Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

The towering vulture-headed demon began to lower itself, kneeling down and bringing its hideous head down to the boy's level. It growled something vicious and hateful; the boy's face crumpled in terror and distress, and he gabbled some more in the language Topher couldn't place. I thought the Summoning Spell translated everything for me. What the fuck is going on?

It didn't translate the dwarven language when Tok and Brox were talking amongst themselves, the distant part of his mind reminded him. Maybe it only works when they're talking to you. Or maybe it only works on Otherworlders.

The vulture-headed demon heaved a long-suffering sigh. Then it decapitated itself.

They all watched, uncomprehending, as the creature raised up an acuminous claw and grasped at its own neck, then pulled off its own head as if it were merely taking off a hat. Black, viscous fluid erupted from the stump, spewing upwards impressively as the creature raked its claws down its neck and chest, leaving horrid wounds down to the bone from which burst more rivers of black, foul-looking blood. Topher's brain did somersaults of bewilderment. What the shit?! Not that I've never been so frustrated I wanted to kill myself, but how is it moving without a head?!

The creature's body began to fall apart, lumps of meat and bone separating from the mass of the corpse with unseemly alacrity to tumble away across the landscape; and from out of the wreckage of its body, a man emerged.

He stepped out of the gore and putrefaction as if he were being extremely mightily inconvenienced; his long white hair fell across his face and back with immaculate beauty, and he was clad in long, flowing black robe of strange design that left parts of his back uncovered. His features were austere and beautiful, almost elven, but with enough evident humanity that one might only suspect a trace of other races in his lineage. He snapped his fingers, then pointed at the boy and barked another command.

The boy squabbled back, was shouted down, and began to cry; eventually, he mastered himself enough to stand up and clench his fists in evident concentration. Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, veins began to emerge visibly on his skin; he sweated and groaned with clear effort as they thickened and swelled, turning black and red. Topher felt himself tensing involuntarily.

Then, when the veins seemed so full they could no longer contain whatever horrid fluids coursed through them, they split open; like oozing, pustulent sores, they disgorged their contents all at once, releasing a flood of spilth that flowed down and over the boy's clothing and flesh in a torrent of thick, glutinous liquid which rapidly hardened and formed into a taut black shell, encasing the boy from head to toe. From out of that shell, fibers and vessels began to emerge; slowly, with evident difficulty and many fits and starts, anatomy and musculature began to form. Bulging muscles swelled and shifted, like blasphemous fruit, as the black shell became covered with veins and nerves and began to rise into the air upon tottering, waxy supports which rapidly firmed and sprouted claws.

The worst was the last bit, whereupon a hideous, leering goat's head was constructed at a point nearly five feet above where the black shell's actual head had been located; the man in the black robe barked an order, and the Capras obediently joined its fellows. Looking infuriated, the man squatted down and was instantly encased in a great black shell, shaped vaguely like a ribcage, from which hideous bony projections and disgusting-looking fluid-filled tubes sprouted with shocking suddenness and speed. Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over; where the man had squatted, the vulture-headed demon was now crouched, and it unfolded itself upwards like a bony stepladder as a cloak of rotten fur and feathers oozed from its body to cover its shoulders. It spent several minutes snapping out what was clearly a dressing-down towards the other demons, who accepted it stoically; then, it gestured with a withered claw. As one, the demons formed up and began to march away; Topher was distressed to discover he could no longer pick out which of the Capras had been the young boy originally. The vulture-headed demon blinked in a strange, greenish teleportation to the head of their formation and began leading them in a different direction, which Topher thought was vaguely southeastern; in less than five minutes, they were all gone, leaving behind only an echoing silence.

No one spoke; as soon as they were sure the demons had gone, they all slowly and cautiously extricated themselves from behind the obsidian heap, then stared at each other in disbelief. Topher was the first to break the silence.

"That kid," he began; stopped. His fists wouldn't unclench. "That kid was twelve years old at most."

Rudo nodded, looking sad in ways Topher couldn't decipher; Hana, too, looked as if she were holding back tears. Only Zanasha seemed unaffected; she cocked her head to one side, but said nothing. Eventually, Topher turned and began to stomp towards the battlefield where the demons had been.

He didn't have a plan; didn't even know what he was looking for. But as he approached the site of the inexplicable events he had just witnessed, one thing did catch his attention.

The pieces of the vulture-headed demon, which had fallen away during the black-robed man's emergence, were burning away to nothingness in a flurry of orange sparks.

