Ch.59— Next Chapter

Chapter 165, “A Constant Battle.” Amy looked over the cover, which had her and Iris walking down a corridor. There were bugs crawling on the walls around them. Chaos creatures, of course.
The blood ritual had already been completed when the chapter started. Apparently the planning at the end of 164 was enough; there was no need to show how they’d connected Crow to the barrier. It went straight to Amy leaving for her trial, with Iris accompanying her as agreed.
Their conversation was pretty much how Amy remembered it. Iris wanted answers, and Amy had spent most of the walk finding ways to avoid giving them. Reading it back was a bit uncomfortable.
Then came her promise: Everything she’d done, and everything she would do, was for their sake. To save all of them.
Amy paused over Iris’s response. She hadn’t been able to hear this part at the time, obviously, but the thought-box was right there: I’ll trust those words for now… just for now.
What followed was as it had been before, with Iris, who had noticed the chaos creatures long before Amy, deciding to stop them alone while Amy ran toward her trial. Both her running as she avoided the chaos creatures—pretty damn badass if she said so herself—and Iris fighting to hold them back were illustrated at the same time, with panels alternating to show both perspectives.
The chapter ended with Amy entering the yellow door to her trial and Lain arriving after hearing the commotion to assist Iris.
Amy groaned on the sofa.
“Next chapter is definitely my trial. Damn it…” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her bandaged hand. She really didn’t want to read this part.
She could still remember the house burning. And the screams. They’d been faint, coming from somewhere in the distance, but she’d heard them.
They weren’t real. None of it was real.
Beside her, Libris tilted their head. They seemed distracted for a moment, then nodded to themselves.
“Next chapter isn’t your trial.”
Amy looked up from the book.
“What?”
Libris was watching her. She couldn’t tell anything from their face, but a possibility had occurred to her before she could ask what they meant.
“Wait. My life on Earth was in it. Is that why? Did they skip the trial?”
For a few seconds, Libris didn’t answer. Then they looked away and shook their head.
Oh.
Amy looked down at the red book again. So they hadn’t skipped it. They were going to show it later. For a moment she’d actually thought she wouldn’t have to see it, which was stupid of her.
What did I expect?
They were not real. They were not…
She remembered pouring the gasoline. Preparing the fire. Amy shook her head, trying to get back to what she was reading, and turned the page.
Crow was on the cover of Chapter 166, sitting with his eyes shut. Behind him was another image, this one of Iris and Lain fighting the chaos creatures.
The bugs were still coming out of the obsidian walls when the chapter began. Iris kept killing them, but it wasn’t doing much. She’d crush one and more would appear behind her. Amy could see where that was going. They’d exhaust themselves long before they ran out of things to kill.
Thankfully, Lain noticed something. Wherever she’d used her ice, the creatures had stopped appearing. Once she’d figured that out, she started freezing the whole hallway. She and Iris fought their way towards the hall, killing what was already there and covering the walls so nothing else could come out. By the time they finished, the hall had been cleared and coated in ice too.
After this was done, they rushed back to the others and reported on their fight. What followed was a sequence of Zayd using his divination to pinpoint where the next attacks would be and sending Lain and Iris to deal with them while Lyra and Ash protected Crow.
It was after a few pages of fighting that the focus shifted to Crow sitting down, one eye semi-open. He was still in the makeshift camp, with Lyra and Ash guarding him. Amy had expected him to wake up after seeing the cover, and there it was.
For a few panels he just looked at the ceiling. His remaining hand moved a little, and he frowned. He clearly had no idea where he was.
“Crow!”
Lyra barely gave him time to open his eyes properly. She was checking his pulse, then his temperature, fussing over him while he tried to speak. Ash eventually had to pull her away so he could explain.
“Okay, so. Don’t freak out.”
There was a small note from the artist beside that line about how awful a way it was to start an explanation. Amy couldn’t disagree.
“You’re tied to the Academy’s barrier. With a ritual. With your blood. Amy’s idea. If the barrier breaks, we all die except for you. But it won’t break, probably, so. Good news?”
The manga let Crow process it across silent, wordless panels.
Crow closed his eyes, then opened them again and spoke.
“Okay,” he said.
“…Okay?” Lyra repeated.
“’Kay?” Ash added.
“Yeah, ’kay…” Crow said as he took a deep exhale and spoke. “Please give me the details.”
