The adventurers and their mechanical companions had left behind King’s quarters accompanied by an awkward silence after Emilia had forced Anastacia to at least take along the simulacrum core she had discarded over nothing more than her own petty reasons.
Guided by the newly outfitted knight of stone, they passed what felt like at least a hundred rooms and a few kilometers of straight hallway. Every now and then, they came to a fork in the road that split the path into two identical corridors that ended in darkness and nothing that hinted that they would lead anywhere other than more of the same, that is, Infinite lengths of grey stone walls, sparsely lit floor and a ceiling that was just a bit too close for comfort and was at all times only a couple of centimeters away from King’s spear’s tip.
Though the dusty scent of ancient times was ever-present in these tunnels, the air was fairly cool and moved along the corridors in pulses that matched the ceaseless distant thumping that got neither louder nor quieter as they traveled onwards. So, by the looks of things, fresh air wasn’t going to be an added worry to them.
While Anastacia was still quite happy just for getting to explore a machine fortress, Emilia kept finding things that made the experience worse for her. Not only did she not enjoy the mechanical background noise that never stopped even for a moment, she had noticed that none of their steps had an echo to them. Even the heavy grating sounds of King’s stone feet hitting the floor didn’t bounce back from the distance and somehow it was extremely uncomfortable for the priestess.
On top of that, the feeling of everything just being somehow worse she had gotten by touching the tainted crystal in the elevator was returning, and a likely culprit for such minor annoyances getting to her. Though it was nowhere near as strong or immediate as back then, it was definitely there and slowly grew as they kept walking. It made the darkness down the hallway darker, the light blue color of the patterns on the simulacra and the walls duller, and every now and then, she had to keep nibbling on a piece of jerky to make sure she could still taste things.
As far as she could tell, it was her surroundings that caused it and she herself hadn’t caught anything from the crystal, or at least she would have liked to think that she would have noticed if that was the case. Instead, her preferred theory was that her lack of connection to Sylvia made her resistance to such influence weaker than Anastacia’s, who had lived her life godless and appeared to be wholly ignorant of the problem.
“I wonder what the aureun could have gotten done if they didn’t love tunneling so much?” Anastacia suddenly said, breaking the silence after a couple of hours. “It probably wouldn’t have been good for everyone else, but exactly how much time and effort did they put into digging these places? Would we even have mountains if they didn’t need to put all the loose stone and dirt somewhere?”
“That’s certainly a theory, and not one I can prove of disprove on my own.” Emilia chuckled and tried to get her mind off the slowly growing corruption that bothered her. “As far as creation of mountains and the world as a whole goes, we know precious little – and quite a bit of it is probably just made up.”
The necromancer slid her fingers across the stone wall to her left as she walked, simply because she enjoyed the effect it had on the light patterns. “Oh? What do we know then?” She asked, happy to start a conversation to kill time.
The necromancers of Mournvalley were never overly concerned about such things, so Anastacia knew less of the matter than an average person.
“Well… Bear in mind that this is what I’ve gathered and not the absolute truth, also there’s more to every part of this, and I’ve only spoken with a few servants of a couple of gods. The world was first created by beings sometimes referred to as gods, but they weren’t really at all the same as My Lady and other beings commonly thought as deities. No one knows when, how or even why these beings decided to create this world and the first few creatures on it, but they certainly did. The first creatures were all immensely powerful by our standards, I think the first muses count among them, as does the thing that’s supposedly sealed in the chasm we saw in Merfall some time ago. From these creatures, the beings lifted up the first major gods, as we know them – for example, the one that created the sun at a later date. The problem with that was that the selection process was more than a bit slanted towards certain aspects most people would consider ‘good’ and well, what was left in the world were the ones that didn’t qualify.” Emilia explained as briefly as one could for a matter of such magnitude. She left out some of the details she suspected were true, but either weren’t important enough or not from a source she could entirely trust. “As you might guess, if you take every well-meaning and decent creature that’s not keen on destruction out of the world into some other plane, the world you’re left with isn’t going to be a good place. That marked the beginning of what people call the ‘primordial night’. The primordial night doesn’t have anything to do with the night we have these days, nor was it really dark as we understand dark; it was more like the more you had to do with the aspects of those that were left here, the better you were suited to survive. To thrive, you needed to be evil.”
“Ah, so there were necromancers all over the place then.” Anastacia commented.
