Mornings in Crater were just as dark as the middle of night. Not like noon was any better. There was no doubt about the city being in Evernight, the dark hemisphere. Was it a depressing place? It might have been for people who knew Earth. How did the people of Lursail cope with this? They were born to this strange planet which only ever showed one of its sides to its two suns, so they didn’t even find it strange. What about the third sun, one might have asked. While there was indeed another one, it was at a distance that made it insufficient to provide a decent amount of light, while still being close enough not to warrant calling it just another star. It was also the sun people used to divide their lives into days, so by no means was it of no importance to them.
The exact same third sun has marked the beginning of my second day in the era I suddenly dropped into. What it brought with it was a lonely morning for my hungover self, except I didn’t have a hangover, which was a nice pro of being undead. The lonely part wasn’t exactly correct either, as it seemed like I have managed to acquire a body pillow to keep me company.
Said body pillow must have had a hard time surviving the night with my drunk self, which was well illustrated by its shredded cover. Luckily, it seemed like the damage was mostly limited to the cover, meaning that I could easily restore the pillow to perfect condition. I really needed to wash myself up, and decided to use that opportunity to wash the pillow too. Undead did not have a need for food, but this morning I actually had a use for the breakfast the inn served, saving my portion from being wasted. After having that behind my back, I would meet up with the royals in one of the nearby parks.
***
Luckily I wasn’t the last one to arrive at the park. Actually I scored myself a second place out of the four of us, Kathleen being the only one to arrive sooner.
“Mornin’, Your Highness! How come you aren’t with Alan?” I only met them the day before, but it was already strange seeing one without the other accompanying them.
“Good morning, Lady Hilde. That useless idiot went to find brother, as he did not come home last night. He might have gone after the girls Mae—I mean His Highness Lux was with after taking you to the inn. By the way, was the inn to your liking, Lady Hilde?”
“That inn was straight luxurious. Maybe even our old family estate would not have been able to compete with it, much less the inns of my time. I didn’t even dare checking the room prices. I’m glad Keith was paying for it. Talking about him, didn’t Your Highness say yesterday that he wasn’t interested in girls? Why would he go after those two then?”
“Brother is definitely interested in girls. What he isn’t interested in is finding himself brides. Mother and great-grandmother have stopped bothering him about it after I got engaged to Alan, but Lady Eva and the head maid practically harass us to have children as soon as possible.”
“He definitely mentioned something about your mother and the grandchildren matter. Who is this Lady Eva though, Your Highness?”
“She’s the previous queen. She is still in charge of most matters, even after mother has officially taken the throne. But forget that for a moment, Lady Hilde. You call both Alan and brother by name, do you not? Why am I getting the ‘Your Highness’ treatment?” Suddenly she dove in near and grabbed my shoulder. “You should call me Ka–” Did I see her nose twitch? “–sister. Yes, let’s do that. Let’s call each other ‘sister’ from now on.” Her smile told me I have messed up. The cat was out of the bag. Or was that the Ilehoria?
“A…as you wish, sister.” I made my bed, so I had to lie in it.
“Should we find Alan and tell him to stop looking for brother?”
“That might be a good id–Nevermind, he is here.”
Alan just appeared at one of the corners, from the same street I popped out from a few minutes ago. Did he give up on the search already, and decided to meet up with us instead?
“I’m back, Kath! Morning, Lady Hilde!” Why did he look like he might burst out laughing any moment?
“How useless. Couldn’t you even find brother?”
“Is your opinion of me really this low? I actually found him. He went back to the castle to change.”
“I wouldn’t have minded if he came in what he was wearing yesterday. Those uniforms are fine to wear multiple days in a row.”
“Yeah, normally. Not this time. His uniform was in a terrible state. It’s like he was ambushed by a pack of sewer rats.” I had to turn away from the princess’ stare.
“Let’s just all go back to the castle then. It’s faster than waiting for brother to get here.” That was a long sigh there, princess. “Come on, Alan, sister, we have to get to the castle before brother leaves.”
“Why did Kath call you ‘sister’, Lady Hilde?”
“Just ignore it.” Explaining it would have been a pain. “Sister, will I be able to enter the castle? Yesterday Keith said that he could not bring an undead like me in.”
“I bet brother just did not want Lady Eva or the head maid seeing him bringing a girl to the castle. I wouldn’t be surprised if they locked you in his room for the night if he brought you. It should be fine as long as you are with me, not him.” I felt less and less like going to the castle was a good idea.
“That might make her safe, but the same doesn’t apply to me. I shudder from even thinking about what the head maid could do.” Just who was this head maid?
***
“Has brother left?” That might have been short, but it scared the guard all the same. The princess seemed to be quite skilled when it came to sneaking up on others, proven by how the guard didn’t notice her. I couldn’t have done that even if they were slacking off.
