“It’s so weird… Why is he just sitting there?” Emilia asked and stirred her hot chocolate. She and Rosie had been watching King, who had just been sitting in the corner of the tavern for hours, after washing the dishes from the breakfast rush. Usually the simulacrum would just loom over Anastacia whenever he didn’t have anything to do, but today the necromancer had asked him to stay behind when she went out to train. “He looks so abandoned and alone.”

“That’s just your imagination, he looks just like he always does. The guy is literally made from stone and can’t change how he looks.” Rosie gruffly pointed out while wiping the counter with a wet cloth.

“Shush! Let me distract myself with this so I don’t think about losing my powers, okay? Besides, there’s a bunch of stuff about them you don’t know about. On our quest, Anna spent more time hanging on to him than on her own feet.” The priestess insisted and waved her spoon.

“There’s nothing new about her being lazy when it comes to walking and carrying stuff, it’s not something to base a theory on. If I was as small as she is, I’d get myself carried everywhere too, so it’s not like I can’t understand her.” Rosie shrugged.

Most of the guests had either left to do their job or hadn’t yet woken up, so the tavern was mostly empty aside from the simulacrum and a couple of batfolk that had just arrived back from a quest. Yulia was diligently working in the kitchen, so there really wasn’t much to do for the innkeeper before the lunch rush. Rosie didn’t exactly mind the free time but did feel like she should be doing something useful, her anxiousness manifested in excessive wiping of tables and maintenance work – which certainly wasn’t a bad thing.

“Once I find a way to reconnect with Lady Sylvia again, I’ll carry you.” Emilia stated proudly.

Rosie frowned. “Pretty rude of you to imply that nothing short of divine assistance could get me lifted. I know I’ve gained a bit of weight since my sailing days, but you don’t have to be mean about it.” She said and tried to act hurt but couldn’t keep herself from grinning.

“That might have worked for the first five times, but I know you’re just messing with me. But I’m telling you, King is totally into Anna! It’s really obvious if you see them go at it.” Emilia kept insisting.

“I don’t want to be mean, but as far as anyone knows, the simulacra are just machines that do what they have been told to do. It’s way more likely that instead of somehow developing feelings, King is just flawed in some way and happened to get attached to Anna.” The tigress sighed and leaned on the counter. “I’m not saying that’s not exactly what she needs though. He’s reliable, harmless and doesn’t seem to mind following her. I sleep far better at night knowing that he’s there to watch over her daft ass.”

“By Sylvia, you really don’t have a single romantic bone in you. Not one! If we don’t know what they are, they could just as well be fully sentient! What if their creators moved their minds into the simulacra to live forever? What if… You get the idea. You’re just choosing to be unromantic about this.” The priestess exclaimed and poked Rosie in the side with the spoon.

“I… I agree with Miss Priestess...” Yulia uttered from the kitchen doorway. “I’ve been sharing a room with Miss Anastacia and watching them is really awkward… like really awkward. When I wake up during the night, he just sits there and sort of pats her head. And she talks to him, like a lot. At first I thought she was… you know… a little crazy. Please don’t tell her I said that!”

Having found an ally, Emilia cheered and fetched Yulia to aid herself in convincing the grumpy innkeeper. “See? Even the sad little lamb knows love when she sees it!”

Rosie furiously glared at her employee, trying to scare her into backing out; but Emilia wasn’t about to let that happen and held on to Yulia.

They were interrupted by King suddenly standing up and heading into the kitchen. He came back out with a couple of apples and a pot of coffee. On his way out, he placed a pebble on the counter as payment and left the inn.

“Should we follow him? It could be interesting.” Emilia asked and rolled the pebble between his fingers.

Rosie untied her apron and tossed it at Yulia. “Yes, he took the good pot.” She roared and hopped over the counter to chase down her beloved piece of kitchenware, with Emilia right behind her.

