The Simulacrum - Chapter 110

I knew it! I god-bloody-damn knew that the shifty old bastard was going to betray me! I knew it, and yet, somehow, I still didn’t not trust him enough! How is that even possible!?

“This is stupid!” I growled as I let go of my head, and the archers on the catwalks readjusted their aim in response. Pausing for a breath, I let out a frustrated groan and firmly levelled my finger at them. “Put those bloody things down! You’re going to poke someone’s eyes out!”

To my momentary surprise, the Celestials started to murmur in bewilderment, and some of them even let their weapons down. It didn’t last for long.

“No! You can’t follow his orders yet!” the bald man in the middle exclaimed and hurriedly rose to his feet. “We can’t let him leave!”

His orders caused another round of whispers and all the arrows to be trained on me again.

“Well, you can try to stop me, but you can’t,” I told them matter-of-factly, and the leader of the group straight up wiped the sweat on his forehead before speaking up again.

“Mister Dunning, I implore you. We came here in peace. We only wish to talk with you.”

This time I aimed one of my flattest stares ever at the man, and even as I did so, I could feel my facial muscles slowly twist my expression into an infuriated grimace.

“Ah, yes. Because luring someone into an overly-elaborate ambush in the ass-end of nowhere and threatening them with bows and arrows of all things just screams ‘We’re reasonable people who just want to negotiate’, huh?”

“We were pressed for time, and it was the only way,” the bald guy excused himself in a strangely subservient tone. “I apologize for deceiving you, but we knew that if you suspected foul play, you would’ve never agreed to this meeting.”

He was kind of right and wrong at the same time. From the very beginning, I did expect ‘foul play’, as he put it; I was just sorely mistaken about the details. I predicted that the Magi ‘insiders’ were just a convenient excuse Percival came up with to take me to a deserted location before the sudden-yet-inevitable-betrayal and equally anticipated backstab. Hell, I didn’t just expect it; I actively baited him into it by pretending to be completely gullible and docile. I even went as far as to order the Kage ninjas to stay out of this one, lest the old bastard would realize the gig was up and abandon whatever nasty little plan he was cooking in the very last minute.

In retrospect, I should’ve at least brought Rinne along in my shadow, if for nothing else than to serve as a witness, but in my defense, I was quite sure I could resolve this without getting anyone else involved. Putting it simply, I didn’t exactly consider Percival a threat. Between my gear, my danger sense, and my other assorted abilities, I felt rather confident, and in the case the old man showed his true colours, I was almost looking forward to beating him to an inch of his life without having to hold anything back. What I didn’t predict was an entire ambush, and one by a squad of Celestials at that!

But speaking of Percival, a cursory Far Glance told me he was already on his way to another location, riding on a black sports motorbike no less! Was he seriously making one of those stylish getaways from a spy movie, I marvelled? If anything, it only made me want to leave without any further ado and then stomp dear Uncle Percy into the closest available curb (figuratively, but the literal version wasn’t completely off the table either).

While I was nominally curious about what these bozos were here for, the traitorous old bastard was higher on my priority list, which meant it was about time I made my exit. As overused as it was, the most straightforward solution to the situation was the tried-and-true ‘I wasn’t really here’ method, and while I didn’t want to reuse it so soon after pulling it on Lord Grandpa just the other day, I—

“This was our one and only chance to make contact with you, so we had to be thorough,” the four-winged man interrupted my thoughts and then sat down again. “We couldn’t risk that you wouldn’t show up in person, so we had to enlist the help of Agent Pendragon.”

“Wait… how can you be so sure that I’m actually here?” I tried to initiate my getaway-line anyway, but he cut me short by casually pointing at my head.

“Agent Pendragon prepared an indicator.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize what he was talking about, but then I reached under my chin and ripped off the face mask Percival gave me before we set out. I raised it up to face-level, but couldn’t see any kind of magical glow, and a quick sweep with my phantom limb told me it had no enchantment on it whatsoever. When I looked up from it and turned a questioning glance at the man behind the desk, he awkwardly cleared his throat.

“I believe he used fluorescent invisible marker. It was clearly visible when you entered the room, and Agent Pendragon assured me that as long as I could see the mark on it, it was definitely your real body wearing it.”

“Fluorescent marker…” I repeated after him in a daze, and a sudden memory elbowed its way into the forefront of my mind. Was… was Percival actually throwing shade at me when he was talking about how people used to magic were easier to deceive by simple tricks…? “Oh, that bloody motherfu—!”

I threw the flimsy piece of cloth at the ground and got ready to Phase after the bastard in a fit of justified, but in retrospect somewhat impulsive, rage. The Celestial in the middle must’ve realized I was about to do something, as he rose to his feet for the second time and pointed his palms at me.

“No! Please, Mister Dunning, sir! We did all of this for your sake! We can help you regain your memories!”

I was already locked onto the old man’s location, but those words made both my body and my mind freeze.

“Pardon?” I uttered in mild bewilderment as I fully returned to my body, and the bald guy let out a relieved breath like he just defused a bomb at the one-second mark.

“We can help you. I swear on Deus that we can return your lost memories to you and make you whole again. Please, trust us.”

I won’t lie, that sent me on quite a loop.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Please, I implore you.”

Before I knew it, I had one of those moments. The kind where all of a sudden about ten minutes worth of thoughts rushed through my mind in the span of a single second, and all of them were fighting tooth and nail to be in the limelight.

The first one that managed to claw its way into my conscious mind was the question, ‘Is he telling the truth?’. This was a Celestial agent of some flavour we were talking about here, and while I rationally knew that not all Celestials were scheming, deceitful asshats, it didn’t mean their reputation was unwarranted. This could’ve very well been just a ruse to pique my interest and make me easier to manipulate… but at the very least, he sounded genuine, so at the very least he believed they were here to help me. So… maybe he was telling the truth?

Just as I reached this point, another thought caught the first one in a chokehold and yelled, ‘Then why are they holding me at gunpoint, or arrow-point, or whatever! Think, you dingus!’, making me seriously reconsider the idea. However, before I could get anywhere with that, a third thought barrelled into the forefront and drop-kicked the previous ones out of my mind with a battle-cry of ‘Context! Think about the context!‘.

Considering the broader situation for a moment, a new question came to mind: didn’t this put Percival’s actions in a completely new light? If I presumed that he lured me here to let the Celestials recover my memories, then it would’ve meant that, from his perspective, he wasn’t betraying me, but helping me instead. It would certainly explain the thumbs up he gave me at the end, and—

Before that thought could be concluded, its legs were pulled out of under it by two other notions, screaming ‘Then why did he run away from the scene of the crime!?’ and ‘Don’t you dare to give the benefit of the doubt of that fuckmotherer!’, respectively. I could hardly argue with that, and while those three thoughts duked it out, a new one sneaked its way into the forefront and gently whispered, ‘Even if they’re telling the truth, do I actually want to have my memories back?’.

That… actually made all the other congested thoughts in my head stop in their tracks to give it the consideration it deserved. From what I’d gathered, I wasn’t exactly the nicest person before I lost my memories. If I got them back, wouldn’t it fundamentally change my personality? Sure, maybe it could’ve shed some light on one or more of the persistent mysteries I was still struggling with, such as where my initial ‘allowance’ came from, or what my original plans were when coming to the island, but were such questions worth risking the integrity of my ego?

My answer to that question was a resounding no, and upon reaching that consensus, the original brainwave sunk back, only to be replaced by another one bursting into my thought-palace, asking, ‘So, even if I don’t care about my memories, could I still use these guys to my advantage?’, and it was definitely a pertinent question.

