~Chapter 180~ Part 1
"{Why?! Why don't you ever listen to me, young knight?!}"
"Ow-ow…! Come on, Cal! My head hurts enough as is, I don't need you to be shouting in it as well!"
"{Statement: Interface:Teeny is in full agreement with Interface:Caly's objection to the behavioral patterns of Archon Polemos.}"
"Oh, not you too…"
"{Yes! Listen to what she says, young knight, for it's the truth! Except that part about calling me 'Caly'! That's categorically false.}" Cal paused, and then the tone of their voice shifted to an annoyed hiss. "{Teeny? Could you please not joke around when our young knight's health is on the line?}"
"{Deflective Response: Interface:Teeny doesn't understand the request. Interface:Teeny is always serious.}"
Ignoring my bickering swords, as usual, I sat down on the edge of my bed and laid both of them on my lap, just so that I could massage my aching temples. As it turned out, while the long-range-ified transmitter enchantment of my Leoformer didn't put as much strain on me as going full gung-ho with the inter-pocket-dimensional tunnelling, it was still a bit too much for me to handle at the moment. My body was in a fragile equilibrium due to the stunt I pulled the other day, and so maintaining contact with Judy and co for just an hour was enough to give me a hell of a headache.
I would've liked to say I was used to these by now, but you can't really get used to this bollocks. I had to cut the connection, and the two chatty weapons have been working overtime trying to fix my insides. As such, I set up a rather languid version of the meditative circulation Naoren taught me, made myself as comfortable as I could, and closed my eyes again.
It hasn't been that long since I was forced to sever my connection with Judy's artifact, but since I was feeling a bit better now, I quickly Far Glanced in the gang's direction, and I found them more or less where I left them. Despite how late it was, the tavern was as lively as before, and if anything, there were somehow even more people surrounding the group.
They were seated around the biggest table in the establishment now, packed with snacks and refreshments. Josh sat at the head of the table (since he was the only guy in the team, they probably presumed that he was the leader by default), with Judy, Elly and Ammy on his left, and Angie, Snowy, and Penny on his right. The rest of the spots, and even the spaces between the chairs, were taken up by gossip-hungry Abyssal villagers.
"Oh! So you're from House Shamash!" One of the patrons I'd seen before, the elderly woman with the braided hair, exclaimed as she closely studied the small plaque in Josh's hand. "My! It's been a while since we had Shamash people falling out of the sky!"
"Is it really such a common occurrence?"
Judy's question must've sounded naïve to them, because the women looked at her with friendly yet amused smiles, while the men were outright chuckling at her expense.
"No, no, Notes Missy!" came the response from the overly friendly balding Abyssal from before, but he first emptied his mug full of a frothy brown drink before properly elaborating. He used his hairy forearm to wipe his mouth and gestured at my assistant with his free hand. "It's not exactly 'common', you see, but it's not quite 'uncommon' either! When this kind of thing happens, it means someone made a pig's ear of a situation, and big time!"
"What he's trying to say," the stocky barkeep cut in with a disapproving frown, "Is that this kind of event only happens when one of the Nobles, or someone in their retinue, miscalculates something badly and it causes one of their gateways to collapse prematurely." He put down the mug in his hand and pointed at the ceiling, then made a circular motion with his finger. "There's something about this place that draws in all the people who get ejected in the process. That's why this here village was built on the spot."
"I've… never heard about such a thing before…" Snowy spoke up, but her objection was dismissed with a shrug.
"I'm not surprised. The Shamash are not known to travel outside the Abyss a lot." The balding man at the table mused. "Must have something to do with the sun outside, or I don't know…" His words trailed off, and his eyes were suddenly locked onto Snowy. "Actually, on closer look… Are you, perchance, a blood relative of the Noble Head of House Shamash? I mean the resemblance is…"
"Excuse me, I have another question," Judy interrupted him, and I just noticed that she was holding a small yellow notepad. I haven't seen her use that in ages, or at least since she started taking notes on her phone, so it felt oddly nostalgic. "Are you saying that people from all Noble Houses of the Abyss show up here? Does that mean there are members of House Inanna here?"