Gilbert stumbled down the stairs just in time to see the pair rushing outside. He had been up late last night, drinking and arguing with Anastacia about goblin politics and how they should be making the roof for the castle. And unlike the young and spry necromancer, he needed his sleep; so while Anastacia had been outside for hours, Gilbert had taken his time in bed.

“Morning, lass. Where did they head off to in such a hurry?” He asked from Yulia and leaned against the counter, but the girl just squeaked shyly and escaped to the kitchen. “Hmph, must be losing my touch…” He grunted and sat down with the batfolk.

Anastacia sat in the middle of the field, reading her book and trying to find something useful in the increasingly worrying notes of Ivory the Mad. Chapter by chapter, the ancient necromancer grew lonelier and madder, but never gave up on his conviction to protect the village that shunned him. Things had taken a grave turn when two villagers had gotten caught in a fight between the necromancer’s thralls and whatever was attacking the village, and now they had all turned against Ivory.

Around Anastacia was an array of hundreds of floating bones, that slowly moved around each other in relatively simple patterns. Initially she had intended for it to be more complex, but it was too early in her training to do that. The purpose of the exercise was to keep the bones moving without them hitting each other while concentrating in the book. Starting out with a handful of bones, she slowly added more and more until she was forced to expand the patterns outwards. Without really noticing it, she had surrounded herself with almost twenty meters of impenetrable field of bones.

Unsurprisingly, it was also where King had hurried off to. The simulacrum waved the apples, trying to get Anastacia’s attention, but not being made of meat made him invisible to her necromancy. In an attempt to get her attention by stopping one of the bones, he placed the coffee pot in front of it. The piece of bone continued its movement through the metal pan completely unhindered, like the copper pan was made of wet paper.

“NOOOO!” Rosie yelled from the distance as the bones ripped apart her pot.

The scream finally caught Anastacia’s attention, and the bone field collapsed. She quickly got up and hopped over to King. “You were bringing me coffee and a snack? I was just thinking I wanted some, but looks like I killed the coffee… I’ll take the apples though. Sorry I had to leave you behind today, but I didn’t want you to end up like that pot.” She explained and grabbed one of the apples. “Why’s Rosie coming here? She looks kind of angry…” She wondered out loud and took a bite of the apple. While chewing, her eyes happened upon the mangled remains of the pot, and when her brains finally connected the dots between it and the furious innkeeper, she went pale. Anastacia grabbed King’s hand and took off as fast as she could.

Despite King being a machine and Anastacia being pretty quick on her feet as well, they had no chance against a tigerfolk whose coffee pot had just been ruined. Only after thirty or so meters, Rosie caught up to them and smashed King into the ground by leaping on his back.

“You don’t try to run from tigers, everyone knows that!” Rosie laughed and got off the simulacrum. “Kitten, come back! He doesn’t have any money!” She shouted to the fleeing necromancer.

“I’ll avenge you, my king! I promise!” Anastacia answered and continued fleeing.

Emilia finally caught up to Rosie and King and was exhausted. Running around in full armor was a lot harder than she remembered it being. She tried to say something but couldn’t quite get it out while gasping for air.

“And you had the gall to say anything about my weight. At least I can run without a goddess.” Rosie boasted and helped King up.

Once he was back on his feet, the simulacrum offered her three more pebbles, presumably as a payment for the pot.

Rosie took them and inspected them more thoroughly just to make sure there wasn’t anything special about them, and there wasn’t; King had clearly just picked up some roundish pebbles form the ground and attempted to now use them as currency. “You know that these aren’t money, right? I’ve had you work for me more than a few times though, so I’m not actually angry or anything, just a bit disappointed by how predictable this was… Finding good coffee pots is really hard, so could you not take them in the future?”

King nodded and offered a fourth pebble.

“Keep it, I have no idea how much you think these are worth, but I think I can do with the ones I have already.” The tigress laughed, lifted the exhausted priestess on her shoulder and started walking back to the inn. “That and you’ll do the dishes for the next month. Oh, and take Anna’s book with you, she left it behind when she totally ditched you.”