Topher's jaw set itself. Of course. Everything's been right in front of me the whole time. In his mind's eye, he could see all the times he'd missed the crucial clues; the assassin in the dungeon. The noises in Oguro's shop. The centaur's corpse in Strathmore. "I should have known," he murmured to himself, watching the unidentifiable bits of the creature disintegrate. "The story's always the same."

Zanasha, standing beside him, turned from staring off after the demon army to look at him. "Friend Topher?"

"A theme from our world," Hana cut in, moving up to stand next to Topher. She shared a look of understanding with him. "Man is the real monster."

"Yeah." Topher turned away, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth despite the sweltering heat of the lava plains. "Child soldiers on all sides of this thing. Dunno why I expected anything different."

Rudo bent, picking up a shard of bone from the mass of remains, and watched as it was consumed by the sparks emerging from it. "It seems unnecessary. Why bother with such complex, clearly painful mechanisms of disguise?"

"Disrupt Illusion." Topher wanted to laugh, but resisted the urge; whatever came out wouldn't be good, and might not stop. "Other detection spells too, probably. Things that unmask shapeshifters. None of it matters if you're wearing the equivalent of living meat makeup." He picked up a rock with Attract Object and hurled it as far as he could, purely as an outlet for his rage. "Every fucking giant cat-person or dragon-guy we see is probably a demon in disguise."

"Not just them," Hana murmured, looking as though she were in shock. "Elves too. They most likely can control it well enough to lengthen their ears and modify their facial features."

There was the sound of a blade being drawn.

Topher turned, feeling numb; he faced Zanasha, who had pulled the Kiku-no-Tsurugi from the sheath Rudo had given her. There was a long moment of silence, even as fragile and broken words collected in Topher's heart. Please don't say it. I don't care. It's not like it matters. Just do it quick.

Then, to everyone's shock and horror, the half-orc reached up and severed the tip of her right ear.

Hana shouted wordlessly, starting forwards, but Zanasha shook her head and waved her away. "You must not. Everyone has to see." She stepped away from the nub of slashed flesh, leaving it where it had fallen. "I, too, wish to know."

"What?" Topher's mind reeled; he wavered back and forth, lost. "What are you talking about?"

"The false flesh of the demons burns away when it is separated from the body, correct?" Zanasha cleaned and sheathed the blade, then began to wrap a small bandage around her ear that she had withdrawn from Hana's old hip pouch. "It is not a perfect test, I admit. But..."

"Zee." Hana picked up the small, greenish stub of bloody cartilage. "Why would you...?"

Then, horribly, Topher understood; he turned away, unable to face the half-orc. "She was worried she was one and didn't know it," he rasped, feeling the bile rise in his throat. "Some friends we are."

"Friend Topher." He felt Zanasha's hand, warm even through her gauntlets, touch his shoulder; he felt foul and unworthy and jerked away, then instantly regretted it as he whirled to see her expression crumbling. "I did not know what else to do."

"Yeah, well, maybe don't start with mutilating yourself," he choked out, feeling sick and betrayed and vile and horrified all at once. "God's sake, you're a person. What the fuck did you think we would do, attack you on suspicion of being a demon?"

Then, abruptly, his self-control failed him; he turned away, his whole body rigid with outrage, and clamped his lips shut to prevent the words behind his teeth from tumbling out. I'd love you even if you were were a demon, goddamn you.

After a while, he got control of himself again; he turned back to the others, Summoning some water even though he didn't need it. "So," he began lamely, "I'm dumb, so you'll have to lay it out for me. This obviously changes everything, but damned if I can figure out exactly how." He took a sip of the water, more to keep his mouth from saying stupid things than for any metabolic reasons, but it seemed to help a little nonetheless.

Hana looked surprised, but Rudo merely shook his head. "I am not certain it does change anything, Mister Bailey. We already suspected our enemies could shape-shift; this merely confirms it and gives us information about the particulars. Much of the rest of the puzzle still eludes us; are the 'demons' a fifth nation? A secret faction within the other four? Some combination of the above, or a third, unknown situation?" He shook his head again. "Emotionally, I am as shocked as anyone. Logically, I cannot see that it alters our situation."

Topher sighed. "Yeah." He wanted to argue; but nothing he came up with felt useful. Numbly, he forced himself to proceed; one foot in front of the other. At least until I step in it again.

He could not sleep that night; whenever he drew close to drifting off, a vivid hallucination of the Capras' severed arm flying freely away in Orvale painted itself in bright, painful hues across the backs of his eyeballs. "DIE, HUMANS!" The thought that he might have maimed a child -- a child capable of wrecking a city, admittedly, but still -- wracked him with a force he could barely withstand.

