The Simulacrum - Chapter 136 - Part 4 (Patreon)

"Lord Archon?"

Hearing the flat voice coming from the doorway, I opened one eye and glanced at Jaakobah, who returned my gaze with an unperturbed expression. I was sitting inside the clandestine meeting room of the chief directors at the moment, and I've just finished doing a Far Sight round check across all the relevant targets. My coming here was a bit of a gamble, because it gave the nefarious Narrative the perfect opportunity to start moving the pieces on the board in my absence, so I'd been routinely checking on every, just in case.

As for why I choose this spot of all places to meet the trio… let's call it some subtle power play, and leave it at that. In any case, just a glance wasn't enough to make the man in the doorway speak his mind, so I opened both of my eyes and faced him properly.

"Yes?"

"We just received a message from Director Savir, saying she won't be able to arrive in time. The messenger also said that—"

"Stop," I uttered, making the hard-faced agent's expression turn just a little bit surprised. I closed my eyes for a second, glancing at the Orthodox director's red dot, and the moment I returned, I frowned with exasperation. "Go over to director Mensah's suite. If anyone tries to stop you, tell them you're running an errand on my behalf. Once there, tell him, Savir, and Tsephanyah that I already know they're here, and to stop wasting my time, or I'll be forced to make good on my previous promise. Understood?"

"Perfectly."

I dismissed him with a wave of my hand, and he closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the small conspiratorial meeting room again. Tried as I might, I couldn't stop myself from exhaling a shallow yet weighty sigh as I massaged my eyes.

"Seriously, are these guys dumb, suicidally over-confident, or both?"

There was no one else here to respond to my question, so I crossed my eyes and steeled my nerves for the conversation to come. First off, I had to get into character. Or rather, I had to finalize my Polemos persona before they got here.

Honestly speaking, I didn't put too much thought into this until now. In fact, I could say my 'Polemos' had much less thought put into him than my 'Bel', mainly because I just used the mask as a degree of separation between me and Elysium. However, I had a feeling that I would inevitably have to use it much more in the future, and while I was planning to put more thought into the act, it was near the rock bottom of my priority list, so I failed to do so until… well, right now.

The problem was that 'my Polemos' wasn't nearly as fun to play as 'Bel'. Well, fine, maybe that wasn't the right metric here, but it was true! Bel required a specific mindset, lots of preparation and setup, and just a dash of showmanship on top of it all that made him more fun to play. Even when it was a stressful performance, there was a sense of catharsis when I was done, and even the less bombastic acts had their high points, like being able to kick Savir in the ass without repercussions.

Compared to that, Polemos was… I didn't really build much on him, to be honest. Just be solemn and authoritative, but otherwise, I didn't clearly delineate him from my normal act as Leonard Dunning.

…

Wait. Did I just call my natural self an act?

…

Whatever. There was no time to get sidetracked by unfortunate word choices right now. I expelled the thought from my mind and focused on the original issue. Namely, Polemos. Bel, as a character, was born under intense pressure, and later moulded to make him dissimilar enough from me to allay any suspicions. So, what was my goal with Polemos?

Initially, it was to fool the audience who watched me getting cocooned by Teeny's memory transfer bubble and to make them think it succeeded. By now, however, it was fully known inside and outside the Elysium that it wasn't a full overwrite, and everyone seemed to accept the 'merger' of Polemos and Leonard. So, my goal wasn't to portray a fully separate persona, but more of a 'shift' from one to the other.

Now came the next question: What was I doing here?

Yeah, I know, asking this so late in the game was kind of stupid, but to be fair, I still wasn't entirely sure about it. One thing that I knew for sure was that if I left these clowns to their own devices, it was only a question of time before they would turn this circus on its head, and then all the lions and monkeys and rope-walkers would spill over into my life, and at this point the analogy kind of broke down. The point remained the same though: I had to take them down a peg.

Yet, I couldn't take it too far. Not yet. As other me had warned me, I had to be aware of the plot, which I presumed was the whole Angie-route thing we've been theorizing around for the past couple of months. I was aware that if I pushed too hard here, it could potentially trigger a plot-pileup, just like what happened when I cut the 'sentai arc' short by leading the gang to capture Fred as Robatto, which caused the Narrative to freak out and dump the Knights and Rinne on my head at the same time.

As such, today's goal was to put a stop to the Directorate's meddling with me, without pushing them too far and causing the plot to go haywire. Easier said than done, but I refused to continue living in fear of these bozos purposefully messing with my daily life, so I had to do it anyway. The easiest way to do that was to give them another target, like handing a dog a chew toy to make them stop ruining my slippers, and I luckily already had something in mind.

