The Simulacrum - Chapter 73~ Part 3

“Sister Penelope. Your conduct was… foolish.”

Following the red knight’s remark, the bare room housing the round-ish table descended into a tense silence. The four Entitled Knights seated around said table remained completely still as well. They were all wearing their full suits of armor, as usual, and if not for the agitated eyes visible behind their visors, one might’ve even mistaken them for props at an especially high-budged medieval fair.

This was, naturally, the infamous calm before the storm, and it arrived in the form of Miss Unicorn slamming her palm against the tabletop. Strangely enough, it made considerably less noise than one would’ve expected, but then she made up for it by raising her voice into a straight-up shout.

“At least I was doing something!” she exclaimed, her eyes practically glowing with indignation behind the slits of her helmet.

“And that ‘something’ was compromising Brother Leonard’s cover,” Mr. Eagle pointed out with the savage succinctness of truth, and it immediately took the female Knight aback… only for her to immediately turn around and double down, as teenagers often tended to do in front of older authority figures, sense be damned.

“No, I was trying to contact him to warn him about the insane teleporting Abyssal on the island! Since none of you bothered to do it, I had no choice but to go and get it done by myself.”

“We already tried,” Mr. Griffon pointed out on the side. “I attempted to call the phone number Sir Arnwald used to contact him in the past, but I couldn’t connect.”

All things considered, that wasn’t too surprising, as I never bothered to charge said phone after I managed to mark a Squire. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where it was right now. Probably on the shelf in the living room, I reckoned. I would’ve checked, but I was tied down at the moment. That said, once I was less occupied, I figured I should probably put it on a charger and make a custom voicemail message telling them I was too busy with nefarious Knight stuff to answer.

I mean, I now had practically full access to their base and operations by marking Arnwald, so I didn’t exactly need the phone anymore, but it never hurt to keep my options open in case I would, by some twist and turn, be forced to contact them as ‘Brother Leonard’.

Anyhow, while I was pondering on that, the scene in front of my ethereal eyes moved along with Miss Unicorn once again slamming her palm against the hardwood table.

“Isn’t that all the more reason to contact him directly? I simply did my duty as a member of the Brotherhood and upheld my Oath of Loyalty!”

“Och c’moan Penny gurl. We baith ken ye gaed thare tae pick a ficht with th’ Abyssal lassie,” Mr. Minotaur grumbled on the side, earning him a huff from the girl.

“I didn’t! I went to Leo’s house to talk, but then she told me to go away, and she even had the gall to call him her brother! How could you expect me to remain civil after that!?”

The other knights all shared a long, conflicted glance between the three of them, but at last it fell on Mr. Eagle’s shoulders to say what was on their mind, and he did so after linking his fingers on the table.

“Sister Penelope. We’ve discussed this in the past already, but you mustn’t let your… fixation with Brother Leonard cloud your judgment and interfere with our mission.”

“It’s nothing of the sort!” Miss Unicorn denied with such vehemence it momentarily made her voice rise into its natural pitch. “Leo is my brother! It’s only natural that I want to make sure he’s safe!”

“But not at the cost of jeopardizing both his cover identity as well as our truce with Bel of the Abyss.”

“I wouldn’t have compromised his cover, and as for that Abyssal, I couldn’t care less,” she huffed back.

“You should, Sister Penelope. We still don’t understand the full breadth of abilities this ‘Bel of the Abyss’ possesses. Until such a time comes, we must make sure to avoid direct confrontation with him. We can’t be the ones to break our deal with him, and you absolutely can’t give him an excuse to think we did.”

“I didn’t make a deal with him,” Miss Unicorn countered in a low hiss. “You did.”

“In the name of all of us,” the red knight pointed out, and the last word barely even left his mouth before the girl slammed the table for the third time, this time with both of her hands, and she even rose to her feet for further emphasis.

“And who gave you the right?!” she bellowed, apparently no longer caring about putting even a token effort into maintaining her fake contralto voice.

“It wasn’t a question of rights, but one of necessity,” Mr. Eagle bit back, also raising his voice in the process. “Someone had to take control of the situation.”

“Bullshit!” the girl yelled as she stepped away from the table and turned her back on the others. “You are not our King, and you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do! I will talk to Leo, I will warn him, and I won’t hear any ‘orders’ to the contrary!”

“Sister Penelope!”

Before the red-clad man could add anything, the Unicorn Knight was already through the door and she slammed it hard enough behind herself that it made the air in the room reverberate for a solid five seconds after she left.

“Well, that went about as smoothly as I expected,” Mr. Griffon noted on the side, but seeing how the man in the red armor remained silent, he added, “Don’t worry, Sir Arnwald. She’s just too worked up about her brother to see the big picture at the moment. Once she calms down, I’m sure she’ll come around.”

