He regarded me with cold eyes as both of us sat across from each other. It was a major breach of decorum for me to be sitting on the same level as him like this, but there was no one in here besides the two of us.
His small fingers drummed against the table, and I waited for him to speak. The silence stretched on for several minutes, the air begging to be broken with speech. I remain silent, not being the one to initiate the conversation. Finally, the drumming of his fingers stops, and he steeples his hands.
"Poe. What might be the relationship between you and my fiance?"
"I am her personal butler, and she, my master."
He frowns. "Provide an answer that doesn't come straight from someone else's mouth."
Brat. I keep my face free of my irritation. "She's…I'm not sure exactly how I would define it. But she is important to me."
"Those are bold things to say about the future king's finance."
"Not when the future king doesn't want to marry her."
His eyes widen for a second, and his face shifts to a slight grin. "You caught me. How embarrassing. For future reference, what gave me away?"
"Perhaps my 'future king' would start referring to his fiance as the 'future queen' if he wanted to stay consistent."
He clicked his tongue, openly frowning. His regal appearance instantly dimms as he leans back and sighs. "Such an idiotic thing." He shakes his head, re-evaluating me. "No, I don't intend to marry her. However, I see no reason for us to be enemies."
My eyes narrow at him. "I am merely her butler, such things should be told to he-"
"You are far more than that." He cuts me off, holding his chin up with one hand as he continues staring at me. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since someone caught me lying? Or since someone didn't fall for the idiotic paranoia surrounding my fiance? I had considered her a minor tool towards my goals, but." He tilts his head as he looks at me. "You two together…that might be something worth keeping around."
I can't stop a frown from coming to my face this time. "Your demeanor broke down rather quickly."
"I don't like keeping airs for the sake of it."
"Shocking. If this lowly butler may inquire, what exactly are your goals?"
He snorts, waving a hand to the side. "Cut the pointless etiquette." He took a deep breath, leaning back far enough on the chair that it came up, only two of its four legs keeping him upright. One of his legs keeps his balance against the table as he speaks. "Do you know the point of existence?"
"Oh god, you're one of the insane ones."
He starts laughing immediately, and pulls himself forwards, the chair legs slamming on the ground. He has a nasty grin as he stares at me. "How fun! How entertaining!" He stands suddenly, both hands against the table as he leans down at me. "Let me ask again, do you know the point of existence?"
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. "I don't think anyone does."
He nods slowly. "Correct. No one knows why we exist. Why anything exists. So with that in mind let me ask you another question. Do you think the gods are real? Any of them, all of them?"
I blow out a puff of air. "I don't know. isn't there tangible proof of their existence? Like the status menu." Saying the word provokes it into existence, but I don't let myself look at it, mentally dismissing it without a glance.
"Sure, there are the powers granted to clerics, the demigods that can shift the balance of wars, but I don't mean beings beyond humans, I mean gods. Beings that can change reality, pull the threads of existence apart and weave something new from it. True and honest omnipotence."
"Well, something made everything."
He snapped his fingers. "Bingo. For there to be something, something came from nothing. Every known law of reality, of magic, alchemy, mathematics. It all says that's impossible, yet it happened. Existence cannot exist. It's a paradox."
I felt like my head was going to start spinning in circles. Was he genuinely just insane? "Alright, sure, let's say there is omniscience then, what does that have to do with you or me? Or the unknown meaning behind existence?"
He raised his hands placatingly. "I'm getting there. Now, let's call this omnipotent being or force the One True God." Was he going to start trying to convert me to christianity? That would definitely be the weirdest thing to come from this. "Why would they have made us? Why create this world, why create people?"
"Boredom? Forever is a long time to spend in a void." I shrug. "I've never been omnipotent before, I wouldn't know."
"Close, so, so, close." He steeples his hands again, looking down at the table. "We are in existence for one sole reason." His eyes flick up to mine, and I feel like I'm in a frozen tundra, the blue eyes trapping me in place. "We exist to be beneath it."
"What?"
"If The One True God was bored, why make beings so far beneath it? It should be capable of making something equal to or beyond itself, otherwise, it wouldn't be all powerful. Yet, we exist. Beings that cannot even perceive it, cannot understand it, cannot manipulate reality as it can, cannot see existence as malleable as it does. Why else would it make us, if not so it could exist above us?"
"You…you think the motivation behind all of reality is to stoke something ego?"
"Yes, I do."
I pause and just stare at him. I can feel a migraine coming on, and rubbing my forehead. "O-Ok, I-I don't agree fully, but I can follow the logic, I guess. What does any of this have to do with you? Or me? Or Lilith? If you've spent all this time believing this, you must also understand that…it's ridiculous to say this, but that challenging a being like that is pointless."
He is silent for a moment. "Do you have a status menu, Poe?"
Change of topic, but, alright. "Yes?"
"Saints of the past have claimed that it was in their native language. But, do you want to know something fascinating about that? They all claimed it was a different language."
"What?"
"Chinese, English, Hindu, Japanese, and Italian. Those are the ones I know of. The saint is a being summoned from another world in times of crisis, yet to them and only them, the universe is accommodating. They can grow at levels far beyond us, and can easily become the strongest beings in the world within tens of years. To answer your question, challenging a god is impossible. We are by definition inferior. However, that is because we are constrained. Status."
He looked at the air in front of him, his eyes scanning in lines as he read something. I swallowed thickly. "Are you, implying that rather than a person…"
His eyes snapped to mine again. "I believe that the Saint is an avatar of the gods. A being through which the divine is given an opportunity to…how did you put it? Assuage boredom. How else do you explain their impossible growth? Their explosive rise in power? The way they perfectly appear when a disaster is incoming? The way the world will accommodate them, will bend to their whim? Always, they receive what they need, always, they just barely scrape by. They find hidden treasures, they get harems and slaughter as they please. They treat our existences as nothing but characters on a stage."
