Even Successful Captains Disagree Whether The Command Structure Or Propaganda Center Is More Of A Setback To Lose
The tunnel curved as it went, widening and narrowing along the way for no reason discernible by the people inside. Just as the tunnel at last seemed to be broadening, insofar as the right side appeared to be giving way to some larger chamber, the metal badgers that made beeping noises nonstop attacked. Or rather they passed by. A passel of them hurried out from the possible room ahead toward some other destination and ignored the dagger that plinked off their lustrous hides as they went. Silone tried to be discreet about picking up his dagger, but everyone saw the whole thing.
With that, the way was clear to the area ahead which was indeed a room. It even enjoyed its own light source that was not even green, though the inability of anyone to figure what in the ceiling actually generated the orange glow aroused some discomfort. It had furniture too, and the arrangement of elements inside struck Dirant and especially Silapobenk as disconcertingly familiar despite still being inside an unthinkable eldritch horrorscape. Gremlins with little horns sat at rows and columns of writing desks, writing, and as soon as each filled a page, it tossed the paper up in the air from which it disappeared.
“This is the reason I prefer the warehouse,” Dirant said. “Scenes of this sort seem somehow a desecration.” Silone nodded.
“These monsters have no sense. They need editors. Hey! Kul! What are you doing over there?” Hewwikke called out to Kul Puvva Kampumso in the center of the chamber, though what that employee was doing ought to have been clear enough. He was worrying. The shakes and sweat proved that. The more intriguing questions had to do with the person next to him. Why was he trying to pull her somewhere? That was one. Why was it hard for him to do so? Why did she not react to his yanking? Two more. Why was she chanting nonstop and looking unhappy about the whole thing? What kind of outfit was she wearing? Some kind of robe embroidered with symbols such as tridents, bidents, and bells, and a bonnet rather than the distinctive Omme head scarf. Was she single? It would have been fine for Hewwikke or Dirant to ask that last one. Silapobenk was in no position to do so.
Puvva greeted them with a question of his own as if the newcomers had more to explain than he did. “Chief! You made it! Is it . . . is it really bad out there?”
“My rooms all have more paper in them than most forests, monsters have taken up residence in my guest shed and never even offered me the pleasure of their company at dinner, and those talk-boxes have blabbed all over town by now about what a strange house I keep. It's bad. If you had anything to do with this, I'm going to pretend not to be mad so you'll tell me before I fire you.”
“I was just doing my job! Taking initiative! I was researching innovative new methods to even out manpower shortages when there's big events like debates or a scandal. I hired a Summoner—”
“Okkallu stikkallu suo tio I am that Summoner mumkitta saotlotta,” the immobile woman managed to get out.
“This Summoner, that's right. The idea was to find a monster that could hold a pen. She did it, chief! These gremlins can't edit or paint a picture in words, but they can write basic stuff. So I arranged to hide her in the outbuilding. I was going to surprise you with some practical examples. But then I don't know what happened!”
Hewwikke glared. “Maybe I'll fire you and hire her. That sounds savage smart. Any ideas?”
Millim Takki Atsa had an idea, and she liked it quite a bit. She hopped from one foot to the other as she announced it in a joyful voice. “There really is a distortion zone in Mosso Eksu! So many of them turn out to be fakes. Oh, you're so lucky to have one right on your estate!”
A distortion zone! A location where inexplicable, unrepeatable phenomena occurred. Specialists in the history of natural philosophy blamed them for much of humanity's slowness in exploring universal principles, since rules kept breaking there before they could even be formulated. That explained everything. Some skeptics muttered that distortion zones proved a bit too much when one considered how easy it was to account for odd results in any study or experiment by saying “distortion zone” and shrugging. Student Dirant dismissed those accusations as mere cynicism, but Dirant Priest of Holzd was coming around to the thought.
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Another thought occurred to him. “Forgive me if I have this wrong. Takki, did you just imply you hoped to find a distortion zone here? And you never connected the curious incident in the main building to that, even as a hopeful surmise on the level of thinking that one girl who works at the corner restaurant likes you?”
“Oh. I, um, no.” She blushed. “I have a long way to go as a Battler. I'm very sorry.”
Of course a gentleman could do nothing in that situation but relent. “Really it was our own research that was lacking, since we knew nothing about . . .”
