Key to the Void: A self-made isekai

Being able to switch to English wound up giving us a remarkable degree of privacy despite talking right next to everyone. I was still unsure if Sagle actually knew the language or not, but I decided not to worry about it. So long as I don’t mention aloud anything about the little tactics I had been using in our conversation, I do not see much that can hurt us coming out of this discussion.

Tia wound up being an easy sell on this whole joining the Hidan thing. It seemed that her comments before leaving about wanting to acquire that bloodline power in order to tame a bunch of dogs was a pretty strong motivator.

Levin and Rolwen came around rather fast after I explained my reasoning, that we had shown ourselves as powerful and now we had to give the fey some feeling of security in our intentions lest we get ourselves set upon by an entire squadron of dragons.

Mr. Adderson wound up being the only one of the group showing any kind of hesitation.

“Uh-uh. I still don’t like it.” He said. “I mean, I understand, but… you’re saying you are seeing this as maybe a comply or die situation, right? I mean, yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do then. I also wouldn’t put that one past that bitch. I just think you ought to… I don’t know…”

It wasn’t that hard to read Mr. Adderson’s sputtered attempts at protesting against my decision for what they were. He clearly liked the idea of me being involved with anything fey related even less than I did. In fact, it was because a fellow Earth human who had lived in the capital was demonstrating such a disposition that I started to shy away from this fairy-dragon queen as well.

Mr. Adderson’s face was a tortured mask as he avoided eye contact with any of us, me especially. A heavy air had come over our group. Levin was looking to me with concern written all over his face. Rolwen looked to Mr. Adderson with a frustrated expression. Tia… why did Tia look so unconcerned? She looked confused if anything, as though she didn’t understand what we were all fretting about at all.

I shook my head and derisively snickered at this situation in general. I had to focus my mind. What are the important points right now? My main objective is to get everyone else’s opinion on this matter, but it doesn’t look like we are in any position to talk productively right now. I guess then that this might be a very good opportunity to get more relevant information on exactly what it is that has Mr. Adderson so against the queen. Perhaps then we might also be able to make a more informed decision.

“Mr. Adderson.” I said. “I think you made some comment when we were capturing those fairies too. We put this conversation on hold back then, but now I would certainly like to hear about what you saw back at that capital that made you hate the fey so much. Not that I haven’t seen plenty to make me distrust them myself, mind you, but I definitely sense something pretty big here.”

“Big?” He repeated with scorn. “Aw, nah, nothing big.” He said. “She just went and used half of us as political fall guys and sentenced them to death by being thrown off the edge of the world is all.”

“Huh?” Levin’s head snapped up. “Thrown off the edge of the world?”

Somehow, it felt like the tension in the space had released at those words. My gut was still getting a very dark vibe off of Mr. Adderson, but the boys seemed to be oblivious to it for the moment.

“Heh.” Rolwen scoffed. “That sounds like the kind of punishment you select yourself to escape a death sentence against some ignorant primitive people. Is this world that backwards?” He mocked, only to get a look of absolute disgust from Mr. Adderson in return.

“Fuck no!” He spat out and then shook his head. “I guess you guys don’t know then, huh?” He asked. “Yeah, I guess that you were all treated as toddlers up until a pretty short time ago, so you wouldn’t know. Hah!” He tilted his head back and put his weight on his hands as he looked up toward what could be seen of the late evening sky through the trees overhead.

“Wait…” Rolwen said. “Wait, wait a minute! You aren’t about to tell me this world is literally flat, are you?”

“Heh, hell if I know.” Mr. Adderson said. “I can tell you though that there is an edge of the world. Well, actually, it’s more like a barrier of light. They moved the capital, but apparently the place it used to be was on one of the four corners of the world. I had to look out every day at those walls of light. Trees right up to the edge of it, and then what looked like endless barren nothingness on the other side. It’s what they call the edge of the world here. And, from what I’m told, you actually will find walls just like those surrounding everything that they refer to as ‘the world’ here.”

“So…” Levin chimed in. “Maybe it’s like this is a section of the planet and outside of the barrier is the rest of the world or something?” He theorized.

“Not really the time to theorize.” I scolded him with a stern expression and then turned back to Mr. Adderson. “You said that part of your group from Earth were made into political fall-guys or something like that, right? Can you tell me more about how that all went down? What were they set up for?”

“Heh.” Mr. Adderson scoffed. “Talking about moving the heaven scar, apparently.” He said. “It’s complete bullshit. You ain’t gonna convince me that not a single person in the entire capital said the same things we did. But, the queen goes callin five people out of our group and said they were talking about it and how the land spirit overheard, and now that’s why she’s gotta move the capital which would destabilize the world barrier or something. So, they gotta be chained up at the old site of the capital and fall off the edge of the world as it erodes.”

“Wait!” Rolwen shouted. “Hold on, that’s… does that mean they are still alive? I thought from what you said before that she’d already killed them.”

“Heh, yeah, they probably are still alive. She even assigned guards, said they were to make sure some animals don’t kill them before they can fall off the edge. I know the real reason they’re there is to keep someone from going in to rescue them though. I’d have helped them by now if I could.” He said.

“Anyway, it was so obvious that’s what her game was, based on who all was picked to take the fall. All the people who were spared this stunt held some kind of value for them. For me, it seems like they are confusing me as a Jin or something cauz I’m black. It’s pretty respected, so they weren’t about to pull me into this game. The others were a couple children who got reborn with wings like the rest of us, their mother, their babysitter, and some guy who used to be a lawyer back on Earth who they seem to be valuing. Seems they consider me and the kids special just because of what we are, and the mother and babysitter were spared by association. The rest, the ones who were picked out, they were all just viewed as trouble makers and it was easy to have them take a fall.”

