One week later

Isse woke up feeling well rested. For once she hadn’t stayed up late reading. Not for lack of trying, naturally, she’d just finished the book she’d been reading and hadn’t felt like getting up from the comfort of her hammock to get another one.

As always when she managed to squeeze in more than five hours of sleep (an actual nine this time around!) she told herself she should be doing this more often.

Yeah, sure, even you don’t believe that, said Siidi with a smirk in her voice.

At least I can say I tried.

A chuckle escaped their lips and they walked out of their room, surprising a domesticated Albert with a raised fist ready to knock on their door.

After a moment of embarrassed silence as the two stared at each other he coughed and motioned motioned towards the dining room/kitchen.

“Could I tempt you with some breakfast?”

“Oh yes, absolutely!”

And in they walked. The food was ready in a matter of minutes and, when Albert served it, Siidi activated one of her greatest Skills: [A Minute, United]. It was the Skill she’d obtained when they’d first started training with Grandmother in magic and… whatever it was she taught Siidi. It was simple in concept yet so much more in practice: for a minute and a half twice a day their minds united, becoming one. They both felt what the other felt, their thoughts commingled, their sensations united and empowered. It was a festival of the senses, a short time of pure joy and pleasure that made everything better, even something as simple as krimou meat with eggs for breakfast.

They, she, ate with gusto, Issekina and Siidi (Issidi?), smiling all the while.

Meanwhile Albert looked at them with raised eyebrows, curiosity in every crease of his face, as he looked down at the simple plates and wondered not for the first time in these months if he had done something strange with the meat to make it taste so great for the girl. Or was it something about the arachne’s tongue? He did not know, and he dared not ask and ruin the moment for her.

In truth, it was a mix of both: the meat was great, arachne had taste buds that were made to make meat and anything related to it taste great and, finally, and most important of all, there was the enhancement from the Skill.

When the minute passed they became two again, and yet their good humor remained.

Well, I’ll be painting if you need me, said Siidi.

Alright. Have fun.

Siidi chuckled mirthlessly and then her presence lessened. In truth her work of giving back color to Isse’s memories was long and tiring, decidedly complex and truly a drain on her energy, but she didn’t care. After seeing how distraught it had made her soul half to lose the ability to feel anything from those memories she felt it was a necessity to do this.

“Having a small conversation?” asked Albert.

She nodded: “We speak constantly. Kinda difficult not to when someone literally lives in your head.”

“Isn’t it… I don’t know, stifling?”

“Oh, we tried to kill each other at first, when I was born. I somehow ended up in the body she was supposed to be reborn into and I was in control while she was in the back of my mind. She wasn’t happy about it. But… we managed to solve that conundrum, thanks to our sadistic Elder. I can’t say I’m not thankful for what she did but I hated how she did it.”

“I thought arachne never fought among themselves and always helped each other, or so the stories used to say.”

Isse made a so-so gesture with one hand, eating with the other. After a short amount of munching she spoke again: “Yes, well, sort of. You probably wouldn’t be happy if someone suddenly appeared in your mind and took your place. And as for the Elder… she was old, as you can imagine. Old and very tired of the way her people had to live, constantly hiding. It made her sad, bitter, and because of that… she preferred more direct ways to solve big problems. I didn’t like it, nor did Siidi. It hurt, it still hurts even remembering it, but… I can’t say I’m not grateful.”

Albert nodded: “I see. Thank you for sharing this.”

She smiled back: “Thank you for keeping me here, even with all the trouble I’m causing.”

He broke out into laughter: “You call that bringing trouble? Try stealing someone from the College and smuggling them to another continent. Now that’s trouble.

“Let’s not talk about sad things though now, shall we? Virgo’ll come sometimes in the afternoon. Today I want to teach you how to file a gear into the perfect shape.”

