RavensDagger

  Chapter Two Hundred aeen - Inquiring Mind Wants to Know

  Ohe st of the Colourless was down and fading into little motes of--was it mana?--we took a moment to look around us and make sure that we were safe.

  Well, I did that. Emmaretched his shoulder and started trotting towards the other Colourless in the room.

  “Hey!” I said out loud. Then, when he didn’t even slow down, I called out, a bit louder. “Emmanuel, what are you doing?”

  The cervid stopped and half-turned. He gestured to the other Colourless, as if it was entirely obvious. “I’m going to fight those?” he said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because... they’re monsters?” He tried. I thiiced how that didn’t work very well on me. “It would be irresponsible for a knight like myself to allow such fair maidens to e to danger because I left some beast alive when I could so easily dispatch it.”

  I put my hands on my hips, and noticed that Amaryllis looked just as unimpressed as I felt. “Mister Emmanuel,” I began.

  “Emmanuel Aldein Von Chadsbourne.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We might be fair, and we might all be maidens, but that doesn’t mean we’re defenceless.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose,” he said. “How about we split them, then? I’ll take the rgest and stro, and you dies fight the smallest and weakest. Sirs Howard and... the sylph take care of some of the others while I’m otherwise preoccupied.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I see... the experience--”

  I shook my head even harder. “No, Emmanuel, it’s not about the experie’s about doing the right thing.” I gestured to the Colourless. The tentacled creatures were ambling about, moving with slow, geions around the room. Sometimes they’d pick up a small rock or pebble, i it, then lower it back down. There were dozens of little piles dotting the room. I’d failed to notice those earlier.

  “The right thing?” Emmanuel asked. “Putting down monsters is hardly the wrong thing.”

  “It is when those monsters aren’t bad,” I said. “Look, those Colourless aren’t hurting anyone and... oh, nevermind.”

  I was still a bit grumpy, and I was maybe taking it out on Emmanuel. He might have been a bit of a pain it, but it wasn’t fair to take out my own anger on him. I had to chill out.

  Awen came up o me and pulled me into a quick hug. That helped a bunch.

  “Just... don’t fight people when you don’t o,” I said.

  Emmanuel hesitated, thehed his sword. “If the dy wishes.”

  “You still haven’t learned our names, have you?” Amaryllis asked.

  “I am relut to admit it, but I am someoor at retaining names. But worry not, fair harpy, I will forever remember the beauty of your eyes, ahe ferocity of yre.”

  I held back a giggle. Amaryllis had a look that I wouldn’t describe as merely a gre. If I was Emmanuel, I would be worried. But then, if I was Emmanuel, Amaryllis probably wouldn’t have to gre as much.

  “Howard, you know the way into the castle?” I asked to get us ba track.

  Hreed to lead us in. We followed, of course, eyes on a swivel, searg for trouble. Howard didn’t seem ed though.

  I don’t know what I expected the interior to look like, but it wasn’t what I found.

  corridors, with straight-cut walls and holes where windows would be. Here and there, rocks were stacked up oop the other, carefully banced and held up by seemingly nothing but their ow.

  They were where I might have expected potted pnts or statues to be in a proper mansion.

  It only took a bit of walking around for Howard t us to a big room. A dining room? Carved arches lead way, to a high ceiling. Hanging down on a was a strangely shaped rock, covered in glowing mushrooms and trailing long streams of luminous moss. A delier, maybe?

  In the tre was a table, curved around like a big crest moon, with cups before all six of the chairs oside arc.

  “This is it,” Howard said.

  He reached the table, and picked something off the surface. A bell? He rang it, but it didn’t make any noise.

  “Don’t sit yet,” Howard said. “And keep calm. He isn’t hostile.”

  The ‘he’ iion slithered into the room a moment ter. A pair of heavy double doors at the end of the room, eae probably heavier than our entire group, slid open and from the darkness beyond came a strange creature, with a form that was hard to expin.

  No matter how hard I stared, my eyes seemed to peel off and away from his form. He was like the Colourless, I figured, though he was much rger.

  Uhe Colourless, whose heads looked a bit like a hat, his was covered in a real but rather small bowler hat, right above all of his many, many eyes. “Greetings, guests. Please, sit, if you would. Let us talk!”

  I stepped forward, in front of all of my friends. “Hi! I’m Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch, and these are my friends. Maybe we be friends too?”

  Jim, The UnknowableDream: To know.Desired Quality: Someone who will answer.

  That retty simple. I could work with that!

  “Greetings, Broccoli. I am... Jim!” Jim put a bit of a pause before his name, almost as if there should have been something a little more impressive there. That was a bit silly though, Jim erfectly pretty name.

  I gri my friends and found mixed reas. Awen and Amaryllis seemed pretty happy, Bastion was guarded. Emmanuel looked dht fused and Howard... moved past me to take a seat on one end of the table.

  “I hope you don’t mind, the tea is just bck.”