Her question made Penny tense up, and the rest of the gang also looked a bit wary, but another of the women around the table, this time a middle-aged one with pale green hair, raised her voice to answer.
"Ah, don't worry, sweetie. We haven't seen anyone from there in years!"
"Maybe they don't travel much outside either?" the bald man mused, still looking at Snowy, but then he suddenly shook his head. "Ah, but what was I thinking. When those damn tunnels collapse, it's always the little guys who get ejected first. There's no way the Silver-haired Missy could be related to any of the Lords, right?"
There was resounding agreement around the table, and Snowy hurriedly nodded along. Meanwhile, Angie (or on second look, Deus), tapped on the table with her finger and said, "I don't like this. This place might be dangerous."
"Don't be so paranoid, Little Missy! Coepi Urbs is about as safe as you can get in the Abyss right now!"
"I'm not a 'Little Missy'!" Deus hissed at the bald man, taking him aback for a second, but then Josh hastily grabbed her hand and sent a 'Don't antagonise the locals!' kind of look her way.
She let out a soft huff, but didn't argue and only turned her head to face away from Josh, right until Angie asserted control again, and she enthusiastically squeezed the guy's hand back.
Meanwhile, the tavern-keep walked over to the table and, after twirling his moustache for a bit of dramatic flair, he emphatically told them, "Hardie isn't wrong about that, you know? You don't have to worry about House Inanna while you're here."
"But what about the civil war?" Ammy pointed out, and her question painted a good-natured grin onto the man's face.
"What do we care about such things? There are people hailing from all corners of the Abyss living here, so one's origins or past allegiances matter little. Not to mention, we're all standing on Ninhursag land!"
"… Meaning?" Ammy pressed on, causing the Abyssals in the tavern to look at her funny.
"Come on, Glasses Missy! Have you been away from the Abyss so long that you don't even know that House Ninhursag are maintaining neutrality in the war?"
"O-Of course we knew that!" Elly interjected from the side, trying to salvage the situation. "But does that really mean you don't care about the civil war at all? What if the Inannas and… um… Bel of the Abyss wins?"
"Oh, Blondie Missy worries too much," the extrovert guy said as he dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand.
The women around the table kept sending him pointed looks, but he didn't seem to care, so the elderly one from before cleared her throat and stated, "Whatever the future may hold is out of our control. It's decided by men and women in power who care not for us, and maybe for the better. Just understand that no matter what may come, right now, you're in a safe place."
"I couldn't have said it better myself!" The tavern keeper backed her up, followed by an overt glance at the stairs leading to the upper floor. "It's getting late. Let's let the kids rest, and we can continue this conversation tomorrow. What do you say?"
"Oh, fine, fine!" the balding Abyssal man grumbled, but then he was immediately full of sunshine and grinned at Josh. "Have a nice rest, and I'll give you a tour of the village first thing in the morning!"
"We…"
"We'll take you up on the offer, thank you," Judy interjected before Josh could formulate a proper answer, and she got up with the same momentum. Elly automatically followed after her, and seeing them move, the rest did so as well.
"Come along, I'll show you to your rooms for the night," the tavern-keep said with a chuckle, but then, when they reached the stairs, he suddenly turned around and raised a finger at them. "Just to be clear: everyone here in Coepi Urbs has friends and family who might've landed here the way you did, so it's common courtesy to offer a helping hand, but the rooms are only free for the first night. I'm running a business here, you know?"
"Yes, and we appreciate your generosity," Judy responded first once again, and the proprietor nodded with a hint of satisfaction.
"I wish all Noble Scions were as nice and courteous as you kids."
He followed that up with a chuckle and then led the group to the room.
The second floor had six guest rooms in total. All of them were empty, and after some back-and-forth, it was decided that the gang would take up three of them. One for my sisters, one for the childhood friend couple, and then the last one, with the queen-size bed, was to be shared by my girlfriends and Ammy, as the latter didn't want to sleep alone.
The interiors of said rooms were the same as the tavern downstairs; simple, rustic, yet still blatantly new. They had no carpets or decorations, just plain walls and wooden floorboards, with only the floral-print curtains over the dark windows and the spotless white bedding bringing a touch of homeliness to the place.