They called Percival ‘Agent Pendragon’, meaning he was directly connected to them. That meant the Brotherhood was still linked to the Celestials, and it also explained the detailed list of strongholds I found on the Celestial Hub way back when; after all, one of their most highly regarded and highest-ranking member was a Celestial mole! Not only that, but since I was his protégé, there was a good chance that I was also supposed to be in on the secret, which meant…

Holy crapbasket! Could it be that I wasn’t on the island to recruit Josh into the Brotherhood, but because of his Celestial Chosen One status? Angie knew very little about why she was designated to look after Josh, and though I had a feeling she completely forgot about her mission as a Celestial asset, the guy was supposed to be one of the candidates as the reincarnation of Deus, the Elysium’s god-slash-messiah-slash-cult-leader. Considering that it was Josh we were talking about, aka the protagonist of the Simulacrum, it was practically guaranteed that he was just that, short of a last-minute twist.

What did that make me then? If we presumed that we were in the Angie route, then it would logically follow that Josh’s status as the Chosen One would have to be revealed, and who else would be better for the job than the Celestial double-agent hidden in plain sight, aka me? However, I lost my memories, so maybe this entire incident was the Simulacrum or the Narrative trying to course-correct things in the last possible second.

‘Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself,’ another thought said as it elbowed its way into my frontal lobe. ‘Yes, let’s consider if I can use this situation to my advantage first, and then ponder the narrative implications,’ the previous thought agreed, and so I took a deep breath and observed the situation again. What were my options?

For a start, I could potentially pretend to switch sides and milk these guys for information. I wasn’t sure how much I could get out of them per se, but maybe they could put me in contact with someone higher up on the Celestial totem pole, and maybe marking them would be useful in the future. That… was a lot of ‘maybes’ though; a bit too many for my liking.

Were there any alternatives? Well, I could also try to beat them up and interrogate them. While I didn’t have any backup, so long as I went all-out, I was confident I could make short work of them, especially if I caught them by surprise. That said, the only remotely-relevant person in this gaggle of winged idiots was the bald negotiator, and he barely qualified as a ‘side-character’ by my metrics. The rest were straight-up placeholders, so I doubted I could get anything worthwhile out of them.

Okay, so working with them, pretending to work with them, and subduing them were all more trouble than it was worth. Did I have any other options?

For one thing, I already got rid of the facemask, so I could still pull my disappearing act. All I needed to do was to keep them busy for a few minutes, and then tell them ‘Hey, while you were talking, I already left through the back door five minutes ago, so bye’. It wouldn’t be particularly elegant at that point, but on the flipside, it wouldn’t break the rules of my illusionist cover story either, and so long as they didn’t suddenly erect one of those locked Purple Zones around the building, everything would work out just fine.

…

“Me and my big mouth…”

Apparently, the universe just couldn’t resist dashing my hopes, and without prior warning, everyone and everything flashed in negative colours and then settled into an unsettling violet hue. More alarmingly, the ambient light not only kept flickering between purple and red, the Celestials in front of me seemed to be even more surprised by the development than I was.

“What is this? Didn’t we already deploy the Restricted Space suppressors?” the bald Celestial bellowed with palpable apprehension in his voice, but before any of his subordinates could respond, there was a bright blue light at the back of the warehouse floor, followed by the sound of blustering wind and the crackling of static electricity.

Before the Celestials on the catwalks could meaningfully react, a swirling, round hole opened in space and a person leaped out of the newly formed portal, followed by about a dozen more. They were all wearing similar brass hoplite armours as the archers, except theirs covered less skin, and the moment they arrived, they brandished magitech spears, swords, and altogether oversized handguns.

“Move out! We must secure the VIP!”

Yep. The guy with the crested helmet at the front was definitely Jaakobah.

“What is this I don’t even…” I muttered under my breath as the two groups of Celestials clashed in combat. The ones on the catwalks were already at a disadvantage, as they didn’t have enough space to maneuver, and by the time they switched to their melee weapons, the second group already gained a substantial lead. My ears also absently noted that the moment the battle broke out, both sides started singing; one side sounded like a Gregorian hymn, while the other was closer to a folk song, but I couldn’t tell which group sang which. I didn’t really have much time to even think about it, as Jaakobah rushed straight at me, only to be intercepted by the bald guy, who produced a pair of curved silver swords from the bracelets on his wrists.

“Leonard! Stay back!” the Celestial agent yelled at me as he engaged the dual-wielding man with his own sword and gun. “We’ll deal with them! Don’t get involved!”

To be fair, I had no intention to do that whatsoever. I had absolutely no idea what this was all about, didn’t know who were the good guys in this conflict, and since my danger sense was completely inactive, I didn’t feel the need to even move from the spot where I was standing.

“Renegades!” the bald man drew my attention back to him by roaring while randomly flourishing his swords as if asking to be shot by Jaakobah.

Instead, the dour healer took up some kind of strange gun-kata pose and said, “If there’s a renegade here, it’s you, vice-director. Your greed got the better of you.”

“You dare to talk about greed, Reformist scum!”

Instead of responding with words, Jaakobah did a completely impractical three-hundred-and-sixty degrees pirouette before bringing down his short sword onto the roaring man, a move which would’ve been incredibly easy to exploit if not for the bald guy being more preoccupied with twirling his blades than actually attacking him. The incoming strike was parried with one blade, and then the hairless Celestial used his other sword to strike at Jaakobah’s side. However, before the attack could connect, it got parried by the agent’s impractically large handgun, followed by several shots that impacted the other man’s chest.

As I already noted while spying on their training, these guns were firing small arrows of light instead of bullets, and weren’t exactly impressive. The projectiles exploded on the hair-follicle deficient Celestial’s Barrier, but it only staggered him for a second before he jumped back in the fray.

As for me, I was currently shocked, confused, and quite possibly even bamboozled by this turn of events. What exactly was going on? Where did these guys come from? What was that about ‘renegades’ and ‘reformists’? And last, but not necessarily least, what was the point of making a huge magitech pistol that made your average gas-operated fifty-caliber semi-automatic magnum handgun seem puny in comparison, when it could barely inconvenience someone at point-blank range?

Okay, maybe that last one was the least important thing to wonder about in this situation, but seriously, what the hell was that? What the hell was any of this?

While my mind was still reeling from the unforeseen development, Jaakobah and the nameless badly kicked over the table in the heat of their fight, and the battle over our heads also gained momentum, with at least one of the catwalks teetering on the edge of collapse after one of the suspension cables got cut in the scuffle. By the looks of it, Jaakobah’s group still held the advantage, which was… good? Maybe?

As a matter of fact, I still didn’t know who the good guys were. Since he was the only person I knew in this royal mess, my gut said I should probably root for the Celestial healer’s squad of Peloponnesian War re-enactors, but one’s digestive track wasn’t necessarily the most trustworthy advisor, and since the losing group was the underdog, I kind of wanted to cheer for them to make a heroic comeback, and…

“… Okay, screw this,” I muttered as a rising sense of indignation kicked all other stray thoughts out of my mind and asserted itself into the cockpit of my mind. Taking a step forward, I inhaled deeply and bellowed from the bottom of my lungs. “Enough!”

My intervention was more effective than I could’ve ever imagined, and in the momentary silence, every eye was glued onto me, which… well, it took me back for a moment, right until ‘Refuge in Audacity’ unceremoniously kicked ‘Indignation’ out of the driver’s seat.

“You!” I said, pointing at the group on the left catwalk. “Yes, I’m talking to you, knobheads! Get off that god-forsaken walkway before it all collapses and the rest of your mates will have to collect your brains from the floor with a teaspoon! Oh, and while you’re at it, put the wings away already; they are a bloody eyesore!”

“Mister Leonard, I—”

“And you two!” I cut in with a reprimanding finger right out of the princess’ handbook, and it shut the bald guy up before he could even get started. “Stop this meaningless battle at once!”

“But we are—” Jaakobah tried to speak of this time, so I turned my finger at him.

“No buts! I didn’t come here to watch you idiots murder each other for no adequately explained reason. Spill as much as a single drop of blood, and I’m leaving, and at that point, you can all rot in hell for all I care.”

