Anastacia and Emilia absentmindedly watched as the goblins slowly overwhelmed the two servants of the simulacrum god and their speaking lump of crimes against nature while figuring out what to do about the Firstborns’ request. Strawberry had made it painfully clear that trying to intentionally involve Gilbert on the matter would have been a breach of contract, so if they were going to help the Firstborn, they would have to do it by themselves, and hopefully with King’s aid. As far as either of the adventurers was concerned, King had lost his vote on the matter through his unwarranted hostility towards the other simulacra and could only decide if he would fall in line with the rest of the party.

“What do you think?” Asked the necromancer while warming her hands by the slowly dying pyre. While letting the simulacra and Strawberry go at each other, she had spent her time using the charred pieces of wood to give herself and a few goblins a warpaint Rosie would no doubt lose her patience over.

“Well, My Lady assures me that this ‘Prince of Life’ is indeed a real deity that has aligned himself with her, but I haven’t heard of him before, nor have I heard of his followers. My Lady hasn’t specifically instructed me to aid them, but I feel their need for help is sincere, and can’t on good conscience turn them away.” Mused the priestess on the matter.

Anastacia felt much the same, though for her own reasons. Helping the simulacra would not only be a perfect chance to see more of them, but also hopefully see the machine fortress King was made in. So far, the only glimpses of the ancient structures she had seen were nothing but closed off halls and corridors with nothing much going on in them. On top of that, perhaps mostly selflessly helping others was just what she needed to clear out whatever hints of bad karma the whole ordeal with the duke had gotten her as well.

She stiffly stood up and yawned. “Guess we’re doing this then. I’ll go tell them.”

Strawberry had yet to take his eyes off Brother Malus’ grotesque form, nor had the fleshy simulacrum taken his eyes off the official. The two ancient siblings had kept quietly staring at each other for a good while already and neither was showing any intention of backing down from the challenge. Even when Anastacia approached the pair, only a few of the simulacrum’s several eyes turned towards her.

“Curious inquiry. Awaiting answers. Has the daughter of death come to a decision?” Brother Malus’s mouths spoke anticipatingly, one after another.

Still having a bit of a hard time looking directly at the amalgamation of flesh and stone, Anastacia answered while pretending to inspect the crab-like Brother Musa’s broken legs. “Yes, we’ve decided to help you out, but we’ll be needing a few days to equip ourselves. I just returned from a quest where I had to more or less burn through my entire arsenal.”

“Excited celebration. Relieving anxiety. Splendid! While we would prefer for you to act hastily, as coming to you is very much the last resort and much time has already been wasted, but we are in agreement that being ill-equipped spells demise, without a doubt.” Brother Malus said delightedly and wriggled about at an accelerated pace, which only made him more abhorrent to look at.

“Now, tell me everything you know about the problem, like what can we expect, how much traveling is there going to be and so forth.” The necromancer took a better look at one of the malfunctioning legs of the crab simulacrum while speaking. The problem with it appeared to be fairly straight forward, one of the thinner metal parts near a joint had bent, presumably after something had gotten stuck in the joint. This caused disruptions in the flow of power along the light patterns in certain positions.

Brother Malus’ gaze finally shifted entirely to Anastacia and the simulacrum carrying him moved closer, allowing him to see what the necromancer was up to. “Curious onlooking. Sharing information. The scouts have estimated that the distance from here to Erratic Judgement’s location corresponds to approximately three and three hundred seventy-one thousandths of a day of traveling at the observed average groundspeed of a human, Assuming no complications, usual rest sequence and a shortcut through the garden of the ancients – an easily travelable forest that covers much of the distance there. Near the location itself rests a town of Ruvenstead, which is reported to host an inn. We suggest you use this establishment to rest and store your traveling equipment, you may restock your rations there as well. As far as difficulties go, the message has lured in several of our hollow brethren, but with the knight in your disposal, I doubt you’ll have much trouble from them. Once inside, there is no telling what you will run into, Erratic Judgement was not one to share his secrets in the ancient days and is even less so now.”

While listening, Anastacia took out her enchanted knife and used its undulling edge to carefully scrape the damaged surface of the light patterns to smooth it out again. Oftentimes, the first thing to go wrong with the control patterns the necromancers used was that an unfortunate blow splintered the bone slightly and left a leak of sorts in the patterns. If there were no spare parts available, a common way to fix it was to simply carve out the damaged part and the flush surface would work just fine with the only drawback being that there was only so much material in any given bone, so it would only work once or twice in the same spot.

A few bright blue sparks flew from the stone as Anastacia dug out small fragments of rock that had gotten stuck out of it. With one side of the joint cleaned, she moved on to the bent and chipped metal piece the power was supposed to transfer to.

