Chapter 252 - The Napping Hill and the Waxing Moon IV
Claire stifled a yawn as she watched the meeting’s participants rise from their seats. It had taken seven full hours for the lunchtime gathering to reach its conclusion. The various parties shuffled out of the room one group at a time; the bolder among them loudly professing their own viewpoints as they retreated, perhaps in the hope that they would remain fresh in the princess’ mind. But it was pointless. There were too many like-minded idiots for the result to be anything beyond an unintelligible cacophony of noise.
The royal in question remained seated. Her eyes scanned the various notes, taking into account both the records penned by the scribe, and the various adages scribbled across the room’s three dozen chalkboards. She was not the only one to stay behind. A few familiar faces kept her company, as did a group of maidservants tasked with cleaning up the hall. The food trays and drinks had been taken away immediately upon their consumption, but there were scraps and spills all over regardless. Too many objects had been ejected from council members’ mouths when they heard the news in detail.
“That was a mess,” said Lia. She brought her chair over to the vampire squid’s desk and sat down beside her. “How are you holding up?”
“I have seen better days, but worse as well.” Arciel leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I wish only that there was more time in each week, so that I might be able to plan around our findings, and perhaps even find time to rest as well, if I were to truly dream of the impossible.”
“I told you.” Claire slowly raised her still groggy head as she vectored her chair across the room and joined them. The homunculus had vacated her body after the morning flight, but the migraine born of her curiosity still remained. “You needed the sleep more than I did.”
The princess nodded. “It was a fair judgement.” Her eyebags were hidden, thanks to a thick layer of makeup, but a closer look revealed that they were certainly not any smaller than they’d been in the morning. “Even without any of the recent developments, I have had little time. Three hours each day, often less.”
“What the heck!? Three hours is way too little!” Sylvia leapt off of Claire’s head as she voiced the complaint. For a moment, it looked like she would land on the desk and throw the documents into disarray, but she stopped just shy of touching down. The buoyant pet hovered in the air instead, just an inch or two above the closest file.
“It cannot be helped. There is far too much work for me to indulge in a luxury as expensive as sleep.”
“This is why you delegate,” said Claire.
“And to whom would I delegate my tasks?” asked the squid, with a bitter glare. “I have already put all that I could to work, but there is a limit. Half our allies are outlaws, and the rest are hardly any more reliable. There are few that are qualified to make the decisions, and even fewer that I would offer my trust. You are one of the rare individuals that I would be willing to burden, but I am well aware that you would sooner plunge a dagger through my chest than fuss over a single page of administrative paperwork.”
The lyrkress averted her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Perhaps you would be more responsible if you did.”
“Oh yeah! Speaking of being completely irresponsible…” Sylvia swayed her hips from side to side as she played around with her front paws. This, of course, earned her a trio of looks, to which she responded with a nervous smile. “Uhmmm… errr… actually, you know what? Nevermind. It’s okay.”
“Stop stalling and say it,” said the moose, as she pinched her cheeks.
“I would also prefer to hear it now rather than later,” added the squid.
“Oh no,” groaned the cat. “Please don’t tell me this is about the people you helped.”
“It kiiiinda is.” She laughed awkwardly as she slowly backed up and ducked half her face under the table. “So uhmmmmm… I kinda forgot to let them go. I’m pretty sure they’re still stuck in the bubble I left on the nightstand. And I mean I know it’s my fault for forgetting, but I told Claire to remind me ‘cause I knew I would forget so it’s kinda not just my fault!”
Arciel pressed her fan against her temple and closed her eyes. She sat with her back straight at first, but its angle began to change as she sank deeper and deeper into the chair. “Why is it that this is the first I am hearing of this? We cannot claim to be just if we are to do something as absurd as capturing civilians.”
“This is why she isn’t allowed to help.”
“Sorry,” said Lia. “I didn’t think it’d mean this much trouble.”
