been standing. He looked to his side. He had nowhere to go.

"I," he started, stuttering. She tilted her head.

"I need to take a shit!"

"Wow," Alice said.

"Human excrement as an escape strategy." Ayame only looked at him, unblinking, which was arguably more unsettling than any response she could have offered. They stood there for a second before he immediately dashed upstairs toward the second floor. He spotted a bathroom door marked with whatever the Scattered Realms used as written language in these compartments. Lucid opened it in a hasty manner and stood inside, breathing heavily.

"You don't even know your own compartment," Alice said. Lucid sighed.

"It's just been a while." He stepped further in, looking at his reflection in the mirror.

"Plus I forgot this place had two floors," he muttered.

"What an absurdly big train." The pendant was still glowing in his grip. He took a deep breath and pressed it against the ruby gemstone at its center. A voice came out on the other side. Raspy but also carrying a particular quality that settled the ears despite everything attached to it.

"Hey, I finally got through."

"Hello?" Lucid waited a moment before replying. Memories resurfaced of the blue-eyed governor with that quiet, sincere smile he wore despite everything. He'd said two things once that made sense and highlighted everything they'd been through together at that time.

"What's up, responsible bard," Lucid said. The other end burst into brief laughter. It sounded calm, decent, and genuinely soothing to the ear. Lucid wasn't angry at it. He'd actually kind of missed the voice. But at the same time, he hadn't. He looked around the bathroom while the pendant spoke, its red glow pulsing softly against his palm.

"I have been trying to get in contact for ages," the voice said.

"Hey, I heard you ran into the princess." A brief pause, a caught mistake.

"Ahem, the queen, I mean. What in Alisia's name happened to you!" He was yelling now. Lucid held the pendant at arm's length like someone being scolded through a telephone receiver.

"Stop yelling, Governor," Lucid said, putting heavy emphasis on the last word like it was an insult. Alice spoke within his mind.

"I have a better one, darling." She paused as though reading from some formal document. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Bard of bullshit?" Lucid chuckled.

"Bard of bullshit."

"You dare call me that?!" the voice shot back.

"To me, of all people?" Lucid snickered internally, directing a mental fist bump toward Alice, which wasn't physically possible but felt right regardless. He resumed speaking in a much clearer tone now, measured and cold.

"So Lucid," the voice said, dropping its volume, "what happened? Why are you in Port Vexis?" Lucid stopped. He genuinely wanted to come up with some justification as to why he was there, to make it clear none of this was his fault. And it wasn't. Not really. Everything he'd suffered through, for better or worse, had been because of that train and the circumstances that came with boarding it.

And now he was in some kind of merit race involving faction leaders across the Scattered Realms, carrying debt to a corporate heir, and apparently of interest to the High Church simultaneously. He started speaking.

"Maybe lowering your tone toward someone you've screwed over twice, and apparently are lining up for round three, is the best way to start a conversation." The other line went quiet. Lucid sat down on the bathroom floor. The interior was tiled in slate with a minimalist construction that looked entirely foreign to anything he'd have expected from the carriage's exterior aesthetic. A brief moment of silence followed. Alice remained quiet as well.

"Forgive me," the governor said.

"I was the one that caused most of this chaos."

"I did try to contact you after we left Port Vexis," Lucid snapped.

"But you didn't pick up." Karmen remained quiet, as if heavily contemplating something beneath that particular accusation. He let out an audible sigh.

"That's, well—""Spare the excuses," Lucid interrupted.

"You go quiet whenever it suits you."

"Lucid, I was busy." Lucid didn't reply. This person was genuinely insufferable. A brief tension sat between them. Lucid broke it.

"Besides, you said to do whatever it takes. That I'm not a hero." Karmen started, "Yes, but—""But what? I got that stupid Astral engine for you."

"You did?" Laughter came through the pendant, genuine and unguarded.

"Well, that's all I need to know then. No problems, my friend. If everything is moving as planned, I myself have no objections."

"The plan you gave me was garbage," Lucid said flatly.

