The Simulacrum

~Chapter 141~ Part 1

Normally this would've been the time I took a look at the situation and waxed poetic about the trials and tribulations of my life, but I had no time to do that, because my sixth sense was already screaming at me the moment I arrived. Even though I came here in a hurry, I wasn't so out of it that I would show up in the open, yet in less than a second, I was discovered and had one of those wave motion arrows fired at my position.

"Crap, crap, crap…!"

Silently cursing under my breath, I Phased away, but even though I was doing short-range teleports, I kept being shot at. Ducking into cover was out of the question, as Bel of the Abyss wouldn't do anything of the sort, which meant I was stuck with one other option; I Phased over to the arch-mage duo at the other end of the playground, currently peppered with injured people and small craters.

How was Lord Taika hiding all this? Was she even able to do that? And if not, then where was the police? Not that I wanted them to show up, but I still kind of expected them to. More importantly though, a few seconds after I appeared, Lord Gulliver finally noticed me and tapped the other man on the shoulder.

"Ambrose? We have a problem."

The two of them were taking shelter under a half-dome made of smaller but thicker semi-transparent hexagonal plates, while the bearded arch-mage was still in the process of casting a really big and complicated spell. He still had the leeway to look up and glance at me, at which point a string of profanities escaped his mouth that I gracious omit for now.

"… and piss off! Wait for your turn!" he concluded, and I shrugged.

"I'm just looking around, don’t mind—"

Before I could finish, another huge magical arrow impacted the shield over our head, and Lord Gulliver started chanting in a hurry to replace the broken panels.

"Argh! He drew her attention to us!" Lord Ambrose accused me, followed by another string of curses, but I couldn't really muster up the mental resources to parse them, as I was struck dumbfounded by the sight in the air.

Because of all the warnings and beam-attacks and whatnot, I didn't have a chance to take a good look, but following the trace of the latest strike, my eyes were glued to the girl floating high over our heads. The air around her was positively shimmering with the colourless light of magic, and her three pairs of wings, while tattered from her fight with the arch-mages, were spread wide and seemed to cover the whole sky. Their golden flames gave off a dazzling radiance that illuminated the whole field and the nearby buildings in sharp yellow hues, yet they paled in comparison to the enlarged halo floating over her, burning so bright it hurt to look at it.

Until now, I thought I've had the fragments of Polemos embedded in my psyche well and fully under control, yet just a single glance at her threw my mind into complete chaos, and if not for Judy yelling in my ear through my communicator, I might've remained rooted to the ground and staring like a slack-jawed idiot for who knew how long.

"{Chief! Angeline seems to be focused on you now! You need to distract her while Duncan and the Squires pull the incapacitated and critically injured combatants out of the battlefield, over!}"

Before I could respond, Angie let out an ear-piercing bellow that made the air around me resonate like I was standing on top of a giant speaker at a concert, and she readied another arrow.

"Beeel!"

"Well, that's my cue!"

I tried to sound chipper, but it was bloody difficult to keep up the Bel persona under these circumstances. I had to try though, so I Phased over to the middle of the ruined playground. It wasn't in as bad of a shape as the version I'd seen in the Purple Zone, but it was uncomfortably similar. Trying to find a spot without too many people around, I settled on appearing next to a twisted and broken jungle gym.

This time, I kept my eyes on Angie, and the moment I moved, she immediately pivoted in the air and aimed her bow at me again. She was tracking me, that was for sure, though I had no idea how she did it. Maybe it was a Deus-thing?

There was no time to ponder the question though, as the moment she stopped, she let loose her arrow and it flew right at my center of mass. I say arrow, but it was more like one of those wave motion cannon beam attacks you'd see in a mecha anime. I didn't need my danger sense's warning to tell me getting hit by that would've been bad news, but I stood my ground and extended my hand, along with my phantom limbs, in the direction of the blast.

Doing this could stop a dragon's breath attack, so it should work against something like this too, right? I mean, a beam is a beam is a beam, by any other name, right? I sure as hell hoped so, and let out a breath of relief when, upon contact, I was met with the familiar sensation of pushing back against a stream of water on my combined phantom limbs. It only lasted for a second at best, and then the ray of golden light dissipated, leaving me and my environment none the worse for wear.

"One account of collateral damage, successfully averted," I whispered under my breath and let my hand down. Only then did I realize that, not too far from where I was standing, Lord Taika was taking shelter behind an overturned car, along with a few other squires and Duncan. They were all staring at me like they were seeing a ghost, so I inadvertently blurted out, "What are you looking aaat…?"

The last bit got drawn out because it was only at this point that I noticed something really, really bloody alarming.