He let out a deep breath, his hand clenching the table hard enough the wood was starting to splinter. "They face risk, but are immune to its consequences. How else are we to regard them, but a being which the world revolves around, and which we are nothing to?"
I want to argue with him, to call him insane again and move on, consider him a crazy bastard and push past this whole thing. But, it hits me somewhat randomly during his rant. He's right. In this world, this place inside the pages of a novel, the coming saint is the protagonist. They are the existence the world is built around, they are immortal, because the novel needs to keep going.
They are avatars of the creators, the characters created by authors to entertain themselves and others. The background of being a [saint] was something carelessly inserted by the author to explain the explosive growth of the MC, but when actually considered from the perspective of a person in this world…
[Saint]'s weren't associated with any particular god, and in the world of the novel, it was said that a [Saint] of the past had managed to even kill a god. Again, such a thing was a throwaway line to tease the upper limits of the MC's power, but, when applied as history…
The Crown Prince had figured it out. He had reached a conclusion that anyone on Earth would've thought was batshit insane, and that I also would've thought was insane, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew he was right.
I feel his hands on my shoulders, and feel him shaking me, a wild and almost feral grin on his face. "You see it! You understand! I can see it in your eyes!" He lets out an almost manic laugh. "It's all pointless right?! We're all just puppets on a stage!"
I swallow thickly, but shake his hands off. "E-Even if you are right, what changes if we know that? If we're all dancing on strings then what do we do about it? Why should we do anything about it?"
He shakes his head, some of the mania bleeding off of him. "That may be enough for you, you may find contentment in that sort of existence, but I refuse. My words are my own, my actions my own, my life my own. I am the only one who authors my path, and if hands beyond mine pull my strings, I'll snap those fingers myself." He shudders, letting out a shaky exhale. "The saint, the avatar of this One True God. I can't kill them, no, that wouldn't change anything at all, nor would I succeed. I need to create a story for it, write out a path with a clear build up. Then, at the climax of my built up story, I'll ruin the ending. It's petty, perhaps totally meaningless, but if I am to live my life under the thumb of a greater being, I intend to at least die ruining it's fun."
I grimace. Despite all of his ambition, it's pointless. It's literally impossible, no matter how badly he wants it, he is a character in a book. Text on a screen cannot write itself, ink on a book is nothing more than that.
Even now. "You…Don't you think that if that was the case, even this motivation of yours was artificially made?"
"So what." I blink at him. He lets out another breath, grimacing. "So what? Two realities exist. One in which I can do as I say, and I succeed in cutting my strings. Another, in which even the desire of separation is predestined. In such a reality, it's all meaningless, no matter what. This exists the only chance of freedom. Within this plan, is the only chance ever to re-write my fate."
I'm struck silent. How do I even react to that? Where…where did the novel end and he start? Was all of this just…character motivation? I feel saliva pooling in the back of my throat and have to thickly swallow it. He's panting, tired from winding himself up. He looks up at me, that mania still present in his eyes.
Wasn't he a shallow character? I don't think any of the author's characters had motivations like that. I never reached the end of the novel, but… but the prince was plainly just a character that wanted to be king, and was greedy for power. Did I miss all of this, or, was this new?
I looked at the boy huffing breaths standing next to me. He was breathing, his cheeks were flush, his hair was rustling. He looked vulnerable, scared almost. He wasn't the cruel and meaninglessly malicious character I had read, he was…he was a person.
He took a final deep breath, calming himself down. "Goodness." He runs a hand through his golden hair, displacing it somewhat. "I wasn't expecting this at all!" He gives a small laugh, that feral look still in his eyes. "I genuinely was just checking on a tool I intended to use in the future, but, I've struck gold with you Poe. Someone else who understands, who knows as I do the nature of existence."
I open my mouth to speak, but get cut off. "I know." He raised his hands placatingly again. "I know I know, you have no plans to help me and just intend to find your own peace here, guided by strings of fate or not."
"Ok, I don't like that, please stop taking words out of my mouth."
He laughed again, holding onto the table to keep him up. "Noted. So don't worry, I won't trouble you to help me or anything like that. Not without compensation at least. You want to keep Lilith happy and healthy, yes? I'm sure we can work together on that, in exchange for your aid in a few things."
"What kind of things?"
He smoothed out his ruffled clothes, calming himself further. "Nothing immense I assure you. There are a few contacts I want to make with individuals who will be around at the same time as the saint. People who I believe will be attending [Eden] alongside the two of us. Part of the story I intend to craft."
I never said I would be attentending, but it looks like the decision was made for me. He continued speaking. "I really just need you to observe, make sure the individuals are who and what I think they are, and I can do the rest myself."
It was a small price to pay for his cooperation with keeping Lilith safe. The Crown Prince was a schemer to the extreme, but I was pretty sure I could trust him in this case. I don't think people can really have a breakdown of that magnitude then turn around and lie. I couldn't at least.
"I'm not in much of a position to go adventuring. I need to keep around Lilith, and I'm not exactly the toughest guy out there."
"Not an issue, I can solve both problems with one solution. Take her with you."
I pause for a moment. "This is an awful idea, shouldn't you have, like, spies?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "None whom I could properly explain this all to. None whom I trust. I'll arrange your and Lilith's departure with the Edgars, and I'll take care of transportation. So, do we have a deal?"
I hesitated for a moment. If I agreed, I'd no doubt be aligning with the villain of the novel, and placing myself in the direct opposition of the hero.
Some people were naturally good, and would have an immediate response. They'd know just what to do, and how to react. I wasn't one of those kinds of people. I reached out my hand, and he shook it.
I might be making a deal with the devil, but I don't think I'd regret it.