The Simulacrum

Transportation was one of the less appreciated universal constants. Regardless of the era or the location, there was always stuff that someone really wanted to be somewhere else. In the case of the Abyss, options for getting said stuff to another place were rather limited.

The Elysium didn't need complicated transit networks because all Celestials could fly, and even when everyone was grounded by law, the elites had access to portals. For the lower castes, they had to do with simple carts and carriages, while the more elaborate methods of transportation, such as the parade chariots and the flying palanquins carried by dozens of Celestials, were more ceremonial in nature.

In contrast, only about a third of Abyssals could fly, and they had no access to portals. What they did have was a more laissez-faire approach to adopting human technology, though that had its limits. The Abyss wasn't especially rich in metals, so there wasn't much room for heavy industry to grow. I presumed they had enough copper for the electric grid, and I've heard Crowy mention how one of the families had a monopoly on aluminium, so there had to be at least some deposits around the island.

What they were lacking was industrial amounts of iron ore. It was why, despite reverse-engineering old cars and other vehicles, they were a rather rare sight on the roads, and the majority of them weren't produced domestically but smuggled into the Abyss, often piecemeal under the nose of the Magi (or, as with the case of Lord Grandpa, them looking the other way). Because of the lack of raw materials, trains were also a touchy subject. There were a few rail lines connecting the capitals of the various Noble Houses, and from what I gathered, they were running modified steam engines powered by magic.

Since the civil war broke out, rail traffic was completely halted, since these locomotives were extremely rare and precious, and absolutely nobody wanted to see them damaged or destroyed, even by accident. That said, even if they would've happened to be running at the moment, a small village in the butt-end of nowhere obviously wasn't connected to the rail network. Nor did it have paved roads for cars, for that matter.

So, what else was there? In retrospect, the answer was quite obvious: boats.

The Abyss, just like the Elysium, was a carbon copy of Critias. Critias was an island. Q.E.D., boats were everywhere. The coastline was a given, but thanks to the slightly different climate, the place also had larger and longer rivers that could be used for navigation and transportation. While a ferry couldn't take you to the big town the same way a train or car would, it could still get you to the right ballpark all right.

As such, it was obvious where the gang would be heading next. However, before they could get there…

"Josh, look! Rabbits!"

"Hey, don't just rush off like that! It could be dangerous!"

Ignoring his warnings, Angie skipped over to the side of the dog-sized bunny sporting a pair of small brown antlers on the top of its head.

"There she goes again," Judy whispered, and seeing that the large rabbit didn't run away and was looking at the Celestial girl while curiously moving its nose, she soon took out her notebook and jotted down, 'Maybe she really is a fairy tale princess?' into it.

It was still fairly early in the morning, yet our little gaggle of friends was already on the south-west road leading out of the village. They were back in their hiking gear, big backpacks and all, but they were also carrying a bunch of extra items they got from the village during their stay. My sisters were discussing the souvenirs they got for the rest of the family, while Ammy was lost in a discussion with the Grimoire about the configuration of local ley-line equivalents, or something. It was all very technical.

"Come on, Angie! You're holding us up." Josh argued on the side of the dirt road, his presence making the horned rabbit creature shrink back. "We need to get to the docks before noon. You can play with the wildlife later."

"Mou! You're no fun!" the Celestial girl whined, yet she eventually waved goodbye to the horny lagomorph and skipped over to Josh's side. "How long until we get there?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," the guy admitted, sounding just a touch awkward. "They said the road should take us right to the wharf, so I think we should be able to find it there."

"Ah! Then hold my bags for a sec," she said while trying to get her backpack off. "I'll fly up and take a look!"

"Oh, no you don't!" Josh grabbed her shoulder at once, startling her. "We talked about this. You can't just reveal your wings all willy-nilly down here. You're gonna get us busted."