“No, and I can’t believe I keep having to tell you this, but there’s nothing inherently evil about necromancy; As far as I know, necromancers weren’t a thing back then.” The priestess sighed before continuing her recount of the events from the early ages of the world. “So, after being judged unfit for godhood, the powerful creatures left down on earth were somewhat understandably upset, and the ones that felt like they deserved better, became obsessed with their hatred for the newly made gods. It was around this time, the original creators fell dormant and left behind what power the gods needed to properly finish their work. No one knows why or how long they plan on sleeping, but it’s questionable if you even want to be there when they wake up, considering how mediocre job their children have done since then.
“Much of the power left behind was used by a select few gods to create the first mortal races, which ones and in which order is a complete tossup and the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask and how racist they are. Typically you hear that the non-beastfolk races were the first ones to be created, along with animals, plants and everything in between, and the beastfolk were only made after the gods that created animals realized their mistake and sort of improved on their old designs. Now, personally I think that seems like something someone added in to make the beastfolk seem somehow lesser, since that’s very obviously not the case. It’s important to note that the aureun seem to defy this whole thing and were presumably already well on their way into building an empire when the rest were created.”
Anastacia interrupted the story again by lifting her arm up and stopping. “Is it just me, or did they just dump a whole lot of mortals into a living nightmare populated mostly by things that were, by definition, evil?” She asked.
“And it went about as well as you’d expect.” Emilia laughed dryly. “Things were very rough for the early mortals, who could do very little besides huddling around their fires and scavenging what meager means of living they could. Many races just didn’t make it, and that caused quite a few gods to lose interest in the whole project, which is an issue that was temporarily remedied at one point but is still there according to Lady Sylvia.
“Regardless, the ones that still had a horse in the race or simply cared enough about mortals doubled down, giving them more power to arm themselves with talents in the arcane, physical strength, fertile land and other boons to help them survive – the most important one being the sun, which flipped the situation down here in a way where cruelty and selfishness were no longer needed for prosperity. I want so say the first necromancers appeared some time before the sun, making your powers something that were meant to help mortals instead of what you think they are.” She said and could already see the necromancer trying to protest but silenced her by continuing the story without a break. “Emboldened by the new conditions, the mortals could form strong kingdoms and slowly gain a foothold against the creatures of the primordial night, that had oppressed them for so long. That more or less brings us to the way things are now. Of course, there has been some changes brought forth by powerful mortals and new gods appearing, but that is what it is.”
Anastacia digested the lengthy tale for a while as they kept on walking along the still very much unending corridors of stone. She certainly didn’t agree with the necromancy part of the tale, but the only piece of evidence she had against it was the Mournvalley version of the birth of necromancy, which was equally crap in her opinion.
“The gods are a bit garbage at their jobs, aren’t they?” She commented out of the blue.
Emilia laughed heartily. “That is a common takeaway from what we know, but they don’t claim themselves flawless either. Gods are individuals, just like you and I, with their own flaws and strengths. They are not all knowing by any stretch of imagination and are fully capable of making mistakes – and have made several.” She readily admitted.
“So what flaws does Sylvia have?” Anastacia asked, unfortunately before actually thinking and immediately regretted the position she had put her friend in.
The priestess’ smile slowly faded, and it almost looked like the whiteness of her uniform dimmed with it. It was Sylvia herself, who had taught her of the less than perfect existence of the divine, but having to point out flaws in someone or something she was supposed to have complete trust in wasn’t the easiest of tasks.
It wasn’t even that she didn’t acknowledge that there was room for improvement on some things, but when Anastacia had asked about it, the first thing that came to her mind shocked even the priestess herself and she certainly was glad that Sylvia wasn’t there to hear it.
“I… I think My Lady lies to me.” She said with an almost haunted look on her face. “Or at least hides much. Recently she has sounded sad more often than not, and for a goddess of joy, that’s likely not good. I’d like to help if I could, but how am I supposed to question her? She’s always been a bit a bit secretive about anything that isn’t strictly work related, so much so that I can’t claim I know who I serve – at least not beyond her name. I trust her with every fiber of my being, but does she not trust me?”
Not at all prepared for the heft of the answer she got, Anastacia simply alarmedly stared into the dark ahead of them, like a wild animal that had been caught eating someone’s crops. Luckily for her, she noticed an odd glimmer in the dark, a bright twinkling light on a door that finally blocked their way and brought a less awkward end to the conversation.