Everyone set their bags down, took off their jackets and boots, and then, as if rehearsed ahead of time, they all converged in my girlfriends' room, as it was the biggest of the three. As soon as everyone was present, Judy turned to the class rep.
"Amelia? Do you see any surveillance spells?"
"No, but even if I did, I couldn't do much about them…"
"Lili? Can you soundproof the room?" came the next request from Josh. "You know? Like you showed me way back when?"
"Hey! I can do that, too! Why aren't you asking me?" Angie volunteered, but by then Snowy was already busy setting down her Sigils around the four corners of the room. "Oh, fine! I'll close the curtains, at the very least."
While they were doing that, Elly casually picked up the small, artisanal wardrobe, both to give Snowy access to that corner and to allow the class rep to look around for hidden spells behind it. All in all, the whole thing took a few minutes, during which Penny made herself useful by activating her custom Concealment Sigil to snoop around downstairs.
By the time she returned, every inch of the room was fully inspected, and as soon as she closed the door behind herself, Snowy activated her spell with a delicate twirl of her fingers, coating the whole chamber with a thin layer of orange light from the inside.
At last, Judy set down a rechargeable electric storm-lamp onto the small square table, the only other furniture in the room besides the bed and the wardrobe, and turned the light to the maximum. The warm LED light mimicking the colour-temperature of a kerosene-fed flame filled the center, casting long shadows behind the seven clustered around it.
"No surveillance found," Ammy started, and a beat later she also added, "Grimmy also says there were no mana-fluctuations at all until Neige set down the privacy spell."
"Good." Josh decided to grab the reins of the conversation and turned to Penny. "Anything suspicious downstairs?"
"N-No," my knightly sister responded a bit awkwardly. "They act perfectly normal! There was nothing suspicious!"
"… Then why are you fidgeting like that?" the guy asked, and after some grumbling, she came clean.
"Because… I overheard that the friendly mister noticed that I was always sticking close to Snowy, and they wondered if I was her bodyguard, or something more…" She abruptly hid her face behind her hands. "Hauuu… I thought I was being super-inconspicuous and natural! How did they figure out we're sisters? Just what gave it away?"
The rest of the group shared a rather complicated look between each other, accentuated by Snowy's awkward smile, and they soon collectively decided to just ignore Penny's outburst and move on.
"In other words, they didn't do or say anything dubious. Noted." Judy, true to her words, wrote that down in her notepad, then turned to Elly. "Did you sense anything odd?"
"No, not really," my draconic girlfriend responded a touch ambivalently, and then she crossed her arms. "Everything smells kinda like Neige down here, which… makes sense, I suppose? It's the Abyss, after all. I could also catch a whiff of another familiar scent. I think there might be Fauns here, too."
"That makes sense," Josh mused with a thumb and forefinger on his chin. "They said the people here are descendants of people who fell out of the sky when those gates, right? Abyssals travel with Fauns, so it makes sense that they would fall out of there at the same time."
"But I've never heard about something like this," Snowy pointed out, only for my dear assistant to argue back.
"To be fair, weren't you repressed and isolated by Noir Irdu Inanna? It's possible that he kept it a secret from you."
"It's… possible," my Abyssal sister granted, and Elly immediately followed her up.
"Let's ask the Shamash Clan Head once she…" Her words trailed off and a troubled frown settled over her eyes. "Actually, do we have a way to contact her?"
"We'll figure that out as we go," Josh stated authoritatively, drawing all eyes to himself. "Before anything else, we have to figure out what to do about this situation. Do we stay here, or do we run away?"
"Yeah! This place is hella sus!" Angie declared, prompting Josh to blink and snap his attention to her.
"It's what?"
"Sus," Angie repeated, and seeing that he still didn't get it, she angrily threw her hands into the air. "Oh, come on! It's one thing that Deus didn't get it, but you're young! You should get the lingo!"
"You've been spending too much time on the internet," Josh grumbled and then faced the electric lamp again. "Where were we?"