"Aw, fine…" she grumbled, but then her eyes lit up again and she hefted the bag into place again. "Ah, I've got an idea! Let's ask Neige! Nobody will freak out if she flies up for a bit, right?"

"I suppose that could work…" Josh relented, so Angie slipped out of his grip and bounced over to my sisters.

He watched her go with a complicated expression, right until he was mildly startled by a giggle coming from the princess coming up behind him.

"It's nice that you're getting along again."

"… Excuse me?"

The guy's expression was frozen in confusion, but luckily Judy was there to clarify what Elly meant.

"Everyone noticed that you two were having some kind of quarrel, so we gave you some space. We're just happy to see that you two made up."

"Wait… When you say 'everyone', you mean… erm…"

"Yes, everyone," Judy said, cutting to the chase.

"Aw, man…"

Meanwhile, the princess couldn't rein in her curiosity, and she sidled closer to Josh.

"So? What were you fighting about this time?"

"Elly, please don't pry into Joshua's private matters," Judy noted, sounding detached even though her pencil was eagerly hovering over her notes still.

"But I'm curious, and they made up already, so it shouldn't matter," the princess insisted, much to Josh's chagrin.

"We didn't fight. Not with Angie, I mean."

"So it was Deus then," Judy noted, literally.

"Yes, but…" Josh let out a shallow sigh and turned away from the girls. "It's complicated, okay?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" Elly pressed him, but he reflexively shook his head.

"Nah. I tell you, it's complicated, and I don't really know how to deal with this yet, and… and…"

"And that sounds like exactly the kind of situation where you should discuss matters with someone for a fresh perspective," Judy proposed, and it made the guy fall silent for a few seconds.

"Maybe you're right…" he admitted, but just as my dear assistant was about to put lead to the paper again, he looked at her and earnestly asked, "Can I borrow your glasses? Later, I mean, not right now."

Elly blinked at the side, and it took her a second to figure out what he meant.

"You want to ask Leo for advice?"

"Yeah." Seeing that the girls didn't look too pleased by his response, he hastily added, "It's guy stuff, okay? I would feel much more comfortable discussing this with him than… You know? No offense or anything."

"The Chief can only talk a few minutes every day, so if we did that, it would mean we couldn't talk to him," Judy explained, and after glancing at the princess and sharing a wordless back-and-forth, she concluded with, "But if it's just one day, we can live with it."

Josh flashed a sheepish smile and uttered, "Thanks. I'll owe you one."

"Two!" Elly cut in, holding up a pair of fingers like a peace sign. "One for Judy, one for me."

"Sure, sure," Josh yielded right away, much to the princess's satisfaction.

Meanwhile, there was some movement further down the road as Snowy, dressed in her Magiformer, descended from the sky and de-transformed back into her hiking gear. Josh took this as his cue to pick up the pace, and he marched over to their side.

Penny already asked, "So? What did you see?" by the time he got there, but the Abyssal girl waited for everyone to gather around her before responding.

"The road goes on behind that hill, and there's a river leading to the sea. I could see some wooden structures there, so I think that's the pier we're looking for."

Ammy beat Josh to the punch by asking, "How far is it?" before he could get a word in.

"On foot? Um… I-I'd say about half an hour?"

"Aw, man! We're super early, aren't we? I could've totally petted that rabbit!" Angie griped, but Josh reflexively poked her in the side.

"Don't act like it's the end of the world. It's infinitely better than being late."

The Celestial girl stuck out her tongue, but didn't bicker, and instead the whole gang followed Snowy's instructions and picked up the pace. Her initial estimate turned out to be a bit optimistic, since it took a little over forty minutes to get to the docks on the river, and nothing particularly outstanding happened on the way.

However, once they arrived and saw that there weren't any ferries in sight, they all piled up for a tactical discussion.

"What's the plan?" Penny asked first, prompting Josh to raise a critical brow at her.

"We wait."

"No, I mean, what are we doing while we wait?"

"Oh, oh!" Angie raised her hand over her head and exclaimed, "I wanna try out my gift!"