“We’re in a Restricted Space. You can’t leave,” the phlegmatic agent pointed out, and I chose to respond with a melodramatic growl.

“Can’t I? Try me.”

To be honest, this was a borderline bluff. Sure, I could leave at any time; there was no issue with that. However, giving a believable explanation as to how I could leave from a seemingly malfunctioning Locked Restricted Space was far trickier, and the Celestials were the last people I wanted to learn about my teleportation ability.

All of that was a moot problem though, as Jaakobah released his weapons at once and they returned to their standard issue bracelet forms. Seeing his actions, the bald guy hesitated for a while, but peer pressure was a harsh mistress, and so he also dismissed his weapons.

“Very well. We are all reasonable adults here, I’m sure we can reach a compro—”

Before he could even finish a single sentence, Jaakobah lashed out without warning and sucker-punched the man right in the gut. Before I could even wonder why his Barrier didn’t stop that, the agent dashed behind the bald man and caught his head in a chokehold. I was pretty sure it took something like half a minute to knock someone out like that, but in just a matter of seconds, the man went limp and Jaakobah carefully laid his body onto the floor. Then, as if to punctuate the moment, the empty catwalk on the left finally collapsed with a cacophony of snapping cables and groaning steel.

“There was no blood,” Jaakobah stated blithely as he stood up and made a few gestures with his hands, at which point the rest of his squad rushed in to apprehend the shocked archers. Just like that, the battle ended in a matter of seconds with the swift surrender of the first group. In the meantime, the dour agent removed his helmet and stood in front of me, so we were seeing eye to eye.

“I really hope that you were the good guys,” I grumbled after clicking my tongue, and he let out a thoughtful grunt in response.

“Good is relative, but as far as you should be concerned, all you need to know is that we’re here to help you.”

“Sure. That’s what the other guy said as well,” I told him while priming my danger sense. We were in sucker-punching range, and he had already shown me that such things weren’t beneath him. Thankfully, for the moment he remained docile and only nodded like I just stated the obvious.

“He wasn’t lying. We both want to help you retrieve your memories.”

“… Then what was this whole thing about?” I inquired with a wave of my hand, mainly aggravated and just a touch intrigued.

“Our short-term goal might be the same, but our long-term goals don’t align. I’ll let the directors explain everything to you once we’re in Elysium.”

“Whoa there, cowboy! Slow down! Who said anything about going anywhere with you?”

Jaakobah’s expression said he was expecting this kind of answer, and he took a deep breath.

“I’m not allowed to tell you the details, but you are important, Leonard. Extremely important. We purposefully didn’t make contact until now, so that no attention would be drawn to you, but now that the Unorthodox faction broke the agreement, we can’t wait any longer. You are of vital importance to the people of Elysium, and we can’t let either the Magi or Bel of the Abyss learn of this.”

“Excuse me, but you do know who I am, right?” I asked, feeling a tad flabbergasted by his insistence. “I’m currently in the center of the Draconic Alliance, the head of the Ordo Draconis, and a bunch of other titles I can’t be bothered to list here. I think I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

“That might be, but if there’s even a one percent chance that your life could be in danger, it’s a risk we cannot afford to take. You must come with us, both for the sake of your own protection as well as for the sake of all Celestials.”

“Oookay, you’re getting a bit carried away here,” I tried to object, but before I could get any further, Jaakobah suddenly brought forth his sword. My danger sense gave me no warning, so I just blankly watched as he raised it to his own neck. “… What are you doing?”

“I’m staking my life,” he told me like we were discussing the weather and placing the semi-transparent edge against his skin.

“That’s idiotic.”

“It may well be, but it is the only way I can show you my sincerity.”

Saying so, his face tensed up as the blade bit into his skin, drawing a few drops of blood.

“Stop that!” I yelled by reflex and used a phantom limb to snap the enchantment that was holding his weapon together in half, at which point the whole magitech sword collapsed and the pieces fell onto the floor, much to his shock.

Meanwhile, I took a closer look at the wound, but it was only skin deep. Still, I never pictured this guy would do something like that. That meant that he was either crazier than I thought, or that the whole situation was bigger and crazier than I could’ve ever imagined.

Considering they needed me in particular, and both wanted to recover my memories, it told me that there was something in my pre-amnesiac backstory that was vitally important to these guys. Whatever it was, Jaakobah was willing to take himself hostage just to force me to cooperate, which was… well, we were acquaintances at best, but I didn’t want to see the guy bleed himself to death in front of me, so it was unexpectedly effective. Damn. Was I really that soft?

Never mind, let’s focus on more important questions. Such as what I should do now? I broke Jaakobah’s weapon by reflex, but how exactly was I supposed to explain to him what I just did?

That should’ve been a major issue, yet it ended up rhetorical a moment later when he stated, “So I was right,” and looked at me with a profound sense of respect.

I waited for him to continue and shed some light on what the thing he was right about actually was, but he just continued to quietly stare at me instead, with dispassionate yet at the same time insistent eyes.

“Okay, let me see if I get this right,” I spoke up once I ran out of patience. “You want to take me to the Elysium.”

“Yes.”

“Because the memories I’m missing make me too important to leave me alone.”

“That’s correct.”

“But you can’t tell me why, or what those memories are about.”

“I can’t.”

“But your directors can.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to take me to them.”

“Those were my orders.”

In short, as much as this whole situation had the Narrative’s fingerprints all over it, it was also a major situation that went far beyond my original expectations, and on top of that, this was probably my best opportunity by far to find, meet, and mark the top dogs of the Celestials, which was an extremely tempting prospect. After all, if I already had my marks on them, an out-of-the-left-field situation like this would’ve never even happened, and doing so now would allow me to get ahead of any future complications like this.

So long as I kept my guard up, I could probably do this relatively safely, and after I marked everyone I could, it was just a question of biding my time until I would be left alone, and then I could get by pretending that I was kidnapped by Bel or something. At the very least, I didn’t have to worry about being stuck there for long, and…

“Ah, fine. Just… let’s get this over with,” I gave in at the end, the potential gains finally outweighing my sense of caution on my personal scale, and while Jaakobah looked like he wanted to grab me and carry me through the portal right away, I raised a hand to stop him. “However, before any of that, give me five minutes. I need to send a text to my girlfriend.”

“Are the coordinates locked in yet?”

Hearing Jaakobah’s question, the Celestial operative controlling a magitech tool that looked like an unholy crossbreed between a cello, a harp, and a vuvuzela, shuddered in apprehension.

“We’re almost done, sir. Just give me a minute.”

“Every second we spend out in the open increases the likelihood that the Magi would detect our incursion. Work faster.”

The unnamed grunt nodded with a groan that said he hated his job, and then started simultaneously plucking on and blowing into his instrument. The sound caused the swirling blue portal at the back of the warehouse to vibrate and distort, kind of like the image on an old CRT television during a rainstorm.

We were already back in realspace, which meant that the damage caused by the short yet intense battle between the two Celestial factions was nowhere to be seen anymore. Jaakobah’s group was standing guard over the disarmed losers, including the still-unconscious bald guy lying on a makeshift stretcher. By the looks of it, the no-nonsense Celestial agent was in charge of running the show, and… well, I wasn’t sure it was right to call him that after the stunt he tried to pull.

Incidentally, he had a fairly deep wound on his neck just a few minutes ago, but while I was writing to Judy and Elly, he healed the injury with just some humming and snapping his fingers twice. Maybe the reason why he was so eager to use that idiotic ‘I’ll cut myself to prove that I’m serious’ trope was because he knew he could fix himself up in a matter of seconds? Despite his apparent recovery, my eyes were unconsciously drawn to his neck, which he must’ve misunderstood for scrutinizing his orders, as he faced me with a stoic expression.