“P-princess? N-no, the prince just arrived a few minutes ago. What happened to his clothes? Another fight with the sewer rats?” Sounded like that actually happened in the past. I thought Alan just meant that as a joke.
“Yeah, something like that. This girl here is with me, so can you tell the others to let her in if they see her later? She’s pretty easy to recognize.”
“That’s definitely a unique look. I’ll be sure to inform the other shifts.” With that we were in the castle grounds. I was, however, completely unprepared for what welcomed me inside.
“Why did you only pour tea for little Alicia and yourself, Sylvie?” whined a long-eared girl at a black-haired short woman in maid clothes.
“Shut up, hag! You are perfectly capable of pouring yourself a cup of tea, aren’t you?” shouted the maid back.
“Who are you calling a hag, you crypt escapee? You are almost as old as I am!” That elf must have been pretty young if the maid wasn’t much younger than her.
“I’m still over half a millennia younger, hag.” Or her definition of not much must have been pretty odd. The maid looked to be around 30, or 40 at most, and she was definitely some kind of human, most probably a Fushane. The elf was an Arid, a desert elf, with a possible lifespan of multiple millennia. There was a huge difference between being 30 or over 500 years old.
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“Calm down, you two,” the old human lady the elf called Alicia whispered. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was over a century old. “It might be rude for me to point this out as the youngest one here, but the two of you tend to behave like a pair of rude children.”
“WAIT, SHE’S THE YOUNGEST OF THEM?!” I couldn’t help but interject. That made all three of them look at me. A moment later tha maid dashed at me.
“Eva, back me up!” she shouted, drawing a pair of daggers from her thighs. I… knew those daggers.
“Hey, where did you get those from?” I couldn’t help but ask while working hard intercepting the maid’s incoming slashes using only my bare hands. Somehow I managed to catch both her wrists, but then a huge hammer sent me flying through the corridor. What managed to stop me was one of the pillars.
“Nice strike, Eva,” the maid cheered. “She was strong enough to stop my slashes, so it could have been bothersome to stay that close to her.”
“Is she even stronger than you? Damn, why must all undead be so overpowered?”
“What are you doing, Lady Eva, head maid? Is this how you welcome guests?” questioned the princess. I could also see Alan running towards me. With his help I managed to get back on my feet.
“Kathleen, dear, come pour me another cup of tea.” Alicia didn’t seem bothered by the events at all. “Let those three play for a bit.”
“But great grandmother!”
“No buts. Lady Eva and Master Sylvie can’t be easily stopped once they become this fired up, and your new companion doesn’t look like she’ll break that easily.”
“I’m glad you have such high expectations of me, but it’s pretty unfair not having a weapon to fight back with. Not to mention being matched up against this set of artifacts.”
“I always like an opponent who can appreciate my Panther’s Bites.”
“Yours? One of those is mine. The other should be sealed together with my sister. Now that I have a closer look at it, that hammer’s handle looks familiar too. It’s Formless, isn’t it?”
“So it was really you… No wonder you reminded me of Colette.” Did I know this Arid from before the Sealing too? How did an Arid even become a queen of the Alnamir’s new nation?
“Ah, you figured it out too?” came Keith’s voice. “Lady Hanna, could you take them down from their high horse, please?” With that, he just casually joined the tea party.
“Hanna? Wasn’t sister called Hilde?” The tea party continued with Keith almost suffocating on his first sip of the drink.
“Since when are you calling her ‘sister’?”
“Since this morning. You know how good my sense of smell is, right?”
“What exactly did I miss? Is it related to how your uniform got ripped?” joined Alan too. Why couldn’t they stop talking about b(r)othersome topics?
***
“I give up! I give up!” A scythe’s blade at her throat was enough to take Eva’s will to fight away. Said scythe was the same Formless she used to send my flying at the start of the fight. It was a long white rod with a light blue crystal at the tip, that could manifest different weapons using the user’s mana. Eva used it as an earth hammer, while my usual pick was an earth battleax, but this time I went for an ice scythe instead.
I looked at Sylvie, who chose to fight to the end instead of giving up. “I get it already. We lost. Can someone just get me back on the floor?” She was pinned to one of the pillars by the pair of Panther’s Bite, with a chunk of ice around each preventing her from escaping by cutting her own hands with the daggers.
“Anyone else looking for a fight?” I asked the attendees of the tea party, whose number increased by another four members since I started fighting back. There was a brown-haired bear child - probably Medved - clinging to Alan, a woman who looked like a Tuhina ice fairy, and two Alnamirs sitting around Alicia. If it wasn’t for her eyes, I would have thought one of them was a man, but both of them had green eyes marking them as women.