The door itself appeared no different from the countless ones they had passed, other than it was at the end of the corridor and perhaps somewhat larger.
King stopped in front of it and turned to the rest of the group, intentionally blocking the passage.
“I assume we’ve run into first of the problems the custodian said we might find?” Emilia suggested and brushed up her appearance to help her forget the realization she just had. “Do we need to fight something? I could use a bit of exercise to clear my mind.”
King shook his head and pressed on the plate in the middle of the door.
As the heavy stone slabs slid out of the way, they revealed a room that was about as big as the knight’s personal quarters and curiously already lit – at least partly. Most of the room was barely visible, but in the middle of it, there was a wide platform with a couple of stairs leading up to it. On this platform was a large round table, maybe five meters across, with a single stone chair next to it.
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The entire platform was lit from both the ceiling and the floor brightly enough to almost blind the adventurers who had gotten used to the dim corridor. Opening the door had stirred the air in the room and the dust that had settled years ago danced in the light as the party entered.
On the other side of the platform, there was a door, similar to the one they entered through, but the lack of lights on it suggested that it was, for the time, inoperable. Following their guide, they circled around the platform to the other door and made sure that it did indeed refuse to open before something else was done.
“Well then… I take it that someone needs to sit on the chair?” Emilia asked and climbed the stairs up to the table. “I’ll do it, unless someone else wants to?”
King immediately pointed at Anastacia, suggesting that it was the necromancer that should be the one taking part in whatever trial Erratic Judgement had prepared ages ago.
Taking that as a sign that it would be mostly harmless, the priestess stepped down and let Anastacia approach the table instead.
Anastacia walked around the table and inspected it thoroughly. Other than a thin band of metal that ran around its surface about ten centimeters from its outer edge, there was nothing special about the piece of stone furniture, if anything, it appeared unusually lifeless for the fortress.
The chair on the other hand was riddled with complicated patterns of light that flashed in what felt like a completely random order.
The necromancer warily touched the arm rests a few times and watched as the energy inside the seat coursed towards her fingers. “If this does something weird, I’m going to scream and take it out on you.” She warned King and handed her backpack and spears to him.
The seat was meant for someone much larger than her, so as she sat down far back enough to lean against the backrest, she couldn’t bend her knees anymore to lower her feet, nor could she reach the table.
The light gathering to wherever her body touched the chair gave off a light tingle, but nothing even remotely unpleasant.
Just as she was about to think that she was off the hook and all the room would ask was a scan or a reading of some kind, the lighting from the ceiling changed hue to a purple or a violet one. Next, initiated by a mechanical click that shook the stone chair, the entire seat started to move to the right, as if it was on tracks that circled the table.
Though the speed was far from mind boggling, taking at least ten seconds to make a full circle, Anastacia started to scream to relieve stress. She wasn’t in pain either but needed to do something to not jolt up from the seat and risk ruining the entire process.
After a full round around the table, the lighting changed again, this time to an indigo hue that was closer to the usual color the simulacrum constructs had, but considerably darker. After yet another round, it changed to blue, then green, then yellow, then orange and finally blood red.
For the entire time, the priestess and the simulacra watched as the necromancer appeared to scream for her life while moving at a moderate jogging pace under some flashing colored lights. What little concern they had for her quickly turned to hilarity over the sight.
Eventually, after the seventh round, the chair stopped moving and the shrieking slowly died down.
“Oh? I guess that was fine.” Was all Anastacia managed to say before a flash of white light engulfed the entire room.
When Emilia regained her sight, she immediately turned to see if Anastacia was still in one piece, but what she saw was seven identical chairs spread evenly around the table, each with their own small necromancer in them. While otherwise appearing just like Anastacia, these copies each had bright eyes and a cloak matching each color of the rainbow.
In place of the original chair was now the violet-eyed Anastacia, the rest of the colors were arranged in order so that the spectrum continued to indigo to her right and ended in red to her left. All seven stared at each other with a knowing look to them, as if they were fully aware what was going on.
The priestess considered raising her voice to get the attention of the Anastacias and ask what was going on, but King gestured for her to stand back and stay silent for the time being.