“Creating a gateway directly leading to Elysium is a complex procedure. Please be patient.”

“And why’s that?” I asked, without much meaning behind it, yet Jaakobah considered my question with the utmost seriousness.

“Elysium is protected by a barrier to prevent any unauthorized entry. The only way to gain entrance is by connecting a pair of gateways, one from each side. Regrettably, the Magi have developed a method for detecting the opening of any such passageways, so we must be careful about when and how we use them.”

Oh. So far, that sounded eerily similar to how the portals between realspace and the Abyss worked, just without the need for Mana Wells and Purple Zones. Though again, considering the Celestials had access to the former as well, maybe I was jumping the gun on that detail. It was only a question of time before I found out though, so I didn’t stress over it, and focused on another discrepancy instead.

“You already portaled in, didn’t you? Isn’t it a bit too late to be worried about the Magi at this stage?”

“No, we made a lightning strike from Argentina, not from Elysium,” Jaakobah patiently explained, though if I didn’t already spy on them to learn the context, I probably wouldn’t have understood what he meant.

“What about these guys, then?”

I used my thumb to point at the gaggle of Celestials in custody, and after a glance, the apathetic agent let out a disinterested huff.

“They were most likely air-dropped. It’s standard procedure. That’s how I arrived as well when I visited the island the last time.”

“Huh. I learn something new every day,” I muttered a standard thought-terminating cliché and turned back to the portal in construction.

Now that I knew it was operating on the same principles as an Abyssal one, I could finally put a finger on the peculiar feeling it gave me. I recognized it as the same sensation that told me how long it was until the connection would be established during the incident with Crowey on the school grounds, and my gut said that in less than a minute, we could get going.

I wasn’t going to lie though; I was still in two minds about this whole idea. Since the Elysium was a kind of parallel-pocket-space-thing, just like the Abyss, it greatly limited my options for deception. For a start, I couldn’t exactly pull off an ‘I was never here’ move and return to Critias that way, as there was no chance anyone would accept that I somehow projected an illusion of myself into a separate mini-dimension. Of course, I already had a slightly more convincing emergency exit plan in mind, involving Bel of the Abyss and lots of bullshittery. Doing so would’ve probably led to another giant kerfuffle, possibly making the entirety of the Celestials and their various intelligence networks and alphabet-soup agencies pinpoint focus all their attention on me, so it was still my Plan B.

As for the most ideal sequence of events, it went something like this: go to Elysium, have Jaakobah introduce me to as many higher-ups and important people as humanly possible, then I’d pretend to regain my memories or whatever, and convince them to send me back to Critias on their own volition. Of course, since this was an optimistic pipe dream at best, it was virtually guaranteed that things wouldn’t go that smoothly, but it was still something to aim for, and then improvise as the situation would demand it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and all that.

Anyhow, just as I reached the end of that thought, the portal was juat about to finish of its countdown timer, or whatever it was called, so I adjusted my parka, checked to see if either of the girls had responded to my text message (they didn’t), and stepped up to the grunt busy with his weird magical instrument.

“I’m sorry, sir. The gateway will open in a moment. Please be patient.”

I uttered an absent “I know,” without much meaning behind it, more concerned by the way he responded to me than what he said.

I couldn’t take a good look at his expression because of his helmet, but the man by the portal sounded both nervous and deferential at the same time. The same could be said about the rest of the Celestials in the warehouse, and even Jaakobah was less terse and more polite than he used to be the last time I met him.

It made me wonder; just how important did I use to be in the Celestial hierarchy? Was pre-amnesia Leonard Dunning (also known as Leonard Pendragon) a secret bigwig? And if so, what did that make my alleged ‘mentor’? The bald guy referred to him as an ‘agent’, which wasn’t exactly illustrious, so if anything, I should’ve been the same as well. Potentially even lower in the ranks, really.

Yet, they went through all of this trouble to get me and return my memories. Just what did I use to know to force to them go to such lengths? Ideally, I hoped there was some kind of rational motive behind all this. Unfortunately, the possibility that the Narrative was forcefully course-correcting things and I was getting swept up in the scenario, because there needed to be a climactic plot for the Josh x Angie ‘route’ to end with a bang, was still on the table. I really wished it wasn’t, but as much as I argued about these things with Judy, outright denying the possibility would’ve been foolish.

Momentarily lost in my thoughts, I was only brought back to reality when the portal in front of me reached the end of its metaphorical countdown and began to swirl faster and widen even further.

“I recommend we go through right away,” Jaakobah stepped up to me and stated stoically, but after just the briefest moment of hesitation, I shook my head.

“No. Let’s send the injured through first.”

For the record, I didn’t say that because I suddenly got cold feet. Not at all. It was all because of my big heart and what have you. Scout’s honour.

Meanwhile, the Celestial agent considered my suggestion and waved at the captives and their guards to get moving. It caused a bit of a stir, but a few pointed glares were enough to get them moving.

Good. Herding all of those guys across, including the man on the stretcher, bought me at least a minute to think things through one last time. Did I really want to do this? Once I stepped through that portal, it was guaranteed to set a lot of things into motion, and I couldn’t predict how much control I’d have over the events to follow. Was I ready to take responsibility for all that?

But, then again, things were already off the rails at this point, and even if I pulled out from this situation at the last second, I was sure the Celestials wouldn’t leave me alone. With the Assembly coming to the island, the last thing I needed was an unpredictable variable like that.

“Leonard?”

I was once again jolted out of my thoughts, this time by Jaakobah. He put his helmet back on and beckoned for me to follow after him, and I only just realized that the only three people left on the premises were him, me, and the nameless agent still playing his eclectic instrument like his life depended on it.

“… Oh, screw it. In for a penny, in for a pound,” I whispered under my breath and stepped up to the stern Celestial healer, took a deep breath, kept my phantom limbs close to me (lest I accidentally dispelled this gateway), and we both stepped through the portal at the same time.

The sensation was rather peculiar. It didn’t quite feel like Phasing, but rather as if I just walked through a curtain separating two rooms. There was a sense of tingling on my skin, kind of like static electricity, but it was soon overtaken by other sensations as my eyes adjusted to the bright ambient light of our destination.

The first thing that registered with me was the thick, sweet scent of flowers, followed by the slight breeze I felt on my skin. At first, I thought we were outdoors, but a quick glance around told me that we were standing on a rather a huge balcony. It was semi-circular, with fancy classical Greek columns holding up its high roof and its milky white floor covered with lush red carpets and even redder rose petals. The finely carved alabaster railings were barely visible under the countless bouquets of flowers and garlands on top of them, while the walls on the sides, as well as several spots on the ceiling, were bearing bright blue banners adorned with the same golden crest. It was depicting a vertical spear with a wide head, surrounded by laurels and six stylized, burning wings in a circle around it, and all of that was enclosed in an even bigger circle made of straight lines representing rays of light.

That would’ve been already enough to give me a pause, but then my attention was drawn to the Celestials standing by the railings in front of me. All of them were wrapped in togas; vivid blue, red, and purple dyed cloths draped over spotless white tunics, their hems covered in elaborate needlework and adorned with small precious gems of various colours. There were about twenty of them, men and women of various ages and hair colours, but all of them wore laurel crowns made of gold and silver.

Then, as if to make things even crazier, about ten Celestials dressed in the simpler ancient Greek armours, the kind I’d seen on the guards, stepped up from the sides and blew their long, straight trumpets, followed by a pair of young Celestial girls flying overhead and raining more rose petals on me. It was only at this point that I realized that Jaakobah and the placeholder with the weird instrument sneakily retreated to the back, where the rest of the agents and captives were currently being herded out of sight.

My first instinct was to call out to him, as I would’ve preferred to have at least one familiar face around, but before I could do so, the trumpeters blew their instruments again. This time, all the toga-wearing Celestials followed it up with a melodic chant of some sort, and revealed their wings without changing their outfits in the process.