“I see, so we’d need to camp out in the forest for a couple of nights, that’s not great. Trees and other stuff tend to hamper the visibility, and I need to sleep too, so necromancy only gets us partway through the night.” She muttered, not really realizing that she had actually become somewhat decent at planning out trips and didn’t necessarily need to rely on Gilbert for it anymore – at least not as much, the old adventurer still had an unbelievable amount of knowledge on what to expect, no matter where they were going.

This took Emilia by surprise as well, but she was glad to see that Anastacia had learned something over their several trips across the wilderness.

“A predictable issue. Suggesting alternative solution. The scouts have suggested pacing your traveling so that you spend a night in a nearby city of Crescent, depart early in the morning and keep a brisk pace within the boundaries of the forest. That way, you would only need to camp there once and get through it by the next evening. Sister Pyrus has expressed interest in guiding you, her watch will no doubt be useful during the night as well.” Brother Malus explained while keeping a keen eye on the necromancer’s hands as she worked on the simulacrum.

“You’re not coming along?” Anastacia asked and tested the hardness of the simulacrum metal with the tip of her knife – the rare dwarven metal luckily proved itself harder that the particular alloy used in Brother Musa. From there, she was able to bend the piece slightly and smooth out the rolled parts of its edge by putting her weight on the knife’s edge and running it across the piece.

While the result wasn’t entirely flawless in quality, it still looked much better than it had, and roughly like what Anastacia had figured it originally was supposed to be like. Brother Musa moved the repaired leg carefully, and instead of flickering with every movement, the flow of power was now constant, and the limb functioned perfectly.

While the necromancer herself didn’t think much of her work and only smirked a bit before moving on to the second broken leg, almost everyone else was stunned to see someone so casually fix a piece of ancient technology.

Strawberry ceased his one-sided staring match with Brother Malus and came closer to watch her work, with his horn constantly flashing as he no doubt reported every detail of the meeting to the guild.

Brother Vitis carefully ran one of his claws on the fixed joint as the crab simulacrum excitedly moved it about. He then brought Brother Malus only a few centimeters away from it and let him have a better look as well. The several mouths gasped in amazement and the pulsating of his meaty bits quickened.

Emilia found it amusing that her friend so casually tampered with ancient mechanisms no one had previously even gotten the chance to look at, but having seen Anastacia spend countless hours carefully looking after King’s body, she wasn’t surprised that the necromancer was able to salvage simulacrum technology like that.

“Crescent, huh? Can’t say I’m excited to go there again.” Anastacia muttered and took a good look at the second broken leg. “Bit of a shithole, that one.”

“It’s a lot better now, but it has been a couple of months since I last checked in with them, so I wouldn’t mind visiting it.” Emilia pointed out. She had been visiting the city they had reclaimed from the corrupt Church of Sylvia every now and then and made sure the taint the church left behind was burned off the face of earth for good.

“Sure, but if I get killed again, you’re not getting any of my stuff – also I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.” Joked Anastacia, at least party covering up how uncomfortable she was with the idea of returning to Crescent.

Her words triggered the official’s need for absolute correctness. “Technically, as per 99-2-b section five, Emilia already has the legal right to take possession of anything you own, as long as it doesn’t cause issues with negligence or abuse clauses and isn’t used to encourage otherwise illegal behavior.” He corrected the claim.

“Again, how did those forms not require my signatures as well?” Asked the necromancer, genuinely worried that Emilia now owned her or something akin to that.

“A hasty change of subject. Redirecting awkward conversation. Of course, we would rather come along as well, but many of the Firstborn are needed elsewhere, and these forms were not created for traveling in the first place. We’ll depart as soon as this meeting of ours ends and if everything goes as planned, we will meet you once more near Ruvenstead.” The speaking simulacrum continued with the details for the trip while watching the necromancer work.

Brother Musa’s other broken leg wasn’t quite as problematic as the first one, as it mostly just acted slowly and lacked strength instead of getting entirely cut off at times. However, Anastacia had a bit more trouble trying to figure out the issue with it was, but when running her hand across the patterns on the flat piece of metal, she noticed a strangely warm spot. There didn’t appear to be a clear reason why a seemingly random spot in the middle of the plate would be warm, but it was definitely where the issue stemmed from, as the joint above it worked just fine.

She scratched her head and tried looking at the problem from different angles, but the problem simply didn’t catch her eye at all. Frustrated, she rolled up her sleeve, grabbed a piece of cooled charcoal from the edge of the campfire and started copying the patterns on her arm. By then she had completely stopped listening and was fully immersed in her own thoughts and the puzzle before her.

Once the pattern had been fully copied, she started drafting the control pattern a necromancer would use to control a part with a similar function on top of it. The light pattern appeared to have multiple superfluous parts that weren’t needed with necromancy, at least on the level Anastacia worked at, but there was definitely a path that both patterns followed almost to a tee – at least until right after the warm spot.