----------------------------------------

Here’s the thing about gears: back on earth there are machines that make them in all the shapes a clockmaker could ever need, cutting with lasers or water or what have you. Some madmen tried to make foundries with molds in specific shapes to craft the gears, which worked like a charm for big ones used in the making of clock towers but, as you can probably well imagine, was useless for making the small ones.

So how did Albert make the gears for his watches?

The method, as is for most things in this world, was extremely simple in theory, but also extremely time consuming and complex in practice. He had sheets and sheets of brass in a small backroom, all neatly piled up to waist height (that is, waist height for Albert. In Isse’s case it actually only reached, like, the middle of her spider half). What would he be doing with them?

“You see Isse, all the gears I use I also make myself. The method is quite simple, albeit time consuming.”

“Albert, the last time you told me something was simple you had me pick a lock that would put to shame a bank’s safe.”

“But you did pick it!”

“Yes, after three hours of swearing in my head because every time I did it with my voice you’d tell on me.”

“Swearing isn’t right for a proper lady, Isse.”

“Oh yeah? I’m sure I’ll make you swear sooner or later.”

“You can certainly try. Haaa, I should’ve put a time limit on that bet of ours.”

“What, you fear that, since you didn’t, you’ll have to keep yourself in check for the rest of your life?”

“Oh no, it’s not that, it’s just that your pathetic attempts to make me swear so far have been ridiculous and mildly laughable. I’ve lost count of how many times you tried to make me swear by moving the furniture around a bit while I was passing making me stub my toe.”

She had done that exactly seventeen times before giving up.

“I still don’t understand how you didn’t feel any of those.”

“Pain tolerance training. Also, I have the Skill [Ignore Inconvenience]. It’s terribly useful and works on both me and other people around me.”

“That… That’s cheating!!!”

“I never said life was fair, Isse.”

They bantered like that for a while as they brought two brass sheets to the workshop and put them down on a special table with clamps to keep them still.

“Now, as I was trying to say before you interrupted me, the process is quite simple: we cut circles of varying dimensions off the sheets depending on how big we need the gear to be, and then we file it into the shape we require. It takes some time, but it’s worth the effort.”

Isse stared at the large plate in front of her.

Then she turned around to look at the floor to ceiling shelf of small boxes of gears.

Finally, she looked straight into Albert’s eyes.

Then: “You’re fucking insane.”

“Language!”

----------------------------------------

Turns out, the process itself wasn’t that complex. Once the brass using a special compass Albert had created, she had to use a metal hacksaw that was basically composed of a very thin and sharp wire. Then, once she had a handful of those circles, she spent the next few minutes drawing the shape of the cog and its teeth onto it, followed by an extremely long time spent filing the metal into shape.

It wasn’t hard per se, but all the time her mind kept on wandering to other things, like her books, the Violin, her mission and, sometimes, when she could suppress the thoughts, her past and her future.

“Albert, how do you deal with the thoughts?” she asked.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

The old man’s eyes momentarily flickered up towards her from his hunched over position at his table right beside her, before going back to his work.

“I don’t. I let them have free reign. Here’s the thing Isse, the more you try suppressing the thoughts, and trust me, I know the ones you’re talking about, the more they’ll try to surface in your mind. It’s like trying to keep a bunch of empty, stoppered, wine bottles underwater: sooner or later you’ll be distracted and one will float back up. If you’re unlucky, it’ll come back so fast it’ll hit you in the face.

“So I just let my mind do its thing. I work and my thoughts, my memories, my many regrets, slowly become one indistinguishable mass of so many things that I’m incapable of thinking of them all.

“It all boils down to me, my body, my heart and my breath, my hands and my eyes and the work in front of me. Anything else becomes secondary, unimportant, meaningless.”

He smiled slightly at that, before adding: “That’s why I love my job.”

Then he fell back into his laborious and calm silence, the sound of the steel file on the brass, the only one in the room, his eyes half closed as he tried to make out every detail of the gear, his breathing shallow and only possible to hear because of a slight whistling coming from his nose.