In conclusion, my Polemos had to be firm and overbearing, but not tyrannical. I had to browbeat them, but I couldn't rely on Bel-style threats, and violence had to be avoided or risk leading to a narrative kerfuffle. In other words, I had to cow them with just the weight of my words and the authority of the Second True Archon, and then divert their attention somewhere else. Easy peasy.

…

Oh, who was I kidding? This was shaping up to be a pain in the ass, and I couldn't wait to go home, forget about being Bel and Polemos and whatnot, and just play myself again. I mean, be myself again. Preferably before I start developing dissociative identity disorder by juggling all of these roles.

…

Though again, I already did have a kind of split personality in the form of 'other me' who had a better grasp on the ins and outs of this Simulacrum thing, so maybe I should stop caring and embrace the madness. Let's make my next identity an attack helicopter. That sounds fun.

Jesting aside, I could detect that the red dots of the three chief directors were moving, so I did one last quick Far Sight roll call on the usual suspects before returning to my body, assuming a straight-backed posture, and picking up the half-empty glass of water from the table. I waited until the three, plus Jaakobah, reached the secret room, and only took a sip the moment the door opened.

The first one to enter was, surprisingly enough, the blonde chief director, though he looked slightly more dishevelled than usual. The moment our eyes met, I placed the glass back onto the table and flipped the Polemos-switch. From this point onwards, I would be arguing from a Polemos perspective, dress them down for Polemos reasons, and get them to behave through sheer, unadulterated Polemosness. Whatever the heck that even meant.

"Archon Polemos," Tsephanyah nodded, and I didn't return the gesture. "We didn't expect your return at this ti—"

"Sit," I told him, interrupting him mid-sentence, and directed a glare at the door. "You two. Get inside, and stop wasting my time."

Grudgingly, Mensah and Savir also entered the room, and the female director in particular looked extremely irate, here yes practically thundering with the kind of outrage usually reserved for people on social media with different political opinions.

"What's the meaning of this, Leonard?" she uttered with barely disguised disdain, but I fully ignored her and turned to Jaakobah, still under the doorframe.

Thanks to the roll-calls, I knew he already made contact with Kane, so I straight-up told him, "Inform the Seraphic Safeguard that I want this whole floor locked down. Not a soul can enter or leave until we're done here."

"As you command, Lord Archon," the man, ever-so-uncomplicated, gave me a salute and closed the door, leaving me alone with the three chiefs. Normally, this would've been one of those 'trapped in the wolves den' situations, except they have yet to realize who was the wolf in there.

"Sit," I commanded in a low voice. "You have wasted enough of my time already, so stop making me repeat myself."

Savir looked at me defiantly, but when her companions did as I said, she also grudgingly took a seat. So, there we were. Ostensibly the four most important people in the Elysium, sitting across a single table in a drab grey room, with the three on the other side waiting for me to speak up. It almost felt like a scene out of a school sitcom, where the hardass principal was about to scold a group of troublemakers… and the fact that I wasn't that off the mark made me weep for the Celestial civilization.

"I assume you know why I called you here," I opened, sticking to the aforementioned principal impression.

"It's because of what happened yesterday, isn't it?" Savir spoke with audible distaste.

"As in?"

Looking annoyed, she put her hands onto the table and said, "You sent your collaborator here to retrieve something, but he returned empty-handed."

I levelled a flat gaze at her, and let the silence linger in the wake of her statement for a while before I turned to Mensah.

"Do you know why I called you here?" I asked, and the man with the glasses blinked in surprise, not expecting me to completely disregard Savir's answer.

"You… are aware of the existence of this room," he pointed out, a finger aimed at the ceiling. "So it must be because of what we discussed here yesterday. Am I correct?"

I repeated the same process with him as I did with Savir, and turned to Tsephanyah next. To his credit, he caught the pattern, and I didn't have to individually prompt him.

"You're here because Eris's plan to draw out Bel of the Abyss interfered with your household on the ancestral land."

I let out a soft hum, reached out for the glass on the table, and took another sip before responding.

"Correct. You are once again proving that you're the least worst one. Congratulations."

"… I don't think that was a compliment," he whispered, and I was tempted to yell 'Of course it wasn't, you idiot!', but I didn't have the chance.

"Let's dispose of the pretenses, shall we?" Savir spoke up, crossing her arms in the process. "You're here because heinformed you about what happened. That means you're in contact, and it's as good as admitting that you ordered him to go after the Book of Hymnos. Isn't that right?"

Looking at her made the irritation in the pit of my stomach flare up, but I couldn't let it cloud my judgment. As such, I used a phantom limb to trigger one of the storage enchantments, Cal immediately appeared in my hand, causing the directors to twitch, and Mensah in particular looked extra-startled.

I ignored them and focused on Cal.