“Oh, come on! It was an accident, I swear!” squeaked the fox. “A-and plus, it’s not just civilians locked up in there! There’s some enemies too! One of them even looks kinda important! He keeps praying and stuff and even tried pulling something out of a subspace. It didn’t actually work ‘cause he’s already in mine, but that’s besides the point.” She spoke at twice her usual speed, no doubt in part thanks to the eyes resting on her frame. “Anyway, it’s ok! I can just uhmmm… teleport them outside the city or something.”
“We cannot simply deposit the civilians and pretend that we did no wrong,” said Arciel.
“Uhhh… then what are we supposed to do?” asked the fox. “Just keep holding onto them and hope no one realises they’re missing?”
“Someone will definitely notice,” said Claire. “You’ll need to make everyone forget they existed to begin with.”
“Mmmnnn… that’s kinda tough, but okay! I think I can pull it off.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Hold on!” shouted Lia. “We can’t just make people disappear because we messed up! Let’s just own up to our mistakes, okay?”
“I am of the same mind.” said Arciel, as she scribbled a few orders onto a sheet of paper. “How many of them are there?”
“Uhhh one sec.” Sylvia paused for a moment to stare at her paws and wiggle each toe in turn. “I think twenty?”
“That is not an unrecoverable number.” The squid filled in a few extra blanks and read over the letter once more before sealing it shut with a waxen stamp and beckoning a maid to her side.
“What is it, Your Highness?” asked the human.
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“Take this to the treasury and give it to Matthias.”
“As you wish.”
The squid watched the maid leave the room before turning her eyes back on her companions. “As convenient as it would be to simply remove our errors, I do believe it would be best to incentivise their silence,” said the squid, with a sigh. “When the maid arrives, she will do so with adequate compensation for the innocents involved. We will deposit them outside the city only after awarding them generously for their troubles.”
“Why would we do that?” said Claire, with a tilt of the head. “It’s a waste of resources.”
“To satisfy my moral compass. I would not be able to sleep soundly with the alternative under my pillow.”
“You barely sleep anyway,” said Claire.
“All the more reason for the few hours I have to be as comfortable as possible.”
“You didn’t hesitate to kill the arviads. I don’t see how this is any different.”
“T-that was because they slighted my honour and then attempted to kill us.”
“That still weighs pretty heavily on my conscience. I wouldn’t have minded if they were warriors, but they weren’t,” said Lia, with an awkward smile. “Oh, and that reminds me. You said that there was an important-looking soldier mixed in with the crowd, right? We should probably interrogate him.”
“Oh yeah! One sec, I’ll grab all the military-looking guys.”
After climbing back up onto the desk, Sylvia spread her paws wide and opened a portal into the lyrkress’ bedroom. She stuck just her front half through it, and with some struggling, plunged her fuzzy mits into the bubble sitting atop the nightstand. Four of the captives were extracted from within and thrown into the space behind her. They were still restrained, of course, with each sound asleep in their own personal bubble. But with the nightmare fox’s magic removed, they were fairly quick to wake. In less than a minute, two scyphs, an elf, and a human were all banging against the walls of their prisons. Skills and spells went off, one after another, but the shields remained unblemished.
“There! Done!”
The fox spun around, just in time to see the fan slip from between the squid’s fingers.
“Ummm… Ciel?” Sylvia waved her tail as she floated in front of the vampire, but she failed to enter her eyes.
Arciel’s gaze was focused on the human. He was dressed in a fancy suit of armour and had an expensive-looking sword strapped to his waist. Most notable of all, however, was not his equipment, but his head. The man was as bald as the seven most hairless Cadrians Claire had ever seen combined. His waxed, polished skull shone even within the otherwise dim conference hall, radiating pure white light as would a miniature sun.
Claire had to narrow her eyes to see past the glimmering bulb. With some difficulty, she was able to make out a haggard-looking face drawn with a set of soft, almost feminine features.
“Cieeeelll? Heeeeeelloooo?” Sylvia floated in front of the squid and waved a paw, but there was no response.
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Claire.
“Dunno,” said the fox. “Love at first sight, maybe?”
“Do not be so absurd.” The squid retrieved her fan as she spoke again. “It is his identity that has me baffled.”