"It wasn't a gift," Josh retorted again. "We had to pay for it."

"But it was at a steep discount!" the Celestial girl argued back and reached for the bow tied to the side of her backpack. It was the same one she was fascinated by at the shop where they got the book with the prophecies, and right after the impromptu farewell party the village threw in their honour in the morning, the shopkeeper sold it to her for a 'nominal price' of fifteen coins. "And look! At that price, it was as good as free! Look how cool it is!"

"We don't know the proper value of the local currency, so there's no telling whether it was—"

Before she could finish, Angie's eyes shifted as Deus took control, and she pulled on the string of the bow in her hands, making it light up with a golden light and let out a melodious sound.

"While this isn't nearly as finely crafted as the Girl's heirloom, and it lacks its explosive capabilities, it is a shockingly exquisite weapon. I would not have expected us to encounter such craftsmanship in such a backwater village, so it must have been the hand of fate at play to deliver us such a fine replacement. Don't you agree, Boy?"

"Erm… Yeah, sure. Whatever."

Deus smiled at him, and it turned into a toothy grin when Angie got in the driver's seat again, followed by a sudden 'Ah!' and her turning to the slightly distracted class rep.

"Ammy! Can you make me some targets to shoot at?"

"W-What?" Jolted out of her discussion with Grimmy, the class rep glanced left and right, and once the Celestial girl's words finally registered with her, she pointed at herself and asked, "Me?"

"Yeah! Didn't you get a whole lot of practice making all kinds of bricks with the well-makers? Can you make me some of those, and then throw them so I can practice with my new bow?"

"Throwing bricks?" the princess chimed in with a frown. "Wouldn't it be better to make them into disks? You know? Like the kind people shoot at the Olympics."

"The proper term is 'clay pigeon'," Judy stated on the side.

"Yes, that!"

The exchange made Angie's eyes sparkle with expectation, and she directed an insistent, "Can you make those?" at the class rep.

"I… probably can, but…"

"Awesome! Let's go…" Angie paused to look around, and she pointed at a lightly wooded area not far from the pier. "Over there! That spot looks great!"

"W-Wait, I still have to…!"

Before she could get a word in, Ammy was already getting dragged along, leaving the rest of the group behind. Meanwhile, Penny was staring intently at the river, and it didn't escape Snowy's attention.

"Is something bothering you?"

"No, I'm just…" My knightly sister vacillated for a bit, then suddenly declared, "Let's fish!"

Snowy was taken aback, but not as much as Josh, who blurted out an incredulous, "… Where the heck did that come from?"

"I-It's Brotherhood tradition!" Penny insisted with her hands on her hips. "When you go to a new place, you have to try out the local specialities! We had vegetable stew and boar barbecue and even snake soup, but we didn't try any seafood yet!"

"… With every passing day, I'm more and more convinced that I'm the only one who takes this whole infiltration missions seriously."

Josh's grumbles fell on deaf ears, as my sisters were already discussing how to prepare their makeshift fishing gear. Seeing that, he turned to my girlfriends.

"Let's put down our bags in the shade and wait for the ship. Any objections?"

Judy responded with a curt, "None," and the three of them headed over to the spot under the nearest tree. Meanwhile, the class rep and Angie figured out how to use earth magic to make clay pigeons. Launching them was a bit trickier, but once Ammy summoned Petra and explained the proper discus-throwing form, things were starting to work out pretty well.

"Ready? Go!"

Following Ammy's instruction, the golem spun in place and tossed a clay disk the size of a dinner plate high into the air. A moment later, a streak of golden light cut through the sky, drawing a bright locust in its wake, and even though it clearly changed its trajectory in an attempt to catch the oversized clay pigeon, it still missed by a hand's width.

"Aw! So close! Next!"

