Three days of hell.

Well, fine. Maybe I was being a bit over-dramatic here, but it really did feel like it. The upheaval caused by the previous plot climax was unreasonably immense, and it drained me of my will to live in record time. Fortunately, I've got lots of support from my girlfriends and allies on the way, and… Well, as much as I hated to admit it, this whole mess was caused by my bumbling interference with the Plot and Narrative-me's plans, so I felt obligated to get things under control.

"Good work, My Liege," Arnwald knocked me out of my train of thought and I let out an ambivalent hum in response. We just entered one of the parlour rooms of the Dracis mansion, a relatively small but cozy spot with a pair of fancy divans set in an L-shape surrounded by the usual portraits and décor on the walls. It was currently breaktime, set between two sessions of the Draconian leadership's daily meeting, and I intended to take it seriously. The breaktime, I mean.

While I generally did my best to avoid the bureaucratic yoke of being one of the founding members of this organization, this time around I had no choice but to actively take part in the running of the Draconic Council. At least whenever I had the time. During the blur that was the past couple of days, I'd been constantly bouncing between the Elysium to oversee the reorganisation of the Directorate, the Magi headquarters under the school to negotiate with Lord Grandpa, and our own underground base to... erm... provide moral support to the Ordo Draconis, I guess? Seriously, I wished everyone else was as self-sufficient as our Knights.

Between all of these obligations, I barely had the time to break the surface and breathe. Since this was one of those few precious opportunities, I beelined towards the closest divan and sat down without any reservations. Arnwald followed after me, and as soon as I got seated, Mountain Girl also surged out of my shadow and took her usual spot behind me. I mean, behind the divan. Otherwise, it would've been just weird.

Ignoring the mental image of her wedging herself under me on the furniture, I made myself comfortable and exhaled a long breath. What was I thinking about before we came here? Right, Narrative-me's plans.

So, just to quickly recap: Using my hard-to-define abilities, I retconned things so that Angie wasn't overtaken by Deus, the mythical founder of Elysium and the messiah of the Celestials, while simultaneously maintaining the cover of my Bel of the Abyss persona. Doing so drew the attention of the star-people operating the Simulacrum, but then another one I names the 'Crowned Coalescense' came to the rescue. In the process, I finally merged with the knowledgeable part of my subconscious I called 'other-me', and then I realized that I was part of the pan-Simulacrum being that we previously called 'The Narrative'. Plus that, by doing said retcon, I effectively ruined the original Plot and broke Narrative-me. Oops.

Honestly speaking though, I wasn't entirely sure what happened to him. As busy as I'd been recently, I still tried my best to sift through and organize the info I absorbed from other-me during the meeting with the Crowned Coalescence, and it answered about as many questions as it raised. Other-me was, from what I could gather, supposed to serve as a kind of limiter on me; wedged in my subconscious, he was supposed to steer me away from actions and information that would destabilize the capital-P 'Plot'.

Except I broke free from his influence during my very first day in the Simulacrum, and so he was demoted into the little voice in the back of my head that would only scream at me whenever I was doing something that would jeopardize Narrative-me's plans. To be able to do that, he naturally had a good understanding of the original Plot, the necessary plot devices, and the actions that would draw the attention of the Emergents.

Yet, because other-me was only ever supposed to concern himself with in-Simulacrum affairs, his (and consequently, my) knowledge of the out-of-Simulacrum details remained spotty at best. I hoped that getting in touch with the Emergents would fix that, but no cigar. The Girl didn't contact me again since the time she had intercepted me, and I didn't have the mental wherewithal to try to reach out to her on my own again. Not yet, in any case.

But I was getting off-topic. What was the topic? Right. Narrative-me.

To reiterate, I still wasn't entirely sure what happened to him. Based on what I grasped from other-me's understanding, breaking the Plot also broke Narrative-me's ability to manipulate things. If we imagined that the whole Plot was a giant equation that Narrative-me had to balance, my forced retcon was the equivalent of dividing the whole thing by zero. At this point, no matter how the other numbers were tweaked, the end result on the calculator would always be a sad face emoji.

That meant Narrative-me was effectively out of the loop, but it didn't strictly make current me the 'new Narrative' either. I now had the ability to force my will upon reality, which worked similarly to what we previously termed 'Narrative Influence', but it had to make sense to me first, and the scope of what I could do was limited by the fact that, unlike Narrative-me, I wasn't omnipresent in the Simulacrum. Whatever the heck that even meant.

In other words, it was all kinds of wacky, and I didn't one hundred percent understand it yet. Maybe if I could find Narrative-me and merge us the same way I merged with other-me, I could finally put my finger on the pulse of the Simulacrum, but that was a long shot if there ever was one. Where would I even start looking for something as abstract as 'a sub-conscious figment of myself diffused into the fabric of the Simulacrum's reality'? It was a fool's errand.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Thinking so, a soft groan escaped my mouth, alerting Arnwald.

"My Liege…" After starting with that, he let out a hiss and muttered 'we're in private'. Clearing his throat, he started again. "I mean, Leonard? Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine. Just tired," I told him maybe a tad too dismissively, but he didn't take offence.

"If you're feeling unwell, you do not need to attend the second half of the conference. I will inform the Council."

Before I could respond to him, the only door of the parlour opened wide without as much as a knock, and a familiar face entered, pushing a fancy, glass-topped food trolley. Sebastian, dressed in his usual (and always impeccable) butler outfit closed the door behind himself and unceremoniously rolled up next to me.