"{Hm? What's the situation, young Knight? Where's Teeny?}" I didn't answer, but started the mana-circulation pattern instead, and after just a few seconds, my sword let out a sound in realization. "{Ah! Do you wish to use that Eastern esoteric technique again? I still don't like it, but I understand, young Knight! Leave it to me!}"

After a moment, my mana made a full circle, and I could feel my mind clear up and my tension alleviated. Damn. I really should do this more often, not just to counteract my gut reactions…

But putting my belated realizations aside, I put Cal on my lap and then faced the confused trio on the other side of the table.

"Eris," I began in a low voice, and that somehow made her face twitch harder than when I took out a weapon. Anyhow, I continued with, "At this point, we've known each other long enough to be on first-name basis, so I'm sure you don't mind if I address you like such." Nobody responded, so I leaned back in my seat and let out a dramatic breath. "So, Eris? Please tell me; how did a thoughtless fool like you ever manage to rise to the pinnacle of Elysium's hierarchy?"

"W-What?!" she blurted out, clearly outraged, but before she could continue, I tapped a finger against the table.

"No need to reply. I already know the answer; this is a soft age, and the Elysium has grown soft as well. You have grown fat and complacent. Arrogant and vain in your ivory towers, thinking yourself safe and secure in the blanket called the Directorate you've woven, and you are viewing the world through the lens of petty schemes whose backlashes could never touch you." I paused and linked my fingers. "This. cannot. continue."

"Don't try to change the subject!" Savir complained. "You use big words, but at the end of the day, you're only here because your Bel couldn't—"

"Did I give you permission to speak?" I growled, lowering the pitch of my voice, and it made her look at me with an expression that belonged on the face of a bratty teenage girl who had never been overruled in her entire life, not one you'd expect to see on the face of a seasoned politician. That either meant that she was completely unbalanced by my act, or that her ego was more fragile than I thought.

"Lord Archon," Tsephanyah spoke up, and when I glanced his way, he hastily continued with, "If I may ask, what was contained in that book?"

"Acacius!" Savir hissed, but the man wasn't apologetic at all.

"A few lines of old law about the ancient marriage customs of Ophanim that would've mildly inconvenienced me and my inner circle if they got widely circulated," I told him, and this time she looked at me like I was a ghost. I had no idea why she was so shocked. It was a well-known fact that the moment a weakness wasn't secret anymore, it would stop being a leverage, and I was fully intending to take away her cards today.

"Eris…" To my mild annoyance, Director Mensah looked genuinely impressed by what I just revealed. "You tried to blackmail the Archon?"

"It was a deal," she hissed, and I nodded along.

"Yes. Was," I emphasized. "Eris promised to keep the news about these old laws out of the eyes of the public to avoid inconveniencing me, and in return, I would leave her to her own devices. Yet, in her conceit, she broke the deal after only a few short weeks." I paused and levelled a long, hard stare at her. "I didn't know why I was expecting anything better."

"I did no such thing! You were the one who used Bel to—"

"You keep making irrelevant accusations. Stop." After a beat, I shifted to a slightly more contemplative tone, and added, "You're so trapped in your own little world, that you completely failed to consider the consequences of your actions. I was willing to give you a small concession, allowing you to play your petty games if it meant you would stay out of my sight and affairs. But of course, you couldn't help yourself. Answer me this: if our deal was predicated on avoiding an inconvenience to me and mine, then if you caused one anyway, why would I trust you not to do so again? Why would I consider our deal worth anything at this point? And if the deal is worthless, then why would I bother trying to get my hand on that precious book you keep talking about?"

All of a sudden, Tsephanyah raised a hand, prompting me to look at him.

"Yes, Acacius?"

"Lord Polemos," he started, sounding a bit unsure of himself. "Are you implying that you had no reason to send Bel of the Abyss to retrieve the Book of Hymnos in question?"

Instead of responding right away, I closed my eyes and theatrically tilted my head back in an implied facepalm.

"Have you even considered that your entire premise is broken beyond repair?" I posited and let out a soft sigh. "Tell me, Eris: did Bel of the Abyss strike you as a being that could be ordered around?"

"You have already done so," Mensah butted in. "When he delivered the communicator to the dragoblooded."

"Is that so, Dolion?" I addressed him, and it made him visibly uncomfortable. "You have access to the intelligence from the time, haven't you? Did what happened back there seem like a subordinate following orders to you?"

"Well, not, but…"

"It was all an act!" Savir exclaimed, finally running out of patience, glaring at the Unorthodox director. "We discussed this the other day! There is no other logical explanation!"

"For what?" I posited, and she glared at me in turn, but when I met her eyes with a calm-ish gaze, she soon averted hers with a soft grunt.

"I believe Eris is referring to the way Bel of the Abyss is present in three realms," Tsephanyah said, and I once again shook my head.