Isse looked at Albert and, for a moment, she thought she’d seen the man that had been, the [Spymaster] who had gone through some kind of tribulation to leave this Game, the regretful shadow who had never truly lived.

She looked back at her work and tried to do the same thing he had done.

Ten minutes later she had fallen into a trance where there was only her, Siidi in the back of her mind humming a little tune, the work in front of her, and nothing else.

That was how Virgo found them after entering the back of the shop because they’d failed to answer his calls from the front door multiple times.

----------------------------------------

The violin lesson per se wasn’t the important part of the day to her, not today at least.

Oh sure, Virgo was as much of an (apparently) apathetic piece of shit who did not want to be here as always, and his lessons were great (she actually felt like she was learning something well for once instead of fumbling around in the dark and trying to find the solution to her problems by following some cryptic advice).

Still, that wasn’t the highlight of the day.

Nor was it learning to file gears from Albert, or finding out about his cheating ass with that Skill he had.

No, the highlight of the day arrived in the form of a half elf boy with purple eyes and a surprised expression wandering into the shop just after Virgo had left.

Tobias Eclisse, the only other friend Morra had ever made who she’d come to know a bit better in the last few weeks since he’d started joining them on some of their outings. She considered him a good friend.

The first thing he said as he walked in was: “Was the person who just left Virgo, the King in Yellow?”

Isse frowned and tilted her head to the side: “Yeah, sure, I think. That’s how he said some people called him at least.”

Tobias jaw dropped to the ground: “What was one of the greatest [Musicians] of our era doing in this shop Isse? Like, it’s not a bad shop, but… you know… it’s pretty small,” he tried to hedge as she narrowed her eyes at him.

“So what if the shop’s small? We don’t need that much space to sell watches.”

Tobias raised his hands in a placatory manner: “Never said that. Still, you didn’t answer my question.”

She crossed her arms and looked offended as she answered: “He’s just giving me lessons in playing the violin.”

If the half elf’s jaw had been on the floor before now it had sprouted arms and started digging: “One of the greatest [Musicians] in all of Irevia is ‘just giving you lessons’ in playing an instrument? Since when do you even play the violin?”

“It’s a recent development,” she muttered, before looking down at him and giving him a short hug.

“I missed you, purple guy,” she said.

“I missed you too, strange girl,” he said back, hugging her in turn.

They chuckled and extricated themselves.

“So, is it really him?”

“I mean, I think he is? Albert says he is.”

“Albert being your uncle?”

“Yup. He called in a favor with Virgo and now he’s giving me lessons.”

“Your uncle knows Virgo?”

“Sure he does. But they’re not friends. Virgo keeps saying he’s a piece of shit and a bastard. Which, now that I think about it, could be seen as friendly insults?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head: “Nah, no, nope, nisba, pretty certain they weren’t the friendly sort of insult.”

A chuckle escaped her lips and, not for the first time, Tobias wondered who in Airm this girl truly was. He’d gained two Levels in his [Information Gatherer] Class just trying to find out anything he could about her, but the girl was a total mystery. He’d only found out when she’d walked into the city, but before that? A total ghost. She fascinated him, and, most important of all, she was pleasant to be around. Plus, she was a good influence for Morra. He was certain, even though she kept on wearing that mask of hers, that she smiled more these days.

Then he asked: “Isse, have you really never heard of the King in Yellow before?”

She had, actually, back on Earth, but she was pretty certain that the King of that book back home and this one weren’t the same person.

Probably.

Mainly because Virgo clearly hadn’t been alive for over a hundred years.

…Right?

“Nope, never before.”

“So you never even listened to him playing?”

“I mean, he let me listen to how some of the songs I’m practicing are supposed to sound, but they’re pretty basic, so I couldn’t say I did.”

The moment she said that Tobias started mentally counting how many coins he had saved up and wondered if he had enough to buy two tickets for the next time the King in Yellow had a concert.

He resolved after a few seconds to start looking for another job.

“So, wanna go hang out with Morra?”

“Oh I’d love to. Albert! I’m going out!”

