30. Unfashionable Knights
The train pulled to a screeching halt at the silver line platform. Once the doors slid open, the small purple line creature drifted out the car and hovered away to somewhere Isaac couldn’t see. He was, thankfully, going in the opposite direction of the thing, assuming the live map was accurate (he promised himself to raise hell if it ever wasn’t; as far as Isaac was concerned, it was the bare minimum feature Lilith could provide to make his job a little more doable).
Isaac made an executive decision to take a detour route to the location, stopping by Mortimer’s shop along the way. When he glanced into the dusty, cloudy windows, however, he couldn’t see anyone inside the dingy little store. He waited a few minutes, but there was no trace of movement. Mortimer had likely gone somewhere else. Shaking his head, Isaac straightened and continued traveling through the city.
He eventually found Igor standing near a particularly circular spiral path situated in the center of Solonell City, one of the rare spots where there was enough empty space to get a clear, uninterrupted view of the giant block of red for a sky. The man was still wearing that armor of his, and Isaac had to clear his throat to get him to look up from whatever he was staring at.
Back when Isaac had first stumbled into the Underside and passed by the man, he’d falsely assumed that the full plate armor was standard in the realm. In his defense, he’d long come to associate “fantastical” with “vaguely medieval” thanks to the media he had half-consumed from his classmates via osmosis. That, and Igor, with his intimidating stature and perpetually stern expression, had looked like someone to take seriously. It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to.
Of course, Isaac had soon learned that armor was not, in fact, a regular part of Underside fashion. In fact it was arguably even more outdated than it was on Earth, considering the total length of Solonell City’s history. This revelation occurred around the same time that he’d learned how Igor had gotten his eyepatch, and after that his view of the man was forever altered.
Still, the one major difference between Earth and the Underside was that, even though full plate armor was terribly unfashionable in both, the people in the Underside seemed to care a lot less about it. No one gave Igor more than a passing glance, though perhaps that was because they’d grown used to him.
Igor straightened to his full height and nodded solemnly at Isaac, his armor clanging as he moved. “Traveler,” he said slowly. “It is good to see you.”
He wasn’t wearing the Heelys today, Isaac noted. Maybe he’d grown tired of them, or perhaps he’d realized that the minor speed boost they provided wasn’t worth it. Isaac pulled up the man’s very familiar, eternally static stat sheet. “Which stat today? Speed again?”
Igor nodded, and Isaac silently congratulated himself on the correct guess. He looked up and scanned their surroundings, searching for a suitable finish line. There was a particularly standout building a few blocks away, most notable for being in the shape of an infinity sign. Despite the decidedly modern architectural shape choice, the material it had been constructed out of looked quite old and worn, and there were enough gothic elements in the overall details that the building looked a lot like someone had just taken a regular gothic building and morphed it into a funny shape. Which made no sense, but he wouldn’t put it past the people of the Underside to pull something like that off.
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Isaac pointed at the infinity sign-shaped building. He didn’t even bother explaining, trusting the man to know what to do. Igor, however, just stared at him. For a second Isaac wondered if he’d overestimated the wannabe knight when the man said in that grave voice of his, “You look tired.”
Isaac blinked. “I always look tired.” He knew he had perpetual eye bags. They were basically permanent at this point; he didn’t think they were even worth pointing out.
“More than usual.”
Damn, he must really look like shit. Isaac scrunched his eyebrows, but finally just sighed and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, it’s…work stuff.” Work stuff that Igor would hopefully never become aware of in the future, if he could somehow convince Lilith that this whole thing was a terrible idea. His mind drifted back towards the conversation with the woman on the train. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m gonna start counting down now, so get ready.”
Igor wisely dropped the subject and got into position, which meant he slightly bent his knees. After another ten seconds, he took off running towards the funny building, every step accompanied by the loud ringing of armor.
Isaac tapped his foot against the ground as he waited for the man to return. When he did finally come back and the tablet was done with its calculations, he was thoroughly unsurprised to find that the stat sheet was exactly the same as it had been. “No change,” he said. Igor stared at him.
“I see.”
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”
“You’re less irritated with me than usual,” the man commented. Isaac frowned, not sure how to take the words. It probably wasn’t an insult; Igor didn’t make it a habit to insult anyone. Knowing that it probably wasn’t an insult, however, didn’t make it any easier to figure out what Igor did mean.
Isaac opened his mouth to ask him to elaborate, but before the first word could leave his mouth, a blast of wind shot overhead and nearly knocked him off his feet. He stumbled forward and would’ve crashed headlong into the ground, if not for Igor standing in front of him. Instead, he crashed straight into hard metal armor.
He heard a clanging noise accompanying the impact that sounded awfully empty. If Lilith were here, he was sure she’d make some oh-so-funny comment about the density of his brain, he thought.
Isaac groaned and rubbed his forehead as he staggered back. There was definitely a bruise, but probably not a concussion? He thought he heard Igor ask if he was alright in that grave way of his, but his attention was more focused on the throbbing in his head. Any spare focus he could grant was directed towards the new figure looming over them, giant wings shining pure white against the dark red backdrop of the Solonell City sky.
Casimir grinned in that ridiculously cheery way of his and waved one hand with more energy than Isaac had the capacity to process at the moment. The angel’s other hand was occupied, curled around some lumpy object that Isaac couldn’t quite make out. Casimir’s voice boomed as he spoke, containing the sort of declarative assuredness that only deep confidence could bring.
“I found it!”