The Simulacrum

How much time had I spent in the company of the Emergents this time? It was hard to tell. Not just because of the usual timey-wimey bullcrap, but because it was hard to keep track of time when not only the not-dark not-room, but even their own appearances kept changing depending on the wildly meandering discussion.

It wasn't until the topic somehow shifted to gossip about the interpersonal relations between the Venerated Emergents that I gave up and started looking for a way out. By the by, their views of relationships were surprisingly less complicated than what I would've expected from eldritch star-consciousnesses embedded into the fabric of space-time, yet at the same time, they were just off enough to be weird. Since they were modelling themselves after humans, the Emergents' thought patterns and emotions were comprehensible, but maybe because those were developed through emulation of human fiction, they were also a bit over the top.

On the bright side, at least there were no 'quadrants' involved. No offence, but ain't nobody had time for that stuff.

Anyhow, since I couldn't really add to a discussion about whether the ************** (rough translation: Effervescent Cyclone) settling her Domain down next to *************** (even rougher translation: Big Rock) meant that they were fond of each other, I forcefully cleared my throat and excused myself.

"Are you leaving already?" a certain ruby ocean spoke, sounding unusually melancholic, but then her waters quickly regained their brilliance when she added, "You can visit us even when there's no emergency, you know? Our ************** is always open to you."

She was referring to the not-dark not-room, but before I could respond in any way, a barren moon flashed with lightning as he declared, "Right! We haven't finished our discussion about Magic Pants. How about we sit down in private one of these days, just you and me?"

"Sure, as soon as I'm done with my current project."

For the record, 'Magic Pants' was the trope name for when someone transformed and destroyed their clothes in the process, yet just enough of them survived to hide their naughty bits. I was pretty sure the Emergents weren't using the trope website for their definitions, so it was likely that some kind of translation convention was afoot, but it worked, so I couldn't complain.

"M-Me too! I'd also like to talk!" The small planet whipped by storms raining molten silicon raised his hand, eliciting a soft scoff and a disparaging roll of an eye from the ringed planetoid sitting by his side.

"You guys are so impatient! Didn't we agree to focus on finishing the scenario first? We can hang out afterwards!"

"True, but…"

"I really should be leaving," I interjected and got up, which made the world shift around me. The idyllic flowery meadow around us slowly faded out and was replaced by the drab indistinctness of the not-dark not-room. "Thank you for the hospitality, and see you… erm… later?"

Again, considering the Emergents' odd perception of time, I had no idea what they heard when I spoke the word 'later', but they nodded along like it was natural. Honestly, if I weren't already swamped with troubles occupying my mind, I would've loved to spend some time on trying to manually dissect the Emergent 'linguistics', and I was sure Judy would find the topic fascinating, but I really shouldn't pick up even more projects when my plate was already full.

I waved my hand and retracted myself from the not-dark not-room, causing my temporary, featureless humanoid avatar to fade out of existence. It was then that I paused. Why was I in a hurry to get back inside the Simulacrum again?

Ah, right! Before Oriole distracted me, Josh and Angie were just about to haggle for a plot-hook of some kind. Something about the true prophecy of the Emperor and the Herald and whatnot. Fairly standard 'last-minute twist to recontextualise previous established plot elements' kind of stuff, if you asked me. In fact… crap. I should've used the opportunity to inquire about the history of the Abyss and its previous scenarios instead of the stupid Magic Pants, shouldn't I?

I was just considering whether I should turn around and quickly ask, but I was stopped in my tracks by an idle question.

"And he's gone, just like that…" Oriole muttered absently, even though I was technically still in the not-dark not room.

"He's way too good at hiding his presence. I still couldn't sense his Domain."

"I tell you, Obsidius, he must be a Venerated One in disguise!" a thundering voice exclaimed, startling the previous speaker so much that the droplets of his endless rain of molten glass stopped falling for a moment.

"Oh, come on, Fulgor," Oriole chimed in with another roll of her eyes. "I thought we were over this already."

"No, I'm serious!" The Emergent, previously known as The Man, argued back, his lightning-struck surface brighter than ever before. "Think about it! He knows his way around the Simulacrum, he can come and go as he pleases, and he can just hand out Definitions like it's nothing. I'm not saying he's playing a prank on us or anything, but you have to admit that it's all too suspicious."

"No, I don't have to," the pigtailed plated argued back defiantly. "It's just you overthinking things as usual, right, Obsidius?"

The boy by her side tensed up again and let out a soft whine. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ nοvelfire.net

"W-Why are you asking me?"

While the three bantered, the last Emergent in the not-dark not-room carelessly pinched her chin and exhaled a shallow sigh.

"I don't think he's a Venerated One. I purposefully brought up the names of other Venerable Emergents, but he didn't react to them. It was almost as if he had never heard of them before… but then again, Fulgor isn't exactly wrong about his talent for Definition." She drew in a long breath and then uttered a single, soft word. "Carmine."

