Chapter 91 - Foot Meet Mouth
"Oh, my Gods. This carrot-cake is amazing."
Gerald twitches at his spot behind his sister as he notices a trio of women had magically appeared out of no-where. From the scowl plastered on the ginger wife's face, he immediately knows that something was wrong, and reaches over to tap the shorter woman on the shoulder. "Uh-"
"Feck off. Lemme enjoy this. Mmm... so devine. Y'know, I can't even have this kinda stuff 'cause Jo 'll smell it on my breath." Zen chomps down on another bite of the delicious treat and snorts out a noise of amusement. "I swear her nose 's better than Elsa's."
"Mizuki."
The short Scout's tail goes rigid at hearing her mate's voice, and she slowly rotates her wide eyes around to find Jessie, Joanne, and some unknown, huge human standing between her brother and Carson.
"Carrot cake."
Zen blinks twice, then turns around to face her irate wife while attempting to conceal the large, half-eaten slice of Heaven. "W-what?"
"You're eating carrot cake."
"N... no, I'm not."
"I can smell it from here."
"Tch."
"Don't you cluck your tongue at me."
The short Cat-woman frowns as she brings her sinful delight around to her front. "Fine. Yes, I'm eating a piece of carrot cake. It's good, an' I like it."
"Well you'd better enjoy it, 'cause it's gonna be your last."
"Aw, c'mon!"
"You promised me, after I caught you eating a slice in bed, that you would never have another."
"I-I promised I'd never eat another while in bed. With you. While you were sleepin'."
Joanne places a hand onto her hip as she pours a cold glare down at her stubborn kitten. "Mizuki. If you-"
"Okay! Fine!" Zen rolls her eyes as she's forced to admit the truth. "I did promise that, but I just couldn't help myself."
"Just like old times. Jo forcing others to bow to her indomitable will."
The small Scout looks to the awkward smile plastered on the blonde woman's thin lips, then looks back to her wife and raises a brow. "Old times?"
"This is Beatrice Becker. My old room-mate from back at the Academy. Bea, this is my wife Mizuki Nekoyama, her half-brother Gerald, their party-mate Carson, and Jess' cute wife, Mishone Inujin."
"A member of the Church, huh." The one-eyed former vanguard offers a wry smile while checking over the newest arrival's white gown with red and gold trim. "I hope you're not here to take our confessions, 'cause this mutt 'll need a full week."
"Stuff it, human. Like you do to-"
"Don't you say it."
"Your old whores."
"Fecking Dog!"
"Hello, sweetie."
"I'm back!" Jessie skips over to trade a trio of soft kisses with her gorgeous puppy before linking an arm in her own. "You should've seen the Holy City! It was blinding!"
"How could I see it if I was blinded?"
"Well... it takes some getting used-to. But it's grand. Massive buildings, everywhere. Even the library looked like a cathedral!"
"Huh. Wonder how they heat it in the winter..."
"Lots of magical-tools. But they even had them outside. It was weird."
"Hmph. What a pointless use of a good heater."
"They can probably afford it."
"So could we, but I still wouldn't do that."
"You've got some odd friends, Jo."
The ginger healer offers her former roomie an absent nod while watching her wife constantly nibble on her prized carrot cake in order to draw out the experience. "And these are the sane ones. You shoulda met some 'f the people I went diving with."
After popping the last morsel of her final piece of carrot cake ever into her mouth, Zen then dusts off her palms and shuffles closer to the tree-like woman. "So... what're you doin' here."
"I dunno. Shopping, first. Then books."
"Books."
"Yah. For the past... few years, all I've been reading are historical accounts of people involved in the Church." Beatrice offers the little feline a bony-shouldered shrug. "They don't allow many other types of tomes into their city."
"You ever read any boy-on-boy stuff?"
"Sorry?"
"Boy-on-boy. Male lovers."
"Uh... no. Never."
"I'll lend you a couple."
"Well... guess I could give them a shot."
"Stop trying to corrupt her with that filth." Joanne displays a frown while her wife's shaggy tail happily sways back and forth at the prospect of finding another person to share such a lurid genre with. "And she'll be busy enough as it is."
"Hah? Why's that?"
"'Cause Jessie's decided to build a central book repository."
"A whut."
"A massive library for our girls. Every few weeks we'll send out different books to all the branches."
The small Scout purses her lips in consideration for a few moments, then gives a curt nod in agreement of the practice. "Okay. That'll be a good way to circulate magic-stuff and boy-on-boy action."
"As well as history, adventure, science-fiction, and poetry."
"Again with the poetry!"
"What?"
"Why's it always gotta be prose?"
"Hush. Women like poetry. It can be extremely romantic."
"Boys-love-stuff can be romantic, too!"
Joanne lets out a heavy sigh, and decides, for the sake of winning a few battles later, to simply give her mate the easy win. "Alright, fine. It can be, when it's well-written."
"Oh, yeah. Gods, the bad stuff is just... kinda awkward to read."
"Exactly. Anyways, Jessie's gonna need funding for that little project, so we'll have to tell Alyssa the plan."
