Instead of answering Yohan or addressing the crowd, Allen diverted his attention to his mate, passing his hand under his hair and rubbing the nape of his neck. The caress was discreet, but intimate, easing Nyell's taut nerves.
"Are you alright?" Allen softly asked. "No bite and no claw marks?"
"Of course, none!" Nyell rolled his eyes, comfortably leaning against Allen, who was now crouching behind him. "What about you? How are you feeling?"
"Quite well, actually."
'Liar,' Nyell thought, remembering his mate's words. His divine lineage had a profound impact on his soul and spiritual energy, but not on his body. No matter how many times he reincarnated, he was still made of mortal flesh. This little feat of his must have drained him more than he was letting on, and he'd bet it hadn't been gentle on his body, either. After all, Allen wasn't only being affectionate right now.
While they were in contact, his mate took the opportunity to circulate his spiritual energy throughout Nyell's body, trying to regulate it. The last thing they wanted, especially at this time, was an outburst.
"…It seems like the Gods don't approve of your union all that much," an elder sneered beside Abby, who, in response, stiffened. "I mean, think about it for a second!"
She glared at him, as if to tell him to shut the hell up, because her crony obviously hadn't realized that their scheme had gone down the drain. No, instead, he was still playing his part as planned. Perhaps he was too shocked by the scene he had just witnessed, and he had yet to recover enough to think properly. Whatever the case, it served them well, and the elder continued to dig his and his comrades' graves.
"The sea had been calm in your absence, and yet it ran wild the moment you returned with your mate, and today as you danced for the Moon Lovers! Don't you find it strange?"
To the not-very-subtle underlying meaning, Allen smiled. His smile almost appeared sweet, and it could have seemed gentle if it hadn't been for his sharp, icy eyes.
"How strange, indeed."
The elder wanted to say something else, but Abby quickly shut him up, trying to salvage the situation. She was no fool, and she knew she had miscalculated. But how could she have known her chief had access to the divine? Or was his spiritual energy so plentiful he could use it willy-nilly to defy the will of a higher being? And wasn't Layla supposed to be a failure? How come she could tap into the divine, too?! It didn't make sense! Neither of them ever showed any hint whatsoever of being able to do so! They were strong, but not that strong.
"My Lord, Ste—"
"Don't bother."
Allen cut her off, and the soft look on Abby's face froze. The gears seemed to be turning in her head, and she appeared to be about to change tactics when a loud, strange rustle broke the air, thundering over the noise of the crowd. It was followed by the scream of a woman, whose voice reverberated throughout the whole land.
"Uncle, you're crazyyyyyyyy!"
"I told you we had to hurry," a deadpan voice responded, and a moment later, something crashed beside Allen, and dust hovered in the air. It took a second for it to settle back, revealing a figure almost identical to Nyell, minus the purple eyes. On his back was a teenage girl whose face was remarkably similar to Nyell's, too. What drew most people's eye, however, was the strange, round being floating beside the man's head, a skull stuck in its wide mouth. It somersaulted in the air, wagging an odd-looking tail as if happy to meet Allen and asking for pets. Some could have sworn to have heard it purr, too.
"I've left the others at the entrance," the newcomer said, nodding at the White Moon Lord. "They seemed exhausted, so I told them to take it easy and go to sleep."
"No surprise here," Allen shook his head, a faint, amused scoff escaping him. It was a miracle in itself that they even made it this far.
These people, who had been entrusted to aid Myur, weren't exactly the fittest. The White Moon tribe's delegation that had been sent to the Black Moon tribe had primarily been composed of shamans, and their strongest warrior died in the jungle while protecting Lapis. If it hadn't been for Cloe and Isa, who had volunteered to guard them, they'd have had no one to protect them during their laborious search. It took longer than planned to locate the skull, but they somehow managed to obtain it despite the lack of information. He had to give them credit for that, even if they barely made it back in time, and the daemon had to meet them halfway through to speed up things.
"W-what's a f-frigging daemon and i-its familiar spirit d-doing here!" an elder stuttered, fearfully glancing back and forth between his chief and the ghostly being. It shouldn't be able to make its way into their land! And why did it look so similar to his mate?!
"Watch your tongue," Allen warned as Isa jumped down from her uncle's back, shaking off the dizziness. She didn't care much about the crowd and directly pounced on Layla to hug her. Allen didn't comment on her behavior and instead smiled sweetly at the elder, "Why are you so surprised, anyway? As far as I know, you were part of that traitorous group that conspired behind the council more than two decades ago. Goodness, I haven't even been dead for a year, and you lot went and caused trouble in the jungle."
"Allen," Nyell frowned, warily looking up at his mate. He couldn't be planning to…?
"Don't worry, it's fine," Allen smiled, kissing his forehead in a reassuring manner. "If I don't put them straight today, I fear this whole affair might happen again in the future. Mortals are like that, dumb and forgetful. Still, I do not want another child to go through such horrors ever again, and a blunt warning usually keeps my people from committing the same error for a while."
The shaman paused a second to smirk, a bit of playfulness flashing in his mesmerizing eyes, "Anyway, it's going to be forgotten soon enough. It always is."
Nyell didn't know what to say to that. It felt like an arrow pierced his heart at the reminder that Allen's life went on after death, that his memory stayed, while it disappeared from others. How many times had this kind of circle repeated itself? He wasn't sure he wanted to know, and thankfully, the arrival of two other persons distracted him from this train of thought. Myrven had silently made his way through the crowd, and although his arrival was less flashy than Dangu's, it didn't take long before Abby noticed him. Or more accurately, she gritted her teeth at the sight of the boy sleeping in his arms.