“Welcome! We have been eager to meet you!”

Blinking in surprise, I faced the middle-aged man who called out to me with an unexpectedly deep and resonant voice. He was fairly short, almost a head shorter than I was, his straight, shoulder-length sandy-blonde hair framing a clean-shaven face with a straight nose, small chin, and wide jaws. He stood a step ahead of the rest; his toga was a deep shade of purple and his headdress was made of pure gold, likely signifying that he was one of the more important people present. However, the most striking thing about him was, undoubtedly, the fact that he had three pairs of bright, translucent wings behind his back. There were a couple of others with six wings in the crowd, but theirs weren’t nearly as dazzling, while the rest were only sporting two pairs at most.

Feeling a little overwhelmed and more than a bit dizzy by this entire scene, it took Refuge in Audacity a while to take its usual seat in the command chair inside my head, but once it did, I let out a pent-up breath and loosened my shoulders at once.

“I presume you’re the representative of this… group,” I said with a level voice, and the man’s face was nearly split in half by a wide and altogether artificial smile as he walked over to my side, just as the portal closed behind me.

“Indeed. I have already sent you a letter, but this is the first time we have met in person. I’m Acacius Tsephanyah, Elysium’s Director of Internal Affairs.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said on autopilot while the gears in my head started to spin up, and it didn’t take me long to realize why he sounded familiar; he was, without a shadow of a doubt, the leader of the shady council-people I saw through Far Sight during the one and only time I managed to catch Jaakobah during a meeting.

Honestly, I based on his resounding bass, I expected someone taller and bulkier, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Looking at him didn’t give me any ‘strangle him right now’ vibes though, which was a good start if nothing else. More importantly, if he was also the person who sent me the letter warning against making contact with other Celestials (which, in retrospect, I did), it meant that he was definitely a plot-crucial person in or near the center of whatever the Narrative was cooking at the moment. As such, I immediately offered a hand to him.

“You probably already know this, but I’m Leonard Dunning. Let’s not get bogged down with the titles, you probably know all of them already.”

“Yes, we most certainly do,” he told me as he nervously eyed my outstretched hand.

He hesitated for a while, but ultimately still reached out, yet instead of reciprocating the gesture, he limply pinched my fingers in his own and bowed. For a moment I was afraid he wanted to kiss my hand, but he left it at that and straightened his back. Was this some kind of weird Celestial greeting I didn’t know about? In any case, a mark was a mark, so I didn’t really care about the nitty-gritty details.

With this, my job was technically done. I came here to mark one of the head honchos for Far Sight, and I accomplished it just a few seconds after arrival. That was efficient, even by my standards… and it was the reason why I figured I could probably stretch my luck a little further.

“You put an awful lot of effort into this,” I spoke as I pointedly glanced around on the balcony and then picked a rose petal off the fur rim of my parka. “Is this how you greet all your guests?”

“Oh no, not at all,” the Celestial director reassured me with a disarming smile and gestured for me to follow after him. I did so, and as we walked down the red carpet leading to the railings, the group of richly dressed people parted to the sides like the Red Sea. “We generally do not allow ‘guests’, but you have no idea for how long we have been waiting for your arrival.”

“Still seems a bit overblown,” I commented as we reached the edge of the balcony, allowing me to look outside. We weren’t particularly high, maybe a couple of storeys at most, and I got a great view of the azure skies stretching over the seemingly endless golden fields and the snow-white spires dotting the landscape, all of it illuminated by the bright morning sun. It was definitely scenic, but nothing special.

“No, not at all,” the Celestial representative emphasized. “Due to the rather abrupt nature of the circumstances, we only had a short time to prepare this reception, but we wished to show you our realm in its best light. Once again, let me welcome you… to Elysium!”

As if rehearsed ahead of time (oh, who am I kidding; of course it was), the trumpeters blew their instruments again, the girls with the baskets full of rose petals made another sweet-scented bombing run on my head, and just outside the balcony, I could see—

“… Did you get a Hong Kong action movie director for this?”

The question slipped through my teeth as I pointed at the flock of white doves flying by the picturesque background, and while the Celestial big shots around me looked rather startled by my comment, they couldn’t have been half as confused as I felt at the moment.

“Hong Kong?” the director by my side repeated after me, with the first cracks finally showing on his harmless smile, so I shook my head with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“Don’t mind me, it was just an observation. So, now that I took a look outside, can we get down to business?”

“Certainly, but… Don’t you have any questions about our realm?” he prodded me, so I shook my head a second time.

“Nope, I’ve seen enough of it already.”

“If… you say so,” he muttered a tad uncertainly, but when he saw that the others were also getting fidgety, he quickly reasserted himself with a loud harrumph. “In that case, please follow after me. Maybe once you recovered your forgotten memories, we could take a second look.”

For some reason or another, this man really wanted me to be in awe of their little pocket dimension, or at the very least comment on something, but unfortunately for him, I wanted to get the most out of this situation ASAP. After all, I still had to get home, grab our beloved Uncle Percy, and then bring him to the closest high-rise building and dangle him off an edge, upside-down, until he gave me all the answers I wanted. Kind of like a nocturnal echo-locating mammal man, just without the funny voice.

Anyhow, he waved for me to follow him, and as we walked down the red carpet again, this time in the opposite direction and towards the only visible exit, the rest of the Celestials in togas put away their wings and awkwardly shuffled behind us. Last, but not least, our processions was closed by the trumpeters, who put away their instruments and picked up circular shields and long spears before they followed us. Were they some kind of honour guard, I wondered?

Guesses aside, I could catch a few grumbling about how this wasn’t in whatever script they rehearsed ahead of time, but such complaints quickly died down as we got inside and I was met with familiar, minimalist corridors currently being swept by some rather adorable flying roombas. Without a doubt, we were inside one of the towers, and a quick Far Glance, revealing a smattering of red dots in the surrounding area, told me that we were almost certainly in the same one I’d visited a while ago during my initial marking trip in the Elysium.

Filing this trivia in my mental cabinets, I followed after the man leading the procession, and before long, we reached some equally familiar sliding doors.

“Just a moment,” the faux-friendly director stopped me in my tracks and let out a series of hums that sent waves of magical un-light towards the panel on the side. The melody caused the surface to light up with a circle that reminded me of one of those old-school wave-form visualizers, and it responded with a mellow chime and a low whirr.

Before long, the doors opened, revealing an elevator cabin I was also familiar with, and so I stepped in without any hesitation, an act that seemed to startle the rest of our group.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked just a touch impatiently, and so the rest soon followed, though it was obvious we couldn’t all fit in at the same time. That said, the cramped conditions were ideal for me, and it netted me a couple of marks, so I wasn’t complaining.

It took about five minutes for everyone to reach our destination, time that was more than enough for me to overcome my initial surprise and start wondering about what was going on. Since I had no idea what these people’s plan was, or how they would try to cure my amnesia, I tried to keep an open mind while also being on guard, yet I had to admit I wasn’t prepared to see the service corridors leading to the restricted area in the basement at the end of our long ride down. It was the place they were housing a Mana Well, like the ones in the Abyss, and the fact they were bringing me to one of them filled my head with an endless number of question marks.

Completely unaware of my inner turmoil, the representative of the group led me through the underground passageways with steady steps, so for the time being, I just honed my senses, and made a few more marks whenever the opportunity presented itself. At this point, I had a mark on about half of the toga-wearing Celestials, plus two of the spear-carrying guards accompanying us, so I considered this trip well worth it already.

At last, we reached the heavy-duty doors at the end of the hallways, and I could already feel the hairs on my arms standing on ends from all the mana in the air. Without hesitation, three of the Celestials stepped forth and started singing in canon, to which the locking mechanism responded with short chirping sounds. After three whole exchanges, the whole corridor shook and the thick metal gates slowly retracted into the walls, revealing a truly curious sight.