And it's not even the first time, the distant part of his mind commented unhelpfully. Noboru was technically a child too.

In such straits he passed another sleepless night; and when they reached the shores of the lava lake the next day, he had to resist the urge to jump in and just get everything over with. But some bone-deep intransigence within him pressed him on, persistently, and he sighed and contemplated the problem before them along with the others.

Zanasha wanted to throw them all across the lava; nobody was willing to volunteer for that, even Topher, so they instead explored other options. Rudo wanted to locate the narrowest point for crossing, but Topher overruled him; "I saw this thing from the air," he pointed out, "and there's nowhere it's narrow enough to matter. If we can't cross here, we can't cross anywhere."

In the end, Hana was the one with the best idea; withdrawing a few clippings from her pockets, she planted them in the gritty, ashen soil and coaxed forth spiraling ivies that twisted together on a scaffold of sticks Topher held in place with Telekinesis. Progress was painstaking, but they worked quickly; within a few hours, they had a springy, resilient structure that spanned a curve twenty feet high and nearly a hundred feet long. It collapsed twice under its own weight; Topher wasn't much of an engineer, but he did at least have the mathematical skills (and the beginnings of the necessary physics knowledge) to calculate the forces in play at each length in his Ledger, and their third attempt held together long enough for Topher to pronounce it lava-worthy. Using the combination of Zanasha's boosted strength and Topher's steadying Telekinesis, they levered it out over the narrowest expanse of the lava they could find and made the attempt.

Then everyone watched, disheartened, as it promptly caught fire and sank into the lava, because it turned out to be several feet too short. But knowledge had been gained, and none of them had come this far to give up now, so the process was adjusted, repeated, and refined until finally a further combination of Telekinesis-assembled stones, scaffolds, ivies, and pure stubbornness assembled something which finally spanned the gap. Zanasha insisted on crossing first -- "I am the heaviest, and bear the best chance of leaping free if it fails," -- but everything went eerily smoothly and they crossed the bridge without incident. There was some discussion of whether to leave it up in case the island did not contain an exit, but Rudo pointed out that leaving assassins a clear trail to find them probably outweighed the annoyance of building a second one if it became necessary, so Topher used Telekinesis to crumple the whole thing up and shove it under the lava, feeling a bit like a baker who has just been told to throw out his most recent cake because the birthday party was yesterday.

Exploration determined that the island was a long, flat strip of land about two miles long, which rose to a height in the middle and sloped gently downwards to the north and south; after some debate, it was agreed that they should proceed southwards, more out of habit than anything else. A few more of the local monsters menaced them briefly, but they were dispatched in an almost dismissive fashion and the four of them soon arrived at their destination.

"That's not what I expected," commented Topher, staring at the cavern before them. It yawned open, bearing the unmistakable aspect of a fanged mouth, and sloped visibly downwards into the earth; he scratched his beard, still feeling stiff from his morning exercises. "You guys think there's anything down there besides more lava? Maybe we should try a different direction."

"Underground, it is more properly 'magma'," Rudo responded with a smile. "But no, I do not believe so. Remember that we climbed a staircase to emerge into this land; it may be that exits operate the same way, but in reverse."

Wonder if that means we'll have to another of those spiraling gravity staircases, wondered Topher idly. He shrugged. "Guess there's no point in speculating when we can just go find out ourselves." He started forward, but then stopped, mouth falling open as his brain tried to process what he was seeing.

His shadow was wrong.

The sun, overhead in the early afternoon, was casting everyone else's shadows almost directly to his left; but his shadow was directly in front of him, and wasn't matching what his body was doing at all. Rather than mirroring his typical slumped, long-suffering walking pace, it had its hands up and was waving them vigorously in total defiance of optics. I've cracked. All this was just finally too much for my stupid old brain. And now I'm hallucinating. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking deep breaths; but he was spared any further introspection by Hana's startled exclamation. "Bailey-sama, when did you learn to do that?" she asked, pointing. "Did you Level up again?"

"It's not me." Topher felt almost giddy with relief that someone else was seeing it too; I've had more than enough of questioning my own sanity with all the bullshit I've been put through. Might need the Master Therapist Class at this point. He summoned his Stylus, grimacing. "You think it's some sort of monster...?"

At that, his shadow shook its head vigorously, then began to make some unreadable pantomime motions with evident haste and concern; it took him a full minute to realize what was happening. "It's some kind of message. Through my shadow... what the hell?"