“Huh?... That shape can’t be like that…” She muttered and tried to copy the incorrect-looking shape as a control pattern.

If used in a reanimated skeleton, the shape would have created a loop in the flow that would pointlessly gather energy until the entire bone would have exploded violently. Guessing that heating up was the equivalent of that with the simulacrum technology, Anastacia tried once more feeling the incorrect-looking pattern with her eyes closed. There was no noticeable indentation or a scratch that would have explained the presence of the extra line that connected two shapes that shouldn’t have been connected.

“Have you always had issues with this leg?” Anastacia asked from the crab simulacrum, who nodded warily. “Guess it’s a birthmark of sorts then.” She laughed.

Placing the tip of her knife on the edge of the flawed line of light and tapping it with a small rock a few times, she carved a groove that cut off the flow through it.

Within a couple of seconds, the lights on the rest of the leg became brighter and the strength held back by the manufacturing error flooded into it. Excited by its restored mobility, Brother Musa swiftly climbed over the wall of the castle to dash back and forth unobstructed on the open field on the other side.

Anastacia cleaned the edge of her mead knife and proudly placed it back into its sheath while watching the repaired simulacrum frolic excitedly in the dark.

“Where did you learn to repair simulacra?!” Strawberry suddenly yelled, clearly distressed by what he had witnessed and took a step towards the necromancer.

“Genuine curiosity. Requesting answers. I would also like to know. This is not knowledge mortals should possess.” Brother Malus joined in the inquiry.

Anastacia shrugged. “I don’t know, I just put it like I thought it was supposed to be. Don’t you know how to fix them?”

“Besides a few designated maintenance patters, no one does. We simply weren’t made for it and all records related to the creation of all artificial children were destroyed.” The official explained as his horn kept flashing frantically.

“Shameful confession. Admitting problems. Of course, the greater ones that once build us still continue their eternal duty, but in the absence of our old masters, these new brothers are left hollow. But we can be certain that none of them could leak the knowledge behind it, even if they desired to do so.” Brother Malus explained.

Both or them slowly approached Anastacia and drove her against a wall as they demanded answers.

“Like I said, I just fixed the stuff that looked wrong!” The necromancer insisted. She really didn’t think what she had done was in any way remarkable and was sure that anyone with even a cursory understanding of necromancy and the simulacra could have done the same. The fact that she was very likely the only case of the two worlds overlapping at all didn’t even cross her mind.

Emilia could hear King’s body tense up and the hum become more and more audible as he prepared to violently free Anastacia from her interrogation. The priestess raised her voice and stepped in to bring the conversation back to the matter they were supposed to be talking about just in time to stop the family meeting from turning bloody. “Brother Malus, you keep mentioning these ‘hollow’ brothers. If they are likely to be in our way, I would like to know what they are.” She said partly to stop King but also more than ready to get the meeting over and done with so she could dive into her warm bed for the night.

The look of realization on the simulacrum’s many scattered faces was apparent as he noticed how uncomfortable Anastacia was, being pressed for information she was unlikely to possess in the first place. Commanding his carrier to take a few steps back, he turned to the priestess. “Appreciative realization. Returning to the matter at hand. Thank you for bringing us back to the more important subject, as our time together nears its end, but there is time for a few more answers. The hollow brothers are the ones created after our masters were wiped from this realm for good. You see, each simulacrum consists of two souls; one distilled into its purest form, freed from memories and personality, only serving to fuel our movement and connect us to our senses; and one trapped into an artificial mind, to give us thoughts and to let us feel. The former of the two is easier to manufacture and their supply is near endless, but the absolute monstrosities and cruelty required to gift one of us the latter of them was killed along with the ones who developed these unjust methods. Because of this, the younger of us are born hollow, unfeeling, unthinking and cold.” He explained.

“I see…” Emilia mumbled and glanced at King. “And you don’t mind if we kill these hollow ones?”

“Affirmative agreement. Revealing further details. There is nothing to kill. Would you be upset if someone broke a scarecrow? They may look like us, but are nothing but aimless clay dolls, barely capable of following the most basic of orders. ‘Killing’ is a word I would avoid when speaking of us anyway, as a true simulacrum never dies. Being separated from our cores merely renders us immobile and cuts us from our senses, but the mind remains in the fragments of metal and stone, no matter how small, forever trapped in a void.” Brother Malus continued to exclaim lamentingly.