"You took your sweet time," Allen cocked an eyebrow.
"They were thorough with the stealth array," Myrven shrugged, unbothered. Finding the child responsible for the misbehavior of the sea wasn't that easy, and he might not have been able to if they hadn't lowered the array to allow the boy's divine essence to reach the sea unhindered. Abby was a powerful shaman, and there was a reason why she had managed to escape their radar for so long.
"That skull," Abby was the first to speak among the stunned crowd, who were close enough to see and hear what was going on, the usual gentleness surrounding her, gone, "to whom does it belong?"
"What?" Dangu scoffed. "You can't recognize it anymore? After enticing that fool to go through the sacrificial ceremony for the God of Plague, I'd have thought you'd at least remember him. The poor pawn didn't even know he was being used."
"You're planning to conduct a ghost summoning, aren't you?" she asked Allen, ignoring Dangu's biting words.
"Yes."
Abby bit her lips. Was the man bluffing? She doubted it.
"Let me ask you one question," she said through gritted teeth, ignoring her cronies' confused gazes, "who are you, really? You said my death earlier; was it a twist of the tongue, or…?"
"What do you think?"
"H-how?"
"You already know the answer, though," Allen smiled, sending shivers down her spine. Still, he decided to explain, so no one would entertain funny ideas anymore, "Like I said, people forget over time. There's never been a 'chosen one' in this tribe. No, it's way simpler than that. These eyes aren't the symbol of our tribal god choosing the next chief; they are the result of a certain someone's reincarnation waking up."
Allen paused, letting the words sink in. Then, he resumed, matter-of-factly, "I guess I tried to help a little too much in the early stage of the tribe's establishment, and the truth of the matter got distorted over time. I didn't see the need to correct the previous generations as they got further and further away from the truth, and here we are."
Some still didn't get the picture, but for those who did, they fell on their knees, trembling. Jawe was among them. Many couldn't hear Allen, however. Unlike when he was standing in the emptied lagoon and his voice echoed, it was now muffled by the first few rows of people.
"Nyell," Isa whispered, dragging Layla in her wake as she approached her brother, "what's your mate saying? I don't get it. And aren't you two super intimate right now? What the heck happened in these past few weeks?!"
"Hm? Nothing important, don't worry."
At these words, Allen ruffled his mate's hair into a bird nest. It was already entangled due to the fight, and his clothes were dirtied from the mud, so a bit more or a bit less wouldn't change much at this point. It didn't prevent Nyell from glaring at his mate in retaliation.
"So?" Allen asked after planting a kiss on Nyell's temple, his friendly smile still hanging on his lips as his attention turned toward Abby. "What do you want to do? You won't be able to escape the trial, but we can avoid things getting ugly."
"…Why didn't you intervene earlier?"
"Because I'm not a tyrant." Some people flinched at these words, thinking that there were plenty of times where Allen had behaved like a small tyrant. From their biased point of views, at least. "Whatever you think of me, I can't accuse someone without proof. What kind of precedent would that leave? The law of the tribe applies to you, but it applies to me, too. But now that I've gathered all the evidence I needed, I don't need to pretend to be dumb anymore."
"Right, fair enough. I'd love to say I'd rather go down in a fight, but…"
Abby sighed, eyeing Nyell, who was nonchalantly sitting on the dock, chattering with the teenage girl. She had seen Dangu decades ago, so she hadn't recognized Nyell's face until now; it didn't even feel familiar, as it had been so long ago. If she had realized sooner, she would have taken more precautions and definitely dissuaded Durion from going after him. The son of the Black Moon tribe's chief wasn't to be trifled with; he was even more of a pest than his mother.
Getting rid of Hulien hadn't been easy, and Abby's dealings with the elders of the Black Moon tribe had been carried out with the utmost secrecy. However, they didn't escape Allen. Of course, they wouldn't. If what he had said was the truth, then he knew the past of their tribe and probably every facet of its shamanic history better than anyone. The arrays she had lent to the elders were old, but they had still been created in the White Moon tribe. Not many knew about them, and even fewer remembered how to draw them. She had been aware of them only because one of the previous elders saw fit to teach them to her behind their chief's back—it was such a waste to get rid of such powerful arrays, after all.
Putting Nyell aside, there were also Layla, Myrven, and Dangu. Her little group couldn't handle them, no matter how powerful a shaman she was. Now, it was obvious that Myrven had only been pretending to be the council's loyal dog, and Layla wasn't only strong physically. She didn't want to think about Allen. No, Ialleion.
"It's my loss."
"Don't expect any mercy," Nyell snorted at the elder's humble and poised behavior, gesturing for his sister to shut up for a bit. "You don't deserve any. Oh, no! Don't try to excuse your actions. None of us wants to hear them, and whatever you say can never erase what you've done to these women and children. Or my uncle, for all that matters."
"You hear him," Allen shrugged. "We will hold the trial in three days. Until then, you and your underlings will stay in a dungeon. Don't worry, I've renovated the cell and made sure the arrays are strong enough to contain you."
"In three days?" Abby repeated, frowning. "Why not tonight? It's not like we'll be able to escape the death penalty, so we might as well get over with it right now."
"And why should we accommodate you? We still have festivities left to celebrate," Allen chuckled. "It might have been dampened a little by your little stunt, but I refuse to let this joyous occasion end on that note."
The three-day festival had been prepared to commemorate the arrival of his mate into his tribe, not the death of traitorous elders and their cronies. Whatever Abby said, Allen wanted it to stay that way.