Chapter 186 |
In the business, we had something called the 'Chronic Hero Syndrome'. It was a shockingly common trope for various reasons, chief of which being that people usually didn't like to read about characters who ignored the peril and suffering of others. Sure, anti-heroes and anti-villains were a thing, but there was a reason why there were much fever of them than 'traditional' heroes.
Why? I imagined because heroes were supposed to be sympathetic and admirable and whatnot, and someone deciding that getting to their favourite coffee shop before they sell out their Friday Special Double Pumpkin Spice Frappuchino Latte (or something like that, I don't drink coffee) took priority over a bus full of children falling into the river generally wasn't considered very 'heroic'.
I knew this, and I knew that Josh (and based on the previous conversation, maybe Fidèle too) had a metastable case of the CHS, but this whole situation was still a bit on the nose.
Hareng wasn't exactly wrong back there; the chances of someone falling for this was just on the south side of zilch, but they also overlooked a different issue: for any of this to happen, someone had to invade deep into Shamash territory and raze a settlement that's literally within sight of the capital. Sure, the Abyss wasn't exactly huge, and such deep strikes could be facilitated relatively easily with motorized units and natural fliers, but both sides knew that and they had rapid response units to repel such incursions.
The only way to solidify ownership of an area was via the presence of a powerhouse, such as a Lord, but doing so invited the other side to just strike somewhere else, knowing that said powerhouse definitely wasn't there. That's how Abyssal warfare worked; a constant push and pull, trying to snipe down enemy VIPs and capture fortified positions, with probing raids in-between. The only time Crowy broke away from the pattern and tried to directly invade another capital to bind their Mana Well, he got ganged up on by the other Lords and spent weeks recovering from his injuries.
In other words, sending a force in to torch a village in the middle of enemy territory just on the off-chance that it could potentially draw the gang out into the open before they reached the Shamash capital could only mean one of two things: either Crowy was getting incredibly desperate… or future-me was manipulating things to this end.
I mean, even putting future knowledge aside, he'd know for sure that Josh would rush in without question, and the others wouldn't try to stop him, because Chronic Hero Syndrome was insidious like that, and it tended to pull everyone else along.
The problem was that I couldn't be sure. If it really was future-me's doing, then playing along would be the reasonable thing to do, no matter how unreasonable the situation looked from my perspective, but… Yeah, that was the main issue. This setup was just too irrational. I was almost tempted to call it contrived. Sure, from a Doylist perspective, I could clearly see why this would happen and how it would work, relying on the people involved acting in line with their character, but from a Watsonian perspective, this made no bloody sense, for all the reasons I already explained. So, what gives?
Before anything else, I checked Crowy's location, and I was both relieved and mildly confused by his mark being all the way over in Castle Nergal. That meant a confrontation with him was out of the question, which was… eh? On one hand, letting him fight the gang was both too early and kind of un-dignified in this situation, and him personally showing up to burn down a village would've been monumentally stupid. On the other hand though, if he wasn't going to show up, then what was the point of this whole detour?
Once they reached the hilltop, Josh came to a staggered halt as he beheld the village. It was a small settlement, only a couple dozen plain wooden and brick buildings clustered around the dirt road snaking through the large monoculture-fields. It was hard to make out anything specific at this distance, no small part due to much of the scenery being obscured by plumes of black and grey smoke rising from the fires all around.
The rest of the group also caught up with Josh and descended into a stunned silence.
"Those barbarians! How dare they?!" Fidèle fumed as she beheld the destruction, her eyes set in a fiery glare unfamiliar on her usually dignified visage.
"We need to fly," Josh urged as he pointed towards the village. "Getting there on foot will take too long."
"To be fair, we could've done that from the start," Hareng noted from the back, and when everyone looked at him, he hastily clarified. "If it's the Herald and the Emperor doing this, and we're going there by ourselves, then hiding your wings is pointless."
"He's correct," the Shamash matriarch concurred and she immediately spready her wings, a pair of large, smoky ones resembling bat-wings that I'd last seen during the battle of my 'capture'. "Let us not tarry!"
She immediately took to the air, ignoring the cries of the startled class rep in her arms, and Josh and Angie followed after her at once. So did Hareng, though with much less enthusiasm, and only after he kicked off his boots and removed his coat, to make sure they don't explode off him during his transformation.
That left only my sisters and my girlfriends, and while the former were trying to decide how Snowy could carry Penny in the least awkward fashion, the latter had something else in mind.
"This is too suspicious…" Judy muttered as she climbed off Elly's back and started rummaging through her backpack. What can I say? Great minds think alike.
She quickly found the snazzy party glasses, wrapped in a towel to keep them safe, and put them on her nose.
"Chief, are you there?"
Since they were closer now, sending messages took less effort, but I still put Cal in my lap out of habit and started the mana-circulation.
"Here, Dormouse."
My dear assistant didn't beat around the bush and immediately asked, "Is Noir here?"
"No, I already checked."
"What are the chances of this being a trap?"
"I'd say about one hundred percent."
"That's lower than expected."
"… Was that a joke?"
She ignored my response and turned to the others.
"The good news is that Noir isn't in the vicinity. The bad news is that the Chief also agrees that this is fishy, so we should be prepared for anything."
"Oh… that's good," Snowy uttered in relief, only to hurriedly tag on, "I-I mean, it's good that he isn't nearby. I'm not sure I'm ready to confront him yet."
My other sister reflexively gave her a hug with one arm while shadow-boxing with the other and declared, "Don't worry! If he shows his face, I'll give him a piece of my mind! And more!"
Judy let out a soft hum and tapped on her artifact.
"I'll stay in contact, so that we can ask for advice when something unexpected happens."
"Don't you mean 'if' something unexpected happens?" Elly tried to correct her, so she gave her a deadpan look in return.
"I know what I said."
Meanwhile, my sisters decided on a rather awkward flying configuration, where Penny would be literally hanging from Snowy's arms, mainly because the more reasonable princess-carry would've been 'too embarrassing'. My girlfriends had no such reservations, and Elly casually scooped Judy into her arms and spread her wings through the Magiformer.
The four of them were following after the rest before long, and by the time they arrived at the village, everyone was already busy with the rescue efforts. Josh was in the process off essentially toppling a wooden building to help the person trapped under the debris, straining hard until part of the roof crashed to the side, where it couldn't hurt anyone. On the roadside, Angie was offering her healing support to anyone injured, and while there were a lot of burns, none seemed life-threatening despite the scale of the destruction in sight.
Though again, while the average Abyssal placeholder was an order of magnitude less powerful than even the weakest side-character types, they still were Abyssals, meaning they had their Barriers to protect them from sudden trauma. Of course, that came with instinctive transformation in response to danger, so the survivors were in a rather sorry state, with all of their clothes shredded and everything, but at least they weren't dead. Or rather, I couldn't see any dead, but maybe because I didn't want to look too closely.
While the childhood friend couple was busy with that, Hareng made himself surprisingly useful by acting as a portable flying water hose and trying to keep the worst of the fire in the center of the village from spreading. The buildings were close to each other, with only small fenced spaces for barnyard animals and livestock, so it was easy for the flames to jump from one roof to the next. Ammy was doing her best to support him from the ground, using a very similar magic that made up for her worse aim with much greater water through-put, no doubt another one of the 'totally original' spells.
As for the Shamash matriarch, she was up in the air as well, though her primary concern wasn't the fire but the Abyssals circling in the sky. She was wielding her inconveniently oversized fantasy scythe (and I'm going to leave it at that, because I already shared my opinions on that particular weapon) and chasing them around. Her opponents were your usual Abyssal combatants, meaning winged, horned, and in various states of undress thanks to the aforementioned Barriers.
She wasn't lying about not being able to exert her full power in sunlight, as while she could pursue and knock them away with a swing of her weapon (which was silly, because it was a cutting blade, but I digress again), she was nowhere near as overpowering as when she single-handedly fought off the late Tracas and the head of House Nergal at the same time.
Oh, speaking of which…
"Belette Ugur Nergal!" Her roar made everyone glance up at her, even my sisters who just landed on the outskirts of the village, and she did a complicated twirl with her weapon before pointing it towards the ground. "What manner of madness took over you to dare show your face before me like this?!"
