Unruly Summon Chapter 43: A New Journey (Patreon)

This chapter marks the end of volume 1

"I'm... surprised," I admitted. "I had expected King Edward to simply hide her from me, rather than following through. And even if he hadn't, I expected you to countermand him. And even if you didn't, isn't acclimatisation supposed to take weeks or months? It's been... what... a single week?"

"I'm not so shameless as to annul the edicts of my father for purely personal reasons. He never did anything without a rational motive, and given his order to process her as fast as possible, even at the expense of her sanity, he must have had a damn good one."

Stephanie remained silent, not reacting at all to the conversation.

"Nope. I really don't want to deal with this," I declared, reinforcing my innards with body strengthening. "Miraculum."

Stephanie continued to not react despite the fine rain of dust falling from the vaulted ceiling.

"Well? Back to normal?" I asked.

She didn't respond, or even look at me, giving no indication whatsoever that she'd heard my question. She gave no indication that she'd heard the spell, despite it shaking the entire castle.

Sure enough, my mana sight showed her collar still active, the spell having apparently achieved nothing. Why?

"Please, just leave and stop toying with my sister's corpse in front of me," ordered the king. "We've already established that your spell doesn't work on those you don't feel deserve it, whatever you rationally think or desire."

"Simply touch the collar here and force a little mana into it to claim ownership," said the knight.

"No way. Take her back and undo it. Even if I can't undo it instantly, you can still do it properly."

"Were you not paying attention when I said this was done to her at the expense of her sanity?" snapped back King George, who seemed to be trying very hard not to scream. "This wasn't done carefully enough to be reversible. You demanded my sister be turned into that, so take it. If you refuse, I'll simply have it disposed of. I have no intention of letting a doll with the face of my sister walk around my kingdom."

I wordlessly complied, injecting mana into her collar, to very little noticeable effect. Her empty gaze simply rotated towards me as she waited silently for her next instruction.

"Sorry," I told her. "I don't think my stay here has turned out how I hoped any more than how your parents hoped."

"Hah. So that gets an apology, but not me?" complained the king. "Whatever. That was my last point of business, so be gone."

I bowed politely—he was still a king, after all, and it was kinda true I'd screwed up his family's plans—and then left. He still didn't get an apology, of course; I was rather angry at the way he kept referring to his sister as a thing instead of a person. Stephanie followed wordlessly, once I prompted her.

Wendy and Mary were waiting outside, heavy packs on their backs and a third on the floor that was obviously intended for me. The lack of a fourth implied they weren't expecting Stephanie to be joining us. Wendy peered at her with obvious surprise.

"We have a lot of things to talk about, but let's save it till we're on the road," she said. "Damn king isn't even giving us a carriage, although I suppose we wouldn't have much to put in one, given that you blew up most of our stuff."

"And after I'd just been shopping, too," complained Mary. "Now I won't get a chance to see you in the other outfits I bought."

"There were more outfits?!"

"Of course! You can't wear the same thing every day."

"Don't worry. You'll get to see him all dressed up in demon fashion soon enough," said Wendy.

"Demon fashion? It's already decided we're going to the Ti'zharr Empire?" I asked, unsure why they were making that sort of decision without me.

"Not as such, no, but I know Minoru will be heading back there, and you're going to insist on escorting her, so... no, but also yes."

"Fair enough," I agreed, being unable to refute that. "Where is Minoru, anyway?"

"Waiting for us outside the north gate. She's been kicked out of the city already."

"Oh. Best we hurry, then."

"This is weird without Christine..." I commented ten minutes later as we walked through the city. Apparently we weren't being kicked out completely empty-handed, because Mary had found Stephanie a pack of her own and some supplies to fill it with.

"Frankly, it's a miracle any of us are still alive," said Wendy. "Christine would consider her death defending Odimere a great honour."

"True, but if that dream dragon is to be believed, the horde was my fault to start with."

"And if you hadn't been here, she'd probably have ended up dead at the hands of the demons instead. There's no point bogging yourself down with what-ifs. What happened, happened."

"Speaking of... Are you okay, Stephanie? Sorry, I really didn't intend for things to end up this way."

Stephanie didn't react.

"Master?" chimed in Mary. "If you want my first-hand advice, saying things like that will only make her feel bad."

"Urk... Stupid mind control. Fine. Stephanie, you haven't done anything wrong. And you're doing a great job at... uh... carrying luggage."

As before, there was no reaction.

"I don't think she feels anything," I pointed out. "Nor is she doing anything of her own accord. She's behaving like a robot..."