“Fur th’ record, ah tellt ye this wid happen,” the big man with the horned helmet commented, but when he noticed the others giving him odd looks, he quickly crossed his arms in front of his chests. “Whit? Ah did! Ah tellt ye taking thaim baith in wid be trauchle, ye dingyed me, ‘n’ ‘ere we ur!”

“We didn’t ignore your opinion, Brother Duncan. We simply had no choice in the matter,” Mr. Eagle stated with just a hint of resignation in his voice. “Sister Penelope was, and still is, a genius seldom seen more than once in a century. When she insisted that she wouldn’t leave the orphanage without Brother Leonard’s company, our Brotherhood couldn’t afford to ignore her.”

“Aye, ‘n’ that’s howfur we git that trooblemak’r piggy-baak his wey intae oor ranks,” the Minotaur Knight continued to grumble, but stopped the moment the man with the griffon helmet on the other side pointedly cleared his throat.

“You don’t actually mean that, do you, Duncan?” When the big man remained silent, Mr. Griffon exhaled a long sigh and placed his hands onto the table. “Yes, I admit, the way Leonard gained entry into our Brotherhood was unorthodox, to say the least, and his mastery of our combat disciplines are… lackluster, to put it mildly, but he earned his Title just the same as you or I did, and he is our peer now.”

“Not to mention, while Brother Leonard’s ideas and conduct might be far from traditional, his methods are definitely effective and his character is trustworthy beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Mr. Eagle added in a solemn voice. “If he wasn’t, there was no way the late Sir Percival would’ve entrusted him with the duty to safeguard Caledfwlch.”

“Aye, ah ken, ah ken, bit ye ken whit ah meant,” Mr. Minotaur finally relented, though not without a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Speaking of Caledfwlch,” Mr. Griffon mused, “Wasn’t Leonard on the island to test one of the potential wielders? Whose bloodline did he belong to again?”

“I can’t say I know,” Mr. Eagle admitted. “Brother Leonard inherited both the sword and the role of the Keeper of Bloodlines from Sir Percival, and to be perfectly honest, I never truly involved myself in their duties enough to understand its intricacies.”

“Ah woonder if we ur ever aff tae fin’ a freish king,” Mr. Minotaur whispered, but he was loud enough so that the others could still hear him

“We can only hope,” Mr. Red noted a tad dourly. “The last wielder of Caledfwlch was born over three centuries ago, and our Brotherhood fragmented too much in their absence.” He sent a meaningful glance at the door through which Miss Unicorn left, and let out a small sigh. “Brothers, I have a confession to make. As much as I wish I could lead us, Sister Penelope is right. I may possess seniority, but we are still peers. Without the authority to enforce unity in the face of the wyrmbloods, let alone the likes of this Bel of the Abyss easily infiltrating our sanctum, I fear for our Brotherhood’s future.”

“Easy, Arnwald,” Mr. Griffon soothed his colleague with what I presumed was a smile behind his visor. “Things aren’t so dire yet, and who knows? Maybe Leonard already found someone to pull the sword from the stone and this whole discussion is pointless.”

“Speaking o’ that  dawbag muncha’, whit ur we aff tae dae aboot him?” Mr. Minotaur interjected.

“If you are referring to Bel of the Abyss, I’m afraid there is little we can do at the moment,” the red knight answered, followed by a shallow groan. “The Squires inspected the entire building, but there was no sign of entry, and so long as we don’t understand his ability to rapidly shift his location, we must remain constantly vigilant and take care not to antagonize him.”

“I believe he might possess some kind of time-manipulation ability,” Mr. Griffon posited. “We already know that he doesn’t move through space thanks to Duncan’s ability, and if it was some form of an illusion, you would’ve detected it.”

“True, but… time manipulation?”

The red-clad man sounded profoundly skeptical, but Mr. Griffon pressed on with his hypothesis anyway.

“The Lords of the Abyss all have truly preposterous abilities, so it isn’t unthinkable.”

“Whoa, haud yer horses fur a seicont! Urr ye suggestin’ this roaster wis an actual Laird?!”

“It would explain his powers and why he referred to himself as ‘of the Abyss’,” the Griffon Knight countered back, and the third man in the room nodded in agreement.

“Brother Roland’s words certainly make sense. It wouldn’t be the first time a Lord of the Abyss walked the streets of this island, and if anything, it would only mean that avoiding a conflict with him was the right choice. We cannot afford to fight on two fronts when the gathering of the wyrmbloods is just around the corner.”

“Not to mention, we still need to get the Ascalon back from him,” Mr. Griffon pointed out in a hurry. “If we lose track of him now, we also lose the spear.”

“‘n’ tae think hings keeked sae simple juist a few weeks ago. Gather a’ body, smash th’ wyrmbloods gate doon, git th’ spear, ‘n’ git oot,” Mr. Minotaur continued to complain to no one in particular.