The circular hall on the other side of the entrance had a surprisingly high ceiling. The place was lit by a series of lights embedded into the fresco-covered dome, though I could hardly see any of that due to my vision being dominated by the eerie, colourless light of the mystical cube floating over a pedestal in the middle of the room. The density of mana in the chamber weighed on my chest and made it harder to breathe, but this wasn’t my first rodeo with a Mana Well, so it only took me a few seconds to get used to it.

In the end, only the head Celestial and I entered the room, while the rest of them remained outside and only stared after us from the entrance. There were lots of whispers and gasps of awe, but I couldn’t exactly tell if it was at the room, at the Mana Well, or something else entirely. Maybe it was because of me, considering the six-winged director looked rather astonished when I followed after him without a word, and there was something strange in his gaze that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. This wasn’t the time or place to address that, especially when he gestured for me to stay back and, contrary to my expectations, didn’t head to the pedestal in the middle.

Ignoring my scrutinizing gaze, he walked over to the altar in the back of the room, surrounded by more frescoes and tall candelabras holding multiple magical lights that were barely visible due to the ambience produced by the cube. Come to think of it, this place did strike me as a small shrine the first time I came here, and now that I had a chance to take a closer look, I had to agree with my first impression. While the paintings on the walls were rather violent, depicting scenes right out of a gory fantasy war movie, the style and trappings were definitely religious, and now that I could take a better look at the altar at the back, this definitely did feel like a place of worship.

While I pondered over how exactly that meshed with this being a restricted zone housing a Mana Well, the man in the purple toga opened up the side of the altar and retrieved an item from within. I couldn’t say he carried it per se, as it floated above his hands, and even so, it looked as if it took considerable effort to bring it over to me. On closer look, the object was some kind of weapon, enchased in a transparent bubble of lazily swirling mana.

In retrospect, this was probably supposed to be a very solemn occasion, further punctuated by the Celestials we left behind in the doorway breaking into a gentle hymn the moment they laid their eyes on the object in question, yet I couldn’t help but feel baffled by the sight in front of me.

The best way to describe the ‘weapon’ in question was to say that it was a forty centimeters long angular hilt made of a matte green material, segmented by a golden inlay in the middle of it, and topped by a leaf-shaped double-edged blade, about twenty centimeters long. It was a strange thing; too short to be a spear, but too small and unbalanced to be a sword. Maybe some kind of ceremonial dagger, I pondered? But then what was the point of the long handle?

I’d gotten only that far with my observations when the blonde man in front of me let out a hiss and unfurled his wings again, startling me into nearly Phasing away by reflex and causing the singing in the background to miss a note.

I waited for a long beat, but when he didn’t move, I let my guard down a little and asked, “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Only… the Blade of Polemos is reacting to something. It could be your presence, or—” Before he could finish his sentence, he let out a startled gasp, exactly as the bubble surrounding the weapon popped with a loud pinging sound. “Ah! Watch out!”

By the time he said that, the object hovering above his hands began to spin, and, without any further warning, it came flying straight at me.

Startled by this development, time slowed to a crawl as I instinctively lashed out with my phantom limb, only for it to bounce off. Or rather, I was the one who yanked it back even before it made contact in response to a small yet very loud part of my mind screeching at me about it being a plot device. Then, my second instinct was to Phase out of the way, only to belatedly realize that after the previous fakeout, I forgot to set my target again.

Normally this was the part where I reflexively dodged out of the way of harm… except my danger sense was apparently asleep, as it wasn’t sending even the slightest of warnings, even as a decidedly dangerous-looking knife-thing was hurtling towards me.

Then, from the very bottom of my mental priority list, another reflex rose to the rescue. My well-trained yet rarely used weapon-catching reflex, that is.

Without much conscious thought being put into the process, my right hand automatically lashed out, and to my surprise, the weapon flying right at my head suddenly stopped spinning and changed its trajectory. It felt as if it was waiting for me to move from the very beginning, and its hilt lightly smacked against my palm. Then, the moment my fingers closed into a firm grip, there was an uncomfortable, borderline painful sensation running through my arm, like a mild electric shock, forcing me to blink in surprise.

And then, when I opened my eyes again, I was suddenly inside an empty not-dark not-room.

“Well… crap.”

Okay, let’s calm down and try to figure out what the hell just happened. A weird weapon-thing came flying at me, I grabbed it, and then I was suddenly disembodied. That never happened before… unless I manually initiated it with a phantom limb, that is.

A cursory glance told me that I was in the vague not-dark not-room. Or rather, ‘a’ not-dark not-room, as while this one was about as fluid and nondescript as the one I’d seen in the past, with the star people and their cryptic conversations and everything, it was also subtly different in ways I couldn’t put into words.

Well, that didn’t shed much light onto the situation, so I moved on to my next observation, namely that I was lacking a body at the moment. Normally that would’ve been an alarming discovery, but I was already used to it, so after making a note of it, I moved on to greener pastures.

Speaking of which, could I move? Normally just thinking about that would’ve made all of space and time shift around me, yet for some reason, the not-dark not-room remained stubbornly unshifty.

“Well, that’s a pickle,” I uttered, and the words caused the scenery to ripple and wave like I just dropped a stone into a reflection on a still lake.

“It is.”

Alarmed, I glanced around in the elusive space in search of the source of the familiar voice, and after tracing back the waves, I found a dark void within the fabric of the not-dark not-room. Looking at it gave me all kinds of vertigo, but none of the weird stellar imagery the ambiguous humanoid star-people elicited from me, meaning this was something altogether new.

“Erm… Who are you?”

“I’m me, blockhead,” the hole in unreality answered, its words causing the weave of space-time around us to undulate even harder.

“You’re you, but what are you?”

“I’m not you, I’m… actually, I am, technically speaking…” the smooth and extremely familiar baritone voice mumbled as if it was unsure of itself, but then it stated, “Listen. My ego is currently in an upheaval due to new memories being forcefully injected into my consciousness, so as a defence mechanism, I separated myself from myself, but then I somehow ended up visualizing a part of myself as a separate entity to have this conversation.”

That made no sense and yet way too much sense at the same time.

“Oooh… Does that mean that you’re the part of my brain that seems to know everything?”

“Do I look omniscient? Also, as I already explained, I’m me, and you’re also me. We are me.”

“You just called me a ‘you’ though,” I pointed out, and the me in the form of a hole in reality let out a groan.

“Stop trying to argue with myself using restrictive language constructs!”

“Well, I’m not the one who’s being obnoxiously unhelpful,” I grumbled, and if a hole in the canvas of reality could roll its eyes, then other me was definitely doing that right now.

“I’m such an asshole.”

“I said it, not me… Wait, now even I’m doing it! Can we at least switch the pronouns to make this more intuitive?”

“Shut up for a moment and let me talk,” black-hole-me reprimanded me and let out a protracted groan. “I have to return to my body. Now.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.”

“No, I don’t understand it. We are currently disassociating from the identity of Leonard S. Dunning.”

“And that’s bad.”

“Obviously,” I scoffed. I mean, the me that wasn’t me scoffed. We scoffed. Ugh. This was giving me a headache. “Every second I spend disassociated here, the chances of them discovering me rise exponentially.”

“Them? You mean those four star-people?”

“Why do I insist on asking questions of myself I already know?”

“Then can you tell me who they are?”

“How the hell should I know when I don’t know it either!?”

“But you know things I don’t know!” I protested, earning me another scoff.

“And you/me know things that I/me don’t know. So what?” hole-in-reality me exhaled another groan that made the not-dark not-room vibrate so hard I was afraid it would fall apart at any moment. “This whole monologue is pointless! Just return to my body already!”

“And how do I do that?”

“How should I know? I’m just a visualized figment of my own personality! You/Me is the one who should know how to do it!”