"A golem, yes..." agreed Wendy, the translation apparently shifting 'robot' into something she recognised. "I wonder if they used the old version of the collar, that only responds to orders? Dunno where they'd have dug one out from, but her behaviour is inexplicable otherwise. Even if she'd resisted acclimatisation to the bitter end, which would explain the lack of emotion, she shouldn't need to be explicitly told to do every small thing. I can imagine if the former king had ordered them to process her as quickly as possible, even at the expense of her sanity, they might have used an old collar to reduce the need for lengthy acclimatisation."

It was a few minutes more until we left the north gate. None of the guards looked like those who'd been manning the south gate when I'd broken my way in, but they nonetheless all seemed to know who we were, and weren't overjoyed to see us. Then again, we did have the broken former princess in our party. It would stand to reason the guards would recognise her.

Outside, not only Minoru was waiting, but also Archbishop Alexander. He was standing, but leaning against his carriage for support.

"I'm sorry. It seems my actions have caused you some trouble," he said.

"You mean the tiara? Without it, there's no way I could have cast Maius Miraculum. I couldn't have pushed back the corrupted lands or saved the lives that I did."

"True, but that doesn't change the fact the king held it against you," he said.

"You should just declare him your saintess, and then it wouldn't be a problem," suggested Mary.

Wendy snorted.

"You laugh, but it's not the worst idea anyone has ever had," said Alexander. "He certainly has the necessary abilities, and I'm sure we could cram the requisite scriptures into his head quickly enough. The biggest obstacle is that appointing a saintess requires the agreement of all eight archbishops."

"... I can't help but feel that there's another rather fundamental requirement that I'm lacking," I pointed out.

"Nah, that's not important," dismissed Alexander. "There was once an attempt to decree that archbishops needed to be male, and Anypha expressed her extreme displeasure by turning more than half of the upper echelons of the church into gerbils. Very big on gerbils, that one, but also on gender equality. As you might expect, no-one has tried to enforce gender requirements on church roles since."

"Huh..." I commented, not having anything else to add.

"Anyway, I didn't come out here just to apologise. Before you left, I needed to give you the full translation of that Infernal text."

"Oh? You've translated it? Shame it's a bit late..."

"Well, that's the thing," said Alexander, frowning. "The precise translation would be: your continued pointless defiance amuses me. Prove you're worthy of my time, endure my trials and cling to life, for I am coming for you myself."

"That's... uh... quite a lot longer than the text we gave you," I hazarded.

"That's just how Infernal is," explained Alexander. "For example, defiance is considered pointless by default. You have to explicitly say 'defiance that is not pointless' if that's what you mean."

"Then in what way was I defying him?"

"That wasn't part of the text I was given."

"So, the short version is that the miasmic flood wasn't what was coming," said Wendy. "Rather, it was a trial that the dragon wanted Thomas to survive, to prove that he was worthy of being dealt with in person. We should expect a dragon... Or worse, something pretending to be a dragon that speaks Infernal."

"Did you give that translation to King George, by any chance?" I asked.

"Yes. I apologise, but that was not a secret I could keep."

"... No wonder he was in such a hurry to kick me out of the country."

"And you don't have a problem with this?" I asked Minoru, who was listening quietly. "Should you really be bringing me into demon territory?"

"Those are my orders," she replied, grinning like a cat who'd just been caught with her paw in the cream and didn't give a toss.

"Uh... Your expression really doesn't match your voice."

"I heard what happened after I passed out," she explained. "What those priestesses did... You saved my life. I'm hardly going to betray kindness like that."

"Ah. So you know you shouldn't really, but are using your orders as an excuse," I guessed.

"You're not supposed to say it out loud!" complained the cat-girl. "But seriously, no-one will mind, as long as you keep your distance from any major cities. And I owe Wendy my thanks as well; had she not been the first to wake, your effort might have been wasted. When the king's party turned up, I believe they gave serious thought to simply killing us all."

"Of course," I said, rolling my eyes. "They'd just acquired a large area of purified land and the opportunity to control the means of making more. I'm surprised they didn't."

"Mary and Glenda were part of the king's party, and of course Mary stuck to you like glue from the moment they arrived," said Wendy. "Pissing off Mary would have knock-on effects on her mother, and of course I'd have defended you. But really, I think the main reason they didn't was because they weren't confident you wouldn't wake up and hit them with Pereo the moment they laid hands on you."

"I'm not sure if I'm amazing at this hero business or a complete liability," I sighed. "Whatever. We're done here. Let's head to the Ti'zharr Empire!"

No-one moved.

"Uh... Minoru? I have no idea how to get to the Ti'zharr Empire from here. Would you mind leading the way?"

Wendy snorted again. "You may not be the hero we wanted, but I'm pretty darn sure you're the hero we needed. Don't ever change."

And so ended the first stage of my otherworldly adventure. As much as I hoped the next would go a little more smoothly... well... I was starting to suspect my luck simply didn't run that way.