Chapter Two Hundred and Eighteen - Inquiring Mind Wants to Know

Once the last of the Colourless was down and fading into little motes of--was it mana?--we took a moment to look around us and make sure that we were safe.

Well, I did that. Emmanuel stretched his shoulder and started trotting towards the other Colourless in the room.

“Hey!” I said out loud. Then, when he didn’t even slow down, I called out, a bit louder. “Emmanuel, what are you doing?”

The cervid stopped and half-turned. He gestured to the other Colourless, as if it was entirely obvious. “I’m going to fight those?” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because... they’re monsters?” He tried. I think he noticed how that didn’t work very well on me. “It would be irresponsible for a knight like myself to allow such fair maidens to come to danger because I left some beast alive when I could so easily dispatch it.”

I put my hands on my hips, and noticed that Amaryllis looked just as unimpressed as I felt. “Mister Emmanuel,” I began.

“Emmanuel Aldelain Von Chadsbourne.”

“Yes,” I said. “We might be fair, and we might all be maidens, but that doesn’t mean we’re defenceless.”

“Well, yes, I suppose,” he said. “How about we split them, then? I’ll take the largest and strongest, and you ladies fight the smallest and weakest. Sirs Howard and... the sylph can take care of some of the others while I’m otherwise preoccupied.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No?”

“No,” I said.

“I see... the experience--”

I shook my head even harder. “No, Emmanuel, it’s not about the experience. It’s about doing the right thing.” I gestured to the Colourless. The tentacled creatures were ambling about, moving with slow, gentle motions around the room. Sometimes they’d pick up a small rock or pebble, inspect it, then lower it back down. There were dozens of little piles dotting the room. I’d failed to notice those earlier.

“The right thing?” Emmanuel asked. “Putting down monsters is hardly the wrong thing.”

“It is when those monsters aren’t bad,” I said. “Look, those Colourless aren’t hurting anyone and... oh, nevermind.”

I was still a bit grumpy, and I was maybe taking it out on Emmanuel. He might have been a bit of a pain in the butt, but it wasn’t fair to take out my own anger on him. I had to chill out.

Awen came up next to me and pulled me into a quick hug. That helped a bunch.

“Just... don’t fight people when you don’t need to,” I said.

Emmanuel hesitated, then sheathed his sword. “If the lady wishes.”

“You still haven’t learned our names, have you?” Amaryllis asked.

“I am reluctant to admit it, but I am somewhat poor at retaining names. But worry not, fair harpy, I will forever remember the beauty of your eyes, and yes, the ferocity of your glare.”

I held back a giggle. Amaryllis had a look that I wouldn’t describe as merely a glare. If I was Emmanuel, I would be worried. But then, if I was Emmanuel, Amaryllis probably wouldn’t have to glare as much.

“Howard, you know the way into the castle?” I asked to get us back on track.

Howard agreed to lead us in. We followed, of course, eyes on a swivel, searching for trouble. Howard didn’t seem concerned though.

I don’t know what I expected the interior to look like, but it wasn’t what I found.

Neat corridors, with straight-cut walls and holes where windows would be. Here and there, rocks were stacked up one atop the other, carefully balanced and held up by seemingly nothing but their own weight.

They were where I might have expected potted plants or statues to be in a proper mansion.

It only took a bit of walking around for Howard to bring us to a big room. A dining room? Carved arches lead way, way up to a high ceiling. Hanging down on a chain was a strangely shaped rock, covered in glowing mushrooms and trailing long streams of luminous moss. A chandelier, maybe?

In the centre was a table, curved around like a big crescent moon, with cups before all six of the chairs on the outside arc.

“This is it,” Howard said.

He reached the table, and picked something off the surface. A bell? He rang it, but it didn’t make any noise.

“Don’t sit yet,” Howard said. “And keep calm. He isn’t hostile.”

The ‘he’ in question slithered into the room a moment later. A pair of heavy double doors at the end of the room, each one probably heavier than our entire group, slid open and from the darkness beyond came a strange creature, with a form that was hard to explain.

No matter how hard I stared, my eyes seemed to peel off and away from his form. He was like the Colourless, I figured, though he was much larger.

Unlike the Colourless, whose heads looked a bit like a hat, his was covered in a real but rather small bowler hat, right above all of his many, many eyes. “Greetings, guests. Please, sit, if you would. Let us talk!”

I stepped forward, in front of all of my friends. “Hi! I’m Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch, and these are my friends. Maybe we can be friends too?”

Jim, The Unknowable

Dream: To know.

Desired Quality: Someone who will answer.

That was pretty simple. I could work with that!

“Greetings, Broccoli. I am... Jim!” Jim put a bit of a pause before his name, almost as if there should have been something a little more impressive there. That was a bit silly though, Jim was a perfectly pretty name.

I grinned at my friends and found mixed reactions. Awen and Amaryllis seemed pretty happy, Bastion was guarded. Emmanuel looked downright confused and Howard... moved past me to take a seat on one end of the table.