“Alright! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“Does that mean I get to murder people?”

“I don’t murder people Isse!”

She chuckled and the half elf was certain he heard someone else do the same from the backroom.

Then they were out.

It was a magnificent evening.

----------------------------------------

Thirty minutes later

Two figures wearing nondescript clothes walked into Albert’s shop. Their shirts were white and clean, their trousers a dull gray that had probably once been dark but had lost color with years of use. Their hair was blonde and light brown, their eyes blue and green. Truly, they were a duo you’d look over anywhere on the streets. Uninteresting. Inconsequential. Nobodies.

One of them rang the bell on the counter and they waited, the brown haired one with his hands crossed, the other leaning on the wooden top of the counter.

Albert walked out a few moments later, a smile plastered on his face.

“Good evening, gentlemen. How may I help you? Are you here to buy a new clock or watch? Or are you perhaps looking to have one repaired?”

The blonde man smiled cordially: “Ah, good evening sir. No, we’re here for… other business.”

A coin appeared seemingly out of nowhere and was placed on the counter, the clack of it filling the shop which had gone deadly quiet, clearly thanks to some kind of [Silence] Spell.

It was an apparently normal gold coin, except that on the face on which a king’s profile should’ve been visible the head had been removed, leaving behind only a surprisingly well visible crown.

“We’re calling upon Remembrance, sir.”

Albert… frowned, looking extremely confused: “Remembrance? Sir, what do you mean? This is a shop that sells clocks. If you need to write something down to help remember it the [Scrybe] is two shops down. Tell her I sent you and she’ll even give you a five copper discount.”

The two men looked at him as if he’d started speaking another language.

“I know it’s not a lot, but good [Scrybe] work costs, and it takes a lot of time. Also, [Printers] don’t do that sort of work.”

The two men looked at each other, than back at him, and this time the brown haired one spoke: “Albert Sirius, [Spymaster of Favors], once a Bishop of the Greatest Game, we are requesting Remembrance to you. You will listen to us.”

And at that the confused smile on Albert’s lips slipped away, instead a frown appearing on his features, his eyes narrowed.

“No, I don’t think I will. Now, leave.”

He began to turn around, but the blonde one spoke: “You know that’s not how it works Albert. We are requesting Remembrance. The Game is calling you back. You have no cho -”

He never finished his sentence, Albert’s fist connecting with his mouth, a crunch clearly hearable around the whole room as many of his teeth broke against the old man’s very hard punch. He fell to the floor, his head striking one of the pieces of furniture in which pocket watches and clocks were exposed.

“I don’t think you understand. I left the Game in a permanent manner.”

The brown haired one looked completely unperturbed by his companion’s fate. Also, he was either stupid or extremely brave and Skilled, because he spoke again: “A Player may abandon the Game only upon their death, Sir. Those have been the rules since its creation.”

“I’ve completed the Pilgrimage of Eights,” was all that Albert said as he shook his hand and prepared to give him another punch.

He stopped only upon seeing the surprise on the man’s face.

“Ah, so you weren’t informed. Sacrificial Pawns, I understand I understand,” he lifted his shirt and showed the man his flank, where a single tattoo was visible: a bishop’s hat on fire.

“This is a real one. You know how to check, right?”

He shook his head: “There’s no need to.”

He was clearly only a Pawn. Anyone with more than two brain cells would’ve checked to see if the tattoo was real. There was no respect in the modern generations if they’d really sent someone so low in the ranks to attempt to get him back in.

“Tell whoever told you to call me back that, if they attempt so another time, their agents won’t be coming back. Understood?”

Brown hair nodded.

“Good. Spread that information to your comrades as well. I left the Game and I will not be coming back. Now go, and take with you this shitty little coin.”

They left, and Albert sighed.

He was going to hate whatever would follow.

----------------------------------------

That night, as Isse slept, she heard the voice again.

[Clockworker Level 13!]

[Skill - The Worker’s Trance Obtained!]