“Were neither of you paying any attention at all during any of the mission briefings?” asked Natalya, with a hand pressed against her face.
“Nope!” said the fox.
“Why would I? They never get to the point,” said the lyrkress.
“Why did I even ask?” muttered the cat.
“There is no argument to be made for their methodology, but neither can we argue with the results.” Ciel retrieved her fan before turning her gaze on the fox, her eyes glimmering. “Sylvia, I would like to extend my honest gratitude. You have saved us an inordinate amount of risk and effort.”
“H-huh? I have?”
“The individual that you have captured here,” she pointed at the lightbulb, “is Lord Tallumroc. Perhaps if you were to read through the material provided, you would discover that he is one of the leech’s advisors, as well as one of her blades.”
“Ohhhh… wait uhmmm… oops. He’s the paladin, isn’t he? I guess that explains why he wouldn’t stop praying ‘n stuff.”
“Do not be deceived by his appearances. He is a rogue.”
“A rogue?” Sylvia tilted her head. “He’s too shiny to be a rogue.”
“He’d stand out like a sore thumb, even by firelight,” agreed the lyrkress.
The human screamed something or other through his bubble, but his voice was muted, and Claire couldn’t be bothered to read his lips.
“It is said that the function of his head changes with the time of day. At night, it absorbs light instead of radiating it.”
The man had something to say about this too. He screamed his heart out as he pounded against the bubble with even more force than before, but Claire silenced him with a paralyzing glare. It was meant to be a weak paralysis, more to harass the man than cause any harm, but perhaps because it was her first time using the skill post investment, or perhaps because of the constant, aching pain pulsing through her head, he was frozen solid, bubble, insides, and all.
“Oops.”
“Claire…” Arciel slowly shook her head. “I must ask that you do not assault the captives.”
“I wasn’t planning to.” She dropped the dagger hidden behind her back and returned him to his lizard-like form before he hit the ground.
“Wait, you weren’t?” asked a very confused cat.
Claire tilted her head. “Why would I?”
“I figured that we needed the intel,” said the cat. “And that you’d probably butcher them for experience once we were done.”
“It’s Cadrian policy not to touch prisoners of war. Besides,” the lyrkress grabbed the orange furball off the table and presented her to the feline, “we don’t need to go through the effort of interrogating them if Sylvia can just read their minds.”
“Right…” the cat winced. “I keep forgetting she does that.”
“Only when I’m bored,” said Sylvia. “And it’s not really mind-reading. I can just see what they see in their heads.”
“What about all the times you talked for me?”
“Oh uhmmmm… that’s different! That only works ‘cause the stuff at the front of your mind is really strong. I know it sounds the same, but it’s not! Mind-reading is a lot more thorough and stuff.”
“Stop making excuses and just do it.” The lyrkress tugged on the fox’s cheeks.
“Ughhhh fine.”
Sylvia paddled her way through the air and pushed a projection into each of the bubbles. The people inside tried escaping her, but to no avail. Her phantom copies grabbed each by the head in turn before diving straight into their minds.
“Mmmmn… Iunno if there’s anything really worth mentioning. All the recent stuff is like drunk parties and elephant guys and stuff.”
Arciel frowned. “Surely that cannot be all.”
“Mmmmnnn... The guy on the right has some maps in his head, but ours are better. And uhmmm… I think that’s it? I can probably try looking a little bit more if you give me something specific, but I didn’t see anything else when I was just glancing around.”
“Perhaps once we compensate the innocents,” said Arciel, as she looked towards the door. The maid was already making her way back through, a hefty leather bag in hand. “Are you able to sustain this prison indefinitely?”
“Mmmmnnn, I think so, but they’ll probably die if we leave them in there for too long, since they gotta eat and stuff.”
“Then I shall endeavour to speak with them by midnight,” she said, as she scribbled a note on one of the boards. “Now, might you be so kind as to transport us outside the city, so that we may release our guests? The western exit will do.”
“Mmk!” Sylvia began clapping her paws together, in a regular, rhythmic beat. “One magical foxhole, coming right up!”