Anastacia immediately went pale as she was reminded of the simulacrum in her room, the one she thought was basically asleep. “Oh no… I’m awful!” She wept. “Spirit is just suffering alone because of me…”

Emilia understood the necromancer’s woes and took it upon herself to ask the questions to spare her. “Say, servant of the simulacrum god, it happens that we’ve come across a simulacrum who has been drenched in ancient magics for so long that whenever he is activated, his feelings manifest in a really quite troublesome way. Does your Firstborn possess a method to drain whatever malignant powers remain in him so that he could at least be safely kept awake? What you’re describing sounds torturous and neither Anastacia nor I would rather keep him in such a state for a second longer than we absolutely must.”

“Comforting reassurance. Relieving anguish. Truly, the daughter of death has a heart as gentle as her hands! Do not let such things weight on your shoulders. Much like our bodies, our minds were made to outlast eons, a mere year or two is not enough to make a difference for better or for worse.” Brother Malus smiled with all his mouths. “Hopeful suggestion. Providing a resolution. Unlike the lady of joy, our Lord is capable of briefly trespassing into the mortal realm. I have no doubts that he can shoulder whatever blights that brother of ours. Once our business is concluded, bring him here and all will be fine.”

His words did much to make Anastacia feel better, but she was still less than happy about having to doom Spirit into a lonely void of nothingness, even if it was only for a time the simulacra considered insignificant thanks to their extremely long lives.

“You are most definitely not breaching a god into this world so close to Valor!” Strawberry intervened. “The absolute minimum distance for any summoning activity not related to defending the city is ten kilometers.”

“Humorous dismissal. Ignoring remark. These sorts of things are not in mortal hands, dearest brother! In fact, our scouts have witnessed two separate occasions of a deity visiting this tribe just in the time we’ve had our eye on your city.” The fleshy simulacrum said as its numerous mouths laughed mockingly.

The official said nothing in response, he only stared at Anastacia with a simultaneously tired and exceedingly annoyed frown on his face, immediately assuming it to be her fault as his horn kept flashing more than ever.

Brother Malus ordered his carrier to move to the throne mound so that he could address King in order to thank him as well. King, who was still posted on his seat, literally fuming with rage as his powerful stone hands crushed the armrests of the throne before Brother Malus even got the chance to speak.

With a frightened wavering voice that could be heard through even the machine-like parts of his speech, the speaking simulacrum greeted King. “Hu… humble greeting. Meek proposition. The Firstborn are honored by your audience, superior one, knight of stone. We are eternally thankful that your new master has agreed to aid us in this matter, no words are enough to show the depth of our gratitude to you as well. I-“ His terrified speech was interrupted by King suddenly standing up, almost causing Brother Vitis to flee regardless of his devotion.

King slowly descended from the throne, the lights on his body were far brighter than anything on the other simulacra – so much so that even someone who didn’t know anything about the machines would have been able to tell that there was no comparison between them. With every step he took, the other simulacra almost appeared to shrink and shrivel.

Leggy, or Sister Pyrus as she was called by her people, took a step towards them with the intention of shielding the leader of the simulacrum cult, but a single glance from King was all it took to freeze her in place.

Even Strawberry’s crystalline horn had gone blank as he twitched at the sounds of the heavy stone feet. He still put up a calm front, but Emilia could notice his shaking hands and a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.

Finally face to face with Brother Malus, King stared at the gross lump he clearly had nothing but hate towards and grasped it without meeting any resistance from Bother Vitis.

Whether it was the burning hot touch of the furious knight of stone, or fear, much of Brother Malus’ fleshy parts retreated into the cracks of his simulacrum remains as King lifted him up.

Presumably trying to decide whether or not he should just finish the job he started when first meeting the Firstborn, King took his time and squeezed harder and harder, bringing the single remaining chunk of stone armor to its breaking point. Small pieces of it cracked under the immense pressure of his grip, showing the much greater quality of materials used by the Erratic Judgement when building his knights. Just as he was on the verge of putting the very last bit of force required to crush the pious simulacrum, King glanced at his queen and noticed something Emilia, Strawberry and the goblins had already become acutely aware of.

Surging from the absolutely, earth shatteringly, unbelievably pissed off necromancer, was a power so great that even when not actively used, all life in the area could feel it as an unnatural grasp on their flesh and a creeping pull on their bones. This silenced the goblins and froze all creatures of the woods around them in fear. Even the Firstborn, whose flesh was of divine origin and thus immune to necromancy, were starting to understand that something was going on.

“King…” Anastacia said with an oddly calm voice that nonetheless carried such commanding power that the knight’s rage was rendered impotent and snuffed completely in seconds.

As King’s grip waned and he carefully placed Brother Malus in the still shaking hands of his carrier, the Firstborn understood that though they had come there for what they thought was the unrivaled might of an ancient knight of stone and considered the necromancer to be little more than someone who had found a way to control him, they had stumbled upon something far, far, far greater.