"The village being suspicious," Judy noted, and Angie's face lit up at once.
"See? She gets it!"
To be fair, my lovely assistant was also certifiably spending too much time on the internet, but I digress.
"I don't know," Elly mused with a finger on her lower lip, and after some more thinking, she slightly tilted her head for further emphasis. "I mean, everything they told us makes sense."
"Exactly. It makes too much sense, which means…" Judy put down her notebook and skipped over to her bag, only to return with her funky party glasses. "Chief? Can you hear me?"
Well, crap.
I took a deep breath and got out of Far Sight, then gingerly grabbed my sword's hilt.
"Listen, Cal. Don't get mad, but…"
A solid minute of heated bargaining later, I closed my eyes again and returned to the scene in the tavern room. Surprisingly enough, there was an eighth person in the room now, though there were still only seven bodies. Someone should write a murder mystery with that premise, or something.
Anyhow, the semi-transparent body of Grimmy stood next to the class rep, and she just finished saying, "… analysis concludes that there is indeed a void of energy currents within this region. In theory, such a phenomenon could result in the described effect."
"In other words, the idea of people being sucked here after a failed crossing attempt is technically plausible," Ammy concluded, and I waited for her to finish before I turned on my communicator.
"Hey, Dormouse. Sorry for being late." Judy's eyes opened a bit wider, and she immediately raised a palm to forestall any further discussion. In the meantime, I told her, "I'm in worse shape than I thought, so I can only talk for a quarter of an hour—"
"{Ten minutes, young knight, and not a minute more!}"
"{Correction: Technically, it's only nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds.}"
I did my best to stifle the groan clawing at the base of my throat and amended, "Cal won't let me speak for more than ten minutes, so ask away."
"Understood." She picked up her notepad again and tapped her pen against it. "First question: did you have anything to do with this place, in either the Watsonian or the Doylist sense?"
Everyone other than Elly and the class rep (and maybe Snowy) looked stumped by her question, and even I needed a few seconds to untangle her meaning.
"No on the Watsonian front. As I said, I'm practically stuck here, and I can only sneak out into town on foot. There's no way I could set up something this elaborate. As for the Doylist option… if you mean whether future-me retconned this place into existence in preparation for your arrival, your guess is as good as mine. Ask me after the finale is over."
She diligently listened to me and then told everyone, "The Chief, as he is, doesn't have anything to do with this."
"Why did we even presume that Brother would?" came the obvious question from Penny, and she received less of a response and more of a cacophony.
"Because it's Leo."/"It's him we're talking about."/"Duh, it's Leo!"
Those words came from Ammy, Josh, and Angie, respectively, and the rest didn't seem to disagree either. I had no idea how to feel about any of that, but before I could digest that, Judy levelled the next question at me.
"Any advice?"
"I don't know. This is the first time I've seen this place," I admitted, and after some further consideration, I also added, "In my professional opinion, if this place had something to do with future-me, then it should be safe, but… I'm supposed to be off the board right now, so I probably shouldn't steal Josh's spotlight by advising you guys from the shadows. Tell you what? I'll keep an eye out with Far Sight and call you if I see something suspicious. Otherwise, act in your best judgment."
Judy nodded along and then pointedly looked at the only guy at the table.
"The Chief says we have his full confidence, and that we should trust our instincts."
Once again, that wasn't literally what I said, but it did sound better than my version, so I let it slide.
"In that case…" Josh hesitated, but only for a moment. "Let's make the most of this situation. If these people really are from all over the Abyss, this might prove to be an invaluable opportunity to gather insights and up-to-date news. We shouldn't squander that, so let's mingle a little." He swept his gaze over the people present, including the hologram. "Any objections?"
"I just wanna go to sleep," Angie grumbled, and since the rest weren't exactly fresh either, they all agreed to turn in for the night.
I also cut the connection with Judy (though first she handed the glasses to Elly so that I could introduce her to Ollie as well), and watched them as they all settled down in their rooms. Not before setting up various flavours of magical alarms and defences, of course.
And that's how the first day of the gang's expedition to the Abyss ended. Not with a bang, but with quiet snoring.