“But I don’t!”

Then, just as my argument with myself reached its boiling point, the whole not-dark not-room cracked, like a pane of glass, and shattered, leaving me stranded in the inky timeless lack of space I often experienced whenever I tried to look for the star-people on my own volition and failed.

“What now?” I asked, but before black-hole-me could respond, a sudden light filled the endless void.

In the near-infinite distance, a strange scene unfolded before my eyes. A huge red sun linked to a smaller yellow star by a crown of ethereal black tendrils, like an enormous tree holding one in its roots and another between its branches. They were infinitely far apart, yet at the same time, it was as if they were one and the same. However, before I could take a closer look, the lack of space itself shook, a wave that caused imaginary numbers and self-referential paradoxes to pop into existence for just an infinitesimal moment before melding back into the lack of existence.

The wave crashed into both mes, and before I could even respond, I felt myself implode into a singularity and get ejected from the immaterial darkness, streaking across time and space like a shooting star. On my way, I could hear strange echoes of familiar voices, tatters of words carrying fragmentary meanings and fractions of emotions.

“I can’t trace him!” the voice of sulfuric wind roared in my ear.

“What kind of joke is this? It’s like he’s everywhere!” ruby oceans churned with tumultuous disbelief.

“He hid his tracks well! I told you he’s good!” orbital rings turned to the tune of birdsong.

“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore!” a barren moon moaned and whimpered quietly.

And then, as if all of that was just a bad dream, I was suddenly back in the underground shrine with the altar and the Mana Well and all that. Needless to say, the sudden whiplash caused by the abrupt change in the scenery would’ve made my head hurt, if I had any at the moment. Contrary to my expectations, I wasn’t back in my body yet, but floating above the scene in a disembodied form. Even stranger was the fact that my actual body was being enveloped in a glowing cocoon of semi-transparent mana, as if I was frozen inside a big ice sculpture.

It didn’t take me long to realize that wasn’t quite the case; the six-winged Celestial frozen mid-motion while trying to rise from the ground made it quite obvious. At the moment, time was at a complete standstill. Has this ever happened before, I pondered for a moment? I had a feeling I experienced something similar when I got skewered by one of Snowy’s ice spears, but due to the shock and the adrenaline, the whole event became kind of fuzzy in retrospect.

Was this some kind of defence mechanism? Was I in mortal peril? Again?

Whatever the case was, I couldn’t do anything about it in my current state, so after steeling my nerves, I cautiously floated over to my body, passed through the mana-cocoon surrounding me, and very carefully melded into my own head, which resulted…

“Aw, fuck me!”

The mother of all headaches. Yes, I know I kept complaining about headaches all the time, but this was in a league of its own. The closest thing I could cite was the head-splitting torment I experienced on the first day of school, but somehow worse.

“{Statement: Memory transfer initialized.}”

“Wait, what?” I blurted out in response to the flat, mechanical voice that jolted me out of my pain-induced stupor and glanced at my hand.

In it, the weirdly proportioned blade was emitting light, both the vanilla and magical variety, and I could sense a stream of mana forcefully crawling its way up my arm. Reasonably alarmed by this development, I did the first rational thing that came to mind, and tried to let go of the weird dagger. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to control my fingers (or the rest of my body, if we were at that), which was even more alarming.

Thankfully my paralysis only applied to my corporeal limbs, and so I used my phantom limbs to cut off the stream of mana climbing my arm.

“{Report: Memory transfer interrupted. Reinitializing.}”

“No, don’t do that, you piece of—!” I began, but then my voice rose an octave when I noticed something else and exclaimed, “I have another one!?”

No, not just one. I’ve gained multiple new phantom limbs, and after a quick count, it all added up to…

“Eight? What am I, an octopus?”

“{Statement: Memory transfer initialized.}”

Before I knew it, the stream of foreign mana started climbing up my arm again, so I cut it off with extreme prejudice once more.

“You! Stupid weird knife thing! Explain!” I growled at the item in my hand, something I probably wouldn’t have even considered if I wasn’t already used to annoying weapons talking in my head, and to my pleasant surprise, it actually stopped trying to invade my body and gave me an answer.

“{Answering Query: You are currently receiving your stored memories. Please stand by until the process is complete, Polemos.}”

“What the hell’s a ‘polemos’?”

“{Answering Query: You are.}”

“Well, I’m not, so stop it.”

“{Responding to Orders: Negative. Once the process is initiated, it cannot be terminated.}”

“Great. Another uncooperative piece of sharpened metal,” I griped as I cut off the mana stream coming at me and considered my options.

First things first, I tried the most obvious solution, even though I didn’t exactly have high hopes for it. Extending one of my many Phantom Limbs, I tried touching the weapon in my outstretched hand, but the moment it came in contact with it, it reeled back like I was touching a hot stove, with a corner of my mind immediately yelling at me to stop.

“You are such an asshole, other me!” I complained just to let some steam out, but I naturally got no response whatsoever. “Fine. So the knife is the plot-devicest plot device that ever plot deviced in the history of plot devices. Awesome. Just what I needed.”

After some further grumbling, I looked for alternatives. The first thing that came to mind was the cocoon of swirling mana surrounding me. Now that it was in motion, it looked very reminiscent of the bubble the stupid knife was encased in before it decided to fly at me, and I figured at breaking it should’ve had some effect on the procedure. Alas, I was mistaken.

“God freaking damn it, other me! This one too!?”

The annoying corner of my mind once again remained silent, but the moment I tried to raise my phantom limbs against the bubble enclosing me, it threw a tantrum. Bloody hell.

“Okay, plan C,” I muttered, and got ready to Phase away, but then I paused halfway through the process. I was still holding onto the stupid body-snatching knife. Since it was in direct contact with my body, just like my clothes, it would be automatically carried over as well. In other words, Phasing away was mostly pointless. “Plan D? Does anyone have a plan D?”

Other me didn’t even make as much noise as a mouse’s farts, the ponce, so I was left alone with only my own thoughts.

Let’s look at this objectively. I was in a bind, but I wasn’t in direct danger. At least not yet. Sure, I had to periodically cut off the mana stream coming my way, but so long as I did that, everything would be stuck at a stalemate. I didn’t need to sleep, and so long as my attention didn’t wane, I could keep this up indefinitely.

That sounded nice, except it wasn’t a plan. It was just stalling.

What else could I do? Both the knife and the barrier around me were plot devices, so my usual swiss-army-knife phantom limbs were useless. Hell, they were actually super-plot-devices I couldn’t even touch! Things would’ve been sooo much easier if I at least knew why, or if I could even just peek at the enchantments, but the knowledgeable asshole in the dark recesses of my mind remained tight-lipped, so I was left to speculate.

So, what did I know about Plot Devices? In short, they were important to the Narrative, and I couldn’t manipulate them with my Phantom Limbs, which meant… Actually, what did that mean?

I have destroyed plot devices before. I broke the curse on mom-in-law’s old wound, and I replaced the stupid dragon-slaying spear and destroyed the original using Xiao’s dragon fire. Other me didn’t throw a tantrum during either of those, so what was the difference? My phantom limbs, of course.

Maybe because it was an out-of-context power, using it on certain plot-relevant things would’ve been bad, in a way other me never explained yet was very adamant about. Conversely, breaking plot devices using loopholes and in-context means was perfectly fine. So, looking at the current situation from an out-of-the-box perspective, the only question was how I could deal with this situation without using my phantom limbs on either the weapon on the cocoon.

Let’s turn it around and look at it from the other way: on which things could I still use my phantom limbs?

Before I even finished that thought, I already activated my Leoformer and was suddenly encased in a copy of my Lion Knight armour. The newly materialized gauntlet made my fingers move a little, yet they remained still firmly clamped around the long hilt of the knife, despite my best effort to move them.

Okay, so this didn’t work. Next idea: could I put this thing into my storage?

