The Simulacrum

Generally speaking, panic was a rather fruitless endeavour. It made people act irrationally, not think things through properly, and led to sloppy decision-making. I believe everyone could agree that it was something that had to be avoided at all costs, yet there were certain situations when it was inevitable. Such as, say, receiving news about the disappearance and/or capture of one of an organization's linchpin members.

"Order! Order! Everyone, please quiet down!" Arnwald yelled at members of the Draconic Council (plus others) filling the Dracis mansion's dedicated conference hall to the brim.

We had all the Draconian clans, both Eastern and Western, represented in full force. At the back, the Ordo Draconis were at full readiness, all of them clad in their magitech uniforms, enchanted armours, and everything in between. Mixed in with them, there were also a couple of Kage ninjas, being as highly visible as usual, Fauns, and even the Research Division members presented themselves on the occasion. Then there was the Magi in their customary seats at the front row, with Lord Amadeus Endymonion in the middle flanked by the whole arch-mage group, including the still recovering Lord Ambrose gripping a walking cane so hard his fingers were turning white.

Last, but certainly not least, we had the whole gang sitting on a hastily installed set of chairs and tables at the right side of the no-man's-land between the benches and the seats of the Speakers. There was Judy, Elly, and my sisters clustered around Angie and Josh in the center, with the tables surrounded on three sides by our entire Praetorian Guard in full battle gear.

In other words, everyone that mattered in the World of Mystics of the island (and some more) was present here, and the tension in the air was palpable. Despite Arnwald's yelling, the crowd continued to murmur, forcing someone else to take matters into her own hands.

"Silence!" Angie, or rather Deus, cried out from the right, her eyes and halo flaring with a bright golden radiance and wings spread over her shoulders for extra dramatic effect. "Let the man speak!"

"Easy there. Calm down," Josh tried to placate her, but it only caused him to enter into her crosshair.

"I'm perfectly calm, and pray that I stay calm, or I swear I'll…!"

It was at this point that Josh decided to take drastic measures and he abruptly hugged her from the side. For a moment, she looked more flustered than anything, but then after a few blinks, her Celestial features disappeared and her eyes shifted back to blue.

"H-Hey! Not in front of everyone!" she hissed in a low voice, and the change of tone meant that Angie was back in the driver's seat again.

In the meantime, Sir Arnwald used the opening her outburst created to grab hold of both the microphone and the attention of the people in attendance once again.

"Brother Roland. Please, can you start from the beginning again, before you were interrupted?"

All eyes shifted towards the podium in the middle, where the moustachioed Griffon Knight let out an exasperated breath and pulled on the collar of his Uniformer outfit. His face was also visible on the large screens hanging over the wall behind the Speakers' table, and once the ambient noise level of the hall became more manageable, he leaned forward to speak directly into the microphone sitting on a long black plastic stalk in front of him.

"As you wish," he began in a dry, level voice. "As I just explained, we received an urgent message from House Shamash of the Abyss. Approximately at twenty-three thirty, Critias timezone, King/Speaker/Archon Leonard Polemos Dunning was ambushed right after entering the Abyss."

He made a valiant effort to condense all of those titles, but at the end of the day, it was still a mouthful.

"How could this happen?" an unfamiliar voice cried out from the back, probably one of the nondescript Draconian council members.

Roland glanced over, then inhaled deeply and focused on the microphone again.

"According to the messenger of Fidèle Basmu Shamash, head of House Shamash, House Nergal secretly colluded with Noir Irdu Inanna and Bel of the Abyss to entrap him."

"Where is she? Why isn't she testifying in person?" another random question flew in from the back, and this time Lady Ysolde snapped at them before Roland could get a word in.

"I would kindly ask the representative of Krepel to shut up and let him finish his report."

Her fiery words caused a wave of murmurs, but then it died down just as quickly when Roland cleared his throat.

"According to the messenger, the matriarch of House Shamash currently cannot leave her homeland, as the betrayal of House Nergal threw the Noble Alliance into disarray and her presence is required in the Abyss. Any further questions?" He waited for a long beat, but this time everyone remained silent. "The whereabouts of Leonard Polemos Dunning are currently unknown, but it is presumed that he was captured by Bel of the Abyss. The messenger assured us that House Shamash and the rest of the Noble Alliance will do everything in their power to unearth more information about his current location."

"Meaning, we don't know exactly what happened to him or where he is right now," Naoren summarized the situation, followed by a barely audible, "I knew something like this would happen…"

"You said it was presumed that he was captured," Dad-in-law chimed in next, sounding as subdued and serious as I'd ever heard him. "As much as it pains me to say it, we can't make any hasty decisions until we know for sure."

It was at this point that a familiar voice interjected once more.