Ammy seemed annoyed on the surface, but she still played along with Angie's whims and cast her next spell. It gouged some soil out of the ground, then the floating clump began spinning and changing colour as it formed a symmetrical flat disk. Once finished, it floated over to the golem's side, and the stone figure gingerly picked the projectile out of the air before taking a discus-throwing posture again.

They continued to repeat the process a few more times, right until Angie finally managed to hit the clay target mid-flight on the sixth try.

"Wohoo! Josh, look! I hit it!"

"Good job!" the guy called over from the shade of the tree, where he was unpacking and repacking their bags with my girlfriends. "How's the bow?"

"Pretty nice!" she yelled back, then after a beat, she added, "Deus says you have to watch when it's her turn!"

"S-Sure!" Just responded, sounding ironically uncertain in the process.

In the meantime, Ammy let out a tired breath and wiped her forehead, followed by a thoughtful hum. She stared intently at the Celestial girl, visibly hesitating, but then she finally mustered up the courage and tapped on her shoulder.

"Hey, Angie?"

"Hm? Ready for the next round?"

"Yes, but before that… there's something I wanted to ask you about for a while."

The Celestial girl let her bow down and turned to properly face her.

"I'm all ears."

"Thank you." Ammy still needed to steel her nerves a bit, but then she gestured for her to lean closer, and she whispered, "So, we're kind of in a similar situation, aren't we?"

"Are we?"

"I mean, with having a different person in our heads," the class rep clarified. "It's like… I'm usually happy to have Grimmy around, because she knows about all kinds of things and spells and gives good advice, but sometimes… how should I put this…" She leaned even closer, her voice barely audible at this point. "How do you deal with someone else watching when you want to be… uh… i-intimate with your boyfriend?"

Angie blinked in surprise. Or was it incomprehension? Either way, she didn't seem to get the question.

"I mean, isn't it embarrassing when you want to do… that with Josh, and Deus is watching?"

It was only at this point that the proverbial lightbulb lit up over the Celestial girl's head, and she let out a dismissive grunt at once.

"Nah, it's not a big deal." She fortunately didn't stop there and put a bit more thought into it, and then she started absently pulling on the bowstring in her hand while saying, "Honestly, I don't think our situation is that similar. I mean, the Grimoire isn't you, right?"

"No, of course not," Ammy responded reflexively, her tone saying that the question itself was preposterous.

"You see? That's the difference. Deus is me. Or rather, if the eggheads in Elysium are right, I'm Deus, and the only reason we're different is because she woke up too late." She pulled a bit too hard on the string, and it automatically created a thin yellow magical arrow. Lacking a flying target, she let it loose at a nearby tree trunk, pretending that she did it on purpose, and hurriedly added, "I-I mean, we're more like two sides of the same coin, while you and Grimmy are two different people or… hologram-thingie. Whatever. It's different."

"I… think I understand, but…" Ammy eyed the other girl for a while, and finally worked herself up to ask, "But if you are two sides of the same person, then… do you share everything with each other?"

"Mostly. Whenever we're not sleeping."

"So… does that mean all sensations?"

"Yeah."

"Including… you know? That?" Once again, it took a few seconds for Angie to figure out what she meant, but then she nodded, causing the class rep to flush. "W-Wow… That's actually worse than my situation."

"But it's not," Angie insisted with a hint of a pout, then she shook her head. "Let's get back to practice! I still wanna get a few more hits before letting Deus give it a go!"

"O-Okay."

While Ammy played along, the expression on her face remained complicated, clearly trying to figure out how serious the other girl was and how all of that worked out, not even realising that while they got lost in the discussion over Angie's body sharing semantics, she never got a response to her original question.

Like that, time passed slowly. Josh and the girls finished reorganising the backpacks and stuffing away all the extra stuff they received from the villagers, mostly in the form of snacks, memorabilia, and even more snacks. Penny and Snowy also finished fishing using a makeshift hazel branch for a rod, and while they managed to catch a handful of small freshwater fishes, they didn't have time to make a campfire and fry them, so they reluctantly let them go.

