>>6071870>>6072060>>6072129>>6073708https://files.catbox.moe/abkr68.mp3“A different time?” you exclaimed, throwing up your hands and flailing them above the divination orb and the barrel. “I’m going to be ‘deal with swiftly and mercilessly’, as you just said! A different time doesn’t seem like a viable option, does it?”
She took another draw from her pipe, sampling it like one would a caramel confectionery. “Yes. That’s true.”
“So I need all the answers now,” you said, thrusting out your chest. “Do you you know how difficult it was to get here?”
“I don’t think that is important,” she said, waving her pipe and allowing the glowing embers to fall onto the barrel’s wooden crown. “What I can say for certain is that you don’t have much time, so, go ahead and pose your questions.”
“You know who I am, right?”
She shifted her gaze away from glassy orb and sighed wearily. “Yes, I think. Having answered so many questions from the raucous bunch, what I want now is a moment of peace and quiet. Yet, their absence is merely temporarily, and here you are, disturbing the short-short break I lucked into getting.” She offered you the smoking pipe, but you refused it. “I know this much: you are a human, brought here by Miranna.” Her leech-like teeth caught the light of the candle as she turned her head.
“Since you’re not alarmed at all that I’m here, that means I’m not the hero of your prophesy, and she made a mistake.”
“I didn’t say that,” she cut you short. “But my genuine, far-reaching prophesies surface on their own, without force.”
“And now you’re tired.”
“I am tired,” she acknowledged, leaning onto her palm.
You sighed, squatting down beside the barrel and the crone with the glossy black skin. “And buzzed from your flowers.”
“No, those are to relax; otherwise, I’d be at my wits’ end,” she said.
“Whatever. I’m going to remind you of the prophesy,” you said. “One would appear soon to slay the Demon King and his generals,” you recited, echoing Miranna’s earlier words. “From the dirt, with a distinct mark. With black hair, brown eyes, chicken herder who smells like hay and lives on his own, with a weapon of great …” you paused, realising Miranna hadn’t specified.
“—of great insult,” she finished. “Meaning, something the King and the Generals will be insulted to be defeated by.”
“Such as?”
“The voice of the prophesy spoke those words. The vision showed the hero’s silhouette defeating the Mountain Eater with merely a dagger.”
Impossible for you. You waved your hand. “Tell me, how often are your prophesies proven wrong?”
She eyed you with her vacant, fogged-over eyes, opaque and devoid of gleam. “Those that come on their own … shouldn’t be.”
