"Darling, stop making Madame Butterfly angry."
The witch naturally understood that Solomon's attitude toward all extradimensional beings was rarely friendly. Given the education and worldview instilled in him since childhood, to the Arcanist, only extradimensional allies who could provide tangible help were acceptable—everyone else was better off dead. As if to match Bayonetta's comment, just before her summoning time ran out, Madame Butterfly formed her massive hand into a fist and extended it toward Solomon, completely ignoring the presence of the Thrones. The threat was so childish it was almost laughable—but Solomon's response wasn't much more mature.
He stuck out his tongue and made a face.
Even with his helmet on, the witch could easily guess his expression with her perfectly manicured toenail. She leapt from the Arcanist's arms and landed in front of the two Thrones. With a mocking air of arrogance, she completely ignored the headless creatures. "Don't be such a child. You're not even the youngest one here." She narrowed her eyes playfully and smirked. "Come on, babies—Mommy's got a fight to finish."
"Athena would never approve of that nickname. And you—runny-nose brat—you can't even handle a Throne? Do you even know how to use magic?" Solomon muttered as he patted Madame Butterfly's fading fist. The heat from his powered armor and jet propulsion still radiated around him as he stepped forward, pretending not to notice the friendly gesture the boy was making at him. While their relationship wasn't outright hostile, Solomon's instincts simply didn't like this strange kid.
When he saw the hourglass-shaped mark on the boy's forehead—formed by two symmetrical triangles lying on their sides—Solomon's instincts screamed. The mark was identical to the design on the device that restored the Waterfall Cathedral. Combined with the boy's ability to manipulate time and space in a way similar to the Eye of the World, Solomon had every reason to remain on high alert. He wouldn't strike first for now, but that didn't stop him from using his sharp tongue to inflict some mental damage.
His gut told him that if the boy recovered his memory and became an enemy, Solomon might be forced to unseal all the locks on his holy sword—or even use the Silver Key. He had already requested Kamar-Taj to dig into the boy's background. Someone this powerful couldn't just appear from nowhere. For all he knew, the kid could've been alive for centuries, just like how some in the Avengers suspected Solomon of being an ancient warlock. That's exactly how he saw this boy. He was confident the Kamar-Taj libraries held clues about him.
"I'm really getting tired of these ugly things. Move aside, snot-nose. I don't want to hit you by accident during a fight—you're still our guide," Solomon said with a small yawn. This whole ordeal had made him miss his afternoon nap and dinner—something terribly upsetting for an Arcanist who had recently decided to live a more domestic life. "Left or right? Or should I just take care of both?"
"My Lord!"
"Speak, Catherine," Solomon said, turning his head slightly and opening the encrypted comms system in his helmet to receive intel from the Sisterhood. Thanks to satellites launched from the City of the Immortals, he had a strong signal no matter how remote the location. He leaned against a piece of broken masonry next to the fallen Throne's flail. There was a dent in the weapon's golden surface—left by Solomon during close combat. Bayonetta had actually panicked at the time, thinking he was about to be struck. She even shouted, breaking her usual composure. No one had expected Solomon to test his hand-to-hand skills by taking on the Throne's massive flail with a direct elbow strike—a move no ordinary person could survive.
Although he and Bayonetta planned to rest here, the real reason was to let the boy tend to his injuries. Despite his impressive magic, the boy had no armor and had cast no protective spells. In the chaos of flying debris, he was particularly vulnerable. No one knew why he thought turning into a flying squirrel could help him dodge area attacks, but that's what he did—like someone with no combat experience and no sense of defense. At Bayonetta's request, Solomon handed over medical supplies from his powered armor. Now the boy sat applying antiseptic gel to his wounds while the witch stood nearby, mocking him mercilessly.
"You two really are a pair. At least your mouths are equally sharp," the boy grumbled, whether from the pain or some other reason. "Do you people even have friends?"
"According to our deal, you're supposed to take us to meet one," Bayonetta replied.
"In Hell?" the boy scoffed. "Sounds like you're not exactly popular, Bayonetta."
"The Crucifix Rose, Lily, and Penitence will arrive over Noahdun in ten minutes," Catherine reported. "Baron Mordo has sent a file. Would you like to receive it?"
"Send it over."
Solomon fell silent after viewing the scanned pages Mordo had forwarded.
The events had unfolded so abruptly that he had never considered this angle before.
The Eye of the World was split into left and right eyes. They originally belonged to a deity of chaos and symbolized the dual nature of its power. It was still unclear why the deity bestowed them upon the witches and sages, but once the tribes possessed these time-and-space altering powers, they could travel through time and reshape history, breaking free of destiny's grip. Of course, this wasn't something easily done. The chaotic deity may have hoped otherwise, but from a higher-dimensional perspective, events that had already occurred were like countless dots on the edges of stacked sheets of paper. Those in the future could only see the lines and planes these dots formed—history had already been interfered with by people from the future, who unknowingly became its key drivers.
This was the concept of fate. What humans could perceive was merely its projection in three-dimensional space.
Yet this did not mean the future was unchangeable. Until observed, all fates existed in a superposition. Only the act of interference fixed a single outcome. That was why Solomon never placed blind faith in prophecy—he treated it as reference material. He knew better than anyone just how many futures were possible. This view was also shared by some of the more advanced Arcanists in Kamar-Taj. Though not necessarily stronger in raw power, their understanding and wisdom far surpassed others.
According to many of Kamar-Taj's Arcanists, all of these events likely tied back to the Sun Island incident.
Even though Bayonetta and Jeanne had defeated Jubileus, the Right Eye—held by the sages—was destroyed, leaving only the Left Eye with the witches. This imbalance triggered disturbances across the extradimensional realms. At first, the effects were minor. With the angels having lost their strongest backer, the remnants were hunted across the world by Bayonetta and Jeanne. The eerie calm in the upper planes made sense. Meanwhile, the lower planes had also been thrown into turmoil by Solomon's arrival and the sudden disappearance of Malphas. But based on deeper observation from Kamar-Taj, both upper and lower planes mysteriously stabilized a few months ago. Then came the reappearance of the supposedly extinct sage tribe.
The most likely cause of all this was...
Solomon looked at Bayonetta.
"Darling, it's time we head out." Solomon removed his helmet and stepped away from the golden weapon dropped by the Throne. "If we wait any longer, I'll starve. Let's go have dinner with Jeanne tonight. Diana's already prepared the Christmas feast. No roast turkey, thank God."
(End of Chapter)
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