Suddenly the violet Anastacia cleared her throat and spoke up. “Alright, us, this marks the beginning of the negotiations of The Council of Anastacia. Normally, we aren’t able to meet in such a corporeal state, so let us make the most of it and move swiftly through the matters at hand. I will be chair-Anastacia of this meeting, unless someone has something against it.” She declared and swept over the rest of the participants with her almost bored-looking gaze.
The red Anastacia lazily lifted up her arm while flipping one of the crystal daggers with the other.
The self-declared leader of the meeting appeared to pay no mind to it and instead fixed her posture to a serious uptight one that was rare for even the original necromancer. “Anyone besides Red? Red will not be voting on this matter because she’s batshit insane.” She stated without even looking at the Anastacia to her left.
“But Violet, can we really do that?” Asked the indigo Anastacia before the others could move on. “Sure, Red would like to skin all of us alive, but she’s still a part of us, and Anastacia is a play all of us have a part in, is she not? If anything, I understand why she feels like that if we exclude her like this every time!” She pleaded and leaned over the table to wave at the red Anastacia, who responded with a derisive chuckle.
The violet Anastacia sighed and rubbed her brow. “Indigo, how many times do we need to explain this to you? It isn’t Red’s job to make decisions, it’s Red’s job to turn people into paste when that’s appropriate. We let her have the reins and she’ll steer us all off the cliff.” She explained, speaking slowly and clearly, almost like she was mocking Indigo’s intelligence. “Besides, we already give Green a vote, and she’s just as much of a mess, so do we really need to include another one?”
“I’ll let her turn me into paste, if you know what I mean.” The green necromancer pitched in and winked at Red.
Violet groaned in genuine agony over her quickly deteriorating authority. “No, Green, no one knows what you mean, because nothing you say makes any sense… Can we please just carry on with the meeting?”
Her words gained little to no traction whit the gaggle of Anastacias; Indigo seemed to be busy helping the blue necromancer next to her, who was bawling her eyes out about something, Green had spotted the simulacra in the room and was preoccupied by doing suggestive hand gestures at them, both Yellow and Orange were just flat out not listening and fiddled with something on their persons, but surprisingly, Red was paying attention.
Emilia had more or less gotten the gist of what was going on and could tell that each of the colorful necromancers was some separated aspect of Anastacia. From what she had gathered, Violet was what little reason she had within her, and as usual, quickly losing control of the necromancer as a whole.
She didn’t really know the capabilities of each Anastacia, but without a doubt, they would soon start to wreak some sort of havoc if they didn’t get focused. So, hoping to aid Violet in rounding up the rest, she hopped onto the platform and immediately gathered the looks from all seven necromancers.
Violet immediately seized the moment of undivided focus to begin the meeting properly. “Alright! First matter of the meeting: Emilia. Does anyone have any concerns?”
The orange Anastacia immediately lifted her arm up and didn’t wait for Violet to give her the floor before speaking up. “Let me start by saying that obviously we all love Emilia, she’s great – but I’d like to raise some concern over her tendency to stand so close to King. Just today, I’ve counted at least twelve separate incidents of her touching or looking at him. Now, you may think that this is a mere coincidence and that people look at each other all the time without it meaning anything special, but she smiled as well, so clearly something’s up.” She calmly stated, disguising something no sane person would even consider as a valid concern. During her speech, she put far more emphasis on mentioning herself than anything. “Now, I know that you folks often thing that my opinions are somehow ‘extreme’ or whatever, so I’ve taken it upon myself to consult Green for a possible solution or a compromise - even if that’s obviously not what I want. So, you know, you’re welcome.”
While Orange and Green sorted out their collective suggestion, Emilia slowly moved towards the violet Anastacia, whose cloak was the same color as the one normal Anastacia had, and only differed from her because of the deep violet color of her eyes, whereas Anastacia’s were closer to turquoise.
Violet was obviously already beyond hopeless over the state of the meeting, and hearing the two team up for something that was no doubt going to be the worst suggestion made in the recent years by anyone anywhere, had been enough to turn the despair into apathy.
“Am I in trouble?” Emilia whispered to the crestfallen Violet.
As soon as she got close enough, to the chairs, the indigo Anastacia lunged from her seat to cheerily hug the priestess before returning back to it.
“No, you have pretty much a hundred percent approval rating and were only brought up because Orange had something inane to say – which will no doubt continue in whatever those two have come up with. They are both an embarrassment to Anastacia, so can you please just ignore them?” Violet pleaded and slumped back into her chair in defeat.