  I blinked and noticed steam from the cup.

  “I don’t,” I said as I pulled up one of the seats in the tre of the table and sat dht across from Jim. “So, it might be a little impolite, but I want to know, what’s it like being a dungeon... creature?”

  “It is quite enjoyable,” Jim said. “I get good versation, and a nice pce to reside. Though tely there’s been some trouble. Weeds, you see.”

  “I think I do,” I said.

  “Wonderful. So, Broccoli, what is the thing you feel most guilty about to this day?” Jim tilted the upper half of his body to the side, and his colourless surface ged in hue and tint in a wave that almost read as ‘curious’ to me.

  I looked away when my head started to hurt a bit.

  “Um, something I feel guilty about?” I thought about it really hard. What was something I still felt guilty about? A bit embarrassing, but not that bad. Howard had said it could be awkward to answer Jim’s questions, but we had to be ho. “When I was in sixth grade, a girl called Flora offered people some gum, and I actally took two pieces instead of just one. I should have given one back, but I chewed on it instead. We couldn’t really affum and dies at home. But that’s not a good excuse for stealing.”

  “Really, Broccoli?” Amaryllis asked.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you feel guilty about?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but that was something I did that was wrong, and I k was wrong when I did it, a I didn’t fix it.”

  Awen ughed and patted my head.

  I spun to her and pouted. When did Awen bee so rude?

  “Truth,” Jim said. “A wonderful truth! Do you have more questions, Broccoli Bunch?”

  I nodded. “So many! But if you o ask more, that’s okay too. Will you ask oo each of us?”

  “Indeed. Perhaps even more than one. Not all questions are weighted equally,” Jim said. He winked and tipped his bowler hat. Or... many of his eyes on one side closed at once, and a tentacle tapped the brim of his hat. I think it was a wink and tip though.

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Sir Sylph, you seem a respectable gentlebeing. Tell me, do you love your try? Your king and queen?”

  Bastion didn’t hesitate. “I do.”

  “How wonderful. Oh, everyone, don’t be shy with the tea. It isn’t poisoned. By the way, Sir Padin, would you betray your nation for your panions?”

  Bastion was silent for a long time. “I...” he began, then paused again.

  I didn’t want to pressure him, so I stayed quiet and fiddled with the tea cup before me. It was made of delicately shaped rock, and was nid warm.

  Bck tea, makes the drinker more alert and anxious, and has a mild bone-fortifying effect. Brewed pinly.

  Bastion swallowed. “I would,” he said.

  Oh no. I knew how important Bastion took his whole padin thing, and if he was willing to abandon that for his panions... for us... well, I’d have to do something nice for him. He still seemed flicted.

  My heart felt strangely heavy. It was a really nice gesture.

  “That’s nice,” Jim replied. “Little human miss?”

  Awen stared back, wide-eyed and with her cup h just before her mouth. “Yes?”

  “Are you enjoying the tea?”

  Awen looked down, then back up. She took a small sip. “Um... holy? It’s good tea. I had worse tea at nice parties and balls. But it’s not the best tea I’ve ever had. So... it’s enjoyable, but it could taste a little better? Maybe some honey?”

  “It hurts my mas to hear that, but the truth be unkind,” Jim said. “And no, I don’t have honey. I’ll make note of it, though!”

  I held back a ugh. Was Jim trying to lighten things up? After asking such a serious question, he came in with ohat was easy to answer? It was nice of him.

  “Miss Harpy,” Jim began.

  “Yes?” Amaryllis replied.

  “Is there anyone you love?”

  “Romantically? No,” Amaryllis said.

  Jim hummed. “A partial answer, but truthful.” A tentacle ed around a cup ached the cup itself back down a mouth that only appeared when he moved some tentacles aside. “What about non-romantic love?”

  I turowards Amaryllis, then stared as her feathers puffed out, almost as if she was angry, but her face was the wrong sort of red for that. “I love my sisters, of course. They’re both quite annoying, and iirely unique ways, but I love them all the same. My parents too, though... they are distant.”

  “I see, I see,” Jim said encingly.

  “And... I suppose I love my friends as well,” Amaryllis said. “E-entirely in a ptonic way, of course.”

  I squealed and crashed into her from the side.

  “No! No! I khis would happe off me, or I swear on the World I’ll zap you.”

  “But you love me!”

  “I’d love it if you weren’t su idiot, more like!”

  I shook my head, tally rubbing up against her floofed feathers. “Nope! You had to say the truth. Your feathers even fluffed.”

  “Because I knew you’d ram into me like some drunkard!”

  Jim chuckled. “How nice. How about you, Sir Cervid, any friends that are that close?”

  “No, no, I’m afraid not,” Emmanuel admitted. “I may have had some close friends once, but that was a long time ago.”

  “It was, wasn’t it,” Jim said. “Why did you kill them?”

  ***

  RavensDagger

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