"I brought refreshments."

"Isn't this below your pay grade, Mr. Steward?" I teased him, and the old incognito dragon huffed and got ready to turn around. "Just kidding. Thank you."

He stopped and rolled his eyes at me, but the next moment, his hands were already hovering over the steaming kettle and porcelain cups on the trolley.

"Any preferences?"

"I'm feeling orthodox today. Please give me some Darjeeling."

"I refrain, thank you," Arnwald spoke unprompted and politely shook his head, while Mountain Girl looked at the platter full of tea blends next to the kettle.

"Naroen-san told Rinne to try Lapsang Souchong."

"Two cups, then," Sebastian spoke with a thin-lipped smile, and he demonstrated his expert tea-brewership by quickly and precisely preparing our drinks. He was quite a virtuoso, though at his age, he had all the time in the world to practice.

He was so good at it; he could even hold a proper conversation while his hands moved without a break.

"Is there any news about Bel of the Abyss?"

It took me a second to recognise he was addressing me, and I hastily shook my head.

"No. He must be laying low after all the chaos he caused."

I tried not to sound too self-deprecating, but I wasn't sure I succeeded.

"If you find him, contact me at once." Sebastian tried to hide his anger, but the clatter he made with the kettle when he set it down told me he had a hard time keeping it under the lid. With a sigh, he rearranged the cups and faced me again. "We have a score to settle."

"Is this about Ascalon?"

It was a rhetorical question. Of course, it was about that bloody dragon-slaying spear.

"Yes, but it's also personal," the old steward answered in a level voice spoiled by his shaking eyes. When I raised a brow at that, he graciously explained, "If he truly is as ancient as the Celestials suspect, then he must know that stealing something from a dra…"

He abruptly paused and glanced at the other two in the room. He was so worked up, he almost blurted out his secret. Not that it would've mattered; I was pretty sure Rinne already overheard it while hiding in my shadow, and as for Arnwald, he was more than trustworthy enough. But I digress.

Meanwhile, Sebastian cleared his throat and reworded his sentence into, "Stealing from the lair of a senior Draconian is the same as challenging their dignity and authority. A personal insult, and a challenge that must not remain unanswered. The fact he even dared to destroy my property…"

Whatever the end of that sentence was, he didn't finish. Instead, he checked on the leaves in the cups and then faced me again with a melancholic sigh.

"All that effort to safeguard the spear, wasted."

Feeling called out, Arnwald hastily interjected.

"Sir von Fraenir, I believe I have already apologized for our failure to—"

"And I believe I've told you that I do not hold you responsible," Sebastian responded sharply. "You could not have expected that a traitor in your midst would collude with Celestials to purloin the spear, and I do not blame you for failing to stop them. Unlike the Ordo Draconis, theirs is an organization that spent centuries mastering the arts of subterfuge and infiltration." He lingered for a moment before looking me in the eye again. "I was lamenting how, even after Leonard went through all that trouble to deceive Bel of the Abyss, the spear still ended up stolen and destroyed by his hands. Isn't that right, my boy?"

Softly clearing my throat, I hurriedly answered, "Yes, indeed. Quite aggravating."

Okay, that was a bit dense, so let's recap the history of the stupid spear:

It was used to stab Mon-in-law, but then Dad-in-law punched the Knight wielding it across a river, and the spear was taken by the Dracis family. It sat in Sebastian's study for years, but when I realized how dangerous it was, I tried to get rid of it. Simultaneously, the Knights also tried to retrieve it, and because of that whole kerfuffle, I ended up inventing Bel and the cover story was that he stole it before they could get to it.

Then, I told Sebastian that I had already replaced it with a replica before the incident, and that Bel stole that one while I had the original. Following that I made an actual replica, which I then used as a prop during the auction before the big Draconian tournament. While things didn't entirely go as planned, including Xiao turning into a dragon, I improvised and used her breath attack to destroy the real Ascalon and then handed the replica over to Sebastian, saying that it was the original. Then, after all of that, said replica was stolen by Celestial agents, they handed it over to Sir Percival, and then I broke it as Bel of the Abyss. End of recap.

In other words, both the real and the fake Ascalon were destroyed by Bel, just not in the order everyone thought it happened. Also… looking back at it, that was pretty damn convoluted, and all for a goddamn stick with a sharpened bit on top that didn't even get to do anything. Though again, the reason why it never got to do any dragon-slaying was precisely because I went through all that trouble and set up that convoluted scenario to get rid of it before it could be used, so… Maybe I deserved a pat on the back? Yeah, I totally did. Good job, me.

Let's just hope that I'd never have to engage in any kind of convoluted scheming of that level ever again. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, our tea was ready, and while Sebastian frowned on it, I flavoured mine with some sugar and a dash of milk. It was still nothing compared to Rinne, who put like six or seven cubes into her cup, but let's ignore her heresy and relax for the moment. Sadly, my cup bottomed out fast, but it didn't stop me from letting out a satisfied breath.

"Thank you. I needed that. With this, I'll hopefully be able to stay awake during the second half of the meeting."

Sebastian gave me a thin-lipped smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, and after collecting myself for a few more seconds, I stood up.

"All right. Let's get this over with. I promised the girls I would be home by dinner, and we have lots of things to do."

And with that, Rinne hopped back into my shadow, and we left the parlour. Narrative or no Narrative, things were progressing, even if slowly. Let's hope things stay that way for a while. I really needed some downtime…