"This was just practice!" Penny declared as she watched her catch swim away. "Next time, I'll catch something big enough to make even dad jealous!"

There were a few more small intermezzos here and there, such as when Elly decided to try her hand at clay pigeon throwing and accidentally sent one into orbit (or more likely into the dimensional wall), or when Snowy tried to use her magic to cool down everyone's drinks and accidentally froze them solid instead, but otherwise things were rather laidback and peaceful. It was only after the sun reached the peak of its path that the ever-vigilant Josh noticed something on the horizon and called out to the others.

"Guys, I think our ride is here."

Just as he said, there was a strange white vessel coming from upstream. It was kind of like an old-timey steamboat, with the paddle wheels on both sides and everything, but the body of the ship was closer to a galleon, except without any sails. Or smokestacks, for that matter.

It wasn't exactly fast, so the group had more than ample time to pack up and make their way over to the pier. Noticing the small gaggle waiting for them, the boat changed course and came to an agonizingly slow halt next to the wooden structure. As soon as it stopped for good, a pair of deckhands extended a long plank from the ship to allow boarding.

However, before Josh and co could do so, a rosy-cheeked middle-aged man walked down it and onto the pier. He had a bushy beard with streaks of white in it, and he wore an unadorned blue navy pea coat and a similarly plain tricorne hat. He looked jolly even at a glance, and when he opened his mouth…

"Arr, and a bucket o' chum! Jolly day to ye, me heartie landlubbers! What brin's ye t' ship o' barnacle-covered Cap'n Vieuxloup Demer?"

Oh. Oh no. Was he… was he doing pirate-speak?

I wasn't the only one who was confounded by this development, because Josh was also left speechless.

"Ah, l-let me!" Snowy exclaimed as she made her way to the front. "A-Ahoy, Sir C-Cap'n? We seek passage t' th' l-land o' Ninhursags."

Both the captain and the deckhands behind were startled for a moment, but then they all burst into laughter more or less in unison.

"Ahaha! Ayy, lil' wench! Me Istanu accent a wee bit strong may be fer yer maties, but understand ye just fine, I can! What say ye? To where ye wish to sail on me ship?"

"We'd like to go to…" Josh tried to speak up, only to immediately falter. "What was the place called again?"

"Digirmah, the administrative center of House Ninhursag," Judy supplied the answer.

"Yes, to Digirmah," Josh repeated after her and addressed the captain again. "We were told your ship makes a trip around the coast once a week, and that you could take us there."

"Aye, ye be told right, me hearties!" the man responded with an ear-to-ear grin. "Tharr be seven of ye, aye? Me ol' bucket o' bolts'll take ye most o' the way, but it'll cost ye some doubloons! Savvy?"

"How much?" Josh asked without batting an eye, and the boat captain's smile widened even further.

"Aye, I be thinkin' fourteen doubloons'll be just 'bout enough."

"Fourteen per passenger, huh?" the guy blurted out, and I could tell that he was already doing the math in his head, but he immediately stopped when the captain let out an incredulous scoff.

"Nay, for all ye seven buckos! A weathered sea dog I be, but a blaggard, I ain't!"

"Oh… Okay, then. We'll be in your care?"

The man let out another hearty laugh and gestured towards the plank.

"All hands on deck, me hearties, and make yerselves shipshape!"

"Ah… um…"

This time, it was Snowy who whispered, "He says we should come aboard and make ourselves comfortable."

"Yes, we will, thank you." In the meantime, Josh fished out the required coins from his pockets and handed them over to the captain while whispering, "I knew those villagers were ripping us off. I knew it."

And that's how the second leg of the group's journey began towards the capital of House Ninhursag. Good for them. As for me… Let's just say that my grievances with Fulgor's world-building choices were swelling by the day, and I was going to let him know every one of them one of these days.

I mean… pirate speak? Really?