As for their answer, everyone shook their heads. “Hoped so. Now then, is anyone willing to explain to me why the yellow Bite isn’t sealed?” The ancient duo looked away. “Why do I have the feeling that I don’t actually want to hear the reason?”
The maid was the one to answer: “Wouldn’t it be better not to hear things you don’t wa–?” I felt like my elbow struck something yet again, but this time it was accompanied by a cracking sound. I looked at the elf.
“I… might have messed up when turning Sylvie into a lich.”
“You probably still need your lungs, so I’ll let you pick. Legs or arms?” I released Formless’ scythe transformation and propped it next to Sylvie.
“P-please spare me. Your sister is actually pretty harmless now. If she wasn’t, we would have been wiped out ages ago.” The newcomers tilted their heads. Kathleen and Alan have already heard who I was from Alicia and Keith.
“Harmless? Are we talking about the same person?”
“Knowing the legends I can see why you would be hard pressed to believe this, but Lady Colette actually saved our hides many times,” chimed Alicia in. “I have lost my children to a dragon they accidentally angered, which she then stopped from wiping the city out.”
“Granny, are you saying the hero who avenged my parents was the Collateral Queen?” the flat Alnamir asked.
“Yes, it was the very Lady Colette from the myths.”
“Who is the one sealed in the central tower then? I mean that busty woman with the Wingless-like blonde hair.”
“I wanna know too.” This was the first time I have heard the Tuhina woman speak. “I have seen her multiple times too, and I just assumed her to be the actual Collateral Queen.”
“That’s her, no mistake there,” smirked Eva. I’m the one managing who and when can enter the tower, so making it look like she’s always there is childsplay.”
“Basically you only let us in if she’s there, right?” Most sane people would have probably made the same assumption as the better-endowed Alnamir of the two around Alicia did. However, it was a waste of time to think sanely when one was dealing with Eva.
“Yes, but no. It’s pretty much the opposite, as I just ask her to go back there every time one of you wants to go near the Seal. Other than those times, she rarely ever goes near the tower.”
“So where is she right now?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Her room is right next to Lady Eva’s one.” Eva looked like she wanted to say something, but Alicia beat her to it.
“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???” came the synchronized shout of everyone other than the three old ladies and the Medved child. Yes, that included me too.
“Keep friends close, enemies closer, and people who can remove these daggers from my hand close enough to be considered helpful.”
“I thought you could not possibly become any more annoying, but I was wrong.” I grabbed Formless then held it out towards Eva. “Could you use that hammer trick of yours to make her shut up?”
“Why would I hurt her?”
“Legs it is then.”
“Y-yes, Lady Hanna! I’ll definitely make her shut up.” She grabbed Formless from my hands in a panic. “Sorry, Sylvie. I don’t want to lose my legs.”
“I hope you lose your ears, Eva.” Eva swung the now-hammer Formless, solving one of my problems, although only temporarily. The maid’s shattered skeleton would restore itself after some time, followed by her body reappearing on it, just like it was the case with me.
“Can you take me to this room next to yours then?”
“I can, but Colette isn’t in right now actually. One of the skeletons under her supervision caused some problem at the Academy, so she’s investigating that matter right now.”
“Are you telling me it’s my fault she isn’t here?”
“I said nothing like that.”
“Sure you did, Lady Eva.” I had to thank Keith later for taking my side. “The skeleton that caused said problem was Lady Hanna.” I had to punish Keith later for selling me out.
“Back on topic, when will she be back?”
“Probably in three or four hours.”
“Can someone lock this Seal-breaking idiot in her room until that?”
“You can’t just give commands to the royal fa–”
“Go to your room, Eva.” The flat Alnamir seemed to agree with my idea at least.
“You forgot the magic word. Saying ‘please’ can do wonders, you know.”
“By my authority as the ruling Queen of Siegel, I order you to stay in your room until I tell you otherwise. Were there enough magic words in that for you?” I didn’t expect her to be the current Queen. The other Alnamir looked a lot more similar to princess Kathleen. “Lady Hanna, would you mind accompanying me while your sister is away? I have so much to ask from a warrior of legends like you.”
“It would be an honor, Your Highness.”
“Bella, Maya, Kathleen, you join us too. Alan, Keith, please go and play with Sara.”
“Lady Eva, could you take me with you?” Alicia was the only one who did not get any orders, but it seemed like she didn’t actually need any.
“Sure, little Alicia” she helped the old lady up from the chair. “Want to play cards?”
“No, I’ll just make sure you do nothing irresponsible like sneaking out of the window.” I could totally see that happen. “Master Sylvie will probably come looking for you when she recovers, and leaving the two of you on your own always comes back to bite me.” She must have had it difficult with seniors like the head maid and the previous queen. Even I was easier to deal with than them.