Chapter 13: Roaming The Wonderland
Immediately when Angor touched the Talent Sphere, a bright flash of red light appeared from the object.
“Red—Red light!” Everyone stared at the Talent Sphere with their mouth agape. This time there was a real talent!
Leon watched with joy. Brother Angor was a talented one?? Leon clenched his fists because of the insuppressible excitement. He might be happy too if one of the servants showed up as a talent. Still, servants were only servants, and they could only provide the family with limited convenience. Angor however, was a true family member, and his closest brother. Even if Angor had to stay an apprentice, the Padt Family would benefit from this greatly!
Surprise only showed on Count Eton’s face briefly before it was replaced by thoughtfulness. It could not be denied now that the Padt Family would rise. If the Morn Family offered their alliance now, they might gain the support of more power wielders.
Alan and Aleen, on the other hand, did not give the situation as much consideration as their father. Alan’s chubby face was not carrying any particular emotion, he only looked at Angor with his head tilted and a trace of curiosity shown in his eyes. As for Aleen… She was smiling at Angor with a bit of silliness. She was just happy because she can learn wizardry together with Angor now. The only regret in her heart for having to leave her homeland had disappeared, now she only held great expectation towards the future.
Mara too, recovered from his surprise quickly.
However, the person who was the center of the crowd, Angor, had fallen into a strange experience…
Upon touching the talent sphere, Angor found himself floating up. He immediately felt excitement because this was just the “change” he was hoping for.
Happiness climbed onto his expression as he realized he was really talented.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of melody and drumbeats outside the closet, as if a chorus team was performing a carol.
Weird. His brother had already asked the dancers and musicians to leave. They were still here?
Angor turned his head to ask Leon about this, only to notice something even more strange.
Apart from himself that had been floating in the air, there was not a single soul in the closet. His brother, Mister Mara, Count Eton and his children… They were all gone.
The room was not totally empty though. The Talent Sphere on the desk was still there, and as always, the candle was burning quietly. Everything seemed fine besides the absence of everyone.
The music outside became louder. Angor frowned. He slowly floated towards the door and pushed it open.
The hallway outside was decorated in an elegant style. Graceful curtains and large wall paintings sat on the walls on both sides, with knight armors and statues occupying the corners. His father Padt used to like such luxurious nobleman’s style, and the brothers never changed it after his death.
The wind in the night moved the curtain aside. Angor looked through the window. There was only silence and darkness.
Weird… Really weird. Everything he saw, furniture, wall hangings… were familiar to him. Yet why did he sense an indescribable strangeness?
Every door in the Padt Manor had two lamps in the shape of a lion’s heart on both sides. The lion’s heart was the emblem of the Padt Family. Servants filled oil in them every day and light them up upon nightfall, so the fire would keep burning until the next dawn. This bore the meaning of “The fire in lion’s heart never dies”.
However, Angor did not see any firelight outside now. Even the iron gate outside of the castle was shrouded in darkness.
Is this really Padt Manor? Where is everyone?
Questions emerged from Angor’s mind.
The melodious music was still going, but Angor began to feel something strange about it.
He looked out of the window again. The sky was full of stars, even with several patterns he never saw before. However, there should be hardly any stars that could be observed in Grue Town once the Month of the Freezing Earth came. Only limited, fixed stars that were extremely far away would show up now. Clear weather during this month would expose seven or eight stars at best. As of now, the sky outside was full of them, as if Grue Town was still enjoying the midsummer.
Fear arose from Angor’s consciousness.
This was absolutely not right. Maybe he was no longer in the real Padt Manor.
Taking a deep breath, Angor turned around and prepared to head back to the closet. No matter what was going on outside, returning there could comfort him.
On his way, however, two large poker cards suddenly showed up in front of him.
There was no poker in the Old Earth even though Jon once made a deck of such cards and gave them to old Padt. Padt was quite fond of such a creative card game, and the game became popular in the manor for a time. However, as Angor remembered, the game never went beyond the grounds of Padt Manor… Could this be related to the Earth?
The pair of cards in front of Angor was the same as the ones made by Jon. Even the patterns on them were identical, only that what he was looking at now was several hundreds of times bigger.
They were the size of adults. Aces. One was heart, the other was spade.
What surprised Angor most was that they both had “limbs”, like bamboo sticks. They swayed left and right while walking. The Ace of Hearts was carrying a crusader sword and a lance, while the Ace of Spades was holding a round shield and a chain hammer.
They were fast. They already rushed onto Angor before Angor could react. By the time he reacted, he no longer had the chance to run.
The next second, Angor was trapped between them.
The cards kept moving forward as if Angor did not exist. However, Angor could not get himself away from between the broad surfaces of the cards so he could only move along with them.
He tried very hard to escape, but the best he could do was to get his feet off the ground, which still did not stop the cards from carrying him away. Angor gave up in the end and just followed the card soldiers.
Soon, Angor found himself in the hall, where the music he heard just now was coming from. The music was from the dancing stage, but when Angor looked towards there, no one was playing music. Several teacups with hearts printed on them were hopping in front of the instruments, creating the music.
Since when could teacups do music?? Angor had not calmed himself before he noticed that the “Swordsman of Hearts” and the “Guardsman of Spades” had vanished somehow.
Since he was in the hall and already witnessed a great deal of the strange world, Angor puffed up his courage and walked towards the center of the hall, instead of trying to go back to the closet.
The hall was well-lit, with all sorts of strange objects minding their “own business” everywhere. Apart from the teacups, Angor saw walking toy soldiers, plush owls flying and playing around the crystal chandelier, dragonflies with rainbow colors patrolling the air, and unfamiliar sunstones and moonstones flashing in different colors…
Looking at more and more strange sights, Angor still felt nervous, but his fear had mostly gone away. He noticed that all “creatures” here were blind to his presence. He floated towards the colorful dragonflies to observe them, but they simply flew away without paying Angor any attention.
Angor did not know if they could not see him, or just were not interested in him.
After floating around for some more, he saw the tip of clothes on a chair near the main table shifting. The chair had its back facing him so he was not sure about it.
Someone was sitting there?
Angor carefully controlled his body to move towards the main table.
As he approached, he became sure about his idea, since he already heard the sound of the knife touching on plates and the noise of book pages being turned.
Someone was eating while reading? Angor was really curious about the figure now.
He had a vague idea that he was no longer in Padt Manor, but a parallel space of it. His teacher mentioned parallel worlds before, but it was only hypothetical back on Earth. However… this was not Earth, maybe not even the same universe where the Earth was in. Maybe the existence of parallel worlds was possible?
In this parallel world, there was the Padt Manor, but not the Padt Family.
Maybe the one sitting on the chair was the owner of Padt Manor in this world? Angor took a wild guess.
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