I couldn't believe that right away, but… yup. When I mentally extended the shaft of her scythe as a direction arrow and followed it to its target, I found a familiar bullish Abyssal standing on the road leading out of the settlement. He was already transformed, meaning his hairy muscular chest, pointy bull-horns, and hoofed feet were all on full display. As well as his goatee, which only added to his villainous mien when he put his hands on his hips and let out a belly laugh.
"Ahaha! Fidèle Basmu Shamash! To think you would truly fall for such a simple provocation!"
Okay, putting the cheesy response aside, what exactly was going on here? This whole setup was already weird as all hell for all the reasons I had previously outlined, but this was just absurd. Whether we looked at this from a Doylist or a Watsonian perspective, a different Abyssal Lord showing up here made no sense whatsoever. A 'disposable' raiding party for drawing the gang out was one thing, but sending Belette Nergal himself here was outright asinine. What were they thinking?
"Do you think you'll walk away from here after invading my lands and massacring my people?"
Massacring? I hurriedly switched my point of view around, but I still didn't see any dead people. Maybe she was just overdramatic? In any case, by the time I returned, I only caught the end of Belette's response.
"… not alone!"
He then extended his hand forward, and all of a sudden a solid stone spike sprung out of the ground. As in, a literally, conical, and really pointy spike made of some kind of dark red rock that was markedly different than the material of the dirt road. He grabbed the tip of it and the whole thing snapped off at its base, only to then start crumbling away until he was holding a crude war hammer that was as oversized as the flying woman's scythe.
Speaking of which, the two weapons clashed as Fidèle dived down from the air, sending a rippling shockwave across that could probably be heard even at the other end of the village. Or at least I was sure Josh did, because when I Far Glanced over, he was busy giving out orders.
"Ammy, Hareng! Focus on putting out the fire! Angie, Lili! We'll go chase off the fliers! Penelope, you go and—"
However, before he could finish that, there was another explosion. Except… this one wasn't from a clash, or someone throwing a big magical projectile. If anything, it sounded and looked like…
"Fireworks?" Judy mumbled in surprise, the moment she landed with Elly. She tapped her eye-wear, maybe trying to ask a question from me, or just to contact the Snowy, who was already on her way to help the matriarch, when another boom startled her, followed by…
"… Is that music?"
That question came from my princess, but nobody had the presence of mind to respond, because it was time for yet another shocking development.
"There's nothing to fear! The Axis of Evil is here!"
"… Excuse me?"
Judy's reaction perfectly mirrored my own, because seriously, what the hell was going on?!
Completely oblivious to our collective shock, the 'Axis of Evil' descended upon the battlefield, some more literally than others. Some came out of the blue (or the reddish-orange, but let's not split hairs over this), others from behind ruined buildings, or as in the case of one particular guy, crawling out of a literal well. They could've encircled the guys, but instead they chose to make their presence known and then form up into a well-dressed lineup on the road as they slow-walked towards the stunned gang.
At least they didn't do poses. I don't know what I would've done if they struck a sentai pose.
Oh, and did I mention that there was still music in the background? Something right out of a rock-opera, and it was hard to tell where it was coming from, though it was probably the least of everyone's concerns right now.
"Shit! Change of plans! Gather up, gather up!" Josh instructed, and while most of them acutely felt the precariousness of the situation, others…
"Aw! Why do they get a theme song, and we don't?" Elly griped, and… Princess, my love. There were more important things to worry about at the moment.
"I don't know, but cover me," Judy responded while tapping her glasses. At least she was on top of things… or so it seemed at first, until she added, "If they're here, you-know-who could be nearby. Let me check the channels. I'm planning to give him a few stern words about not letting the Chief come home."
…
Dormouse, my other love. That also wasn't the biggest concern right now.
Then again, maybe they were easy-going like that because they knew that these 'Axis' guys didn't pose a mortal threat. The same might've applied to the rest of the gang, thanks to all their previous encounters with future-me's pet project, but they still took the threat seriously enough. Not to mention, Belette Nergal was still there, and…
Wait. Goddamit, now things make even less sense! Why would the Nergal patriarch show up together with the Axis of Evil? They were unrelated! I mean, technically the bullish Abyssal Lord swore loyalty to Bel, but he wasn't 'in' on the plan. Not that I had an idea about how much the Axis members knew, but they were happily playing along with future-me's whims, so they must've been given at least an outline.
The point was, this combination made no sense, them showing up here made no sense, and this whole trap made no sense. Something was seriously wrong here, and the only thing I could hope for was that future-me knew what he was doing. Or rather, I hoped he did, because if not, then it meant I will have no idea what I'll be doing in the future, which only ever happened when things had seriously and irrevocably gone off the rails. But then again, that shouldn't happen, because of future-knowledge, so…
…
Okay, let's just ignore Josh's verbal jostling with the buff masked guy in the middle (I presumed he was their squad leader, kind of like an Abyssal Jaakobah) and focus on untangling this. It was just a standard pre-battle preamble, with lots of boasting and arguing about personal philosophies and so on. Classic battle shounen stuff, but I've seen it enough times already.
For a start, let's presume that the Axis of Evil's presence confirmed that this was set up by future-me, and then further give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew what he was doing. The question was, why? What was the rationale here? Something narrative-related, I reckoned, but what could it be? Both Belette and the Axis was set up already, so it wasn't to introduce them. Re-introduction also didn't make much sense, so maybe they were here simply because they were the only ones who could reliably pose a threat to the gang? But for what reason?
Maybe I was overthinking this. Maybe… It could be that there was another rubber-band situation here, where the Simulacrum's framework was expecting something to happen, and this had to be arranged for it to calm down and stop pushing things somewhere else. For example… Yeah, maybe this was a rivalry square-off.
That kind of thing often happened in the finales of battle shounen stories, especially ones with large casts. The protagonist would obviously face off against the main villain, but the rest of the cast also needed something to do, so the story would introduce a large number of new enemy underlings. Named characters, usually with striking designs and unique powers that either contrasted or complemented the abilities of the main cast, and with varying power levels (often emphasized by literal hierarchies, where they would be given numerical or alphabetical designations to show how high they were in the pecking order) so that everyone could have someone fitting to battle.
Fidèle and Belette had already fought and clearly didn't like each other, so that was a clean matchup, and as for the gang versus the Axis of Evil… maybe they existed specifically for this purpose? Or rather, to make sure there would be a pre-existing group of quirky minions in play, so that the Simulacrum wouldn't try to invent a whole cast of potentially genuinely dangerous bad guys for Josh and co. to fight?
It made a lot of sense from where I was standing, or rather lying down, but something was still missing. Why would this encounter be 'placed' here, apropos of nothing? Shouldn't there be some build up? Maybe as part of the final confrontation, instead of some random skirmish like this?
Whatever the case might've been, the verbal sparring between Josh and the other guy whose name I still didn't know quickly turned into an actual battle (it was inevitable, really), drawing my attention away from my meta-narrative guesses, yet I just couldn't shake off the feeling that something was definitely wrong with this picture… I just had to figure out what, preferable before it exploded into our collective faces.
Okay, so… battle. Honestly, that was the least of my concerns right now, because it felt a bit superfluous at this moment. The gang squared off against the various Axis of Evil members, Fidèle and Belette were still duking it out in the background, while Hareng was still busy combating the fires. The class rep was doing the same as well, but she was also summoning stone barricades from the ground to shelter the villagers and guide them out of the battlefield.
Then there was a series of explosions, and she yelled, "Hey! We just put that out!"
"Sorry!" Angie shouted back from the air, followed by an annoyed, "Focus, girl!" as Deus took the reins and sent another salvo of her burning spell-swords raining down at someone. I wasn't paying much attention there, because I was still too busy trying to figure out what this whole scene was about.
The cheeky answer was 'It's an action scene, duh?', but that was unsatisfying. Sure, there were awesome powers on display, with magic projectiles flying left and right and great feats of strength and all that jazz, but we already had a bunch of that during the incident at Castle Ninhursag and the subsequent train chase. Heck, it was easy to forget, but the big battle between the gang and Marzanna happened less than a week ago as well. Counting this, that's three major battles in a row.