At this, his shadow nodded, then pointed downwards emphatically; Topher frowned. "Down? At my feet?" He inspected his feet, confused, but his shadow slapped its forehead in a very Topher-like manner and wheeled around, to his right, before pointing back behind him. "Oh. That way." He turned around, looking northward, then turned back to the shadow. "You're saying we're going the wrong way? We need to go north?"

"Friend Topher." Zanasha had half-drawn her Nethersbane, which was glowing with brilliant cyan light. "It may be a trap."

Rudo nodded; Topher grunted and turned back to his traitorous penumbra. "She's got a point. Any reason why we should trust you?"

Immediately, his shadow gave him the double bird, raising both middle fingers and extending them upwards with a lengthy, emphatic shake; Topher had to laugh. "Alright, alright. But you're gonna have to give us something."

The shadow paused, looking deep in thought, then raised its hands in pantomime; curving both hands, it formed a circle, then stuck a thumb downwards and outwards to form a crude Q. Topher nodded. "Q. Right." Then, the shadow steepled its hands, crossing a thumb between them to form an angular shape bisected laterally; Topher frowned. "4? Q-4? What is this, fucking Battleship?"

Rudo looked like he was about to burst with suppressed laughter. "I believe it is an A, Mister Bailey."

"Oh." Topher turned back to his shadow, which was flipping him off again and thumping its own head with a fist. "QA? Q.A. You want to do question and answer?" The shadow shook its head, throwing up its hands in exasperation; something about its mannerisms clued Topher in. "Oh. Quint Aumraham. This is some kind of spell you're using?"

The shadow shook its head again, then pantomimed listening and nodding. "Message. Quint told you to do this?" The shadow nodded, then pointed northwards again and made frantic shoving motions between meaningful taps at its wrist; Topher sighed and nodded. "Right. Northward, and hurry, got it. I'm gonna give that smug prick a boot in the ass when --"

But in the middle of his threat, his shadow snapped back to its correct position and resumed its slavish obedience to his own motions; further inquiries produced nothing other than a feeling of embarrassment. Feeling put-upon, Topher obediently turned around and began hiking to the north. Couldn't have told us before we got to the complete wrong end of the island, oh no.

All in all, it cost them the bulk of the afternoon to turn northwards and reach the corresponding shore; the cave they found there, a twin to the southern one, was much less foreboding and mostly just looked like a regular cave. Topher looked around between his companions. "Should we make camp? It'll be dark soon."

Rudo shook his head. "Our mysterious visitor seemed quite adamant that haste was required. Let us press on; fatigue may pain us, but any pursuers are likely to be worse."

Topher sighed and nodded. "Well, whatever. Remove Fatigue can get us through one sleepless night at least." Summoning a Mage Light, he led the way into the cavern, whose floor sloped rapidly down as he'd expected. Like I thought, this whole island is some kinda hill between these two caves. Doesn't make sense, but I guess magic worlds don't have to have consistent geology.

The journey through the cave was surreal; the floor continued to grade downwards, at an always-gentle but never-ceasing slope, and the cavern itself twisted and curved in strange directions that were too orderly to be natural. Rudo reached out, touching a wall, and nodded as though confirming a theory. "It is unnatural."

"Huh?" Topher half-turned, looking back at him. "What is?"

"This cavern." The Innkeeper stroked the wall weirdly, as though listening to it. "My Minor Wilderness Mastery lets me discern much about natural features; this cavern is both a natural lava tube and clearly a constructed passage, with flows and branches that do not match what would occur organically. It is like finding weeds which form a perfect likeness of the Mona Lisa."

Unexpectedly, Hana giggled. "You can do that, actually. With the right plants and technique, and time; like planting seeds in rows to make letters." She looked around, marveling. "Maybe it's just really advanced technique?"

"But who would be able to do something like that?" Topher frowned. "Gods? Even the Archmages aren't on that level."

"It may be similar to how dungeons are formed," Zanasha volunteered unexpectedly; Topher turned to look at her, surprised. She ducked her head a little, looking shy, but continued nonetheless. "It is only a theory. But we have seen unnatural stones in dungeons before."

"Leafwind-sama did say the formation of dungeons was its own realm of theory," Hana agreed. "It could be something like that."

Rudo nodded. "Perhaps. I only thought it strange." He slipped back to guard the party's rear, looking contemplative; Topher wanted to ask what was bothering him, but decided against it and just soldiered on into the darkness. Gotta be an end to this cave somewhere.