"What the heck happened to you, big guy?" I asked as I pointed at Duncan, whose right arm was reduced to a charred stump. We were too far away for him to respond, so Judy answered in his stead.

"{Sir Duncan took an arrow from Angeline to defend Mrs. Talvipäivänseisaus. I told him to protect her, because if she goes down, this incident will blow the masquerade wide open.}"

Judy's voice was unusually shaky, and I didn't need to be a genius with an EQ of 200 to tell that she was distressed by what happened. Potentially even feeling guilty over calling the shots that landed Duncan in hot water like that. However, the therapy session had to wait, because the threat still wasn't fully resolved. Case in point…

"You dare to show yourself in front of me again, treacherous cur?!" Angie/Deus roared overhead. "Did you think I wouldn't recognize you, just because you conceal your face!? You can run, but you can't hide from me!"

What to do, what to do? I wasn't seeing much evacuation happening at the moment, but Judy said it was happening, and I had no choice but to trust her. As such, since I landed myself in this hot mess, it was my responsibility to make the best of the situation and act as a distraction. So… time to initiate Operation: Bel Is Being Annoying!

"Hey, Deus! Old pal!" I exclaimed and waved at her like I'd just noticed she was there. "Long time no see! It's been ages! Literally!" I've got a couple of arrows flying at my face in return, but that was good. I mean, not getting shot at; that's never a good thing, but the fact they were just small projectiles I could avoid just by flailing around a bit. Now that I had her full attention, I just had to make sure I kept it, so I snapped into a straight pose and theatrically rubbed my chin. "You look different than the last time we met."

"And whose fault do you think that is?!" she yelled at me so hard, I was afraid she'd have a sore throat the next day. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't think so far ahead right now. First, let's just focus on the next five minutes. And the five after that. Baby steps.

Anyhow, while she was talking, she wasn't shooting at me (or anyone else, for that matter) so I was dedicated to keeping up the conversation by abruptly snapping my finger and pointing my index at her.

"I've got it! You changed your hair, didn't you? Looks good, by the way. Gives off a nice 'girl next door' kind of impression, if you know what I mean."

"How dare you ridicule me?!"

"I'm not though. I swear." For emphasis, I drew an X over my chest. "Cross my heart."

She ignored that and descended a bit, probably so that we wouldn't need to yell at each other to be heard.

"Tell me, Scion of the Tenebrous Flames! Tell me how you survived! What secrets did you keep from me, you vermin!?"

"Oh, my dear Deus. You wound me." I nonchalantly yet pointedly straightened the lapels of my tailcoat, and then opened my arms wide. "I'm an upstanding kind of guy, you know? I haven't told a falsehood in my life."

"Liar!"

She was getting ready to draw her bowstring again, so I hastily raised my palms.

"Oh, fine! 'In my life' might've been overstating it a bit. It's more like… ten seconds?" I shrugged. "Compared to the age of the universe, it's not that big of a difference, really."

"Stop playing word games with me, and—!"

We were just about to slide into a nice back-and-forth here, and I was convinced that I could buy a couple of minutes this way, but of course, something had to come up.

"Angie! Come back to your senses!"

Josh, ever the master of picking the worst bloody time to act out his heroic instincts approached us from the left. To my surprise, his Magiformer was off, and instead he was wearing the same full Celestial transformation outfit as Angie's, just with the asymmetric bits and bobs mirrored. He also had his transparent wings out, even though he wasn't flying. All six of them. And they were even smouldering with the same kind of thick yellow radiance as Angie's flames.

"How dare you show your face in front of me, thief!" she glared at him, but her bow was still trained on me, and she only averted her eyes from me for a second. "Was this part of your ploy, you vile daemon?"

"Please, stop!" Josh continued to plead with her while inching closer, and he was also paying lots of attention to me. "He's dangerous!"

"Silence! I am Deus, Father of Elysium! I will not back down from a fight, and…" For the first time since my arrival, her expression changed, with just a hint of uncertainty creeping in. "And where is Polemos at a time like this?!"

"I would also like to know," I chimed in to keep her attention on me, and started casually walking in a wide circle around her, to make sure she would have to divide her attention between me and Josh. "I wanted to talk to the kid, but we apparently missed each other."

"You wouldn't dare to speak of him so casually, were Polemos here," Angie/Deus hissed at me, and I shrugged again.

"Do you want to bet?"

"S-Shut up!" Josh tried to interject, but despite being influenced by his absorbed Deus-ness, his voice lacked strength when he was talking to me. "Don't change the subject!"

"What is the subject, then?" I glanced back to Angie. "Do you know?"

"Your destruction!"