Sure, we were all familiar with sporadic skirmishes and big pileups where a whole lot of action happened at the same time, but this was the first time I'd seen big clashes firing off one after the other. But why?
Looking at the unfolding conflict, there were many Doylist and Watsonian ways I could explain what was happening, and I already threw out a few, but there was something else in there that was bothering me. Sure, we were getting close to the finale, as future-me had often emphasised, so it made sense that there would be more encounters like this to allow everyone a little spotlight, but the way it was happening was… honestly, it eerily reminded me of a rather unpleasant possibility, and I needed a second opinion on it.
I shifted my point of view away from the literal sparks flying between the Abyssal Lords and Josh and Angie/Deus doing some synchronised combo moves to keep the Axis of Evil on their toes, and I soon found Judy hunkered down behind one of the rough chest-high walls Ammy created, which… Huh. It kind of reminded me of those cover-shooter games Penny sometimes played. They were even conveniently arranged in a way to—
No, stop it, Leo. Focus.
I exhaled hard and established the communications line again.
"Dormouse?"
"A moment, Chief," my dear assistant stopped me before I could get going, and she raised a finger. "Deinonychus, Ankylosaurus and Archeopteryx require support, over. Circle the building on your left, and you should be able to flank the Utahraptors. Parasaurolophus, out."
"… You do realise you're just going to confuse the heck out of them with these code-names?"
"It worked so far. If it's not broken, don't change it." She paused and tapped on her artifact. "Is there a new development?"
"Not quite, I just have a suspicion, and I wanted to pick your brain for a moment."
"I'm not sure this is the right time, but I'm lis—" She fell silent and then tapped her communicator again. "Pterodactyl, you have boogeys on your tail. Take evasive action towards Diplodocus, over." She listened for a moment, then pulled her party glasses down a bit and started again. "Now I'm listening."
"Okay, I'll try to be brief. We're reaching the end of the scenario, right?"
"Everything points in that direction, yes," she confirmed, though she sounded a bit stumped, probably because it was something we already established. It was best to be on the same page though, so I continued in the same vein.
"And this is essentially the big hurrah before the finale."
"Yes, I think that's also something self-evident."
"Don't you think things are proceeding a little too… haphazardly?"
She blinked, but then her brows descended into a hint of a frown.
"Can you elaborate?"
Thus prompted, I inhaled deeply and began my explanation, trying my best not to make it sound like a rant.
"I didn't pay it much attention before, because I obviously can't see everything, but I've been getting blindsided more and more often as of late by odd developments that feel justified in retrospect, but are kind of out of left field in the moment. You know? Like the Celestial renegades showing up in your battle with Marzanna? Or the incident with the Ninhursags? Or… well, this mess?"
My girlfriend graciously prompted me with, "I could argue about that, but I want to hear out your point first," so I stopped beating around the bush.
"Everything is happening too fast, potential players in the plot being introduced and written off quickly, and sudden developments like this… I've seen this kind of stuff before. It's when a serialised story is being axed, and the author has to condense the remaining plot as best as they can in the remaining chapters."
"… Does the Simulacrum work that way?"
"No, and that's what's confusing me," I admitted with a shallow groan. "That's why it feels so wrong. It's like things are being deliberately rushed for some reason, and I can't figure out why."
"Have you tried asking you-know-who?" Judy asked, and when I didn't respond right away, she clarified, "You mentioned authors before. Since he's the one responsible for the current scenario, shouldn't he be our primary suspect?"
"Yes, but you know I have no way to contact him. Every time he shows up, he just annoys me and plays with Ollie, and then leaves before I have the chance to ask him anything."
"Chief, you really need to stand up to yourself," she insisted, only to shield her mouth and whisper, "Or failing that, you should ask the Emergents," in a low voice, as if afraid that someone would overhear her in all this chaos.
"That's my Plan B, but first I just wanted to know if you think there's something to this, or I'm just being paranoid."
"I think you might be onto something, but if you're right, and it really is being orchestrated by you-know-who, then there has to be a reason for it."
"Yes, I figured as much, but…"
Judy cut me short before I could finish. "Chief, sorry, but I really need to pay attention here." She tapped on her communicator and added, "Let's continue this discussion once we're out of battle."
"Fair. Be careful."
She let out a non-committal hum and then immediately went back to coordinating the group. There were high-flying hijinks, earthquakes and explosions, thunderbolt and lightning (very very frightening), and so on. Again, I've seen them all, and I was more occupied with the discussion we just had.
To summarise, Judy agreed that I might've been onto something, and I trusted her instincts on these things, because she was usually right on the money (me being a womaniser and all the harem-talk notwithstanding, but hey, we all have our blind spots). That was a step forward, but it still didn't answer the big question: why was the scenario being rushed? Or put another way, why was future-me rushing the scenario?
Was it impatience? I didn't think so. I knew myself, and I knew that I wouldn't get sloppy like this unless there was an insurmountable external pressure in play. If so, then was it the Simulacrum's doing? My new Emergent acquaintances swore up and down that the scenario wasn't supposed to take Josh and co. to the Abyss, so maybe this was a reaction to that. Maybe there were more of those 'rubber bands' in play, and the framework of the world itself was pushing the scenario towards an early conclusion in response to being stretched in a direction it wasn't supposed to go.
Which brought up another question: why was there a need for a conclusion? I mean, every story had to end Nobody had time for literally endless tales, because those would take a while to tell. More practically speaking, there were only so many pages in a book or minutes in a movie, but our situation was different. As far as I understood, the Simulacrum's goal was to provide the metaphysical environment for the Submerged Ones to define themselves into young Emergents, and the scenarios existed to give them the necessary stimulation and patterns required for that.
In that case, a scenario ending should've been the point when the Submerged Ones 'emerged', both figuratively and maybe literally. If we took that as a baseline assumption, then there could be only two outcomes: either the scenario was a success, and they emerged, or it was a failure, and they didn't. If we transplant that back to our earlier analogy, the only reasons why a scenario would 'get axed' early would be either because it already succeeded and the Submerged Ones were raring to emerge, or because it was unlikely to succeed, and it was better to start with a clean slate and a new scenario, necessitating the ending of the current one.
The problem was that I had no idea about the consequences of either of those options, and that was troubling, to put it mildly. This scenario was never really meant to be a 'real' one, but a sort of trap or prank on the Crowned Coalescence that the Emergents decided to run with, so it wasn't guaranteed it would succeed. I'd sat in on their meeting (even if I didn't understand most of it), and they seemed to be pleased by themselves, so it didn't sound like it was failing either.
But putting all of that aside, what did a 'finale' even mean in that broader context? Sure, from the scenario's battle harem shounen roots, it was easy to guess what a satisfying ending should've looked like. Josh fights Crowy, there's a huge battle, he then triumphs (maybe with the power of friendship and/or love; it was a common trope for a reason), then group hug and timeskip to a bit later. All the relationships are solidified (with maybe Babies Ever After in effect, if the time-skip was long enough), everyone gathers one more time, and we get a big group shot with some optimistic words about the future. The End.
Sounded fine, if a bit clichéd, but was that what the Submerged Ones wanted? Was that necessary, or some kind of trigger? Was future-me fast-tracking us towards that ending with a cursive 'fin' pasted on top of it on purpose? It sure looked like it, but I couldn't help but feel that there was something missing from this equation. But what could it be? I had no bloody idea, because future-me was a dick and refused to tell me diddly squat, but if I had to guess, it should've… been…
It was at this point that I stopped my train of thought and sat up straight on my bed back in my cell. Let's take a step back and look at this from a different perspective. I activated the storage enchantment of my gear, and out popped a familiar, worn notebook. I leafed through this thing multiple times, trying to memorise as much of it as possible, and I hit it up again, though this time with something else in mind.
I turned the pages and scanned the lines like I was one of those hyper-genius types who could flip through a book and remember its full contents perfectly. I wasn't, and that wasn't what I was aiming for either. It took less than a minute, and then I snapped the notebook shut and stored it away again, feeling a bit more secure in my hunch.
