“Let’s see here,” Lily leaned forward. “Oh, it’s quite the detailed map, actually.”

“Detailed map?” Claud echoed her words. From his viewpoint, he could only see four different botches and the many, many squares that made up the map, so in what world was it detailed?

Lily stepped back and forwards, before nodding to herself. “The map becomes more detailed if you take a few steps forward. In fact, the closer you get, the more detailed it becomes!”

Claud blinked, and then took two steps forward. Instantly, the four blotches of colour shimmered once. The Mortal Light Ascendency and the nation on the west, the Court of Majesties, remained uniform in colour, although hundreds of different landmarks — assuming that was what those stars were — had popped up. The Inwards Star Council, however, had been split into three varying shades of red. Three different names popped out there, with one of them being the Continuum of Beauty.

The other two were the Exalt of Melodies, which occupied the place called the Ying Yue Star Domain, and the Harmony of Consensus, which occupied the Reiwa Star Domain. All in all, the Star Domains were named in a rather weird style, and Claud couldn’t even place a finger on why he felt that way.

“Hmm. So, the Inwards Star Council is made up of three powers, which have their own territories or something,” Claud muttered. “And this segment of the Celestia Ruins…”

“Yeah.” Lily rubbed her nose. “What are these Celestia Ruins exactly? What exactly is this…universe?”

“Universe?” Claud repeated. “What does that word mean?”

“It’s over there.” Lily pointed at the small legend attached to the bottom right corner of the map. “Map of the Celestia Universe. Scale: one centimetre to…what’s this number? There’s an odd symbol attached to it.”

Claud glanced at the legend, where a smaller number had been placed to the top right of a larger number. No matter how the two looked at it, it was a number that they didn’t understand, so after a while, they gave up.

“It’s probably a freaking huge place, though,” said Claud. “I mean, this whole city and planet apparently belongs to a subordinate power of the Inwards Star Council, if this little blip really is us. I’m going to wager that it’s a really big deal or something.”

“True. And…you have another thing on your mind, don’t you?”

Claud glanced at Lily and smiled. “You sneaky mind-reader. You’re right. Now that I think about it, our language, numbers and even units of measurement have been very close to that of the ones used in the ruins. Does that mean that our culture and education came from this place? If so, how?”

Lily’s cheeks puffed up as she tilted from right to left and left to right. “Uhm…let’s find an expert on this matter and ask them. But I don’t think we’ll get a definitive result, though. From what I know, we’ve been using the same language for entire eras. Maybe up to and including the First Godsfall.”

“Which doesn’t make sense at all,” Claud muttered. “Is it possible that the Celestia Ruins had a hand in shaping our culture and language?

“Probably,” Lily replied.

The two looked at each other for a while, and then decided not to think too hard about this matter. Claud had witnessed too many ground-shaking truths earlier; it would be fine to let other truths lie around for a few moments. Lily probably had the same thought too, since she took the initiative to change the topic.

Jiggling the items in her hands, Lily said, “Oh yeah. Bag, please. I found a bunch of Second Shadows. We’ll be able to create copies of ourselves from now on!”

“Nice.” Claud grinned. “We can now go to some safe area and use it to explore the rest of the city. Still…”

His grin faded. “We need to be really careful, though. If the three gods or whatever destroyed Celestia, how did this place end up in our world? And what are those visions?”

“You really shouldn’t ask me questions I can’t answer either,” Lily replied, before tweaking his nose. “Anyway, we’ve obtained our goals for today. Should we leave the place now? Or do you want to check other places? We can, after all, use the Second Shadow for that now.”

“Better not be too reliant on it, though,” Claud replied. “I won’t put it past them to be able to trace us down through this artefact or something.”

“True. We’ve seen the Cord of Cause and the Knife of Karma,” said Lily. “I think this is the perfect attitude to take.”

“I’m quite sure I’m the professional at being cautious, though,” Claud replied, rubbing his nose. It felt a bit odd to have Lily say those kinds of words to him, since he had been the one dispensing advice so far.

“It’s proof of my growth!”

Claud felt his lips twitch. “I wonder what Dia would say if she heard you say those words. Last time, she complained that I was corrupting you and everything. Now…I’m quite sure she’ll run after me and demand a fight. Yikes.”

