The Simulacrum

Running up the stairs, I silently cursed future-me again. This whole thing could've been resolved sooo much faster if I could still Phase, but nooo...

I practically leapt out of the gaping cave entrance of the prison and paid little attention to the Fauns loitering in the distance. One of them noticed me when I was halfway out of the compound surrounding the Chasm, but after a short beat, he suddenly looked to the side as if he found the most interesting leaf in the whole world on a nearby shrub, so I ignored him in turn and used my usual spot to climb over the walls and out into the town.

While I was doing all that, I didn't forget to periodically check on Judy and her surroundings. Not just to make sure the action hadn't started yet, but because I needed to find a location that corresponded with hers in Timaeus. Both the Elysium and the Abyss were copies of the real Critias that were 'overlaid' on the real world, retaining much of the geographical features, and whether due to those, sheer coincidence, or lazy worldbuilding, the Inanna's capital of Eanna was more or less on the same spot as Timaeus, relatively speaking.

It didn't take long to arrive at a fairly rundown district of the town, and after double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking using Judy's Far Sight red dot as the reference, I found the right place. Of course, I couldn't just start working in the open, but after a minute or two, I found a nice, secluded spot in the attic of a seemingly abandoned building. After gracefully jumping through the missing window like some kind of predatory eight-legged silk-producing arthropod man, I settled down and got ready to work.

First things first, I plunged a phantom limb into my Leoformer and checked the enchantment arrays. The disruptive effect of the Chasm of Desolation got exponentially stronger the deeper one descended into the prison facility. Normally I didn't care about such things, because my gear was specifically reinforced against such disruptions. I usually only went up to the top floor when I as experimenting with the transmitter arrays, but if I wanted to make this dumb communicator work in a hurry, I needed as few interferences as possible.

Once I finished checking the Leoformer, it was the orb's turn. As the Matron told me, this thing was supposed to be paired with an identical magic glass orb to allow clandestine communications across dimensional barriers. She also spoke the truth when she told me it no longer had its twin, making it useless for her, but that was only a small hindrance to me.

I had already made a few prior changes to the arrays, so I only needed to complete those, which I did in record time (if records for such things even existed, that is). Not that it mattered, as going into the 'enchantment space' to manually tweak things always had at least some time-dilation involved. After rearranging a whole lot of magical doohickies my brain interpreted as giant transparent gears and levers, I managed to 'spoof' an incoming signal.

When the communicator orb detected that, it attempted to make a connection. Since these things were designed to facilitate correspondence between agents in the outside world and their superiors in the Elysium, they could naturally pierce through the threshold separating the pocket space from 'normal reality'.

This time there was nothing to connect to though, but I only wanted to make sure that the system was working before I shut it down and flexed my phantom limbs again. This time, I kept alternating between the orb and my Leoformer, gradually porting the enchantment arrays and emulating them on my own gear. It all sounded so simple when I put it like that, but it was an absolute bloody pain in the neck to do it manually, and it took me subjective hours to do. Oh, and my headache was back too, probably because I was rushing too much. Lovely.

"Bah…"

I closed my eyes and massaged my temple with a low grunt. That was annoying. I was planning to get all of it done over the span of a few nights, but I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Now, I just needed to see if my idea worked.

But before that, I swept the dust off the floor in the corner of the attic and sat down cross-legged there. It would've been better if a stray chair or stool were lying around, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and I had a feeling that finding one would take a while, so I made myself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

I inhaled deeply to steel my nerves (which, in retrospect, wasn't a great idea due to all the dust I just kicked up), closed my eyes, and activated the newly installed modifications on my Leoformer. There was a soft buzz in the air and loud static noise in my ears, but that much was to be expected. Then came some popping and screeching noises that definitely weren't like old-school dial-up modem noises, at all, followed by more static noise underscored by a low hum.

Hopefully, that meant the procedure was a success, but I couldn’t be sure until I gave it a try, so I flung my point of view to Judy's side. She was still on a nondescript flat rooftop belonging to some local establishment, and she was still flanked by my sisters, so nothing changed on that front.