"Three days across the Red Mountains, you said. Boy was that a lie." Alice interjected within his mind, deadpan.

"A lie with a feral Oni included."

"The skydock master will let you onboard, you said. What skydock master? There were none." Lucid's voice climbed slightly.

"And the fenshore house, you won't believe it..." Lucid voice trailed of like as if he was debating on wether he should continue or not.

"So Governor," Lucid said, the word carrying enough weight now to qualify as a full sentence, "tell me exactly why I should believe a single thing you say, because I swear my patience is running genuinely thin."

"I won't even return this Supposed Astral Engine to myself. I'll keep it myself."

"The queen is offering me six diamond coins over whatever you're supposedly offering me for this race."

"Are you referring to the Transcendence?" he said in a revealing voice. He stopped, breathing harder than he'd intended. It was as if months of compressed stress and accumulated frustration had just found their exit point all at once, and he'd had every right to release them.

"You have no right to speak to me that way," the governor's voice came back, quiet now, stripped of its earlier energy. Lucid grimaced. He shifted his weight and leaned his shoulder against the cold metal wall.

"Oh well," Lucid said into the receiver.

"What will you do. Play more of those tunes to quench your anger." A low hum of static sounded on the other end of the line. The caller did not reply. The silence stretched over the connection, heavy and expectant, bleeding through the small audio speaker.

"Lucid," the voice finally spoke.

"I can offer you something much more valuable than that." Lucid adopted a contemplating look on his face. He processed the claim quickly. What material good could possibly be worth more than six diamonds. He could buy the entirety of Port Vexis and still have funds remaining with that amount of wealth.

'This is a desperate bluff,' Lucid speculated inwardly. Then the caller said something he completely failed to anticipate.

"Home," the voice stated smoothly.

"Somewhere far, far away from this place." Lucid stopped. His grip tightened around the receiver. A sharp spike of irritation hit his chest. Who the hell was this unseen person to offer him a home. Did the caller think he was homeless. Did the voice assume he was just a wandering nomad with no foundation. Lucid opened his mouth to deliver a hostile retort. He paused.

"Before you say anything," the voice interrupted, dropping into a cold, threatening register.

"I suggest you consider your position carefully." The ambient static on the connection vanished completely.

"Intruder of the sacred age." Karmen's final words hung heavy in the stifling air of the room, a venomous echo that simply refused to dissipate. Lucid opened his mouth, a fiery protest already burning on his tongue, but Alice stepped close. Her pale fingers dug desperately into his forearm, her wide eyes pleading as she fiercely shushed him, desperate to keep him from making things worse. It didn't matter.

Before Lucid could tear away from her grounding grip, Karmen's voice cut through the static, cold, mechanical, and absolute. He spoke right over Lucid's rising voice.

"Tyriana. By the end of the month," Karmen demanded.

"If I do not see you there, there will be grave consequences." Lucid bared his teeth, inhaling sharply to hurl a vicious insult back through the line, but the sharp, hollow dial tone beat him to it. Karmen had hung up. The silence that followed was suffocating, amplifying the sheer helplessness of the moment. A raw, blinding fury surged through Lucid's veins. The anger bypassed all logic, erasing Alice's presence from his mind and driving straight into his fists.

With a guttural, wordless snarl, he pivoted and swung hard, his knuckles connecting violently with the mounted wall mirror. The glass exploded outward with a sickening crunch, a web of jagged silver shards raining into the sink and scattering across the floor. He stood paralyzed, chest heaving violently, glaring at his own fractured reflection. Crimson blood welled up rapidly from the deep gashes across his knuckles, dripping in a steady, morbid rhythm against the white porcelain.

Yet, as he watched the blood trace dark lines down his trembling wrist, the agonizing throb in his hand began to shift. It started deep within his chest, a sudden, radiant pulse entirely detached from his adrenaline. A profound, unearthly warmth bloomed from the very center of his being, cascading through his arteries and racing down his arm. It was a green light heat that pooled at the site of his wounds, caressing the torn skin from the inside out.