Just doing that made her endless crimson waters come to a sudden halt, as if all the ebbs and currents stopped to listen. It only lasted for a blink of an eye, and then her human form reasserted itself as she crossed her arms.

"It feels nice. Like a warm blanket on a long winter night."

"R-Right!" Obsidius nodded with surprising vehemence. "His Definitions are very comforting!"

"Yes, and I tell you that only a Venerated One could come up with such exquisite Definitions. Assembling layers upon layers of profundities to create Definitions that not only don't clash with one's own self-Definition, but actively complement it… It's not something just anyone could do!"

…

Okay, for the record, I have put a whole lot of thought into the nicknames I gave these four, especially after how generic the first ones turned out to be, but they weren't that mind-blowing. Oriole was chosen because her planetary form was yellow and her voice had this birdsong-y (or occasionally eagle-screechy) undertone. Obsidius was the guy 'obsidian' was named after, which was a volcanic glass, and since his planetary form's most distinct characteristic was that it was literally raining molten glass, I just ran with it. Fulgor was not only just a different word for lightning, but it also referred to a different type of natural glass, fulgurite, and since that's what covered his full surface, the association was easy to meet. Finally, Carmine is… well, it's just 'red'. Also, already a name, so that one took the least time to come up with.

The fact that they were reading so much into them could only mean one of two things: they were either way too emotional and willing to read deep between lines that didn't even exist, or this was another of those situations, like the one when I casually wrote some random Celestial scribbles, and Crowy's people somehow translated that four different ways.

I really hoped it was the former option, but as always, my inner pessimist told me that it was probably not only the latter, but also part of some kind of sneaky foreshadowing, which… Oh dear god. If tropes and writing conventions not only applied outside of the Simulacrum, but on the existential level of the freaking star-people, this universe was toast.

Putting the worrying thought aside, I fully retreated from the not-dark not-room post-haste. Looking at it in retrospect, I had spied on the Emergents like this a number of times in the past, so I shouldn't have felt too bad about it, but there was a distinct difference here. Back then, they were weird and near-incomprehensible entities. Now, they were… not quite friends, but at the very least acquaintances, so it felt different. Kind of like how I didn't like using Far Sight when people were having intimate moments, because it made me feel like a creep.

Anyhow, after dragging my consciousness out of the not-dark not-room and across the un-vastness of the lack of space surrounding it, I let out a soft gasp as I returned to my body. My first instinct was to check the time, to see how long I was out, but then I remembered that I had no idea what the time was when I astral projected myself outside, so there was no point.

First things first, my mouth felt dry, so I took out my metal flask and drank some Sebastian-brand tea. It's been quite a while since he let me borrow it, but there was still a whole lot of it left, and it was still hot as well. That done, came the next question: what was I doing before I Oriole came here?

I already asked that question once, before I got distracted by the Emergent quartet, and the answer remained the same: I was Far Seeing Josh and Angie's misadventures in the Abyssal village. Wondering how much I missed, I put away the flask and Far Glanced their way, only to see that… they were already back in the inn.

"We're never gonna talk about that. Ever."

"Oh, spare me the dramatics, Boy!"

"No, I'm serious," Josh insisted as he tapped on the table in their room. "We can't let the others hear about it."

"But it worked!" Deus (clearly) argued back with a huff. "We only had to pay half of what that shrew initially demanded."

"In exchange for our dignity," the guy snapped back, seeing that he wouldn't budge, Deus threw up her hands.

"Fine, have it your way! Just wait and see when I'll try to do something nice for you again!"

With that, her eyes suddenly shifted to blue, and Angie let her hands down.

"Mou! Don't fight with Deus, you dummy!"

"Hey, don't pin this on me!" he argued back, but before they could get into the details, the door of the room opened and Elly poked her head inside.

"Guys? Amelia and Penelope are back. Come over."

"Sure, just a second," the guy responded in a hurry and then whispered to his girlfriend. "Just to be clear, don't tell the others about the whole haggling thing, okay?"

"Oh, fine…" Angie grumbled as she got up and pulled him along. "Come on. Let's not make them wait."

So, based on the context clues, including the light of the afternoon sun seeping in through the curtains, I deducted that at most an hour or so could've passed since I last saw them. Also, I apparently missed a supremely embarrassing (and therefore potentially hilarious) scene, which was a bit annoying.

I followed the childhood friend couple, and they soon joined the rest of the gang gathered in my girlfriends' room on the tavern's upper floor. By now, I figured that all their rooms got individually insulated, because I couldn't hear anything until I shifted my point of view inside. When I did, the first audible words were my knightly sister's complaints.

"W-Wait! I'm still sweaty! I'll go wash up first!"

"Me too," the class rep seconded her, and also added, "And maybe a little smoky."

"Did you set the bricks on fire?" Josh asked, seemingly without any ill intent, but the bespectacled girl still glared at him.