"Dormouse? Can you hear me?"

I waited with bated breath, but there didn't seem to be any reaction to my words. The fact that there was no response on the communications like was to be expected; technically speaking, I wasn't connected to her artifact. It was more of a broadcast than anything else, and she had no way to send any signals back to me, so the only way we could talk was if I was simultaneously observing her with my Far Sight for responses.

She didn't respond, so I increased the power output of the enchantment and tried again.

"Testing, testing. One, two, three. Dormouse, are you there?"

This time, there was a small reaction. My dear assistant twitched, and Snowy didn't miss it.

"Is there a problem?"

"No. There's just some static noise in the communications."

My other sister's eyes opened with anxiety.

"Are we being jammed?"

"No, I don't think so." Judy tapped her funky party glasses a few times and shook her head. "It might be just some malfunction."

Okay, so that was both good news and bad news. On one hand, it meant my idea was working, or it was at least in the right ball-park. On the other hand, Judy still couldn't hear me. It was better than nothing, so I increased the power output again. I could feel mana being drained from my body through the Leoformer. It was different from when I was using my gear normally; less of a smooth flow and more of a prickly, uncomfortable sensation, as if my whole body was slowly being smushed to squeeze out all my delicious juices.

Disturbing analogy aside, I tried a few more times, but got the same result. If anything, it just made Judy worried that her artifact might be broken just before the big operation, and while I didn't want to confuse her, I wasn't exactly spoiled with choices either.

"Why isn't it working…?"

My whispers echoed dully in the empty roof space. As Judy's reaction already showed, getting through wasn't the problem. To simplify things, my jury-rigged inter-space-pocket communicator worked like this: Instead of connecting directly to the receiver, which was impossible due to the different 'protocols' in question, I used the bits borrowed from the Celestial orb to 'tunnel' through the dimension barrier and deposit the signal outside.

In theory, it was similar to how the Abyssals' tunnelling worked whenever they wanted to leave this place, except because I only wanted to send a small amount of magical communication wave stuff over, I didn't require a whole-ass portal to do it. The principle was still the same, I came to the place that matched Judy's location on Critias to reduce the metaphysical distance the signal needed to tunnel through, just like how we travelled to the middle of nowhere to be 'closer' to Castle Nergal.

Yet, even after stacking everything in my favour like this, Judy's artifact still didn't manage to pick up my signal. Was it distorted in transit? Or maybe it just wasn't strong enough? Maybe I made a mistake somewhere when merging the two enchantment arrays?

There were many possible issues to troubleshoot, but I had no time to go through the whole checklist. Or even a single one of them, really, as Judy abruptly perked up.

"Eagle's Nest to Western Barn Owl. The Hamsters are in the net. I repeat: the Hamsters are in the net. Prepare to swoop, over."

First off, I was happy to see that my girlfriend's penchant for silly code-words remained unchanged whether I was around or not. More importantly though, as soon as she finished speaking, the whole neighbourhood flashed into inverted colours before settling into the usual, creepy purple hues.

"Oh, goddamit!" I cursed under my breath, only to be startled when my girlfriend also got startled, if only after a few seconds of delay.

"Chief?"

"What? Dormouse? Can you hear me now?"

Once again, there was a solid five-second delay between my words and her response, but then her face lit up in that curious mixture of relief and outrage that, for anyone else, would've probably looked like her nose was itchy.

"What's going on? Where are you?"

"Still in the Abyss, and—"

"Why didn't you call until now?"

Because of the delay, she kept on pestering me, and her reaction also worked up my sisters a bit.

"Hold on! Are you talking to Brother? Is he all right?"

"Is he back? If he appeared right now, wouldn't it throw the whole plan astray?"

"Hold on." Judy raised a palm, probably because my previous words had just reached her. "He says he's still in the Abyss."