Simply put, the most consistent thing future-me had been doing since his first appearance was not explaining shit to me. Even the notes only contained 'events as they should unfold', without any explanation about the hows or the whys. He was keeping me in the dark on purpose, and I never gave it much thought before this, but when I looked at it in retrospect, it was all very deliberate. Purposeful.
He didn't just want me to stay out of his way while he was doing his retcon stuff; he was actively boxing me in and trying to give me as little info as possible. In fact, there was a distinct possibility that I wasn't just purposefully uninformed, but actively deceived by him, but… why? Why would I do that to myself? Because of more timey-wimey bullcrap?
That was a possibility, but it felt like an incomplete answer. Future-me knew something. It could've been about the ending of the scenario, or maybe something else entirely, but it was important that he couldn't allow me to know for some reason. Which meant it had to be a dangerous secret. Whether it would've been a danger to me, the gang, or maybe the scenario itself, I had no idea. It might've been the reason why he was rushing things like this.
I had no way to know, and it annoyed the piss out of me. I concluded that I would have to brainstorm this a bit more with Judy, but for now, I lied down in my bed again and cast my point of view back to the nameless village in the middle of the lands of Shamash, where the battle was still raging with the same ferocious intensity as before, except…
"I need to prepare a spell! Cover me!" Ammy yelled from the back, and Angie responded with a chipper, "Got you!"
At least I figured it was her, based on the eyes. She's been switching so fluidly with Deus as of late, it was hard to tell sometimes. More importantly, she popped out of her cover and let loose a couple of arrows in the direction of a pair of Axis of Evil members, forcing them to duck behind their own rock barricade.
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The class rep followed her up with an enthusiastic, "Heads down!" and waved her wand over her head like a lacrosse stick, lobbing a fireball in an overhead arch.
The men in the impact zone didn't rest on their laurels though, and one of them yelled, "Intercepting!" while summoning a small, round barrier. The fireball didn't explode right away, but just bounced off, landing right next to the stone slab.
Then there was a blinding explosion, cracking their cover and forcing them to relocate while a different pair was providing them with suppressive fire from behind another chest-high wall and… this was just a cover shooter, just with magic and crap. Was… was this my fault, too? Did this happen because I made a mental connection a few minutes ago? But that's dumb. Even in the worst of times, Narrative influence wasn't this blatant.
Hold on, wait. If this situation was arranged by future-me, and he knew Ammy would summon these, therefore he may have instructed these guys to operate this way, so that I would see it and have this train of thought about narrative influence. But if that's the case, then he must have known about my previous worries and his not telling me shit, so maybe this was meant to indirectly tell me that he's not telling me anything because narrative influence like this can be dangerous to our plans and…
"Ugh. I hate mind games."
My quiet gripes were punctuated by yet another explosion when Elly let loose a small blast of dragonfire to break another convenient chest-high rock barrier. There might've been some universal law of cover-saturation, because as soon as that one was taken out of the equation, everyone seemed to agree that cover blasting each other was over, and they all jumped into the fray, resulting in a chaotic melee.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the ruined village, the two Abyssal Lords were still going at it. Despite being in a weakened state, Fidèle was still dominating the duel, though I couldn't see a single scratch on Belette either. If anything, despite still wielding a big-ass war hammer that looked anything but nimble and defensive, he was swinging it with contemptuous ease and made sure to keep the Shamash matriarch's attention without pushing his luck too far. Which, once again, made no sense.
This kind of tactic would've been fine if they were in their home territory and waiting for reinforcements, but stalling for time when this deep behind enemy lines was asinine. Yeah, sure, the response units from the Shamash capital were being late, but they were expected to show up any time now, so Belette and the Axis of Evil should've been pushing hard to capture the gang, or Ammy at the very least, but instead they were just causing as much havoc as possible. What was their plan, exactly? It couldn't have been that they…
"New boogey at two-o-clock! Take evasive—!" Judy's ever-so-slightly startled (read: full panic) voice jolted me out of my thoughts, followed by a no less frantic, "Chief? You said Noir wasn't in the vicinity!"
I reconnected to her and hastily told her, "No, he's at the…" I trailed off when I checked on his mark, and then saw the eruption of purple light coming from nearby. "Son of a bitch!"
Pivoting my point of view to said mark, I witnessed a shocking and yet simultaneously infuriating scene.
"So we meet again," Crowy spoke in a low, creepy whisper. He was standing in a shallow crater caused by yet another of his dynamic entries, and the air was positively boiling around him as he unfurled his wings.
When he did so…
"Bastard!" Josh roared and pointed his blade at him. "Let her go!"
… it revealed that he was holding the unconscious class rep against his chest. The sudden development took the gang by surprise, but the same couldn't be said about the Axis of Evil, who used the moment of confusion to regroup, moving with practised ease while everyone else's eyes were glued to the bastard.
"Oh, it's you…" Crowy spoke in a smug, oily voice as he sized up Josh, followed by an unimpressed, "I have not forgotten that day, boy. Your time will come." He paused and looked up at the girl hovering a good distance away in the air, and he amended, "And so will yours, my dear sister."
Of course, she couldn't hear that, because she was too far away, so it was probably said just to unnerve the others around him, which at this point counted Josh, Angie, and Elly. That was, incidentally, more or less the same as the group that confronted him the first time around.
As for the rest, Penny was further back, and by the looks of it, she was planning something. Probably to hide with her personal Concealment Sigil and then stab the bastard in the back, but before that could happen, the spanner in the works burst into the scene again.
"My fair maiden! I'll save you!" Hareng Ninurta yelled from the top of his lungs as he dived towards Crowy, but he barely reacted. He didn't even raise his hand, just flexed his wing, and with a contemptuous flap, he sent the young noble flying in the opposite direction and right through the only remaining wall of a burned-down barn.
Oh. Okay, then. So he was doing the whole 'overpowered villain flexing his chops on the red-shirts' routine. Very nice, very thematic. Just one question, though: WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING HERE!?
Seriously! This was way beyond contrived; this was just straight-up nonsense! I knew for a fact that he was in Castle Nergal just five minutes ago, so the only way he could've gotten here on such short notice was with… with…
"Son of a bitch! Again!" I fumed, and as if waiting for my realisation, the sound of a slow clap started everyone.
"Bravo! You're finally learning the trade!"
Future-me, as Bel of the Abyss, walked into the middle of the battlefield with the casual ease of someone taking a refreshing afternoon stroll in the park, eliciting a full gamut of reactions. For Crowy, he was struggling to keep his poker face from cracking. For most of the gang, it was a mixture of shock, fury, and hopelessness. For my girlfriends in particular, it was mainly confusion, but Judy hid it really well behind a veil of anger that hopefully wasn't aimed at me in particular. I probably wasn't so lucky, though.
"All right, Crowy, my boy. You remember the rules," Bel warned the bastard in the middle with a wag of his finger reminiscent of a tired father educating their kid. "I'll let you keep her, but you have to take care of her. Having a pet is a responsibility, and I won't hear you crying about it later."
"Don't worry, my Emperor," Crowy responded through a thin-lipped smile that definitely didn't reach his eyes and hefted Ammy's limp body, pressing her even harder against his chest. "I'll take very good care of her."
"Good." He crossed his arms and nodded in satisfaction, then twitched and acted like he just noticed Josh and the rest glaring at him. "Oh, hello! Fancy meeting you down here! And Deus, old buddy! If I knew you were coming over, I would've tidied up the place. Sorry about the mess."
"Bel of the—!"/"— of the Abyss!"
Two voices overlapped as both Deus/Angie and Fidèle roared in anger, the latter rapidly approaching from the sky. Before either of them could get to him, future-me Phased across the battlefield and spread his arms wide.
"Ladies, please. Don't fight over little old me." He came to a staggered stop mid-motion and shifted into a thoughtful pose with a finger on his chin. "Hey, Deus? A silly question, but are you a lady now? Officially, I mean?"
He got a hail of arrows and flame-swords flying at him in place of a response, so he Phased over to Crowy and patted him on the shoulder.