Through a full night and day, they wandered; the path bore no branches or side-tunnels, no monsters or wildlife seemed in evidence, and the tunnels themselves were completely devoid of plant or fungal life as well. Eventually, finally, the floor began to slope downwards less sharply, then leveled out, then began to climb again; Topher had a feeling he knew what was happening at this point. It's just like the staircase. There's something weird with gravity, and the tunnel was moving us around that by being clever with angles. He kept an eye on his shadow for more misbehavior, but it seemed resolutely unhelpful.

Finally, nearly two days after the initial event, they glimpsed light up ahead; it was slight at first, almost completely drowned out by Topher's Mage Light, but steadily waxed as they marched onwards. Topher was down to half his MP from repeated castings of Remove Fatigue, but everyone had carried through without complaint; he hoped they wouldn't find a battle waiting for them.

Then, as abruptly as it had began, it was over; they emerged, blinking, into a great verdant dale, festooned on all sides with massive moss-covered stones. Before them, the terrain rose more sharply, portending a long and difficult slog upwards across rocky terrain; Topher groaned. "Yeah, no. I'm calling a halt. We're gonna get some sleep before we tackle that bullshit."

"Fortunate, then, that you are not required to do it on foot," came an amused voice from above. Topher whirled.

The face which smiled down at him from atop one of the massive stones was not one he had expected to see (or had wanted to see ever again, really), but at least had the common courtesy to be one he'd seen before. Topher felt the muscles around his spine clench in anticipation. "Uh. Hey there." He waved half-heartedly at the young man -- boy, really, he's only sixteen -- and hoped this conversation wouldn't go poorly. "Fancy meeting you here."

Shuji Takano smiled broadly, then hopped down to grasp Topher's hand and shake it vigorously. "Ah, Uncle America, we meet again! I trust you have had many adventures?"

Takano solved the practical difficulty of getting them up the valley floor by the simple expedient of producing a small wagon from behind the stones, then loading them into it and proceeding to pull it himself at a dead sprint up the nearly fifty-degree incline; Topher's guts squirmed in anticipation of the jarring impacts of the stones, but to his surprise the ride was as smooth as if they were flying. "It is enchanted," Takano commented over his shoulder, showing no signs of exertion whatsoever. "The Archmage thought you might require a respite after your journey, in addition to seeing someone at least slightly familiar."

"Uh huh. Real considerate." Topher revised his plans to kick Quint in the balls to include a running start. "And where are we going, exactly?"

"Bailey-sama," hissed Hana quietly, "who is this person? How do you know them?"

Topher sighed. "He's an Otherworlder from the Summoning, the guy Quint wanted us to find that turned out to be in outer space. What he's doing here and why he's taking us in the wrong direction, I don't know, but the Archmage will probably tell us." If he wants to have any teeth left.

The landscape flew by; Topher was surprised to notice that what he had initially thought were moss-covered boulders everwhere were in fact great bones, the size of houses or larger, which were scattered about the landscape. "What the fuck is this place, anyway?"

"Dragon Valley," breathed Hana. "On the path to the Demon Lord's realm. We followed Oshima-sama's path, but in reverse."

"Worry not," replied Takano heartily. "I have assurances that you will soon be free to pursue your own goals once more. But, for the moment, the Archmage requires your presence; I am not privy to the details." A tilt of his head and his lips implied that this was by choice; Topher chuckled. Not exactly the brains of the operation, I guess.

There was a short silence, then Topher remembered something that made him sad; he tapped Takano's shoulder to get his attention. "Hey. I heard what happened to Arima." The thought of expressing any unhappiness about the pint-size terror was beyond Topher entirely, but sympathy wasn't. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Takano nodded, eyes distant. "Thank you for your concern, grandfather." Topher bristled, then felt Hana's hand on his forearm and tried to calm down. Cultural differences. Right. Takano turned back to his task, leaping like a gazelle over boulders without apparent difficulty. "But, regrettably, it is war; casualties must be expected. Or so I am told." He lapsed into silence, for which Topher was grateful, and carried them the rest of the way without further comment. Eventually, the valley's greenery lapsed into darker and more hardy scrub as the land leveled out; finally, they crossed a dark and sinister plain towards a tall, black forest, where Topher could see a small encampment of tents and buildings formed from logs.

Pulling the wagon up at the edge of the encampment, Takano dropped the handles he'd been using to pull it and smiled, gesturing towards the tents. "Please, take your ease; quarters have been prepared for you. The Archmage will greet you in the morning; I must return to the battlefield, but we will speak again." Drawing his sword and shield, he began to lope away, but paused for just a moment to smile back at Topher. "I look forward to hearing how Ikehara-chan's studies are going!"

Topher winced.