"No. He's captured. Definitely." Everyone focused on Angie, or rather Deus, once again. This time she seemed more under control, probably because Josh was holding her hand under the table. "His goal was to rescue a child from an Abyssal dungeon, was it not? Allowing himself to be captured, just so he could infiltrate a prison from the inside is exactly the kind of plan the Polemos I know would come up with."

"That's preposterous!" Arnwald denied her conjecture on the spot, but the audience seemed to be split fifty-fifty on the idea.

"It does sound like somethin Brother would do…" Penny murmured, sounding audibly conflicted. "He was always fond of… um… unorthodox strategies."

"But even if that was true," the bespectacled Feilong patriarch raised his voice again and made a vague wave at nothing in particular with his hand. "What do we do now? Let us presume that Brother Leonard allowed himself to be captured on purpose. Would that mean everything is going according to his plan, and he doesn't require our interference? Are we going to gamble his life on this assumption?"

Everyone considered his words carefully, and it was Yseult who responded first.

"But if her conjecture is correct, then wouldn't sending a rescue party to jeopardize his plans?"

"Lady Yseult, with all due respect." Arnwald rose to his feet and firmly planted his palms onto the table with a bang. "We ought not to talk about 'rescue parties' at this point. Capturing the King of Ordo Draconis and a Speaker of the Draconic Federation is as clear as casus belli as we can ask for. I say we stop tip-toeing around and knock down the gates of the Abyss with the full fury of our alliance!"

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"I understand that you are agitated, Sir Knight, but think of the consequences," Naoren attempted to hold him back, but to little avail.

"No. Full military mobilization is the only reasonable course of action," Arnwald hissed back, but before they could get into a full-blown argument, a new voice entered the fray from the front row.

"Not to belabour the point," Lord Barnabas spoke up, and he sounded as non-confrontationally self-assured as always. He waited until the people behind the Speakers' table were all focused on him, and then he declared, "Let us presume that Leonard indeed wanted to be captured. Before his departure, he was rather adamant about performing this operation alone and refused all offers of aid and support. Considering his list of recent achievements, I believe he didn't do so out of folly, but because he believed that this was the most effective course of action, and so our interference may do more ill than good."

"I mean… that's true…" Dad-in-law let out a soft huff and gently tapped on the table in front of him. "I trust my son's judgement, and as much as I would also love to storm the Abyss, I believe we should…" It was at this point that he noticed Josh holding up his hand on the side like he was in the classroom, and he turned to face his direction. "Yes, Joshua? Do you have something to say?"

"Yes, thank you."

He stood up without letting go of Angie/Deus's hand, which caused a few subdued chuckles around the room, but they quickly died down when the guy cleared his throat and swept his gaze over the chamber with a determined look in his eyes.

"As someone who knows Leo, I mean, Leonard Dunning well, I'd like to share my perspective on this discussion. In my opinion, you're failing to recognize his true intentions."

Now, that raised a couple of brows, with Naoren in particular looking especially intrigued.

"What makes you say that?"

Josh inhaled deeply and met the Feilong patriarch's gaze tit for that.

"I agree that he most likely… no, he definitely let himself be captured for the reasons already mentioned, but I think you're missing a… crucial element. Leonard… his plans aren't that simple. I know this, because we talked about them a lot, and I think I have something of an… understanding. I'm not saying I fully understand how he thinks, but just getting caught to get into a dungeon or prison or… erm… that's too simple. It's just a Plan C kind of thing."

"C?" When Lady Yseult echoed him with a skeptical bend in her eyebrows, Josh nodded without hesitation, growing more and more confident with each passing second.

"Yes. He makes a whole shitl— I mean, many plans. Plan A, B, C, D, and so on, each more complex and involved than the last. The one that usually goes into action is something like Plan G."

There were some confused and critical murmurs in the conference hall, but at least one person at the Speakers' table accepted his words without hesitation.

"Yes, that makes a lot of sense," Arnwald whispered just loud enough for the microphone to pick up his voice, followed by a question of proper volume. "As Leonard's close friend and confidante, what do you think his real plan was?"

"If there was even such a thing and we aren't overthinking this," Naoren noted in passing, but everyone's attention was on Josh already.

His first reaction was to gulp and then to glance at Angie. Her eyes were back to blue (honestly, it was so nice of them to invent this whole eye-colour switcheroo; it made telling her apart from Deus so much easier) and she squeezed his hand, as if telling him that she was in full agreement with him and that he should have more confidence in himself. He certainly took it that way and faced the audience with renewed vigour.

"It was already said, but Leo… nard was adamant about going in alone. If we presume that the first step of his plan was to get captured, then it makes sense that he didn't want anyone else to get caught up with him. He would say that… erm…"

"Cuts down on the variables," Judy whispered from the back before slinking into obscurity again to take notes. At least she was productive though; the princess looked completely zoned out, like she was watching a soap opera.