"Oh, my. It seems this neighbourhood is rather dangerous. Be careful on your way back home." He then stepped back, just as Penny was about to rush the two of them, and he extended his arm, showing a thumbs-up. "Remember: your responsibility now."
He then disappeared, which not only startled Crowy, but also Penny, slowing her down just enough to let the bastard flap his wings again. His aura surged, tinting half the village in purple, and then he abruptly launched up into the air and accelerated past everyone.
"No! Ammy!" Penny yelled and tried to jump after him, and so did Josh, taking off into the air on his wings, but they were almost comically slow compared to the Abyssal Lord cutting through the air.
"Do you think I'll let you go just like that!?" the Shamash matriarch cried out, turning into the familiar streak of smoky orange light and launching after the retreating purple ray cutting through the sky.
"Shit! SHIT!" Josh, realising that he couldn't catch up to them, stopped mid-air and yelled, "We need to take care of these guys, and then…!" only to trail off into a long moment of silence, capped by a confused, "Where did they go?"
If he meant the Axis of Evil, then the answer was that future-me extracted them while everyone was focusing on Crowy's sudden and inexplicable appearance. He did the same to Belette Nergal, which was bollocks as well, but let's just ignore that for the moment, because Josh wasn't asking the right question.
Just now, after patting Crowy on the shoulder, future-me gave me a thumbs up. As in, he was literally looking me in the eye (as much as that applied to staring at my disembodied point of view) and was reaching towards me, so…
"… What the fuck was that supposed to mean?!"
"Um… Are you sure you're all right?"
I glancde at the kid nervously peeking at me from outside the cell, and I tried my best to force a reassuring smile onto my face.
"No problem, Beansproud. I just got a little… heated. That's all."
Thus explained, I continued to pace up and down in the chamber while occasionally sipping from my tea reserves. I was trying to be frugal about that as of late, since I had already drunk more than half of the enchanted flask's contents, but if I ever needed a pick-me-up, it was now.
Ollie didn't look particularly convinced by my words, so I stopped pacing and turned on my heels to face him.
"Uncle has to pay attention to some other things right now. How about we try out those cards you were so curious about after lunch?"
His eyes lit up at once with an eager, "Really?" and when I nodded in the affirmative, he practically beamed at me.
"I'll prepare the table!"
The cards in question were the same Celestial ones Penny and the class rep were playing a lot ever since our vacation there, and while I wasn't super-interested in the game, there was a whole pile of them in Ollie's toy box. While their magical hologram aspect obviously didn't work down here, the kid was still enamoured by the illustrations and the effect descriptions (he would've probably liked the flavour text too, but that was in Celestial Script only). The fact that future-me also smuggled a printed booklet of the comprehensive rulebook in here only made talking him out of the game all the harder, and goddammit, I just reminded myself of him again.
I took another sip from my flask to calm my nerves and sat down at the edge of my bed. I needed a short break lest I burst a blood vessel, but since I was only nominally livid right now, I decided to bite the bullet and cast my Far Sight out again. First off, a quick glance at Crowy and the class rep told me they were still in flight. The bastard seemingly still hasn't fully recovered from his wing injury, because his pace slowed down considerably compared to his frantic launch velocity.
He was also soaring high up in the sky. As in, high enough to touch the clouds, which told me two things: the Abyss's fake red sky wasn't a shallow imitation, and apparently 'flying under the radar' didn't apply here. Which, on second thought, made sense considering that the Abyssals had no radar facilities (as far as I knew), so flying high was probably better for avoiding being noticed.
More importantly, the class rep was still unconscious in his grasp. He was holding her by the waist, where she hung limply, and despite them flying at high altitude, the wind barely even touched her. I figured the purple aura thing wasn't just for show after all, but even though she looked fine on the surface, I couldn't help but be worried about her. Normally I would've insisted thatshe obviously wasn't going to get hurt, since future-me set this up, but my faith in my future self was eroding by the minute, and so that argument was starting to sound increasingly hollow.
Sure, it was probably step seventy-nine in a long and convoluted plan of epic proportions, without which there was no way to achieve optimal results. The kind of plan Josh thought I was scheming all the time, except this time actually I was. Or will be.
But speaking of him, I have delayed the inevitable for too long. I exhaled hard and shifted my point of view over to the gang's side. For a start, I looked at Judy, and… then looked away. Not because she looked mighty peeved, and I really didn't want to have an awkward conversation. I just said I wasn't delaying the inevitable, and therefore it logically followed that the only reason why my attention was needed elsewhere was because something time-sensitive was happening there. Such as…
Penny was patrolling… Snowy was outside, alone… Fidèle was on her way to meet up with a Shamash task force consisting of half a dozen Fauns and about as many dapper Abyssals… Okay, if nobody else, at least Josh must be doing something important.
"It was my fault."
Oh, look! An important discussion! I knew I would find one of those!
The previous line came from Angie, sitting with Josh on top of a mostly unburned barn. Why they chose this of all places to have a discussion, I had no idea. Maybe because it gave them a nice overview of the wrecked settlement? The scenery certainly had that classic 'Event CG' feel to it, with the two of them sitting side-by-side, their feet dangling off the edge of a wooden shingled roof, with the sun behind their back and Angie's head resting on the guy's shoulder and everything. If not for the smoke trails and the general devastation, it would've been pretty romantic.
"We were all caught by surprise. It's not your fault," Josh insisted, and despite being alone with his girlfriend, he looked a bit uncomfortable.
"Yes, we were, but I still made a tactical blunder," she argued back, and… Wait.
That's not Angie. That's Deus. But then why was she leaning on Josh like that? Just how far did that whole 'we're both two sides of the same person' thing go while I wasn't looking?
"That doesn't make it your fault. By that logic, it was my fault as well."
"Yeah! Listen to Josh!" Angie interjected, which looked silly, considering the circumstances, but her determined expression was immediately replaced by a distressed one when Deus gained control again, and she adamantly stated, "No, you don't get it, Girl. I let my emotions get the better of me! I should've focused on saving our companion, but when I saw Bel of the Abyss, I let my anger overwhelm me! I didn't even attempt to pursue that lordling. It was my failure."
While saying so, she snuggled even closer to Josh, clearly looking for comfort, and after some hesitation, he put his arm around her shoulders. Considering the mood, this was the moment when he was supposed to say something reassuring, sweet, or both, but before she could muster up something suitable for the occasion, their attention was grabbed by the sound of rushing wind.
My Abyssal sister descended and gingerly touched down on the roof next to them. It was only when she took a closer look that she awkwardly utter, "S-Sorry! I hope I'm not interrupting… um… something?"
"No, actually, it's good you're here," Josh spoke carelessly and gestured at the girl still leaning on his shoulder. "Can you help me convince her that it wasn't her fault things turned out the way they did?"
Snowy let out a soft, "Ah…" and she would've probably uncomfortably shuffled her feet if it wasn't ill-advised to do so on a rooftop. "I… might not be the best person for that." Josh raised an intrigued brow at that, so she quietly explained, "When Noir showed up, I… I wasn't ready. I didn't know what to do, and by the time I came to my senses, he had already flown away. Maybe if I intervened, then Amelia…"
Her words trailed into an uncertain, depressed silence… only to flinch when Angie let out an uncharacteristically annoyed groan.
"I can't even with you two! Listen, I'm worried about Ammy too, but beating ourselves up over what happened like this isn't gonna help anyone!" The moment she finished that, her eye colour switched, along with her tone as Deus insisted, "While that's true, we must also reflect on our mistakes. We could've done better."
"Tell me about it," Josh grumbled, and when the girls both focused on him, he hastily explained, "I mean, the fact that out of all of us, the only one who immediately tried to save Ammy was Hareng is just… I can't find the right word…"
"Pathetic?" Deus proposed, only for Angie to reassert control and puff out her cheeks. "Hey! If you're like that, then no more cuddling for today!"
That made my sister tilt her head in confusion, but the guy next to them lightly waved his hand and said, "She's not entirely wrong, you know? Freeing Ammy should've been our first priority… Heck, protecting her and making sure she wouldn't get captured should've been that, but I guess we got a bit too cocky after our previous victories, and we cocked up. That really is a bit pathetic, I guess."