"Once again, you are so snug and comfortable in your little bubble, that you fail to understand the true significance of what you see, imagining sleight of hand and ploys to explain the obvious, because that's all you know." I let out a soft sigh and shook my head. "I shouldn't blame you. You're like slightly larger fish living in a tiny pond, imagining themselves apex predators because they lack the frame of reference to realize how weak and insignificant they are."

"Are you implying that we're wrong, and Bel of the Abyss truly is just one person capable of moving freely between the realms?" Mensah blurted out, and oddly enough, when I frowned at him, he hastily amended, "O Lord Archon?" at the end.

"That's impossible," Savir insisted, but by this point, I'd already successfully sown the seeds of doubt in their minds.

"You're only proving my point, Eris," I stressed. "You're still afraid to consider the world outside your miniscule pond. What's so impossible about entering and leaving the Elysium and the Abyss unannounced? Any sufficiently powerful Celestial or Abyssal of old could do so if they were alive today, after millennia of erosion between the realms."

"Can you?" Mensah asked.

"Which part of 'sufficiently powerful' did you not understand, Dolion?" I asked back, and the man continued to stare at me, trying to weigh my words.

"So you're telling us…" Savir muttered, her eyes clouded over with clashing thoughts and realizations, "You're saying there's no conspiracy, and Bel is…"

"Bel is a shark," I told her flatly. "Stop trying to confine him in the logic of your tiny pond. You must first accept that he's fundamentally different from you. Only after you do that can you start to understand what he's doing and why."

I let that sink in, and after a few seconds, Savir's eyes cleared up.

"But I've seen him read Celestial Script!" she said, sounding unusually perturbed. "He can't be from the Abyss!"

I let out a theatrical groan and fell back to the exasperated principal act from the beginning.

"Have you put any thought into that conclusion? Did you think Abyssals could hold positions in our government in my time if they couldn't read our Script?" I told her disparagingly, though to be perfectly fair, I had absolutely no idea if they could or not. I had only a fraction of a fraction of the true Polemos's memories, but my conjecture sounded reasonable enough, and a shocked expression settled on the director's face.

"But… that would mean he's ancient, just like…" Savir mumbled in a daze, her voice trailing into silent whispers.

"Lord Polemos?" Tsephanyah addressed me, seeing that his colleague was out of it. "Ignoring our… potential misunderstanding about this Bel, you've come back to Elysium to warn us not to interfere with your affairs. Indirectly or otherwise. Am I correct?"

"Not quite," I responded, pitching down my voice again. "We're past the stage where I warn. I order you to cease, or face the consequences."

I was expecting them to argue, but the previous bit about Bel was apparently still on their minds, so I only got a few vague grumbles, followed by a borderline baffling, "Any other orders?" from Mensah.

With zero idea about what he had on his mind, I pondered the question for a moment, then just winged it.

"Do you expect me to give you another command?"

"I… thought you would have something to say on the current state of mobilization," he pointed out, and I was just about to nod along when I caught myself.

Wait, I was Polemos right now. Sure, I personally didn't like that, but the Second True Archon was a military leader, and so he would be in favour of military readiness. Not to mention, it was another of those 'had the Narrative's fingerprints all over it' developments, so I didn't want to touch it until I gave enough thought to how it could fit into the context of the Angie route.

"No. Continue as you were," I told him, and the bespectacled director's eyes lit up in pleasant surprise.

"We understand, O Lord Archon," Tsephanyah noted, and glanced at Savir, still lost in thought, before his attention returned to me. "I don't want to be disrespectful, but… I wish you had shared this information with us sooner. It could have avoided such an…"

"Awkward situation," Mensah continued the thought of his colleague.

"Yes. Let's call it awkward," the blonde director nodded. "Anything else you wish to discuss? Maybe we could move to a more pleasant venue?"

"No, that's unnecessary," I told them and stood up, carrying Cal in my left hand. "I can't leave Deus unattended for long." That was the excuse I prepared ahead of time, and when the others tried to follow after me, I gestured for them to stay put. "I recommend you remain here for the time being, and reflect on your past actions and what we just discussed."

I headed to the door, but just as I was about to leave, Savir spoke up again. She still looked a touch scatterbrained, probably because I sent her brain on a loop with all the 'revelations' about Bel.

"Leonard?" She paused, and after a moment she rephrased that to, "Lord Archon? If this… this Bel is as you described then… what are we supposed to do about him?"

"Nothing," I answered off-handedly. "Minnows should not involve themselves with the affairs of us sharks."

And with that, I opened the door and left them to their own thoughts and devices. With some luck, it would shift their attention to Bel and keep them guessing for a while, too busy to meddle with us. Of course, that didn't mean I wouldn't keep them under constant surveillance during the coming days. If they decided to throw caution to the wind and keep scheming behind my back, I was still perfectly willing to put my plan into action and overthrow them all on Monday. If they decided to be on their best behaviour though… I was willing to postpone that until another Monday.