“Hoppalli I'm getting very thirsty mumle posstemmu and I'm scared meippi please help me.”
“I'm very, very sorry!” Takki ran over to the Summoner and wrenched her away from the ground with a popping sound. The illumination faded, the gremlins began to vanish, and the glass of the walls started to drip as if something had gone wrong during the glass creation process. Even as the Summoner's chants died away in favor of regular speech (“Summoner Paummi Ti Poska, present and happy to meet you wonderful people”), a gurgling sort of chant arose to replace it. The rescuers chose not to think about how it seemed to be coming from outside the walls and that the light pulsed in rhythm with it.
Paummi Ti Poska's body relaxed once removed from its former position. She all but collapsed in the arms of Takki, who held a reservation about that arrangement. “I'm afraid I may need my halberd. Could you gentlemen . . .?”
Dirant and Hewwikke were happy to take Ti off her hands, all the more so since the Summoner was barely five feet and slight in her build. That done, the party hustled back down the tunnel at a maximum speed that soon slowed.
“What's the delay?” Hewwikke demanded to know from the back. Aside from his habit of getting reporters to find out things for him, he had his attention and hands far too full of Summoner to investigate problems himself.
“It branched.” Imlakke moved aside so his host could see the perplexing truth. The simple single tunnel that brought them there had bettered itself by becoming three separate paths.
“Does anyone know a way I can consider this guest house an enemy? My abilities would work on it then,” Battler Takki suggested.
“It isn't already?” Silapobenk Rikelta asked. “For the time being I propose to keep to the center based on my Selection Sense.” A true leader, he did not inform the anxious people around him of the details of that ability. It sounded relevant, and that was all they needed to know. The curious among them would be free after they escaped to look up an index of class abilities and learn it gave a general sense of areas that might be worth examining. Helpful, but not so authoritative as he presented it as being.
The party proceeded, its members not sure they needed to hurry but certain they wanted to. Future route splits presented two options, five options, two options but actually three options when Takki noticed another way set at a right angle from the direction they came, and vertical routes complete with ladders. Paummi Ti Poska had some issues with those, but cooperation saw them through.
The monsters they encountered did nothing to obstruct them on their way out. Perhaps monsters cared about nothing but privacy the entire time and man was the real monster. Dirant brought up the idea, but Takki scotched it based on the predatory habits of fire wolves if nothing else. Hewwikke, however, was interested.
“Here's the article. We disguise someone as a monster, somebody ugly, and have him get closer and closer to a monster nest. Try to infiltrate it and give us some real insight on these things. It could be a whole book if it does well. You might want to give it a try, Kul. You'll be looking for a new job soon anyway.”
“I'll find one, too. A lot of publishers will be interested in this gremlin scheme. Smart ones, ones who didn't plant their houses on weirdo land plots where weird stuff happens that isn't my fault.” Kul Puvva Kampumso had gone through a heroic journey that changed him as a person. Unless that was normal behavior for him, and all that nervousness he had displayed at dinner derived from anxiety over the upcoming gremlin demonstration. That seemed more likely.
“How long will this continue? We've been exiting longer than we were entering.” Imlakke's mild complaint struck all of them as insightful when they heard it or had it translated for them.
“We might need more of that unconventional reasoning. I'd like to try it out. Is that all right?” Upon hearing no opposition, Takki made her attempt. “We've walked far enough to be outside. That means we are probably outside.” Nothing happened. “What do you think I did wrong?” she asked Dirant, her stare imploring him to fix it.
It was too late to pretend he had not become an authority on the topic of inventing arguments to support the idea of being either inside or outside a disconcerting pit of fiends. Making the best of it, he embraced the position. “The most successful charlatans never waver in their confidence. I don't know if that's true, and that's exactly what I mean. Try something more brazen like this. 'A strange space full of aggressive monsters existed while a Summoner chanted. We entered that rather than the guest house. The Summoner is no longer chanting and the monsters are not aggressive. Those two facts are proof the strange space no longer exists. However, we are still inside it, which indicates a flaw. A flaw of that size must be easy to find.”
“There it is.” Silapobenk pointed at a gash in the glass through which poured not green light but the regular darkness of night ever feared by humanity, though less so in the middle of town. Hewwikke, his guests, his employee, and his employee's employee at last departed the outbuilding and entered the comforting, well-tended grounds of his estate.