Angie's brows shot up, and she poked her boyfriend with a peevish, "Hey! Language!"
Meanwhile, Snowy let out a gasp, as if she just recalled something important, and gestured at the two to get their attention.
"Ah, right. Mister Ninurta. I came over because he woke up."
"Oh?" The Celestial girl stopped poking the guy and got up, then put her hands on her hips and declared, "See? I told you he'll be fine! I'm getting really good at patching up broken bones!" with a delighted grin that was just a tad dissonant with the topic of the conversation.
"Um… He said he had something important to say. I already told Penny, and she said she'll call Judy and Eleanor over. They might be waiting for us already."
"Then let's go!" Angie exclaimed as she casually jumped off the roof and flashed her wings open. She was gliding towards one of the few fully intact houses near the southern edge of the village, and Snowy quickly followed after her.
Josh, on the other hand, lagged a bit behind and muttered something about Deus being weird before following after them, and in just a minute or so, the three of them were already indoors. Contrary to Snowy's worries, the others haven't arrived yet. The owners of the building escaped during the battle, and they haven't returned yet, so under Fidèle's supervision, they commandeered the place for the war effort (read: they were frantic to find a place where they could deposit Hareng, and they couldn't be picky).
The guest room of the house was simple but clean, with a kind of earthy atmosphere. It wasn't as rustic as the common Celestials' homes in the Elysium, but it wasn't exactly up to modern standards either. In any case, Hareng was lying down on an old divan bed set next to the far wall, and as soon as Josh entered the room, he immediately raised an arm over his head.
"Hey, Boss. What happened? Is everyone okay?"
"If we don't count you," Josh began, but then he shook his head and blandly stated, "Ammy got captured."
"The fair glasses maiden? Drat."
It looked like he had more to say, but then Angie entered the room, pushing Josh aside to inspect the guy on the bed. He was no longer transformed, so he was naked from the waist up, save for his right arm, which was wrapped in a makeshift sling made of some wood and half of a flower-print curtain. His upper body was covered in bruises and lacerations, but it was a testament to Angie's capabilities as a healer that he looked like he had been in a car accident a week ago instead of an hour earlier.
He tried to prop up his upper body, but the Celestial girl hissed at him and menacingly wagged her finger.
"Hey! No moving around! Do you have any idea how long it took me to set your shoulder? Compound fractures are no joke!"
"Really? It doesn't feel that bad…" Hareng mused, prompting Josh to stifle a guffaw.
"Yeah, not that bad. Say that after the healing magic's out of your system."
The young noble muttered a flat, "Oh, bother…" and he once again looked like he really wanted to say something, only to be interrupted for a second time by the other half of the group entering the room, with the Shamash matriarch in tow. She looked as elegant as usual, though maybe a bit paler than her already ashen complexion, which could've been either exhaustion or just her biology disagreeing with sunlight. Either way, as soon as she entered, she directed a warm smile at the guy on the bed.
"I'm glad to see that you're hale and hearty."
"He's alive, but I wouldn't go that far," Judy noted behind her, only to shudder when Elly suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders from the back and started theatrically massaging them.
"Psst! Remember: stress is bad for you. Happy thoughts."
My princess must've realised that she was grumpy due to the recent development (I mean, it would've been stranger if she didn't notice), so she was on placating duty.
"Um… I think being stressed is entirely reasonable right now," Penny pointed out, being the last in line, and when the others focused their attention on her, she stammered, "W-What? I-I mean, isn't this the worst-case scenario? Amelia was our trump card! Without her, the whole plan is kaput!"
In response, Fidèle straightened her back and tapped the end of her closed parasol against the floor, then declared, "Fear not, children. I swore upon my name and my House that I will aid you and ensure your safety. The Lord or Inanna will not escape my fury. As soon as our forces assemble, I will personally lead them to rescue your friend."
She must've been feeling just as guilt-ridden about the situation as Deus and Snowy, considering she also tried and failed to take the class rep from Crowy's clutches, but due to her not being in her element, she was too slow, and the bastard got away. I had to give it to her; she didn't give up easily, and pursued the two of them for a couple of kilometres before it became obvious that she couldn't catch up to him, but just as with the others, her failure to get Ammy back must've been weighing heavily on her conscience.
"Penelope isn't wrong," Judy chimed in, her voice extra flat and her brows infinitely approaching a frown, something that looked a bit incongruous with the princess vigorously kneading her shoulders. "The plan hinges on her, but it also requires that we don't come into conflict with Noir until we're ready to put everything into motion. That's impossible now, because we need to rescue her." She glanced at my sister and added, "So yes. It's definitely kaput."
"There's not much we can do about that. What's important now is to rescue Ammy," Josh stated emphatically, his gaze sweeping over the people in the room. "Noir and Bel of the Abyss set everything up to capture her alive, so she shouldn't be in mortal danger, but that doesn't mean she's safe."
Fidèle nodded along and tapped the tip of her parasol against the ground again.
"You're correct, young man, but our options are limited. There's no telling where the Lord of Inanna took her, so our best course of action is to strike first and gather intelligence from the officers of House Inanna. In a few days' time, we should uncover her whereabouts."
"There's no need for that," Judy cut in and pulled the party glasses communicator out of her pocket. "As soon as the Chief graces us with his presence, he should be able to tell us where they are."
"Don't you mean, when he calls?" Penny tried to correct her, but my dear assistant didn't react, especially since Fidèle was looking at her with a hint of skepticism.
"I understand that Lord Polemos-Dunning established a communications channel with you, but can he really tell you the location of your companion from the depths of the Chasm of Desolation?"
"The Chief is—"
"Leo is a man of many talents!" Elly cut her short, and when Judy turned a flat stare her way, she hastily added, "I just wanted to say it once. For the sake of variety."
While the two of them were busy with that, Fidèle let out a long sigh and closed her eyes. Seeing that, my Abyssal sister sidled up to her and asked, "Lady Shamash? Are you all right?"
"Don't worry, child. I'm just tired." She exhaled another breath and reasserted her presence by straightening her back and making another series of taps with her parasol, for the third time. "I'm also worried about what we might face when we engage the Lord of Inanna again. He's a difficult opponent at the best of times, but he's going to be much harder to overwhelm in his home territory. And that's presuming that he doesn't bend the Mana Well of the Ninhursags to his will before we get there."
"Um… Y-Yes, that is a possibility."
"Right," Angie noted from the bedside, and it looked like she had just finished giving Hareng a quick check-up. "Why else would Neige's brother kidnap her? He's probably gonna use Grimmy to give himself control over all the Mana Wells." She paused, then flatly stated, "And that would be bad."
"Obviously," Josh griped, and it was at this point that Hareng flung his legs down on the side of the bed, much to Angie's annoyance.
"Hey! I just told you not to move around!"
"You did, my angelic maiden, but I have something important to show you all." He tried to get up, but he had trouble rising from his sitting position, so he extended an arm towards Josh. "Boss? Can you give me a hand?"
He obliged, and once the young noble was on his bare feet (again, he didn't have the opportunity to get dressed post-transformation), he pointed towards the doorway and loudly exclaimed, "Follow me, fellows!" and marched out of the building, much to everyone's confusion.
Once outside, he stumbled around a bit, as if he were drunk, but he soon figured out where he wanted to go and used his good hand to gesture in the direction of a collapsed building.
"Over there!" He didn't even wait for anyone to respond and quickly made his way over to a fallen chunk of a wall. "Boss? A little help, please?"
Josh looked skeptical, but he, along with Elly and Penny, grabbed the large piece of half-burned wooden debris and dragged it to the side, revealing something startlingly familiar underneath. A brown bag. Not a hiking backpack, but a cross-body bag made of thick linen with a single long strap, which was currently broken at the clasp.
"Is that… Ammy's bag?" Josh asked, and the guy cheekily rubbed his nose.
"What, Boss? Did you think I rushed the Herald of the Emperor without a plan?" He crouched down and, after a bit of rummaging, took out a familiar cube with a shit-eating grin. "Look! Not a scratch!"
"But Amelia was wearing that when Noir captured her," Judy pointed out, but it only made the young noble's grin widen even more.
