The Noble Queen-A Shadow Slave Fanfic

Chapter 852: Oh, Boy...

Ray slipped through the restraints that an orderly was trying to secure him and rolled off the table into Noble. He clung to her sleeve, catching her other arm and knocking his IV loose. A trickle of blood ran down his hand.

But he didn't seem to notice. His eyes were transfixed on hers, the terror in them threatening to set off a similar reaction in Noble.

However, the professor remained firm.

"There is no monster here. You are safe."

A small part of her wondered if he was somehow hallucinating and thought she was a monster, but his determination to hold fast to her suggested he was desperate for help, not there to harm her.

Not that he could harm her with his strength even if he tried: a Saint and an Awakened were too far apart for that.

"Not here! There!" Ray pointed, his vision becoming unfocused.

"She forced me into the gateway! He told her to but kept them back!"

'She, he, them? Did something happen to the boy's mind in the Dream Realm?'

His sanity seemed fractured.

Noble sent him a wave of calm, hoping to push away his panic. However, the conflicting emotions were too much. The boy's eyes rolled up in his head, and he seemed like he might pass out.

"Don't let him lose consciousness!" Umbei forced a syringe into his arm.

Ray jolted.

"You have to check! I need to know!"

Noble took a deep breath. "I want to understand. Please tell me what happened."

The young man puffed out his cheeks, frustrated by the lack of comprehension.

"That devil monster carried me over her shoulder…"

"A Devil or a Monster? It can't be both!" One of the technicians was elbowed by his coworker.

"A DEMON! But not as demonic as her master. He almost killed me!" Ray looked deathly pale, and Noble wondered if he might be feverish. "The abomination dumped me on the cold, stone floor, and when I tried to move away, I collided with an angel. She was so unlike the demoness and her master that I thought I must have died and gone to paradise." Ray's gaze shifted upwards.

"What kind of drugs did you give him?" One of the orderlies accused another in a hushed tone. "He's hallucinating!"

"I am not!" Ray defended himself.

Noble gave the staff member a stern look. "Ignore him. Please go on."

Delusional or not, Ray was calmer when he was explaining. Noble needed to keep him talking.

"The angel, I mean Her Highness, healed me with her touch, and then her attendants fed me and tried to calm me. But that Dark Lord, he just kept staring from behind his three-horned mask!" Ray's emotions spiked, and Noble had to let them.

'Three-horned mask?' Noble had seen something very recently with that description, a sewn image on the back of a double-sided spider. Suddenly, this story didn't sound like a hallucination.

"Then the Dark Lord loomed over me, and with an unearthly voice, he announced that he wouldn't kill me." At these words, Ray hid himself even more than usual, becoming almost invisible.

Was that his new Ability? Noble would ask about that later. She frowned. "Wait, were these monsters or humans?"

Monsters that could talk were rare, but ones that didn't kill people and even went so far as to heal them were unheard of. Something wasn't adding up.

"The Dark Lord is human…I think. And the princess and her attendants certainly were. As for the rest, they were monsters through and through, but he was controlling them!" Ray's grip on Noble's sleeve tightened.

"And that's when the demon…"

"Demoness!" Ray shook his head.

"…demoness put you into a gate? Were you in a citadel?" Noble guessed that the minions he spoke of were echoes, but if so, then why did he seem so skittish?

"First, I was questioned. They wanted to know where the girls were. I couldn't leave the love of my life out there. I gave all the information that I could."

"There were other Sleepers with you?" Umbei's eyes went wide.

While that happened sometimes, it was uncommon. However, at this point in the Solstice, there were only a few people unaccounted for, and even fewer females.

But even without that information, Noble knew the words that Ray was going to share.

"Fleur and Tamar ended up with me in the Death Zone."

The room went silent.

"D-did you say a Death Zone? How did you get out?" The question came from the corner of the room.

"I didn't. There is a citadel out there. I think it is where the Dark Lord lives. Certainly, Lady Changing Star wouldn't live there, would she? Come to think of it, why was she there at all?" Ray hadn't seemed to contemplate that before.

"Was this in Godgrave?" Noble watched the young man nod.

"How did you know?" Ray looked up at her in confusion. "Are you a seer? If you are, can you check on Fleur and Tamar? Please!"

Noble's mind was racing. 'Godgrave, Lady Nephis, and a dark lord. Could it be?'

"I need the room." The professor's quiet words left no room for argument.

"You heard Master Noble. Get out, all of you!" Umbei ushered the rest of the staff into the hall.

In addition to Noble being a rank above them, she was the only one in the group who had direct contact with the young man before his departure to the Dream Realm.

Now that he no longer seemed in need of immediate medical care, Noble had every right to do what she thought was best for Ray going forward.

Noble shut her eyes, extending her emotional sense. "Umbei?"

"I'll check on them personally," the healer promised as she began to shut the door. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Fleur!" Ray started after the healer. "Take me with you!"

Noble blocked his path. "Everything will be fine. You will just get in the way of their work."

"But…" Ray shook his head. Resigned to his fate, the young man slouched onto the exam table and placed his head in his hand. "I should have fought harder when they made me go. How could I leave her behind?! Not even Changing Star could protect her if that man wanted to harm them."

"The Dark Lord took the ladies hostage?" Noble clenched her fists.

"No, Changing Star wanted to speak with them. But the Dark Lord didn't like me from the moment he laid eyes on me. He hated me, in fact, I'm sure of it. When the ladies came, I barely got to hug Fleur before I was ripped from her arms by that monster of his and shoved through the gate. Oh, and he told me if I returned to his citadel, he would not let his regard for Lady Nephis stop him from ending my life."

"This Dark Lord, would you describe him as daunting and solitary?" Noble tilted her head.

"Those are the perfect words to describe him!" Ray nodded emphatically.

"You didn't happen to catch if this dark lord had a name, did you?" The professor held her breath.

Ray paused. "I am not sure, but I heard Lady Nephis call him Saint Shadow."

Noble resisted the urge to place her head in her palm.

'Oh boy…'