“As a wise man once said, plans rarely survive an encounter with the enemy,” Mr. Eagle responded with a profound nod in tow.

“Who’s that from?”

“I… can’t seem to remember. It was an idiom I’ve borrowed from Brother Leonard,” the red knight admitted.

After this point, the discussion between the three rapidly devolved into throwing famous quotes at each other and trying to figure out where they came from, and while it was amusingly idiosyncratic watching a group of grown men clad in armor arguing about what quip Churchill may or may not have said, it wasn’t particularly informative. Unfortunately my main target has long since left the base of the Knights, but since I didn’t have a mark on her, I was still stuck in this room. Not for long though, as I soon ended this Far Sight session and returned to my completely dark room.

At the moment I was lying flat on my back on top of my bed, with my girlfriends using my upper arms as pillows while sharing the same blanket. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, but I admit I was getting a little numb by this point. After a very long and tumultuous game of Monopoly, full of ups and downs and trying to convince the girls that it was literally impossible for me to cheat at this game even though the piles of fake money in front of me said otherwise, we decided to go to bed a little early. We had a short chat in the bed, and I waited for Judy and Elly to fall asleep before I started doing Far Sight roll calls, accidentally stumbling upon the scene in the Knight base in the process.

To be honest, part of the reason why I did so was that I was getting a little bored, but mostly because the girls were wearing some fairly, so to say, provocative night-wear and I needed something to distract myself. Apparently this was part of some kind of multi-stage plan to awaken my libido, which needed no help if I may add, but this time they might’ve overreached a little, as they were too embarrassed by their own appearance to try anything more physical than accidentally rubbing certain parts of their anatomy on me while they were turning in their sleep.

Speaking of which, Judy did just that, and I tried to use the opportunity to slip my arm out of under her head. I was successful, though I might’ve been a little hasty, as her eyes popped open the moment her hair touched the pillow.

“What time is it?” she whispered a little groggily, so I immediately used my newly freed hand to pat her on the head and tell her:

“It’s still in the middle of the night. You can go back to sleep.”

My deadpan girlfriend stifled a small yawn in place of an agreement and sidled even closer to me, once again bringing those aforementioned squishy bits of her anatomy to bear, and a moment later she was back in sleep again. I couldn’t help but wonder once again if Judy was actually really good at being alluring, but she was overthinking things so much it only really worked when she did it unconsciously. I decided not to worry about this for the moment and instead I focused on the new things I’ve learned today.

One: apparently I was an orphan and came from the same orphanage as the Knight girl. Two: she called me her brother, which still didn’t completely put her off the harem-radar, but if it was true, at least it provided me with a solid excuse to turn her down and keep her at arm’s reach if the dreaded Narrative wanted to throw us at each other like an over-excited child smashing action figures at each other while demanding they kiss. Three: the stupid sword in the stone was literally Excalibur by another name, which was a little disappointing. I was expecting something slightly more elaborate, like Claíomh Solais, or Dáinsleif, or even something more exotic, like Cura Si Manjakini. Yes, I did a lot of research on magical swords after the Knights appeared, why do you ask?

Jokes aside, the rest of the discussion surrounding it made me think. Apparently whoever pulled the off-brand Excalibur from the stone would be the King. Not of Britain, but of the Knights which, considering that king Arthur was often called the ‘King of Knights’, didn’t make things any simpler. Anyhow, here’s the important part: apparently, said ‘King’ had some form of authority over the rest of the individualistic Knights. Now, the full extent of that was questionable, as I imagined trying to keep these guys in line was tantamount to herding a group of especially ornery cats, but it was an option I didn’t really consider before.

Until now I was mainly focusing on either getting rid of or defanging the Knights, but if pulling the sword also came with an actual, sanctioned leadership position, it provided a brand new opportunity ripe for exploitation. I just had to figure out how to do it. Unfortunately, the Dracis family’s understanding of the hierarchy and the internal workings of the Knights was spotty at best, and while I could observe them, I couldn’t exactly just ask them to explain how I could subvert them from the inside by courtesy of being an unanticipated sword puller.

Well, unless…

“Shit, I’ll have to talk with the sword again, won’t I?”

My whisper was barely audible, yet it still made the princess start squirming on my other side, so I did my best to remain still as to not disturb her sleep anymore. At last, she let out a content sigh and also sidled even closer to me. As such, now I was quite literally sandwiched between my two girlfriends, with no way out. For a moment I almost considered that forcefully limiting any lewding until Christmas might not have been such a great idea after all, but I quickly shook the notion out of my head. That said, this was the bed I made, so now I had to lie in it, quite literally, and thus I took a deep breath, steeled my mind, and focused on coming up with a plan to utilize the silly talking sword in the corner of a storeroom to my advantage, squishy bits and hormones be damned.