WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 423

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WeTried Translations
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint
Chapter 423 — Devastating Beauty

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The goal was reviving the Demon God, but that didn't leave me with much to actually do. I just focused on keeping Tyr comfortable and slowly restoring her senses, same as always.

The result was that Tyr and I ended up spending most of our time pressed together. And by pressed together, I don't mean simply in the same room.

"Unni! Do you think I might dare to come in?"

"Enter."

"Yes! I just wanted to bask in unni's presence for a moment..."

Permission granted, Cabilah pushed open the door to the reception chamber with a giddy skip in her step, then went quiet the moment she caught sight of what was inside.

I was there. Tyr was there. On their own that might have just barely scraped within the limits of Cabilah's tolerance. But there was one thing, just one thing, that brought her to a dead stop.

Tyr and I were sitting in the same chair.

"What... is..."

When something is too absurd, words fail. Even when the person involved is a vampire. I read the thoughts collapsing inside Cabilah's head and spoke up.

With Tyr sitting in my lap.

"Go ahead and talk amongst yourselves. Don't mind me."

"How can I not mind! Why are you holding unni like that?! What gives some outsider the right to put his hands on unni without — you did it again!"

"Didn't Tyr mention it? I'm in the middle of restoring Tyr's senses, so I need to stay close to her as much as possible."

That wasn't a lie. My hand on Tyr's shoulder was engraving sensation into her body even as I spoke.

Not even the Lightning Demon God could inscribe sensation into someone else's body at will. A Demon God understands the structure of the world, not how any individual human is put together. Finding the formula doesn't mean you can explain every practical problem — or the phrase "armchair scholar" would never have been coined.

I'm different, though. A King of Humanity who can read people themselves, and who also grasps a Demon God's knowledge, can inscribe sensation tailored to that specific body. Limited to cases where Tyr cooperates willingly, of course.

"Mm. I still feel some psychological resistance to showing this to others..."

"Should I stop, then?"

"No. Continue. It would be unkind to treat Cabilah as a stranger. She has witnessed even my most embarrassing moments over a very long time."

Tyr leaned further into me as she said it. I nodded and settled my hand back onto her shoulder. Her dress had thin straps and left her shoulders almost entirely bare, and I pressed my palm flat against her skin without any interference.

Fzzt. A faint crackle of static, and I kneaded Tyr's shoulder. She closed her eyes like a cat and shivered.

"How does that feel? Does it help?"

"Mm. Yes. I can feel it coming through."

"Your muscles are quite knotted. Why are your shoulders so stiff?"

"Can muscles knot? I haven't been putting any particular tension in them."

"Ah. Sorry. I suppose my hands are just weak."

It had the feel of a grandchild massaging an elder's shoulders. Never mind that I probably looked older than Tyr to anyone passing by.

Cabilah stood rooted to the spot and watched every second of it with both eyes wide open.

"Un... ni?"

"That's enough, Cabilah."

Still accepting my massage, Tyr addressed her.

"I too would have preferred not to be seen like this in front of others. But Hyu is human. He needs sleep, needs food, and sometimes his hands need rest and he needs to go out. I cannot very well force him to give more of his time."

"You should force him! It's only right for a consort to serve unni with full devotion!"

"I refuse. If Hyu is tired on my account, I will be the one to decline it. So I hope you can understand."

When the Progenitor says understand, there is nothing to do but understand. Cabilah accepted the situation, even if she wasn't happy about it.

Laying his hands on unni so casually... that human doesn't grasp even a hundredth of a hundredth of how presumptuous that is...! And that's as much salt in the wound as I can take...!

Well. Is this really salt in anyone's wound? Strip away the assumptions and all he's doing is giving a massage. That barely clears the threshold of a harmless favor, so let it go.

"Come sit. Yes. What is it?"

"...It's about the upcoming Night Ebb."

"The Night Ebb is approaching. I've returned at a good time."

Night Ebb? The unfamiliar term made me pause, and Tyr, reading my hands, caught my confusion.

Ah. Hyu is from outside the Duchy. He won't know what the Night Ebb is. No matter how much I tell him not to worry, I can hardly spend the whole day talking about something he knows nothing of.

Exactly. Nice of Tyr to notice. I could find out by reading her thoughts, but having to pretend I don't already know something after reading it is harder than the reading itself. Telling me in advance makes things easier for both of us. It had been a while since anyone had been considerate in that way.

That said, saying outright that Hyu doesn't know and asking for an explanation would embarrass him. A partner's dignity must be preserved.

I hadn't been hoping for consideration that thorough, but all right. Tyr cleared her throat and asked:

"Cabilah. I've grown a little muddled. Would you give me a brief explanation of what the Night Ebb is?"

"Of course, unni."

Cabilah launched into the explanation without a flicker of suspicion.

"Two sea-beasts live in the Sea of Leviathans. The drift whale and the cloud ray. The cloud ray is a chaotic thing — it slaps the sea with its fins, stuns the fish, then skims the surface collecting whatever floats up. It causes endless trouble like some bottomless glutton, but it's nothing compared to the drift whale."

