~Chapter 179~ Part 1
"Ow."
"Uncle Polemos? Are you okay?"
"Yes, yes. Just some muscle cramps. Don't worry about me, Beansprout."
Ollie continued to look at me with clear concern, so I forced a smile onto my face and continued to arrange the LAGO sets we built over the past couple of days on the table. It was the same one that used to be my workbench, but since we needed a spot to display all of the stuff we built, I moved it over to Ollie's cell, and now it was holding not only the entire pirate set, but a space set with a shuttle, a train set, as well as six colour-coded robots that were using different components, including ball-joints, but were still technically compatible with the block-based sets.
The past couple of days were a bit of a blur for me. Yeah, I know; that was happening a lot lately. This time, it was mostly thanks to the mana burn sapping my will to live. When I returned to the dungeon, my headache was taking precedence, so I could barely feel the rest. On the second day, the headache went away, and I realised that the reason why I couldn't feel anything was that my whole body had become numb. It extended to my sense of smell and taste as well, and while initially I thought my vision was hard to focus thanks to the exhaustion, it was probably also caused by the mana burns.
Cal and Teeny had been working overtime to fix all that, so by the second day, I was no longer numb; my whole body was burning and aching instead, from head to toe. It got a bit better over time, but even now, it was like I had sore muscles everywhere. Needless to say, I didn't make any expeditions outside in this condition, so I'd been cooped up at the bottom of the dungeon and trying my best to distract myself from all my various aches as best as I could.
That was mostly done by Far Sighting, reading, and playing with Ollie. We ended up building all the LAGO sets that future-me got for him, and as of today, we just finished the last of them, hence the display on the table. I felt oddly satisfied with a job well done, while the kid… well…
"Uncle Polemos?"
"Yes?"
"We ran out of toys to build."
"That seems to be the case, yes."
"Then…" He stared at the LAGO sets with unflinching intensity, as if trying to steel himself for something, then faced me. When our eyes met, he flinched, but otherwise he remained determined and gulped hard. "Can we… build something else from them?"
"… I'm pretty sure that's like half the point of these things." My response made his expression light up, so I asked, "Do you have something in mind? Like a pirate spaceship or something?"
"No, not that!" He shook his head and picked up the large pirate ship. He could barely hold it in one hand, but he still struggled to do so, just so he could grab one of the ball-jointed figurines with his other hand. "Let's make a pirate ship robot!"
"I… How would you do that?"
That wasn't a rhetorical question. While the sets were technically compatible with each other, and the various studs, pins, and axles were designed to fit together, it didn't mean they were ever meant to be combined.
"I don't know yet, but I want to try!"
When faced with such unbridled enthusiasm, what other option did I have but to rub his noggin and say, "Lightspeed, Beansprout."
He beamed at me and brought the pirate set over to the carpet, along with two more of those LAGO robot things, and began disassembling them. I'd be lying if I said it didn't pain me to see all the work we put into building them be undone like that, but not following the guidelines and being creative was like half the point of these toys, so I let Ollie play as he wanted.
I couldn't provide any guidance, since I still had no idea how he planned to marry the two sets together, so I returned to my cell to grab a bottle of water. As soon as I was done with that, I reached for the ear-marked manga volume on the bed and made myself comfortable. Ever since I first woke up in the Simulacrum, I had spent a looot of time on researching tropes and story conventions, but due to the urgency of the situation at the time, I cast a wide net, reading summaries, plot synopses, and analyses of many works that felt relevant to our own scenario and the Narrative's designs.
That allowed me to develop a broad view on many genres and trends, but it also meant that my knowledge of the individual works was rather shallow. Since I was stuck here with nothing better to do, I used the long nights to catch up on a couple of seminal classics that I didn't have the time or will to tackle, and right now, I was in the middle of reading one of those genre-defining works, called Phoenix Cubes. It was about as old-school as shounen battle stories could get, though the first half of it was more of an adventure series. I just finished that last night, and was just getting ready to immerse myself in the second half and see what all the hype was about when my gaze accidentally landed on the clock on the wall.
It was the only indicator of time we had so deep underground, and I involuntarily let out a stumped, "Huh," when I saw where the hands were pointing. It was already past five in the afternoon. Time was moving uncomfortably fast lately, but more importantly, I was pretty sure there was something important going on this afternoon…
"Ah, right! The gang!"
I closed the book and sat up properly on the bed. A moment later, my point of view was… travelling at ninety kilometres an hour down a highway. It took a second to reorient myself and find the Constable LLC minivan on the road. Shifting my position, I entered inside the car.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?"
"Ay coorse aam sure! That's whit th' map says."
"Maybe we should use the GPS after all…"
"Ah tauld ye, we dornt need onie ay 'at talkin' computer mince, Penny gurl. Ah tauld ye Ah gie ye kids thaur oan time, an' i'll dae it mah way, end ay story."
