'That damned shrimp bastard!'

Vale, as much as he wanted to chase Mias, quickly turned his attention to Awilix, who was groaning in pain due to the gashes on her stomach.

As of the moment, he had no means of healing her. Salome was still absent, and Vale had 0 Aether in his reserves.

All he could do was take Ximena's fabric from around his neck and tie it around the girl's waist, and apply pressure.

'Salome! Where are you?!'

***

Fifteen hours had passed, and night had fallen.

Salome, fully healed, sat, resting her head against the dome of smoke that held up the collapsed building they were currently trapped under.

"Reaper, you're batshit insane, you know that?"

Mias whispered back:

"I said to be quiet."

Salome rolled her eyes at the insane man's pleas.

'Vale's going to want to kill the little guy when we get back.'

Mias had a smirk on his face as he said:

"Five more minutes, then we can escape without being spotted. Alpha should be starting the distraction I ordered right about… now."

A mass of screaming and orders filled the camp. A large number of footsteps were all rushing in one direction.

And after five minutes passed, Mias used his smoke to clear the debris hiding his barrier, then dispelled it entirely, letting the two experience the outside breeze.

Mias whispered as he activated Nevermore, using it to cloak himself and Salome as best as he could.

"Hurry, if we get spotted, this will all be for nothing."

***

'I feel like shit…'

Vale rolled around, his own mounting injuries causing immeasurable pain.

'Salome… where are you?'

Awilix's complexion was growing worse by the second. It seemed that even as an Aether Construct, her body had limits on what it could sustain and heal from without intervention.

That threshold had clearly been passed.

Vale hadn't been counting the time, but it felt like days had passed.

'Ah…'

Vale had been able to hold his wound on his arm closed, but he couldn't mend it with shapeshifting, as if his body was rejecting the change of form.

Vale heard a whizzing sound, and a small smile crept on his face.

'Finally…'

Vale looked over and watched as Salome glided through the air and barreled straight to Awilix, and began healing her.

She moved barely glancing at Vale, as if she'd already known Awilix's terrible state.

Vale was just about to shove that thought to the back of his mind when he saw a second figure appear from the maze.

"Oh, what the fuck."

Vale could barely stop himself from screaming. After tightly clenching his jaw, Vale muttered:

"You had the nerve to come back?"

Salome, growing weak from healing Awilix, responded first:

"Let him explain."

Vale sneered:

"If he has a reason, it better be a damned good one."

Mias smiled as he looked down at the collapsed Vale.

"Of course, and sorry for slicing your arm. It was needed."

'Man… I really want to punch this little fucker.'

Vale exasperatedly sighed:

"Well, get on with it. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Mias formed a chair from his ashy smoke and sat upon it, then started:

"You might want to get comfortable as well…"

After that short preamble, Mias began to reveal his web of truths and lies…

First, he began with the 'why'.

"When I said I thought they had an oracle on their side. Well, I was more or less completely sure… And remember when I told you that oracles aren't absolute, but tricky to deal with? This is how I deal with them."

Vale reeled back.

"Huh?"

Mias smiled:

"First, let me explain how an oracle functions."

Mias held out his left hand and summoned a board of smoke; on his right, a mass of lines branched repeatedly.

"An oracle can see the future, yes, but it's important to know how."

Mias motioned and nodded as three smoky figures appeared on the board.

"An oracle has an ability to mark a follower or neutral target which accepts, and once marked..."

Mias held up his hand with the branching lines, and continued:

"They can see that person's branches of fate — possible futures — but they can only see and understand the future from that person's perspective, not from a 3rd-person point of view. So they can't know or see what their mark won't know or see."

Mias smiled as a string danced on one of the smoky person's heads, signaling it had been marked.

"Also, the mark can spread from one to another, but only to those applicable."

Then, that string appeared on other smoky figures' heads.

'What?'

'Just where is he going with this…'

More human figures appeared on the board, all marked.

"Bottom line is… whoever their oracle was, could experience the future through everyone in that village, including Ophelia and Laertes."

Vale's eyes narrowed as he watched Salome, exhausted, crumple and lie beside Awilix.

Vale asked:

"So what?"

The reaper let his examples collapse as he crushed his fist:

"Therefore, as long as you're never spotted doing something by one marked, you can't be predicted."

Vale's eyes lit up, but immediately stopped when he realized the plethora of glaring flaws in that logic.

"Would they not be able to see and react to the results of your actions even if you weren't physically seen? Plus, then how did you get spotted in the first place? And how did Ophelia know what knowledge you desired?"

Mias leaned back in his smoky chair.

"Shrewd observation. Which is why I had to not only hide myself, but also my actions. As for how I got caught and how they knew what I wanted…"

Mias sighed:

"I don't even know where to start. A lot went into that one."

Mias summoned the branching lines of smoke once again.

"First, I have to explain the branches of fate…"

Vale listened intently as Mias went over how an oracle reads and sees the future. Their desires to steer toward their desired conclusion.

"...So, while there may be one true ending, those other endings existed at one point. And, it was quite possible that in the path toward those conclusions she marked someone in the future, potentially even one of us, and had been able to find out the questions I wanted answered as well as my ability and curious nature."

'So, an oracle can gain knowledge from the future version of someone, even if that person takes a different path and never becomes that future version?'

'That's…'

'What the hell?!'

Vale wanted to trust Mias's words. But after all the scholar put him through, he just couldn't. Not completely.

"While that's plausible, that doesn't entirely explain how you were spotted."

Mias shrugged:

"One way or another, she concluded I was spying on the girl, regardless of whether I'd been seen in reality or action. But more so, it was because Ophelia could sense me."

Mias looked a little to the side, a sour look on his face.

Vale asked:

"What do you mean?"

Mias let his arm burst into smoke.

"I won't go into too much detail about myself, my life as some no-name king's failed successful science experiment. But know that my soul and what constitutes my body is constantly in flux, never complete."

Mias leaned back in his chair, then added:

"Ophelia is a healer. You saw it firsthand. One of her abilities is sensing the injuries of those around her. My body is fragmented and spliced. Therefore, she could sense me — she sensed an injured soul."

Vale studied the Reaper's onyx, hollow eyes.

"That…"

Mias laughed pitifully.

"Yeah, it's quite sad. But, to be honest, we're lucky she could, else this might have turned out differently. I'd never been able to string Ophelia and the oracle along to the degree I did."

Vale grimaced, nursing the cut from Mias on his arm.

"I want to believe you. I really do. But what was the point in not telling us? Maybe you wanted to eliminate variables, I guess. Maybe you were afraid we'd be bad actors. But you could have at least told me."

Mias laughed:

"Ah, that's simple… I let myself be marked."

Vale's face went pale, his expression dropping.

"Huh…"

Vale, after a few seconds, snapped from his confusion and screamed:

"Then why are you saying this?! Won't the oracle see and change…? Oh. huh?"

Mias laughed at Vales' confused expression.

"Yes, they would. But you seemed to have figured out that by me saying that, this future shouldn't exist. They should have reacted to the words I just said and steered toward a different path."

Mias paused, then let a mini Mias form:

"When I said I was marked… only half of me was."

The mini Mias began running around the legs of the smoke chair, but then grew to full size with no more smoke being added.

"My body is a little weird. I've already alluded to its broken nature, so I won't go into extreme detail, but know that because my soul is a patchwork of souls, the oracle was only able to mark the half it saw."

Vale wanted to understand… he really did.

But he simply didn't.

"Huuhhh?"

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