I still remembered that tsunami. The one that had nearly swept away the humans who had come out to gather food during a low tide. What had almost been a catastrophic disaster was nothing more than the aftershock of a sea-beast's hunt.

And the drift whale was something beyond even that. Cabilah herself felt a shade of awe whenever she thought of it.

"Once every four years, the drift whale rises from the deep — where it lives as though dead — and comes up to the Sea of Leviathans around this time of year. Deep water to us, but to the drift whale it's shallow enough that it can lie belly-down with its back jutting above the surface like an island. It positions itself between two actual islands like a dam, opens its mouth toward the current, and then..."

"The water that would fill the sea passes through the drift whale's belly."

"Exactly. It swallows seawater in great gulps, strains out its prey, and expels whatever remains through its gills and blowholes."

Words alone weren't enough, apparently. Cabilah shaped blood into a figure to show us. A body blocking the current like a dam, mouth open. Blood poured through that mouth. The whale made of blood gulped down the waves in steady swallows, straining what passed through and letting the rest flow free.

"But the water the drift whale releases after blocking the current is far less than what normally flows. The Sea of Leviathans runs short of water, and that shortage causes a massive low tide unlike anything you'd ordinarily see. The Night Ebb. The phenomenon where the plains of the seafloor are exposed."

Stories about sea-beasts had been passed down like legend. They were hard to grasp from description alone, and not many people had actually seen them.

But hearing about sea-beasts from a vampire's own mouth — even knowing everything beforehand — still felt like legend.

That's something else. The drift whale has a back that sticks out like an island, hence the name, and it dams the sea and filters the water for food, and the result is such an enormous low tide that plains form out of the seabed?

The scale of it was genuinely terrifying. It was a fresh reminder of why no ship could sail beyond rivers and lakes. Beast or otherwise, it was simply a living natural disaster.

Cabilah folded her arms and frowned once she'd finished.

"I don't particularly look forward to it myself, but it's a rare chance for the cattle to make real money, so it's difficult to stop them. You wouldn't believe how many of them covet the coral and shells."

"In the old days, didn't most of it go to the Gold State? The Gold State is gone now — who is there to want it?"

"There are still plenty. Traveling merchants from the Arcane Federation haven't stopped coming, and there was that kingdom, gone now, that used to quietly source items to put up as prizes in duels. There were also dealings down in the Wildlands with black mages who wanted them for materials..."

Cabilah was in the same position as Valdamir. Tyr had been in seclusion for stretches ranging from a few decades to a few centuries at a time, so people always had to fill her in when she returned. No wonder explaining things came so naturally to them.

"So before the Night Ebb arrives, humans and vampires from across the Duchy will gather here. Like darkness riding in on the heels of night."

The Night Ebb was the one occasion when every human and vampire scattered across the Duchy came together in one place.

"And... Valdamir has set that day as the date for Lir Nightingale's trial."

The real reason Cabilah had brought up the Night Ebb came at the very end.

This wasn't some minor matter. It concerned an Elder. Naturally it would need to be announced at a gathering where every vampire was present. The Duke of Crimson Blood had consulted Cabilah about setting that day as the trial date.

"Of course, it would require unni's approval!"

And so she had come for that final permission. Tyr nodded without hesitation.

"Tell him to proceed."

"You have no objections?"

"It's sensible, so I see no reason to change anything. It's a day when every waking vampire is gathered, and after that things will be busy again — better to have it done beforehand."

She handled things decisively. That was why Tyr had trusted the country to Valdamir, and why Valdamir had served her with such total loyalty. It was no exaggeration to say that virtually every major affair of state was handled by Valdamir.

Cabilah nodded as though this was exactly what she had expected.

"...Then I'll pass the word along."

"You work hard. I'll leave it to you, Cabilah. Ah, wait — may I ask one more favor?"

"Anything."

Tyr glanced at me and smiled.

"Your cooking is truly delicious. Regaining my sense of taste and then eating your food has been both a blessing and a curse. My standards have risen so high that nothing else satisfies."

"You flatter me."

"Not at all. So, sometime soon, would you cook for Hyu and me? I would like to share that pleasure with him."

Late-blooming passions can be something else. She had only just learned what taste was, and already she was taking an interest in fine taste.

What must it feel like to cook for the Progenitor you revere, the unni you adore? Something swelling and heart-pounding, I imagined. She might even be overcome with emotion.

But Cabilah was a vampire. Emotion didn't stop her body. And cooking, for her, had only ever been a way to manage the discontent of the humans — not a craft she had cultivated to find meaning in or share.

It used to be different. The Tyr of the past had been lofty but hollow, and Cabilah, as her thrall, had been bound to that power and those feelings. She had strained to bring Tyr even a grain of joy. A time when Cabilah clung on unilaterally.

But now.

"For unni, as much as you like!"

A smile worn smooth by a thousand years was all she had to give.

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