"Fine, fine…" my sister grumbled, but didn't argue any more.
The minivan was filled to the brim. Duncan was driving, treating the company car as his personal property as usual, with Penny sitting on the front passenger seat. The row behind them was occupied by Josh, Angie, and Ammy, while the back row had Elly, Judy, and Snowy. In other words, it was just the 'core' of our little posse, consisting of Josh's past entourage with my girlfriends in tow.
While I was pretty out of it since the big battle with the arch-mage, and time felt like sand trickling through my fingers, my friends' days were anything but quick or uneventful. Marzanna's actions, the dissenters coming into the open, and their subsequent defeat and capture naturally caused huge waves in the World of Mystics, and none of them felt the impact more than the Magi.
Not only did one of their highest-ranking arch-mages, one of the custodians of a Grimoire Key, got caught actively conspiring to assault and capture the Conduit of the Grimoire within another School's jurisdiction, but she did so while colluding with renegade Celestials. All of that could only result in one outcome: emergency meetings. Emergency meetings up the wazoo.
Of course, since it was a trap set up by our little posse, with the help of Percival and the tacit support of the Praetorian Guards, all loose ends were cleaned up and all incriminating evidence was collected ahead of time. While my little 'expedition' in Ottawa was still a source of diplomatic tensions, pretty much the whole Assembly turned their collective backs on Marzanna thanks to all that, and thus all of her objections to the class rep's inauguration as the Conduit of the Grimoire were effectively discarded with prejudice.
That sounded nice and convenient, but this was supernatural politics, so things weren't that simple, and after a couple more of those pesky emergency meetings, it became obvious that the gears of bureaucracy were moving slowly, and not necessarily in the right direction. Last I checked, while Ammy was now nominally accepted as the Conduit, it just led to more delays, because now the Assembly wanted her to travel to Glasgow and go through a ceremony in front of the physical Grimoire stored there, while the rest of the team was effectively grounded on Critias due to being critical witnesses in a judiciary jurisdiction nightmare.
The Assembly naturally wanted to interrogate and punish Marzanna on their own. However, since the attack happened on Critias, which was implicitly Draconic Federation territory, and since there weren't any treaties of extradition between the power blocs yet, the Draconic Council wanted to set a precedent and deal with her under their (aka. our) laws. However, to be consistent with that, the Draconic Federation also demanded that Elysium hand over the captured Celestials involved in the affair, but Tsephanyah refused to do so, claiming that it was an internal matter, and they were going to punish the culprits themselves.
So yeah, that was effectively the three superpowers of the World of Mystics getting bogged down in a diplomatic cold war over it all. This was exactly the kind of red tape I could've turned into confetti as long as I was present, but my friends deigned to keep the fact that I contacted them a secret from the adults. Even Duncan, who was currently driving them to the middle of nowhere in the north-east of the island, was mostly in the dark about the situation and was only doing the group a favour because Penny pestered him.
"How much longer until we get there?" Ammy asked from the middle row, and the guy behind the driver's wheel let out a grunt.
"Abit an hoor. Hoor an' a half if th' roads ur shitty." At first, it seemed like that was the end of it, but then he frowned and took his attention off the road for a moment to glance at Penny. "Dae ye serioosly need tae come aw th' way it haur jist fur trainin'?"
"Y-Yes!" my knightly sister insisted, but while she put on a serious façade, the way she kept tugging at her seatbelt showed that she was nervous. "I-It's a very important spot! And we need to do it there! Training, I mean!"
Despite sitting in on Percival's skullduggery training with Snowy and Tajana, she was still a terrible liar.
Luckily, Duncan didn't notice that, or cared enough to point it out, as his eyes were already back on the road with a dismissive, "If ye say sae. Jist dornt gie yerself caught up in some guff ye cannae handle, aw reit?"
Or maybe he did have some suspicions after all.
"Don't worry, Sir MacCumhail. We know what we're doing," Judy noted from the back row, but he didn't respond and continued to drive.
I kept observing them, and while there was some bather every now and then, the insides of the car remained mostly silent until the end of the ride. Duncan's prediction was spot on, because it took them about an hour and a half to get to the end of a not particularly well-maintained side road leading to an old campsite in the woods. It was already summer, so it was still bright outside, and the bright green coniferous trees surrounding the clearing with a small, round brick fireplace and a few rough wooden benches were rather picturesque. Despite being off the beaten path, the campsite was clearly maintained by the local forestry.
The whole group streamed out of the minivan and waited for Duncan at the back of the vehicle. He opened up the storage compartment and handed out the large backpacks in there, everyone grabbing one in turn.
"Dae ye want me tae help ye sit up th' tents?"
"Oh, come on!" Penny huffed as she hoisted the biggest bag. "This isn't the first time I camped outside! We'll be fine!"