"Yes. It cuts down the variables. But! There's no way in he— I mean, it's unlikely that he wouldn't consider what we would do once we heard what happened to him. Actually, now that I think about it, isn't it strange how quickly we learned about all this?"

"That's… a fair point," Roland noted from the podium.

"Right! If he wanted to do this alone, then he would've planned around this to make sure we wouldn't learn about it. We did, therefore it follows that he wanted us to know about his capture as soon as possible. Probably."

"Are you implying that Brother Leonard's goal was to make us have this discussion?"

"Yes! Maybe! I'm not entirely sure, but it's the most logical thing I can think of!" Josh insisted and looked around until his eyes landed on the Knight amongst the speakers. "Sir Arnwald!"

"Yes, young Joshua?"

"You said that Leo being captured is a… erm…"

"Casus belli." Despite Judy's support from the back, Josh continued to flounder, so she tried again. "A cause to justify a war."

"Justification! For war!" Josh exclaimed in turn, causing everyone to fall completely silent, and he continued with the same momentum, not even trying to sound formal anymore. "If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Lili's brother, the Inanna lord or whatever, and Bel of the Abyss are big threats that Leo wants to eliminate, and he also said that we're already at war with them, right? It's just that nobody was willing to go into the Abyss, but now that he's captured there, we have a reason to go there and take the fight to them!"

"Are you saying that Leonard Dunning purposefully set himself up just to give us the justification to invade the Abyss?" Yseult blurted out in a mixture of shock and disbelief. "That's…"

"The ends sometimes justify the means!" Arnwald declared with undue gravitas and slapped the table again. "I agree with young Joshua, and in light of this, I opt to follow the plans laid out by the King of Ordo Draconis and request an immediate vote on the topic of an official declaration of war against House Inanna of the Abyss and the subsequent creation of a military task force to spearhead the invasion."

"Sir Knight, please calm down." Naoren tried to be the voice of reason, even if he was barely heard. "This is all just conjecture. We can't be sure that this is truly what Brother Leonard intended."

"I, for one, trust my son!" Abram declared out of the blue and raised a hand over his head. "I support the request for voting."

Things were getting noisy, but then it was all washed out by a loud, booming voice coming from the first row.

"Lord Speakers, please listen to me!" Lord Grandpa spoke as he let his mana loose, suddenly appearing as if he was looming over the room. It took a few seconds for everyone to quiet down, at which point he retracted his aura and lightly cleared his throat. "I understand that you are all worried about the young Mister Dunning, and you are willing to grasp any straws that would allow you to come to his aid, but I reckon you must also consider the diplomatic, and even more importantly, the logistical ramifications of such actions."

The Speakers shared a few tentative glances, then it was Dad-in-law who responded first.

"I'd like to ask the Lord Arch-mage to elaborate." After a pause, he also amended, "Specifically about these 'logistical ramifications'."

"I call them 'ramifications', but it would be more apt to refer to them as a bottleneck that makes any major military movement impossible."

"Are you referring to the Assembly?" Yseult ventured a guess, but to her surprise, the old man shook his head.

"No. While I do not believe that Glasgow would be thrilled by the notion of a full scale military invasion of the Abyss, it is not something many would vehemently oppose either. No, I am solely referring to the subject of logistics." He shook his head and made an odd hand gesture towards Arnwald. "It appears you have failed to consider that, if the recent reports on the topic are to be believed, entering the Abyss not only requires the active contribution of one or more of the Abyssal aristocrats, but the capacity of these so-called tunnels is also limited to a handful of individuals at a time. In view of these circumstances, I am under the impression that large-scale military deployment into the Abyss is, in a single word, impossible."

The arch-mage waited to see if anyone had something to add to that, but his wet blanket was enough to cool the fervour of the room. Nobody could argue, as it was exactly as he claimed; the number of people who could pass through one of those tunnels into the Abyss at a time was very limited. Even when using all the excess power they could gleam from a Mana Well, it was at most a dozen or individuals, and the more powerful they were, the more that number dropped.

There was also a cooldown period to take into account, and with all of these issues compounded, mounting a full-scale military operation like that would take ages to get off the ground. That is, unless there was an external factor everyone in the room failed to consider.

"E-Excuse me?"

All eyes turned to the table at the side of the room again. There, opposite to Josh on Angie's other side, and taking a page out of his book, the class rep raised her hand high over his head to get everyone's attention. She imperceptibly shuddered the moment her eyes met her grandfather's, but she quickly steeled herself and let her hand down.

Eyes gleaming with determination, she reached for her glasses and uttered the sentence that was the source of as many grand innovations as epic blunders.

"I think… I have an idea."