“She won’t do that,” Lily replied, puffing out her chest.

“What makes you say that?” Claud asked, curious.

Lily reached out and patted his head. “If she wants to do that, I’ll fight her first. I’ll protect you!”

Popping his own hand on his head, Claud smiled. “Thanks.”

After flirting for a bit, Claud and Lily started to poke around the room. From the sounds of it, the entire ruins had some sort of measure to prevent people from taking too many things at once, so they had to be careful in choosing the items they wanted. Apparently, the way the ruins measured things were through weight, but the records were uncertain.

“There’s nothing else here,” Lily reported. “Lots of documents made out of light floating around, but there isn’t a drawer or a compartment.”

“In that case, where did you get the Second Shadow from?” Claud asked.

“From the cupboard behind the chairs,” Lily replied. “That one. It’s full again, somehow.”

“Maybe it replicates itself or something,” Claud replied. “The ruins have a place churning out lots of artefacts, after all. This cupboard might not be ordinary; it could very well produce more of those Second Shadows.”

Lily tilted her head. “In that case…can we take it away?”

Claud paused. “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

“I was wondering if we could just take this cupboard and leave the Celestia Ruins,” Lily replied. “But that’s probably going to be very dangerous.”

“Insanely dangerous, if you ask me. Didn’t the reports say something about not moving furniture?” Claud asked. “I’m sure this counts as furniture, no matter how you look at it.”

Pouting, Lily turned away from the cupboard. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Come now. It’s a good idea, but…hmm.” Claud folded his arms. “Why don’t we use the Second Shadow to test the waters?”

“After what you just said a couple of minutes ago, I don’t really think we should do that either,” Lily replied.

“So…we’ll just leave it here, then,” Claud concluded. “Still, leaving such a useful item lying around here doesn’t gel with me. Let’s inspect that cupboard more closely and see if we can find out how it replaces any Second Shadows we take.”

Lily pondered over his words for a moment, and then nodded. “Alright.”

The two of them reached out to take another few black boxes, which Lily placed in Claud’s backpack. The whole time, however, their eyes were staring at the cupboard closely, waiting for the moment when the cupboard replenished the missing artefacts.

Minutes ticked by, but nothing happened.

“Umm…”

“Yeah,” said Claud. “I don’t think the previous time took this long, right?”

Lily nodded. “Maybe it’s broken or something. What should we do? Do we put them back or something?”

“I suppose we should leave some for the other people, then,” Claud replied. “Go on. Put some of them back. We won’t be using this many anyway.”

Sighing, she placed the first box back onto the cupboard. Lily was about to return another three when Claud’s eyes widened — the cupboard had abruptly vanished. In its place was a fist-sized silvery globe, which then proceeded to hover around Lily like a curious animal.

“The heck?” Claud reached out to the sphere, but the silvery sphere smacked his hand away and cuddled up to Lily’s hair. “Hey. What do you think you’re doing?”

The odd globe paused. For a moment, Claud could swear that it had done the silvery-globe-equivalent of staring at him, and he rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Lily, on her part, had been completely dumbfounded by the sudden appearance of what seemed to be a pet sphere, and she turned a set of confused eyes to Claud.

“What’s this?”

“…You found a sentient object, I guess.” Claud rubbed his eyes. “Uh, silvery sphere, what’s going on?”

The sphere hopped onto Lily’s head at those words. “Meep!”

Claud and Lily froze at that sound.

“That sounds very familiar,” Lily forced out. “Claud, take Crown out and see if they know each other.”

“Not now,” Claud replied. He was very tempted to, but this was a dangerous place. “We’ll check them both when we’re outside…assuming that your pet can go outside.”

Lily lifted the sphere off her head and looked at it. “Can you go outside?”

“Meep!”

“Oh, okay.”

The way Lily understood that utterance was probably proof that the silvery sphere and Crown shared the same origins. Casting one last gaze at the cupboard-less table, Claud nodded at Lily, and the two left the crystalline dome.

The silvery sphere, naturally, came along with them, and as Claud watched the fist-sized fellow make itself comfortable on Lily’s shoulder, he couldn’t help but wonder one thing.

What exactly was going on?

Considering that every single question he had so far hadn’t been satisfactorily answered, Claud didn’t harbour much hope for this one to be answered either.