Mr. Adderson rambled his reasoning out angrily, sharing his frustrations that were clearly eating him for a while. I got the distinct impression it didn’t even matter that it was us who he was telling this to. He would have gladly told anyone from Earth he might have found, and just wanted the opportunity to spill out these frustrations.

He was looking at the ground now as though he was not even seeing us anymore. This was not directly related to our current situation, but it was definitely quite informative about just how cut-throat and ruthless this queen apparently was.

We were clearly not getting the entire picture from Mr. Adderson’s account, but assuming he is correct I can derive that she is a shrewd sort who does not value human… or rather, sentient life at all. Rather, she clearly wanted some excuse to move the capital and just did some kind of balanced analysis of whether it would benefit her more to senselessly expend the lives of that lot from Earth from Mr. Adderson’s group, or weather whatever other political fall-out might come of declaring her intention to move the capital outright.

There was very clearly a lot in this I didn’t understand. I had heard from Eirlathion the capital was moved to the heaven scar, the place that I could presume was created by some kind of energy from Earth that was responsible for carrying all of us to this world based upon all I head heard on the subject. The reason given was that demons were coming up from the depths of the scar, and the capital being there was the best means to fight back against these demonic forces.

Something didn’t seem quite right about that. There had to be more to the story. Maybe I could figure it out if I had a few years to learn this world, but as of now I really couldn’t figure it out. Something to do with the residual energies maybe, but it felt like there ought to be more to it than just that.

And why did it have to be the people from Mr. Adderson’s group? He’d mentioned they were ‘seen as trouble makers.’ Could it really be as simple as just removing a nuisance? Mr. Adderson’s aura was definitely stronger than the other great fairies. I hadn’t had the chance to compare it to a dragon yet, but so far he’s the strongest thing I’ve felt in this entire world. According to Tia, the rest of them should be similar. From what I’d gathered, the fey actually value things like that. Would they really get rid of them so easily?

No, it could be that the spiritual power they had was the only thing keeping them alive if they were viewed as a nuisance, and therefore they needed to find some sort of excuse to get rid of them. Perhaps any excuse would have worked. This one just happened to fill a pressing need as well.

As for why she needed a fall-guy, destabilizing the world’s integrity definitely sounded like reason enough to have to pin the blame on someone.

“So… umm… Terry.” Rolwen called out to Mr. Adderson, using his more familiar and friendly name, in the morose state he went into after spilling all of his thoughts on this matter. “So, you said that they were still alive though, right? Maybe we can find a way to save them.”

I felt all the blood drain from my face when I heard what Rolwen had to say. Yes, that’s the obvious first thought for any normal person to have after hearing everything Mr. Adderson had said, right? Try to save the innocently persecuted? And yet, here I had just been stuck in a sea of analytical thought about trying to get as much information out of what I had heard as possible.

Mr. Adderson gave Rolwen a tired look. “Heh, much as I would love to, I’m making sure you lot are safe before trying anything. Goddess kid and spook kid there might be able to help out a bit maybe, but the fey spooks over there have them both under observation. You two ain’t got magic or anything to compensate for the fact you are in the bodies of toddlers right now. No, it ain’t happening. I’m doing something, I’ll handle it myself.”

He dismissed Rolwen just like that. Yeah, he’s right. We aren’t in a situation right now where we can contribute anything, but…

My stomach felt like someone had reached inside me and was trying to squeeze it into a small ball. Once again, I felt disgusted at myself. I may have considered myself a martial arts teacher who just did nursing as a profession to pay the bills, but I was still a nurse. How could I have possibly put the lives of these people as second in my mind like that? How had the thought of saving them not even crossed my mind until Rolwen suggested it?

The only thing that had been on my mind before that was politics and processing information. I had only seen the lives of those fellow people from earth as a data point. What had happened to me?

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see Tia looking back at me. Her eyes locked with mine and I could see a deep worry in her features. That’s right, she had said that she could somehow sense my emotions just a day or so ago. Hah! Yeah, she must be pretty worried. I’m turning into a wreck here.

I let out a slow breath. “I’ll be alright.” I muttered quietly. The others could definitely hear it at this distance, but hopefully they would take a hint I meant that for Tia only.

I tried to turn away, but Tia’s hand on my shoulder suddenly started pulling, dragging me back to engage with her. Her gaze on me was intense.

“Asa, we definitely need to have that talk as soon as things are safe.” She said, and then turned to the rest. “I don’t think it matters what the queen did.” She told them. “Like Asa just said, we really do not have all that much of a choice right now. We should accept this deal.”

“Maybe we can negotiate more.” Rolwen said. “Have them let out the others before the edge of the world degrades and all that.”

Tia gave him an absolute death glare.

“It won’t work.” I said in a weak voice.

Mr. Adderson tisked and shook his head. “I don’t know how much they are valuing the little lady here for her tactical skills, but I doubt it’s gonna be enough for that. Besides that, I couldn't understand what was being said while she was busy negotiating, but I’m betting she pushed them pretty far already. No, you guys take the deal she got you. I don’t like it one bit, but it really sounds like the best we can get here. I know none of you all are really as young as you look, but you still are in the bodies of toddlers and I’m an adult here. So, I’m gonna put my foot down now and play adult.

“You all are going to take that deal she got you, and that’s final. Don’t go fucking it up asking for the moon and trying people’s patience. If my story just now should tell you anything, it’s this. These fairies ain’t playing around. They won’t bat an eye about killing people who they see as a nuisance, and being some reincarnated Superman from Earth ain’t gonna help you. So, be smart and do what you gotta to survive.”

Mr. Adderson swept an intense gaze over all of us with the air of someone ready to brutally crush down any attempt to contradict him with the rhetorical brute force of an overbearing drill sergeant.