"Listen, there's a lag in the communications, but that's not important. I'll explain everything later, but I need to tell you something very important right now! Are you listening?"

I rattled all of that off in one breath and waited for her to respond. Each passing second felt longer than the last, but when she didn't say a word, it was Penny who lost her patience first, and she let out a high-pitched groan.

"Aaagh! You can't just keep us in suspense like this! What is he saying?!"

"I don't know," my dear assistant responded in an extra-deadpan voice, her expression also looking the part. "He said the communications are lagging and that he'll explain everything, and then he didn't."

"Did the line get cut?" Snowy spoke a tad hesitantly, and after some consideration, Judy shook her head.

"I don't know. I'm not hearing any static either, and—" Before she could finish the sentence, the whole building shook under their feet, so she turned her attention towards the pedestrian square with a fountain and readjusted her glasses. "Let's focus on the operation now. Eurasian Kestrel had already engaged the Hamsters."

"Who was 'Kestrel' again?" Penny, still visibly agitated, blurted out the question on her mind, and my other sister looked just as stumped.

"I think it's Josh. I'm not sure…"

Putting the codenames aside, I returned to my body, only to find myself drenched in cold sweat. It didn't take long to realise why Judy couldn't hear the end of my last message; I was completely out of mana!

"Goddamit…"

Without further ado, I slapped my belt buckle (though it was mostly just to relieve some tension), and out popped Cal from the storage enchantment. I also switched over to my Lion Knight armour replica, as it had the most robust physical enhancement suite and, by consequence, the firmest connection to my Oaths.

"{What happened, you knight? Where are we? Why did you leave Teeny behind?}"

Now that he mentioned it, in my hurry to get outside, I only grabbed Cal and the box containing the communications orb from the table in my cell before making a rush for the surface. Hopefully Teeny won't hold a grudge over this, but that was the least of my problems at the moment.

"No time to explain. Start accumulating mana. Also, start the usual circulation."

"{But young knight…}"

"Now!"

I could hear Cal quietly grumble in my head, but at the same time, he also started doing the meditative mana circulation that Naoren taught me a while back. While it only had a mild calming effect on me, since I didn't have Draconian lineage, the flow helped distribute mana in my body and it allowed faster recovery through the magical equivalent of osmosis. With Cal's help, I calculated that I would only need a few minutes before I could open the communications channel again. Not a long time, but in a battle, not a short one by any means either.

Speaking of battles, since Cal was manually directing the circulation and my recovery, I could spare the mental effort to Far Glance at the unfolding situation, so that I'd be on top of things as soon as I could contact Judy again.

Since they mentioned Josh, I focused on him first, and I found him in the middle of the square, shield raised. A moment later, a series of wicked fast magical arrows exploded against it, but he remained rooted in place and even parried one, sending the bright red projectile careening into a purple-tinted building at the other side of the street.

"Keep it up! Don't let him close the distance!" a conspicuously robed man yelled nearby. He was surrounded by half a dozen similarly dressed Magi, and they all raised their staves in unison. "Loose the next volley!"

Their weapons flared with magical light, both the colourless and the more perceptible variety, but before they could fire off their magical payload…

"Look out!"

The mages scattered as a freaking moped plummeted into the middle of their group. It didn't directly hit anyone, but it certainly disturbed their formation and staggered them all. They weren't the only ones.

"Hey! That was my ride!" Josh yelled from the top of his lungs, causing my Draconian girlfriend to freeze up for a moment.

"S-Sorry! That was the only thing in reach I could grab!"

Elly's disguise was undone by her transformation, and she was standing at the other end of the square, her golden locks billowing and her red scales glinting in the light show generated by the Magi in the Purple Zone.

"Don't get distracted, fool! It's not the real one!" Zihao yelled as he literally jumped over Josh and did a full somersault for no discernible reason whatsoever.