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“I hope you don’t mind, the tea is just black.”

I blinked and noticed steam from the cup.

“I don’t,” I said as I pulled up one of the seats in the centre of the table and sat down right across from Jim. “So, it might be a little impolite, but I want to know, what’s it like being a dungeon... creature?”

“It is quite enjoyable,” Jim said. “I get good conversation, and a nice place to reside. Though lately there’s been some trouble. Weeds, you see.”

“I think I do,” I said.

“Wonderful. So, Broccoli, what is the thing you feel most guilty about to this day?” Jim tilted the upper half of his body to the side, and his colourless surface changed in hue and tint in a wave that almost read as ‘curious’ to me.

I looked away when my head started to hurt a bit.

“Um, something I feel guilty about?” I thought about it really hard. What was something I still felt guilty about? A bit embarrassing, but not that bad. Howard had said it could be awkward to answer Jim’s questions, but we had to be honest. “When I was in sixth grade, a girl called Flora offered people some gum, and I accidentally took two pieces instead of just one. I should have given one back, but I chewed on it instead. We couldn’t really afford gum and candies at home. But that’s not a good excuse for stealing.”

“Really, Broccoli?” Amaryllis asked.

“What?”

“That’s what you feel guilty about?”

I shrugged. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but that was something I did that was wrong, and I knew it was wrong when I did it, and yet I didn’t fix it.”

Awen laughed and patted my head.

I spun to her and pouted. When did Awen become so rude?

“Truth,” Jim said. “A wonderful truth! Do you have more questions, Broccoli Bunch?”

I nodded. “So many! But if you need to ask more, that’s okay too. Will you ask one to each of us?”

“Indeed. Perhaps even more than one. Not all questions are weighted equally,” Jim said. He winked and tipped his bowler hat. Or... many of his eyes on one side closed at once, and a tentacle tapped the brim of his hat. I think it was a wink and tip though.

“That makes sense,” I said.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Sir Sylph, you seem a respectable gentlebeing. Tell me, do you love your country? Your king and queen?”

Bastion didn’t hesitate. “I do.”

“How wonderful. Oh, everyone, don’t be shy with the tea. It isn’t poisoned. By the way, Sir Paladin, would you betray your nation for your companions?”

Bastion was silent for a long time. “I...” he began, then paused again.

I didn’t want to pressure him, so I stayed quiet and fiddled with the tea cup before me. It was made of delicately shaped rock, and was nice and warm.

Black tea, makes the drinker more alert and anxious, and has a mild bone-fortifying effect. Brewed plainly.

Bastion swallowed. “I would,” he said.

Oh no. I knew how important Bastion took his whole paladin thing, and if he was willing to abandon that for his companions... for us... well, I’d have to do something nice for him. He still seemed conflicted.

My heart felt strangely heavy. It was a really nice gesture.

“That’s nice,” Jim replied. “Little human miss?”

Awen stared back, wide-eyed and with her cup hovering just before her mouth. “Yes?”

“Are you enjoying the tea?”

Awen looked down, then back up. She took a small sip. “Um... honestly? It’s good tea. I had worse tea at nice parties and balls. But it’s not the best tea I’ve ever had. So... it’s enjoyable, but it could taste a little better? Maybe some honey?”

“It hurts my many hearts to hear that, but the truth can be unkind,” Jim said. “And no, I don’t have honey. I’ll make note of it, though!”

I held back a laugh. Was Jim trying to lighten things up? After asking such a serious question, he came in with one that was easy to answer? It was nice of him.

“Miss Harpy,” Jim began.

“Yes?” Amaryllis replied.

“Is there anyone you love?”

“Romantically? No,” Amaryllis said.

Jim hummed. “A partial answer, but truthful.” A tentacle wrapped around a cup and he pitched the cup itself back down a mouth that only appeared when he moved some tentacles aside. “What about non-romantic love?”

I turned towards Amaryllis, then stared as her feathers puffed out, almost as if she was angry, but her face was the wrong sort of red for that. “I love my sisters, of course. They’re both quite annoying, and in entirely unique ways, but I love them all the same. My parents too, though... they are distant.”

“I see, I see,” Jim said encouragingly.

“And... I suppose I love my friends as well,” Amaryllis said. “E-entirely in a platonic way, of course.”

I squealed and crashed into her from the side.

“No! No! I knew this would happen! Get off me, or I swear on the World I’ll zap you.”

“But you love me!”

“I’d love it if you weren’t such an idiot, more like!”

I shook my head, coincidentally rubbing up against her floofed feathers. “Nope! You had to say the truth. Your feathers even fluffed.”

“Because I knew you’d ram into me like some drunkard!”

Jim chuckled. “How nice. How about you, Sir Cervid, any friends that are that close?”

“No, no, I’m afraid not,” Emmanuel admitted. “I may have had some close friends once, but that was a long time ago.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” Jim said. “Why did you kill them?”

***