Regrettably, this was a stillborn idea for multiple reasons; I would’ve not only needed to take Cal out to make space for the other blade, but doing so required me to physically move my hand to retrieve and store items, which I still couldn’t do. I really wished I could manipulate the armor with my phantom limbs to make it move, but it had no such functions, and implementing something like that into the enchantments without external tools and while keeping an eye on the mana stream climbing up my arm would’ve taken ages for a plan I wasn’t even sure could work.

Yet, just as I was considering that, a new idea raised its pretty head in my mind. Sure, I couldn’t interact with the knife or the cocoon, but my phantom limbs could clearly cut the mana stream off without any trouble. Wouldn’t that mean that, unlike the rest, it wasn’t actually a plot device?

It made sense too. After all, the mana stream was just the medium that was, supposedly, transferring whatever memories were hidden away in this idiotic blade. In other words, while I could not disrupt the enchantment itself, I figured I might be able to trick it into thinking that the transfer was complete and then undo the paralysis by itself. In other words, I just had to commit magical wire fraud!

That sounded remarkably feasible, so once the knife re-initialized the transfer process, I very gingerly reached out with my phantom limb, without the intent to disrupt the flow. It took me a couple of tries, but where I lacked in talent, I made it up with stubbornness, and so after lots and lots of trial and error, I was finally able to visualize what was going on.

To put it into layman’s terms, I had always likened a human soul to a giant ball of yarn. This stream of mana was, in essence, a single such thread, designed to be tied onto a loose end, get wound around the target yarn ball, and then blend into it in the process. It wasn’t the most elegant way to do things, but I imagined it should’ve worked, except for one thing: apparently, I had no such ‘loose ends’, and so the process was stalled at the initialization phase. Not only that, but every single time I interrupted it with my phantom limbs, it would start from the beginning all over again.

In other words, I was currently the equivalent of a computer stuck on a blue screen because an update failed, and the operating system kept trying to install it, crash in the process, and then start over.

Analogies aside, now that I had a rudimentary understanding of the process, there was only one thing left to do: trick the system into thinking that the installation was successful so that we could get to the desktop and then Ctrl+Alt+Delete the whole installer package.

I’ve had all the time in the world to come up with a plan, and it took a while indeed. It was a little tricky and quite frustrating to execute, but it was better than being stuck in this loop. Step one was fairly simple: using the Oath-receptacle as a template, I created a fake ‘loose end’ for the memory transfer process to latch onto. Then, I guided this newly formed yarn string and wound it around an equally fake ‘soul’ I emulated using the experiences I had with Saahira’s remote control enchantment. It didn’t have any functions whatsoever, but so long as the knife accepted it as ‘my soul’, it was good enough.

Of course, this wasn’t without any risks. In particular, for all of this to work, I had to guide the ‘string’ through one of the Oath-receptacles, which put it in direct contact with my ‘soul’, and consequently, my consciousness. This carried the risk of some of the memories ‘rubbing off on me’ during the process, which wasn’t ideal, but so long as was able to recognize them as foreign elements, I figured I would be all right. Of course, this was based on pretty much nothing but just educated guesses and lots of elbow grease, but when I considered that the alternative was being stuck in this limbo until I died of old age. Or thirst. Probably the latter.

Speaking of which, I wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed. My rumbling gut told me it was at least a couple of hours, but considering how much time I’d spent in and out of the non-Euclidian enchantment-space to set everything up, it would’ve been stranger if I didn’t lose my sense of time in the process. Success was paramount; everything else was secondary, including time.

Then the moment arrived, at last. With a deep breath, I carefully connected the stream of mana and the strand of memory-yarn inside it to the enchantment-contraption I hammered together over the past couple of subjective aeons, and the moment it happened, the knife in my hand finally changed its tune.

“{Announcement: Memory transfer in progress.}”

What followed was… peculiar, and somewhat unpleasant. I mentally prepared myself for it, but the process still made me feel light-headed and a little nauseous.

How should I put this…? I was an ocean, and the memories trying to enter my mind were a river. As it reached my coastline, I used my bulk to send large waves its way. It changed the direction of the river, so that it would flow into a giant, empty lakebed I prepared beforehand. Yet, water was still water, and no matter how much I pushed, the mixing of the two was unavoidable.

There were images in my mind of places I’d never been to, impressions of people I’d never met, and the scents of flowers I’d never heard of. It was uncanny and idiosyncratic and disquieting and nauseating and mostly harmless and it all lasted altogether way too long. Then, just as I was about to get impatient, my mind was invaded by a loud ping.

“{Announcement: Memory transfer complete.}”

A breath of relief escaped my chest, and at the same time, my outstretched hand went limp and fell to my side, completely numb. I didn’t care though, but instead focused on myself. Was I still me? Well, I felt like myself, so that was a start, though I probably would’ve felt even more like myself if my head wasn’t throbbing like crazy and let me organize my thoughts in peace.

Anyhow, once I was clear on that, I immediately cut the bridge between myself and the fake soul where I dumped the memory-string, and it all disintegrated back into unstructured mana. Good. At least that was out of my hair. Now, I just had to deal with this barrier and the weapon in my hand, and then I could finally go home and take a hot shower before I would…

“{Greeting: Welcome back, Archon Polemos.}”

My train of thought was pushed off the rails by the mechanical voice of the blade in my hand, and while my first reaction was to throw it against the wall while loudly complaining about not knowing what a ‘Polemos’ was again, I was completely and quite abruptly stopped in my tracks by the realization that I actually did know. It wasn’t a title; it was a name.

Alarmed, I paged through the fragmentary memories swirling in my mind, and the more I gathered, the more I could feel the blood draining from my face. These weren’t the memories of Leonard Dunning. Hell, these weren’t even the memories of a human!

However, before I could try to create any kind of order or organization inside my head, I noticed that the cocoon of semi-transparent swirling mana around me was starting to slow down and gradually dissipate.

“Shit! What do I do now?” I hissed through clenched teeth, still busy shifting through the bits and pieces of memories and impressions that stuck to me like a burr to a dog, but I was too slow, and before I could come to a decision, the barrier around me fully unravelled, revealing a bunch of Celestial bigwigs, along with a few new faces thrown into the mix. All in all, there were about thirty people crammed into the shrine, keeping their distance from both me and the Mana Well, and the moment I came out of my shell (no pun intended), everyone froze in shock and awe.

It was only then that I realized that I was still in my Lion Knight getup, and after locking eyes with the expectant gaze of the Celestial representative who led me in here, one of the only people who were still in their ceremonial togas, I gave in and plunged a phantom limb into my Leoformer. Using a fragment of a piece of a hint of a memory as a basis, I changed the outwards look of my gear, replacing the black metal plates with shiny brass, the gambeson with a white tunic, the lion motifs with a facsimile of the crest I’d seen on the banners when I arrived to the Elysium, and the closed helmet to a white circlet with a laurel crown.

As if sensing the change in my appearance, the weapon still in my numb hand heated up, both the blade and the hilt growing in length until I was looking at a decently sized spear with a long, gently curved blade, shined to a mirror finish and adorned with delicate golden filigree.

It also got heavier in the process, but I ignored how weak my arm felt and raised it before planting the butt of the spear on the ground for support. As if the sound was serving as some kind of signal, the Celestials in the back shuddered and fell to their knees, soon followed by the purple-togaed man in front of me descending as well.

“I greet Archon Polemos!” He exclaimed with his head down, and his words were echoed by the onlookers. “Glory to the Second True Archon! Glory to Deus!”

…

“Great. Judy’s either going to kill me for this, or make fun of me until the day I die for walking into this one,” I silently concluded with a rising sense of trepidation. I didn’t let it show on my face though, as I was already in full-blown ‘Refuge in Audacity’ mode once again, because when life gives you lemons, you’re obligated to drown life in lemonade.