While in mid-air, he let out a deep roar and his hair flared up with a fiery crimson glow. Hand raised high, the same red light swirled and coalesced around him into a huge, three-clawed reptilian paw that he immediately slammed into the ground between Josh and the magi-group, sending a series of cascading waves across the pavement. That wasn't the end of it, as he repeated the process two more times, and on the last strike, the dragon paw somehow gained an extra clawed finger, and its impact not only destroyed the nearby fountain, spreading water everywhere, but it also sent Zihao flying back and behind Josh.

The Magi group, scattered and disoriented, should've made for easy pickings, but they weren't the only ones present at the scene. There were about twenty of them in total, give or take a few, spread all around the square and the nearby streets, and actively covering for each other. This meant that while the biggest group was dispersed, the close combatants couldn't just rush them down without worrying about being hit in the back with a magic missile.

Or rather, by birds made of fire. Or watery serpents. Plus, the occasional wind blades or stone spikes. Lord Grandpa had already demonstrated it to me once, but the offensive repertoire of the average Magi was rather diverse, and they weren't shy about going full throttle in this situation.

Looking at it objectively, there was a reason why Marzanna and their cronies chose to use this spot for their ambush; Magi held a huge advantage at range, and as long as there were Ley Lines to tap into, they could spam their spells without discretion. An open space like this meant they could take full advantage of their strength while surrounding a single target.

The only reason why they were in so much trouble was due to being counter-ambushed by a bunch of main- and side-characters, each of them some of the most powerful members of their respective factions. Because of this, Josh and Zihao were pushing back a whole group of mages, Elly was dashing around the square and picking off individual stragglers, while Sahi and Pascal were working in tandem to cordon off a whole street by themselves to stop the enemies from regrouping.

While the gang definitely had the upper hand, and the Magi ambushers' performance was less than stellar, it was more of a stalemate than anything else. Half of it was because of the Restoration School mages mixed in with the more offensive spell-slingers patching them right away, keeping casualties to effectively zero, but our side wasn't pushing things as hard as they could either. Case in point:

"Can I join?"

The class rep's question was met by disapproving looks from both Angie and Mike. The three of them were hiding inside a Purple Zonified café, and the two Celestials were clearly in charge of keeping her safe.

"I want to join too, but we have to stick to the plan!" Angie told her with a pout, and the guy next to him also insisted.

"You heard her, honeybunch. Just stay calm and wait for Judy's signal."

So yeah. That exchange pretty much confirmed my hunch; they weren't going all out because they were buying time. Maybe for the local authorities (read: the School and the Draconic Federation) to notice the commotion and intervene, maybe because they were hoping that Marzanna would lose patience and would show up in person, so that they could beat her up and resolve this whole dilemma in one go. Heck, maybe it was both. Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵⁂𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮⁂𝓷𝓮𝓽

That wasn't a terrible plan in and of itself, but at this moment, it was bound to fail, or at the very least lead to an extremely dangerous kerfuffle, and I had to warn them.

Speaking of which, I got out of Far Sight and checked my body's condition. Thanks to Cal, I had enough mana in my system to attempt another contact, so I fired up the modified communications arrays again and then immediately Far Glanced at Judy.

"Dormouse? Can you hear me again?"

Once more, there were several seconds of lag, but my busy girlfriend imperceptibly twitched and put her hand on the rim of her glasses.

"I have an incoming call, European Honey Buzzard. Eagle's Nest is hanging up, over." Her words were followed by a long beat, then she tapped on her artifact again. "I can hear you, Chief."

"Good. Listen! This is a trap!"

"Yes, we know," she responded calmly. "You said you'll tell me what happened to you. Are you all right?"

"There's no time for this! You need to tell everyone to get out of the square, or even the Purple Zone, if possible!"

My tone must've finally gotten through to her, because she dropped the issue and her eyes snapped over to the square.

"Is Lord Marzanna coming?"

"I have no bloody idea, but that's the least of your problems! Listen to me!" Even as I was saying that, I could see the pavement crack and down there, so I hurriedly yelled, "They smuggled in half the bloody School of Ottawa! They've got golems in the sewers!"