"No! It's that you have to stop this at once!" the guy roared in frustration, drawing Angie's attention to him again, and in that split-second, I suddenly felt all the hairs on my body stand on ends. However, it wasn't because of her.

There was a wave, like a stone being dropped into a pond, followed by a deafening, high-pitched noise. Then, the whole world turned blue; a harsh, cold kind of colour originating from a streak of light piercing through the heavens and blowing a hole in the clouds hanging over the night sky. It all lasted for a split second, and then Angie suddenly plummeted to the ground.

"Got her! Wooo!"

Even as Lord Ambrose's ecstatic yells filled the silence left in the wake of… whatever the hell that was, my brain was doing its best to understand what exactly happened here. Josh was faster than me this time, and he was already rushing to catch the falling girl, her wings cleanly sheared off on her left side. She must've used them to defend against Lord Ambrose's attack, and even as she was falling, her wounded stumps (as much as that applied to ethereal wings like that) were spewing golden flames that were trying to take their original shape.

For a moment, it looked like Josh was about to catch her in his arms, but then she abruptly beat her still-present wings and turned in the air, tackling him onto the ground instead. She lost her bow in the process, and it tumbled away before coming to a stop right in front of me. I gave it a good kick in the opposite direction, for good measure, and got ready to Phase over to the duo's side in case there was an emergency.

"Angie! Please!" Josh pleaded with tears in his eyes, lying on his back as his girlfriend straddled his stomach, one hand on his throat. "Come back to me!"

"Silence!"

"Please! You need to remember!" He tried his best to speak, despite his windpipe being squeezed, with his hands clasped around Angie's forearms. "You are not being yourself right now! Remember what you told me, about how to resist mind control! You need to focus on your emotions, and snap out of it!"

"I said silence! Don't try to confound me, you thief!"

"I don't! I only want to help you! I love you!"

I was just about to move, but seeing the hesitation in Angie's eyes, I held back. This was a pretty template development of the dramatic emotional climax variety, so I held my breath back. Interrupting this could've had unforeseen consequences, so for the moment I decided to wait and see what the Narrative was cooking.

"You… want to help me?" she asked, looking conflicted. Seeing a glimmer of hope, Josh immediately nodded, even though his face was turning red from the pressure on his throat. "Then…"

She finally withdrew her hand and glanced at me, but the cold light in her eyes sent shivers down my spine. Then, without warning, she let out a series of discordant notes and straightened her fingers, summoning the same kind of hand-blade that Josh was using as of late, and she raised it over her head.

"Then give me back what you stole from me!"

Shit! That wasn't good! Josh wasn't even trying to protect himself, and she obviously wasn't just trying to scare him. With my heart in my throat, I Phased to their side, yet to my momentary shock, someone was even faster.

"Stooop!"

Before Angie could swing her magical arm-blade, a blonde blur passed by me and tackled her off Josh. She let out a startled yelp, but the two of them quickly rose to their feet, with the princess squaring off against her, arms raised in a defensive posture. More importantly…

"{Chief, what are you doing!? Why did you freeze up like that!?}"

"I thought they were doing a thing! Power of love and stuff!" I complained loudly, and fortunately, nobody was paying any attention to it.

"{Go help Elly!}"

She didn't need to say that twice, and I quickly Phased between the two, just as Angie was about to strike at my girlfriend. My danger sense told me that the magical arm-blade was bad news, but by wrapping my forearm and hand in my phantom limbs, I managed to successfully deflect it.

We exchanged a couple of blows like that, though it would've been more accurate to say I took hers as best as I could. Because of the height difference, and her attacking low, I was forced to backpedal a bit to avoid the sweeps and stabs aimed at my legs, and maybe because I was too focused on her magical weapon, I paid too little attention to her other hand.

It happened when I ducked under an overhead sweep of her flaming wings. I had no idea if they could cause any damage or not, but since my sixth sense gave me a warning, I wasn't going to disagree. However, at the same time, she was aiming to stab my thigh, and because I was in an awkward pose, I couldn't really get out of the way in time. As such, I Phased away… but didn't realize that something touched my face. Sure, I didn't receive a danger-sense heads-up about it, and I was admittedly completely exhausted by this point, but it was a mistake I wouldn't have normally made.

At first, nothing seemed out of place when I reappeared just a step behind where I stood a moment ago. However, the thing that immediately caught my attention was that Elly, who was in the process of helping Josh up from the ground, froze mid-motion and stared at me with wide-open eyes. Then, I saw that there was something white in Angie's free hand, and…

"No way… This cannot be…" she muttered as she looked at the mask in her palm. "Polemos… No, it can't be! You! How dare you wear his face!?" With fury that completely distorted her face, and a sickening crunch, she crushed my Bel mask and bellowed, "Unacceptable!"

Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, OH SHIT! I was standing there, right in the open, with all eyes focused on me, and not wearing my Bel mask.

I messed up. I messed up big time.

If this gets out, everything will get turned on its head. The Draconic Federation, the Ordo Draconis, the Directorate… Fuck, even my relatively amicable relationship with the Magi will be completely screwed, along with my school life, my personal connections, and everything else.

Fuck! Just two more weeks! In two weeks' time, I could've finally put the plan to retire Bel into action, but now everything is bloody ruined! I can't talk my way out of this! There's no amount of refuge in audacity in the world that can fix this! I would… I…

"This is a bad idea…" I whispered, but I couldn't think of anything else.

I had to act now. The quicker I do, the less likely it was that things would go catastrophically wrong. I just needed to… retcon this. Not a big one; just a tiny retcon. Just the last ten… no, make it twenty seconds. Yes. Just retcon the last twenty… Thirty seconds. Just to be safe. A minute at most. Just make it so that Angie didn't grab my Bel mask, and everything will work out.

Was this a good idea? Like hell it was, but I had no time to hesitate, or ask for a second opinion. Each passing second made it more and more difficult, so I had to bite the bullet, and get it done now, or face the consequences.

This was my Rubicon, and I cast the die. With a single thought, all of my phantom limbs rushed out and simultaneously plunged into the body, or rather, the concept of the girl in front of me, pulling my consciousness through a tunnel that made me feel like a golf ball being sucked through a garden hose, until I reached Angie's core. What I saw there, gave me pause. And blanked out my mind. And if I had a back, it would've given me the chills too. Among other things.

"Wait… Where's… Where's Angie?"

My muttered words caused the space around me to tremble like an ocean during a storm, and that was also the best way to describe how my mind felt at the moment.

I've seen Angie's 'soul' before; her metaphysical yarn-ball was a mixture of dull, colourless threads mixed with more vibrant filaments on top. Yet, at the moment, I couldn't see the latter at all. Here and there, the different strands blended together, something I'd seen before, but the balance was overwhelmingly in the dull ones' favour, and even without touching them, I could tell that they all belonged to Deus.

It was at this point that the cold yet inevitable realization began to sink in. I… messed up. I completely messed up. I focused on the assassins and Percival, because I considered them the bigger problem, while I should've done this from the very start. I should've checked the status of Angie's soul much sooner, but because I've wasted so much time elsewhere, it allowed Deus's consciousness and personality to completely encroach on her. Hell, there was practically no 'Angie' left here, which meant… it meant…

"Is… she dead?"

This time, my helpless words only caused tiny waves, and I watched as they gently rocked the countless tightly woven threads in front of my nonexistent eyes. All the day's mental exhaustion cascaded down on my mind like an avalanche, burying me under a sense of utter powerlessness I'd never felt before.

I must be mistaken, right? There's no way the Simulacrum and the Narrative would allow something like this to happen to a main character, right? Not just that, but Josh's chosen heroine! Unless it was a bad ending, or one of those fake-outs where time gets reversed, or it's shown to be just a vision of the future, or some other plot device to enable a shock death without consequences.

But wait… The Simulacrum explicitly didn't allow time travel. Or resurrection, for that matter. Both of those were among the hard-coded rules of the world, acknowledged even in-universe by the Magi and everything. Which meant that, if Angie was truly dead…

"I can't do anything about it…?"

This time, my voice caused no waves. Everything was silent. Even the ever-moving threads of her soul remained stock-still as I floated in the non-Euclidian space-between-spaces, my mind's eye firmly closed. That was it. There was nothing for me to do here. I had no choice, but to accept the truth in front of my eyes, and move o—

"Fuck the truth!"

The words erupted from the bottom of my heart with a primal roar, shaking the space around me so hard I wouldn't have been surprised if it all fell apart. It didn't though, so I grit my currently non-existent teeth and anchored myself into the world before extending a single phantom limb into the yarn-ball of dull threads in front of me. Even though I knew that this was a terrible idea with unfathomable and terrifying consequences that could absolutely ruin everything I have worked so hard to achieve and the world wouldneverbethesameagainsoIshoudlstoppleasestopbefore—

"And fuck you too!" I yelled at the asshole corner of my mind and plunged the phantom limb into the core of Angie's soul. And when I did… everything exploded.

The threads, the yarn ball, and even the space around me fractured and twisted as uncountable branches of an immeasurable fractal tree appeared in front of me. It was time to break the rules. It was time for a not-so-small retcon, and damn the consequences.