"At the beginning, maybe." He turned around and wiggled his butt, as if pretending to be a dog wagging his tail. "You can't cast spells with it, so nobody pays attention to the tail."
Meaning, he must've used it to snatch the bag off Ammy while pretending to rush in, and he ate a hit to keep up appearances. I had to admit, I didn't see him do it either, but the bag (and more importantly, the Mana Well) was here, so he clearly wasn't lying.
"You see, my fellows?" Hareng tried to juggle the cube with one hand, but he nearly dropped it, so he hastily handed it over to Elly and tried again. "You see? Our bespectacled fair maiden may be missing, but the Mana Well is safe and sound, and the Herald can't make use of it."
"That's true," Fidèle said, sounding just a touch cautious. "Let's hope the Lord of Inanna won't take out his anger upon your friend once he realizes the Mana Well is missing."
Hareng let out a dismissive huff. "Oh, please, my dear madam! You just discussed how important our fair maiden is to him. There's no way he would hurt her. None at all."
I could see Judy already on the verge of facepalming in the back, and I was of the same opinion. This guy, as occasionally useful as he could be, was a jinxing magnet, and if I took that into consideration…
"Shit. I'd better keep an eye on the class rep…"
It was official: all the Abyssal Castles were the bloody same.
Or, at the very least, that was the conclusion I could draw from a sample size of three. In the middle of the cobblestone maze of the town whose name I never bothered to learn stood a familiar structure, sitting on top of a dark stone plateau jutting out of the heart of the settlement. I rarely got to have a good look at one of these from a distance, but from the Inanna Patriarch's vantage point, high up in the sky, the fortified estate resolved into a majestic yet also slightly creepy. Giant buttresses gnarled around each other, their surfaces carved with a menagerie of stone gargoyles frozen in eternal mid-roar. The main keep, a colossal block of granite, was covered with hundreds of lancet windows, complete with pointed arch tops.
In other words, it looked exactly the same as the Castle Inanna I was intimately familiar with and the Castle Ninhursag I'd seen in passing during the battle. Of course, only you looked closer, there were some individual touches introduced by the ruling families, but from up here, the nuances were washed out by the dominating samey-ness of the overall design and identical floor-plan. That made me wonder: the Emergents made the scenario, building on top of previous scenarios, some of which ostensibly took place in the Abyss, but I sincerely doubted that they manually created every nook and cranny and personally sculpted every single dumb gargoyle perched on the sides of the castle's spires.
Considering that, and the fact that all of these looked the same, did that mean the Simulacrum made them? Or maybe there was a hand-crafted initial castle where a scenario took place, and now that the whole Abyss got entangled in a different one, that 'template' castle got copy-pasted all over the place. I would've loved to bounce some of these ideas off Judy, but she was still mad at me right now.
It was a bit unreasonable of her, I had to say. I mean, it was future-me's doing, so I didn't do anything wrong… yet.
Anyhow, after the long flight, Crowy landed in the courtyard of Castle Nergal; a scene that was oddly similar to his arrival at the Ninhursag (or, at this point, Ninurta) estate. He was even welcomed the same way, though this time by Belette Nergal. He greeted Crowy with an ear-to-ear grin and literal open arms.
"Welcome back, Herald of the Emperor! What a refreshing encounter that was, wasn't it?"
He was already back to normal, wearing a snazzy gothic black suit with lots of gold filigree and an oversized bolo-tie with a green gem in the middle. Future-me must've taken him home right after he served his role as a glorified distraction for Fidèle, and while Crowy was flying over the country, he had ample time to tidy himself up a bit.
"Where's the Emperor?"
Seeing that he wasn't in a good mood, the Nergal Patriarch's jovial grin was quickly replaced by a stern look. He jerked his head towards the main keep.
"He transported me directly to the lobby, then disappeared into thin air, like a daytime mirage. It was a rather peculiar experience, I must say. Traveling across such vast distances in but the blink of an eye. Not to mention, a disorienting one."
"I can't say I have ever experienced it," Crowy stated flatly, much to the other Abyssal Lord's thinly veiled surprise.
"Really? Is there a reason for that?"
"Don't mind it."
Crowy hefted the limp class rep, drawing the other Lord's attention to her.
"Is she the bounty you were after?" He leaned closer to take a better look, though he could only inspect the top of her slumped-over head. "I personally prefer my women with a bit more meat on them, but I certainly won't hold your partialities against you, Herald."
"Cut the witticisms, Lord Nergal. I'm not in the mood." Crowy squinted as his eyes swept across the spacious courtyard, eventually settling back on Belette. "Where's Dimas?"
"Ah, your Majordomo?" the Nergal Patriarch asked back, followed by a careless shrug. "I believe he's currently in the west wing, preparing a secure room for your…"
His words trailed off, eyes pointedly glued to Ammy, clearly hoping that the other man would drop a hint. He didn't, and Crowy simply hefted her unconscious body, holding her like a sack of potatoes under his arm and turned on his heel. As he walked away, I could see Belette's mouth move, silently making the motions for something along the lines of 'arrogant bastard'. Or maybe it was just my antipathy speaking.
In any case, he didn't follow after Crowy. As for the Inanna Patriarch, he didn't bother to de-transform (maybe because he had no change of clothes at hand, or maybe so that he could carry the class rep with ease), and he casually stomped across the castle's corridors like he owned the place. In a sense, he kind of did.
On the way, he encountered a couple of unfamiliar faces; mostly local servants, officials, and a couple of Fauns. Some of them offered to help him carry the unfamiliar girl, no doubt considering it a rare opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the Herald of the Emperor, but he rebuked each and every one of them like they were common thieves out to rob him of his most precious property.
He must've been familiar with his destination (and not just because the floor plan had the same layout as his own castle), as he moved with clear purpose, past the fancy galleries and the luxuriant lobbies. At last, he stood in front of an unremarkable wooden door, its faded frame reinforced with iron straps and inscribed with a copious amount of wards. Crowy entered without even bothering to knock.
"Oh. It's you, My Liege."
The air was still in the windowless space. A single gas lamp hung on a thick chain from an unseen point in the vaulted ceiling, the only source of light in the small, windowless room. The chamber was situated in the middle of the building, and from the context, I imagined it was a room set aside for the guests of the involuntary persuasion.
The floor was of dark, unpolished oak; the boards groaning underfoot as Crowy stepped inside, a noise drowned out by the slamming of the door behind him. On the left, a colossal wardrobe of carved mahogany stood against one wall with even more bloody gargoyles decorating its surface, frozen in silent screams. On the right, a four-poster bed dominated the space, with a heavy, brocade canopy sagging over the black and red bedding.
And then, in the middle, stood Dimas Ekhtear, Crowy's right-hand man. He was wearing the same grey navy uniform as always, matching his long hair and eyes, and making me wonder if that was the only outfit in his entire wardrobe. He fell to one knee as soon as he recognised Crowy's entrance, only to immediately jump back to his feet when he practically threw the class rep at him.
"Ah? Is this…?"
"Yes. It's her."
"Congratulations, My Liege."
The man in the navy uniform moved the unconscious Ammy over to the large bed and did his best to lay her down in a comfortable position. It was only once she was situation that he turned to Crowy again and quietly asked, "How about the Emperor?"
"He doesn't know yet, or at least I don't think so," Crowy spoke as he walked over to the wardrobe.
He opened it up, and once he inspected the clothes inside, he finally undid his transformation. I've seen this lots of times, even from up close with the princess, but the way the horns and the wings receded into his body was still as fascinatingly weird as ever. As for his 'regal' (by a certain definition of the word) outfrit that came with his Abyssal form, it burst into purple flames and disappeared without leaving ash or smoke. Was his getup made of flash paper, I wondered.
The only piece of his apparel that remained was, once again, a pair of black pants frayed up to the knees. He quickly got out of those and started rummaging through the clothes in the wardrobe, all the while continuing the previous track of the conversation.
"The Emperor is convinced that I'm infatuated with this girl, and as aggravating as that is, we have to ensure it remains that way." He paused to send a sharp glance at the other man. "You hear me, Dimas? He cannot, under any circumstances, catch wind of this."