"If ye say sae..." The big guy made sure they'd collected everything before he pulled the door down and looked over the group, all dressed for trekking in the great outdoors. "Make sure ye swatch it fur ticks, mingin' wee bastards, n' whin ye train, aye mak' a R'stricted Spayc'. Juist fur tis th' middle o' nowhere, ye kin aye catch up wi` hikers 'n' whatnot."
"Yes, of course," Snowy responded with a disarming smile. "Thank you for the advice, Sir Duncan."
"Ey, dinnae ca' me Sir, lassie. A'm off-duty th'day." The big Knight let out a guffaw, followed by a soft sigh. "Fur howfur lang urr ye planning tae bade oot 'ere?"
"It's special training, so we don't know yet," Josh noted half-heartedly while looking at the campsite from a distance.
"What he means," Judy interjected, "is that we're planning to stay here until we see results, so it may take a while."
"We'll call you when we're ready to go home," Elly chimed in, and it made Duncan frown at her.
"That's braw 'n' dandy, missy, bit juist fur school's oot fur ye weans, it doesn't mean ah git a break fae wirk." He puffed up his chest and tried to look indignant, but he soon deflated and shook his head. "Eh, whitevur. Juist ca' me 'n' ah will pick ye up."
"Thanks, Duncan."
Penny tapped him on the shoulder, and the big guy's eyes glinted as he told her, "Dinnae mention it, lassie. Juist dinnae sling yer hook in th' woods, 'n' mak' sure ye dinnae anger th' Ghillie Dhu."
"The what?" Josh perked up at the sound of an unfamiliar term, but a rapidly reddening Penny waved her hands towards him.
"J-Just silly folk tale Duncan told me once to try and scare me! You don't need to know the details!"
"Tried?" the big Knight repeated after her with an impish grin, causing my sister to literally kick him in the butt and towards the car. "Ah, braw. A'm gaun. Hae fin wi' yer secret trainin', or whitevur!"
With that, he got back into the minivan and, after some more goodbyes and lots of waving, the car disappeared past the trees and out of sight. It was only at this point that everyone collectively let their guards down, and Penny, in particular, exhaled a long groan.
"It feels so wrong to deceive Duncan like this…"
"You remember what Percival said about it."
Hearing my other sister's comments made Penny slouch her shoulders and sigh again.
"To deceive your enemies, you must first deceive your allies, yes. It still feels wrong."
"We can't help it," Judy told her while hefting her backpack. "Despite his looks, Sir MacCumhail is the loyal and hierarchical type. If any of his superiors asked about it, he would've spilt the beans right away."
"To be fair…" Snowy spoke up with a hand showing, "I think Sir Roland was already suspecting something before we left, so…"
"My money's on Tajana," Josh blurted out, and when all the girls looked at him at once, he hastily added, "I mean, those two are like… You know? I'd bet money she let it slip, and that's why he was suspicious."
"It doesn't matter now," Angie stated firmly and gestured at the campsite. "Let's sit down and unpack first. What did you say? When are they coming?"
"After dark," came the answer from Elly, prompting everyone to glance at the sky.
"I guess we still have a couple of hours," Josh noted a tad absently, but then his face suddenly lit up and he asked, "Hey? Do you guys wanna make a campfire while we wait?"
"I don't know how to make one of those," was the first response, coming from Ammy. "I've never done anything like this before."
"Me neither, but that's all the more reason to try! Between all of us, I bet we can manage," Josh insisted, and it was the moment Penny chose to step forth.
"Fufu! Step aside! I, like all Entitled Knights bearing a Mantle, am fully trained for survival in the wilderness! Let the master show you how it's done!" She glanced around and pointed at the underbrush on the left. "First, let's gather some dry deadwood from the forest floor!"
"We'll clean up around the fireplace," Judy volunteered with Elly in tow, while Angie was getting more excited by the second.
"Oh, oh! Ammy, can you make skewers with magic? We can make some campfire bacon!" She didn't wait for the class rep's response and skipped over to the benches to put down her backpack. "Hey, guys? Did anyone pack marshmallows?"
"I brought a pack… Um… Just in case?"
Snowy's response made the Celestial girl beam at her like she had just seen her life's saviour, followed by an enthusiastic thumbs up. In the meantime, Penny and Josh waded into the woods looking for kindling, my girlfriends used their feet and some branches to sweep away the fallen pine cones and needles around the campfire, and the class rep's magical forehead-mark lit up as she consulted Grimmy on how to summon skewers, or something.
All in all, the whole group got busy with preparations. One thing was for sure, though: as enthusiastic as they were about the promise of fried bacon and marshmallows under the summer sky, this certainly wasn't a run-of-the-mill camping trip. More concerningly, this wasn't a last-minute training arc either.
"I better keep an eye on them…" I muttered under my breath and set the book I was planning to read for good, resolving myself to observe my friends for the rest of the evening and document whatever shenanigans they were up to this time.