The manga skipped the conversation that followed with a montage where Zayd helped explain, and Iris and Lain—who returned at some point—joined and recounted their experience, as seen by Iris’s gestures as she mimicked fighting.
By the end, his tired-looking eyes had settled on the corridor Amy had vanished down. He kept looking that way until the next panel brought his face closer. His expression was much the same, but his eyes looked strangely empty.
The background darkened behind the first boxes of his thoughts.
He was here. Father was here.
Crow looked at where his arm should have been. Then the page broke into little pieces of a flashback, drawn like shards of glass. Amy recognized Abaddon’s silhouette and the golden light. One of the fragments showed Crow losing his arm.
All because I followed that pull in my head. All because I wanted to find him.
If I had never come here. If I had ignored the key, the box, the Eastern Wing… none of them would be like this.
His face remained blank; however, the art, with its raw lines and dark shadows, made it clear how he was truly feeling.
Amy was gripping the page harder than she needed to. She frowned and loosened her fingers a little.
Ash seemed to have noticed something too. In the next panel, he approached Crow and hesitated before putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey. Don’t do that to yourself.”
Crow kept looking away. “I’m not doing anything.”
“I know you. I can tell.”
Lyra sat beside Crow, nodding at Ash’s words.
Ash gave her a smile, then turned to Crow with a crooked grin. “Look, man. Your dad’s a psycho. You don’t get to choose your father. Or whatever prophecy he’s dragged you into. We’re not blaming you, so don’t start doing it for us.”
Crow’s jaw tightened. He didn’t say anything.
“We came because we wanted to,” Lyra told him. “Ash is right. You didn’t make us.”
Lain was standing a little away from them. She hadn’t looked up when she said, “Feeling guilty won’t help.” She seemed to think about that, then added, “You aren’t at fault.”
Amy watched Crow’s shoulders relax a bit over the next panels. His face was still difficult to read.
“…Thanks.”
Ash squeezed his shoulder before letting go. He was smiling, though he looked tired. For once, nobody in the little group seemed to be in immediate danger.
A rustling sound effect appeared at the side of the panel. Zayd had walked up to them, looking about as tired as everyone else, and apparently nobody had noticed him coming.
“I’m glad you’re having this conversation,” he said, “but we aren’t out yet. I’m going to take my trial.”
They turned towards him. Zayd glanced down the corridor before continuing.
“Miss Stake should be back soon. Until she returns, you’ll have no seer here. Prepare yourselves in case Abaddon decides to act while I’m gone.”
“Lady Mysteries is nearly done?” Iris asked. “Did you see that?”
“No. I don’t believe she’ll need much longer, that’s all.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I can work things out without it.”
Crow took a moment before answering him.
“Right. We should prepare.” He let out a breath.
“Yes, you should.”
Iris started to follow Zayd, but he put up a hand to stop her. The shadows around him were already gathering.
“You should stay here. Crow needs the help, and I can get there on my own.” He glanced towards the hall. “I can hide myself quite well. Hiding you too would only make it more difficult.”
He walked into the dark corridor and disappeared. There were several panels of the hallway afterwards, even though there was no longer anything to see in it.
Ash scratched the back of his neck. “…You know, every time he leaves, I feel like there’s a fifty percent chance we’ll never see him again.”
“Only fifty?” Iris asked.
“Alright, maybe fifty-one.”
The group went back to what they’d been doing. Lyra watched the corridor while Lain worked on the fortifications. There were a few small panels of that, then a larger one of Crow, who was still looking in the direction Zayd had gone.
He frowned. “Actually,” Crow said slowly, “we should make sure not to take our eyes off Zayd.”
Everyone looked at him.
“He’s involved with the Tribe of Onyx, after all. Chances are, he betrays us once we get out of here. Us learning about his magic while we were escaping the chaos creatures was clearly not part of his plan,” Crow added.
There was silence, clearly shown by the manga, as there were several still panels of everyone thinking.
Iris pointed down the corridor.
“You could’ve mentioned that while he was still here.”
Everyone looked that way.
“Bit late to keep an eye on him now.”
The chapter ended on a view of the empty hallway. Amy stayed on that page for a while, frowning, before lowering the book.
“That whole last bit about Zayd,” she muttered while her frown deepened. “It felt like foreshadowing. And it’s confusing me.”