"I understand, My Liege. My lips are sealed."
"Good."
Meanwhile, Crowy finished changing into a pretty stereotypical black and red ensemble with a fancy cape that was screaming, 'I'm a villain!'. Or being a big fan of Count Dracula. The Bela Lugosi version, to be exact. He walked over to the bedside and looked at Ammy with a cold, dispassionate stare. At first, silence, then he pointed two fingers at her. An inky blackness seeped from his fingertips, undulating like a flag in the wind for a few seconds before suddenly lashing out towards the class rep, almost like a living thing, like a snake snapping at its prey.
It hit her in the shoulder, and after a long beat, her eyes popped open as a pained yelp erupted from her throat. Her whole body shook, as if she was being electrocuted, and the moment the black tendril retreated, she hugged her shoulders and curled up into a foetal position, her mouth open and gasping for air.
It took several seconds for her eyes to finally regain their light and focus, and when they did, a new surge of panic showed on her face. Her gaze met with Crowy's, and she instinctively tried to crawl away, but was stopped by the end of the bed.
"So we meet again," Crowy gloated without a shred of subtlety, his mouth curved into a cattish smile. Specifically, a cat that had already cornered the mouse and was planning to spend its sweet time playing with them.
"W-What's going on? Where am I?"
"That's not something for you to worry about right now," he told her in a faux-gentle tone and reached out towards her. The class rep froze up like a deer in the headlights and allowed him to grab her chin. "What was your name again?"
I would've bet my pancreas he had to know that, considering she was officially Lord Grandpa's only relative, and therefore a VIP even before the whole Grimoire business, so he must've been playing some mind-games with her.
"… Amelia."
"Ah, that's right. Amelia," Crowy repeated after her, his eyes alight with a hungry spark. "You know exactly what I want from you, don't you?"
"I-I… The Mana Well… I… I…" She frantically looked left and right, turning paler by the second. "It's… I was in my bag. I-I must've dropped it, or…"
"That's not what I'm talking about," the bastard interrupted her, his fingers clenching harder on her face. "The Ninhursag's Mana Well is something that belongs to me, but I will gain custody of it in time. No, Amelia. The thing I want… is you."
"M-Me?"
"Oh, yes…" His lips curved into a supremely creepy smile, and he dragged her closer, until their noses were only about a palm's width away from touching. "You are my key. The key to something that I need… no, something that belongs to me, and you are going to give it to me."
"I…" The class rep's eyes opened wide, but this time it wasn't because of panic. Or, well, not just panic, but let's not split hairs about that. "I'm not helping you!"
"Oh, but you will." He raised his other hand to show it off, and from his palm rose a whole plethora of undulating, inky black appendages forming something that resembled a grotesque flower, or maybe a sea anemone. "You will cooperate, and you will give me what I want, or else I will let you experience the sensation of all your mana in your body burning like red-hot coals all over again." He paused, and this time his grin took a sadistic undertone. "In fact, maybe another demonstration would make you more… compliant. What do you say, dear Amelia?"
His hand moved with a languid, deliberate slowness as it closed in on the class rep's forehead. She tried to struggle, and… Seriously, what the shit was this?! I knew that future-me was shady, but letting Ammy be tortured was a bridge too far, no matter how I—
"No! Bad Crowy! Bad!"
Oh, wait. False alarm.
Just as the pitch-black flower was about to touch her forehead, the spell (or power, or whatever it was) in his palm abruptly dissipated, and Crowy shuddered in surprise when a rolled-up newspaper hit him on the back of the head. His eyes opened wide as saucers, then a flash of intense fury twisted his expression, which was gone in the blink of an eye, replaced by a stony poker face.
He let go of the class rep and turned around, only to immediately descend to one knee next to the bed, adopting the perfect image of a loyal subject.
"My Emperor. I didn't expect you to—"
"Bad!" Future-me hit him on top of his head again, then threw the bent newspaper to the side. "Come on, Crowy, my favorite overcooked blood hurka! We went over this! When you're raising a pet, you don't do corporal punishment like this! It's beneath us! It makes us look like third-rate villains, like those weird people who put shock collars on their dogs. Do you want to be like them?"
"… No, my Emperor."
"Of course you don't," future-me huffed and puffed, and then his attention turned to the class rep. "Ah! Hello!"
"H-Hello?" she responded on autopilot, much to his apparent amusement.
He looked at her from the left, then Phased to the other side of the bed to look at her from the right, and once back at Crowy's side, he crossed his arms and let out a chortle.
"Hah! On second look, my Herald might have surprisingly decent taste, after all. Not my type, though. I like my women like I do my coffee."
He purposefully paused here, sending expectant glances at the other men in the room, and eventually the man in the navy uniform mustered the courage to guess, "Do you mean… black?"
That was followed by another beat, during which future-me continued to give a flat stare at the man.
"Don't be an silly, minion. I meant sweet and hot, obviously. Bringing race into the conversation without rhyme or reason is also third-rate villain behavior. Unless you also have a tiny mustache, which immediately makes you a legendary villain, I hear." He paused to rub his chin, then shrugged. "I have no idea why, though. It looks really snazzy to me, but I must be missing some historical context. I'd better look into it." This time, he pointed at Crowy. "I'm off to the library, then! Behave yourself, all right? I'll be watching."
He then immediately disappeared from the room, much to the two Abyssals' relief… which lasted exactly until he reappeared in the corner.
"Or not! It's a lot of hassle."
"My Emp—"
Before Crowy could finish, he disappeared again… then just as he was about to stand up, he Phased in right next to him.
"Or maybe I will!" Phased out, then back in. "Or maybe I won't." Disappeared again, reappeared again. "But I could be watching." Gone, then not. "I probably won't be though." Dematerialised, then remineralised. "But I might be! You could never know!" This time, he didn't leave right away; instead, he patted Crowy on the shoulder and added, "No pressure. It's not like I'm watching you every second of every minute of every hour of your miserable existence. It would be a gross breach of privacy, right?"
"… True," Crowy squeezed out between quenched teeth, prompting future-me to laugh and wink at him before disappearing again, this time seemingly for good.
"Is he gone?" Dimas asked a tad wearily, a question that made Crowy exhale an irate growl.
"I hope so." He froze up for a second, as if expecting that Bel of the Abyss would show up one last time to spite him. When he didn't, he exhaled again, this time in relief, and rubbed his temple. "He might be onto us. We need to speed up the plan. Dimas?"
"Yes, My Liege?"
He pointed at the confused class rep on the bed and dryly ordered, "Gag her. Her kind can't use powers without a verbal component."
"As you command, My Liege." He wanted to get to it right away, but Crowy raised a hand to stall him, and he stopped in his tracks. "Yes? Is there something else?"
"Let me think…" He did just that, his fingers remaining on his temple for a while until he managed to dig up a new idea from somewhere. "Once you ensure that she's safe and secure, I have a mission for you. I cannot return to Castle Inanna for the time being, so I need you to go and pick up the item for me."
"The… item?" he repeated after him, audibly stumped, which clearly irritated his boss.
"I talk about my new gift I arranged for my dear sister upon her inevitable return." Crowy clarified, his mouth set into an unsavoury smirk as his eyes lingered on the class rep. "I was hoping to present it to Neige personally, but it appears it would suit our new captive better." His gaze returned to his right-hand man, and he asserted, "Travel lightly, and be swift and discreet. We must ensure that this will be a… surprise."
"As you wish, My Liege."
"Good man." With that said, Crowy pulled his cape over his shoulder and headed towards the door. "Be swift. I'll ensure that our Emperor will keep his eyes on me alone until it's… time."
Dimas noted, Crowy left, and the class rep was utterly bamboozled, then shocked when the man retrieved a straight-up ball-gag from his breast pocket, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Putting the casual use of fetish bondage equipment aside, now I knew for sure that Ammy was, if not comfortable, at least not in immediate peril. She still needed rescuing though, so I had to update Judy and the gang on that… as soon as I figured out how to do it without getting chewed out for something I hadn't even done yet.
Yet another reason to hate time travel tropes, I supposed…