Emilia knew well the troubles Violet was going through, as handling the necromancer was a large part of her vocation. At least she only had a single, albeit chaotic Anastacia to deal with, and not a whole rainbow of them.
“I’m sure it can’t be that bad.” She said and smiled understandingly.
With the details of their suggestion ironed out, both Orange and Green stood up to speak. Green tried to start her part immediately but was stopped by Orange pointing out that not everyone was paying attention to her.
“Orange, in all her overly possessive cuteness, came to me with this problem of hers and the two of us banged out a solution for you all – in a less literal sense than I would have wanted, but all in a good time.” Green proudly started and pranced behind the yellow Anastacia’s chair to wrap her hands around Orange. “So what we figured out was that we’d allow it, if we can have Emilia keep her armor on-“
The sound of Violet kicking the table interrupted the speech. “And that’s as far as I’m letting this nonsense go!” She roared, bright red from embarrassment. “Moving on to the vote! Everyone who’s for disregarding all this nonsense from both of them, raise your hand!”
Violet, Red, Blue and Indigo all swiftly raised their hands in unison and formed a majority, much to the other two’s disappointment.
Yellow, who had yet to say anything and mostly just seemed confused by everything that was going on, simply didn’t appear to have an opinion on the matter and refrained from voting.
“Good. I’ll have you two apologize to Emilia once we’re done.” Violet nodded. “There are plenty of other matters to discuss, so let’s move on to the next one, which I’m sure won’t be a massive waste of time and energy for all of us.”
The blue necromancer, seemingly in control of her weeping for the time being, stood up with a bit of help from Indigo. She wiped her face for a while and gathered strength to speak up.
“Hi, everyone.” She started with an unsure greeting and spend a while to individually stare at each Anastacia. “I… I think we should be planning what to do with life if we fail to rescue King from this place. Is there a point in going on or do we just give up?”
Finishing her short speech, she collapsed back down to her stone seat and began to uncontrollably weep again.
The other six sat in silence for a while, none of them really having an answer for Blue. They gestured for each other to speak up, but no one actually did. Even Indigo, who had spent most of the meeting tending to the sad necromancer next to her, had nothing to calm her with.
One by one, the Anastacias sank into their chairs with solemn looks on their faces, including Violet, who at least felt somewhat reasonable to Emilia, lifted her feet up on the seat and hugged them quietly.
“Well… I guess we’ll vote on it. All in favor of coming up with a plan if we fail… raise your hand.” The violet necromancer uttered meekly.
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green and Orange all slowly raised their arms.
Yellow, once again refrained from voting and clearly wasn’t as bothered by the suggestion as the five, but the only one who was clearly against the idea was Red.
Still playing with her knife and with her feet over one of the armrests, she disappointedly shook her head and glared at the rest of the council in furious disgust. “I can’t believe you weak pieces of shit are actually considering this.”
“But what if we fail?” Blue sniffled in response.
Red scoffed and took her feet down to properly address the idea she vehemently disapproved. “Do I just not exist to you losers? We are not going to discuss failing, we are not going to vote what happens if we fail and above all else, we are not going to fail.” She boasted and hit the table on every point she made. “Blue, know this, I will freeze the seas solid, burn the skies to ash and turn this world into a nightmare of glass and gore before we even entertain the idea that we have to give up on King – am I making myself clear? Shove me out of the way all you want to act out your little ‘good person’ routine, but if I ever hear this talk about giving up something we love, I will take over and none of you will be able to stop me.”
Pleased with herself, Red leaned back, lifted her feet on the table and resumed playing with her knife while watching the rest of the necromancers shake off the doubt Blue had managed to cast on them.
Violet scrambled to gather what little authority she had over the others and stood up to at least be slightly taller than them. She cleared her throat several times and worriedly glanced at the sneering Red before speaking. “Okay, so the motion by Blue is discarded because Red is so, so very terrifying. Let us keep the pace up and move on.” She said with a still wavery voice. “The next matter would be one set forth by me, so actually an important one. Recently, we’ve run across several of these inquisitors, with varying results, and I know they’re a touchy subject that we do not agree on at all, but my question is: should we get ear piercings? The inquisitor who was called Iris or something had a few, and I thought they were neat.”