“Confusing how?” Libris asked, tilting their cracked head.
“Well, it just makes no sense for the Goddess or whoever the author is to add that last bit. Zayd didn’t try to kill me, or anyone, after our win against Abaddon, where it would have been his best bet.” Amy paused, thought for a second, then added, “And honestly, I doubt he ever will.”
“Well, Crow is the protagonist, and from his perspective, Zayd has always been suspicious,” Libris said. “Is it that surprising for Zayd to be presented as a possible antagonist to the readers?”
“I guess not.” Amy slumped a little against the couch cushion. She was quiet for a moment, then exhaled. “Is it messed up that part of me hopes Zayd takes it?”
“Takes what?”
“This whole ‘potential antagonist’ setup. The thing the manga keeps building around me lately with all the suspicion from everyone being thrown against me. If they’re determined to point that gun at somebody, I’d rather it not be pointed at me. And Zayd’s got the whole mysterious Tribe of Onyx thing going on, so he’s the obvious candidate, and…”
“Amy.” Libris was quiet for a beat. Then they gave a small, tired smile. “To be completely honest, it’s really all just the consequences of your own actions.”
Amy looked at them with a raised eyebrow.
“The way you’ve handled every interaction since you got here, as well as how you keep the mystery around your power, and eventually how you decided to antagonize Crow over the vote, has led to this situation.” Libris shrugged faintly, the motion making the fractures along their shoulder glint. “I don’t necessarily think they were the wrong actions—personally, I think most, if not all of them, were appropriate, given everything you’ve been navigating. But they were still your actions… You really have nobody to blame but you.”
Amy stared at them for a long moment, then let her head fall back against the couch with a quiet groan.
“You really know how to make a girl feel better.”
“Thank you, I try my best.”
“Clearly.”
Libris smiled at her for a few seconds before speaking. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Amy. It isn’t me criticizing you—far from it. I’m praising you, while at the same time trying to tell you that if what you want is to be just another companion of the protagonist’s party, it’s far too late.”
Amy stared at Libris in silence, then sighed and lowered her head.
Then, a few seconds later, she felt a hand on her head.
“I think you should just embrace your new position, although more distant from the others, it will also give you more opportunities to act outside of the manga spotlight, which will be focused way more on Crow and his grief from now on.”
Amy nodded. She didn’t say anything else for a while.
“I guess I just wanted to be liked.”
Amy stared down at the book. Now that she’d said it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Libris thought of that.
They didn’t answer. Their hand moved against her hair instead, and it took Amy a second to realize they were patting her head.
She let them do it a little longer before looking sideways at them.
“Okay, stop. I’m not a dog.”
“Mm.”
They were still doing it.
“Libris.”
“I’ve always wanted to know what your hair felt like,” Libris said while they continued. “You know how hard it was to constantly see that long, fluffy hair every day bounce as you walked?”
Amy took their hand off her head. Carefully, though. There were still those faintly glowing cracks along their wrist, and she didn’t want to make them worse just because Libris was being annoying.
Libris examined the hand she’d moved, then smiled at her.
“You’re right about the dog. More of a cat, I think.”
They finally put their hand in their lap. Amy shook her head and went back to the book. She wasn’t going to bother answering that.
It took a few shallow breaths before she was ready to turn the page.
Chapter 167. The cover was a trial door, though without the colors she couldn’t tell which one. Amy hesitated over it. Maybe this was where they’d show hers.
The opening pages were set in the hall with the seven doors. She kept reading, bracing herself, but there was no trial. Only the drawing of her coming back out with the sphere, the cut already sealed tight.
And, of course, they included Zayd hiding by the far wall. There he was, touching his presence against her barrier. And there she was, nearly jumping out of her skin.
“Ugh, did they really have to add that part?” Amy commented. “I look so stupid…”
“You really do,” Libris said with a chuckle.
Amy turned to them with a frown. “I will end you.”
Libris smiled for a second, then, as if realizing something, put both hands in the air. “I was about to say ‘try it.’ But now that I have lost most of my powers, I think you might actually be able to under the right circumstances.”
“…Right.” Amy’s eyes rested on them for a few seconds longer before settling back into the manga.
The story—after her conversation with Zayd, where she was given the artifact she would then later use to kill Abaddon—moved onward, this time from Zayd’s perspective into the trial, and contrary to hers, it did not skip this one.