Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 75.1

Melisandre

Dante finally fell asleep, and Melisandre placed her notepad down while trying to make sense of things.

There was only one thing she could be sure of. He was broken. Completely broken. The fact that an archaic would cry at all meant that something was wrong, drastically wrong. Dante should have been distant from his emotions, but he wasn’t. He was completely different from the rest of his kind.

That only opened up more questions though. His past was beyond tragic. But, it wasn’t enough to affect an archaic. Being used, abused, or even watching a close friend die might have had an impact on a regular person, but it shouldn’t be enough. Not with their mental fortitude. Something much worse must have happened.

That was the real problem. Someone wiped his memory. Not altered, not replaced, it was gone. The number of people who had such a rare skill could be counted on one hand, and they were all exceedingly dangerous.

One of the church’s Archbishops was her first thought. But that didn’t hold to logic. The church would have the capability, but they had no reason to hide an archaic in the Outer Edge region. They could do almost whatever they wanted without any real fear of repercussions with the Goddess acting as a deterrent. Besides, grooming an archaic would only cause further internal struggles for them.

No, it had to be one of the other three factions. Even that didn’t make sense though. All of them had a relatively stable footing, there was no need to take such a large risk, despite the possible reward. One archaic wasn’t worth the threat of eradication.

And even if Dante was worth the risk, why leave him alone? Why risk it? True, no one of note would have even the slightest chance of finding him in the Outer Edge region, and all forms of detection would be cut off by the Chaos region, but the chances of him dying by himself were far too high if left unattended.

Melisandre’s eyes narrowed. Someone must have been watching over him, helping him in secret. They might still be watching, but she hadn’t noticed anyone. Furthermore, Victoria hadn’t noticed anyone. She would have mentioned it. The possibility that someone was watching Dante without Victoria noticing was frightening. Beyond frightening actually.

If that were the case, the lack of intervention was also frightening. It meant that what had happened to Dante was okay with them.

Melisandre rubbed her eyes, the smart thing to do would be to take Olivia and flee back to the inner regions immediately.

That would be pointless though, the damage had already been done. If she was going to be silenced, and they had the ability, she would. Leaving now wouldn’t make the slightest difference, so she may as well finish helping Dante before departing.

That was what she told herself though. In reality, she was unwilling to leave Dante in his current state, despite the risk.