"No, I didn't! Bricks can't even burn! That's their whole point!"

"We had a barbecue." Even before finishing her curt explanation, Penny's eyes opened wide, followed by an ear-to-ear grin. "Right! We brought tasters! The boar meat is a little gamey, but it's still really good!"

"All of you, please settle down first." Judy's words made everyone look at her, and so she gestured at the chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. "You can wash up and snack later. Let's sit down and discuss what we learned first."

"Oh, fine…"

Following Penny's lead, the rest also took their seats. A brief spell of silence followed, then Josh cleared his throat to get everyone's attention.

"We didn't learn anything new in the hospital, but we did find something interesting. Lili?"

"Yes, it's here!" Snowy sounded unusually eager as she raised the familiar book, mostly for the benefit of the late arrivals. "I've read the parts you mentioned, and it's fascinating."

"But is it actually useful?" Judy cut to the heart of the question, and after just a hint of vacillation, my Abyssal sister nodded, if weakly.

"I… I think it might be." She opened up the book again and tapped her finger on a page. "The 'Prophecy of the Herald' in this book is an earlier version than the one I knew. It's also written in stanzas, and it focuses more on the Emperor than her Herald, and…"

"Hold on, please." Ammy raised a hand to forestall the discussion and glanced around. "Why are we discussing prophecies again?"

"We found this one while exploring the village," Angie chimed in with gusto. "We were just talking about all the other prophecies, and this lady overheard us, and she wanted to sell us this book for—"

"We got the book for cheap," Josh cut in a tad more forcefully than usual. "It's about old Abyssal legends and stuff, and we figured it might be important." The class rep still had a 'But why?' kind of look on her face, so he clarified, "You know? Lili's brother wanted to kidnap me because of this prophecy, but then switched tracks and became the Herald instead, we figured there might be more to this, so we asked around, and this book might hold the answers."

"Joshua might be onto something," Snowy said, drawing everyone's attention to her. "This version of the prophecy doesn't talk about Bel of the Tenebrous Flames. If anything, it… I mean, the wording is a bit ambiguous, but it's almost like it says that once the Herald would absorb the powers of the Abyss and… uuu… it says 'make it theirs forever', so… The important bit is this: Once the Herald has all the power, it's mentioned that the Emperor would emerge, and then the Herald is never mentioned again. It's as if the Emperor is meant to replace the Herald, and the rest of the prophecy is about him."

Elly honed in on one particular word and uttered, "Replace?" When Snowy nodded, she tapped on her chin and posited, "So maybe it's like what almost happened to Leo? You know? The Polemos incident in Elysium."

"M-Maybe, but… It's written very ambiguously, so I can't be sure," my sister admitted in a mousy voice.

"Let us presume for now that this version of the prophecy is accurate," Judy proposed while furiously scribbling in her notebook. "Can we use this to our advantage? Specifically, to get to the Chief sooner?"

"It could be used for propaganda," came the first idea from Penny. "We can use it to undermine the legitimacy of the bad guys!"

"But people already know these prophecies," Ammy argued back with a dissatisfied hum. "And while they accept Bel of the Abyss as their emperor, it doesn't really matter."

"Maybe we can make it matter," Josh spoke provocatively and pointed a thumb at his own chest. "Think about it, guys; both Leo and Lili's brother were convinced that I was supposed to be this Herald all along. I mean, I can turn into an Abyssal with a bit of blood, even if it's not so easy nowadays. So… what if we use that?"

"Oh? Oooh! I get it!" Elly exclaimed with sheer excitement. "If you can prove yourself as the true Herald, you can then appoint a different Emperor of the Abyss, using the old Prophecy as the basis! That would completely delegitimize Clan Inanna's claims, leading to internal strife and potentially more neutral Clans joining against them! That could work!"

"Y-Yeah. I didn't think that far, but yeah," Josh muttered a tad sheepishly, and the onus was once again on my dear assistant to prod the conversation along.

"And you said you encountered this book and its owner by complete accident."

Her comment made the class rep reach for her glasses and exclaim, "That's right! I just wanted to point that out! There's no way something so convenient could happen, unless…" Her words trailed off, and after a dramatic beat, she sent a sideways glance at Judy. "Destiny?"

"Potentially," Judy nodded, though I was pretty sure their definitions of the word didn't exactly line up.

"Oh, I didn't even think about that…" Angie noted absently, and after some murmurs across the group, Judy showed her palm to focus everyone's attention on her.

"While it's a long shot, considering the number of prophecies fulfilled as of late, it might be worth entertaining. However, I propose that we keep it as our Plan B and focus our efforts on Plan A as intended. Which brings us to our next question." She swept her gaze across the gang, ultimately settling on the class rep. "Are we any closer to figuring out how to get Amelia access to a Mana Well?"

Considering that her question was followed by a rather awkward silence, I figured their big plan wasn't as foolproof as I would've liked to believe…