"Shur. She'll be pissed, but what kin ya do."
"Yah. So... let's get out of the open and find a place to speak in private."
"Alright. I'm a bit hungry, so let's-"
"Again?"
Zen blinks twice at the interruption, then slides a blank-faced expression towards the horrified puppy. "What. We've been walkin' around all morning."
"They've been gone for twenty minutes. And in that time, you visited a dozen food stalls."
"Like I said. Come on." The short Cat-woman leads the troupe purely by her sense of smell, and shortly thereafter winds up in an exotic restaurant serving mainly grilled fish, flavoured rice, and broth-cooked noodles. With just a nominal bribe, they're able to rent out a private space in the rear of the establishment, and once the hostess leaves them with a large selection of lunch-wines, then get down to business. "So, Beatrice. I gather that, since you're here, Jo's intuition proved correct, and there's a definite connection with the Church."
"I guess so." The blonde scarecrow offers a bony shrug while filling a large glass up to the very top with a full-bodied port. "She wanted to know about secretive sects that had been established shortly after the Church's independence, and Jessie narrowed it down to a single group with the mention of a person named 'Zephyr'."
"That can't be the guy's real name, though."
"It's his title. The leader of the Order of the Black Rose."
Zen's left eyebrow twitches upon hearing the monicker, and her furry ears slowly begin to lower against her scalp in direct proportion to the amount of sheer and utter loathing welling up inside. "The Black Rose."
"That's correct."
"The group responsible for the most deaths of innocent civilians during the Race Wars."
"There's no literature to that effect in the Chruch's archives."
The small Scout's knuckles issue muted pops as she absently clenches her hands into tight fists. "Figures. Feckin' pricks wouldn't really want it known that they authorized th' indiscriminate slaughter of entire villages."
Joanne reaches over to place a hand atop her wife's forearm in an effort to calm her down, then looks to her former roomie before seeking clarity. "What was the Black Rose best known for? In the accounts you read?"
"Subversion, activity behind enemy lines, disrupting supply-trains, assassinating generals..." Beatrice takes a healthy gulp of her wine, then lightly sets the glass back onto the table. "They also had the distinction of not having lost a single member during the entire decade-long struggle. And many of their members went on to found other organizations, afterwards."
The ginger healer takes a moment to think about what the official accounts would have pointedly left out, mainly, how supply-lines would have been cut off. You wouldn't just attack the caravans, but the ones who stocked them, as well. And 'subversion' would mean creating dis-harmony by doing disgusting things. Horrible murders. Killing innocents. Setting fire to civillian homes. Anything to keep the warriors' minds off of the battles. "So they were generally just the worst kinds of people."
"Perhaps. They were certainly willing to do anything in the name of the One and the Many."
"When do the records of them stop?"
"Well, there hasn't been any mention of their activities in almost a hundred and forty years. But I know for a fact that they haven't been dissolved, or else there would have been the proper documents stating as much, and they would've moved the entire selection of accounts down to the fourth sub-basement."
"So what've they been doin' in all that time?"
Carson plants an elbow heavily onto the table before offering his own speculations. "Training. Keeping their skills and tactics in place by hunting smaller, highly-trained groups inside of the Dungeons."
"Yeah. That's what our research found." Gerald gives an absent nod while twirling his own glass around in circles. "Someone's been killing a lot of parties down in the depths, goin' back a long time. If it were simple raiders, then the goods they stole would've surfaced in the black markets or normal stalls."
"An' if it were bandits, then they'd have taken a few casulties over th' years." The Labrador-kin sends a scowl off to the side as he moves through his own traumatic memories. "It fits, though. Bunch 'f assassins keepin' themselves ready. Capable of instantly waging war again."
Zen lightly drums her fingers atop the thick table while considering the views of the others. "That guy we questioned earlier, though... he said somethin' about if there were enough smaller groups, that their voices would carry far an' wide... and people'd know the truth... but this can't be it."
"Maybe he was just talking about rebellion?"
The short Cat-woman looks to the human teen mage with an expression of confusion. "Buncha divers gettin' t'gether in order to overthrow the Church? That ain't likely."
Jessie offers a shrug before clarifying her position. "Maybe those parties would've eventually have seen things, and if they started to put the pieces together, then it would've just snow-balled from there."
"Seen what." Zen throws a frown towards the sultry arcanist before indicating the three other professionals at the table. "We've been livin' in the depths for years. Aside from a bunch of monsters, there ain't nothing down there."
"So where do the monsters come from?"
The small Scout blinks twice, then slides her gaze towards the Husky-kin. "Huh?"
"They've gotta come from somewhere, right?"
"Sure? I mean... of course."
"So, where?"
Zen looks to each of the other spelunkers, but either finds un-caring blank-faced stares, or an expression of deep thought. "It's... the ground, right? 'Cause it's corrupted?"
"Sure."
"Sounds good."
"Maybe?"
"Yah. The ground." The short Cat-woman nods to confirm her statement, then returns her attention towards the pair of teens. "Definitely the locations, themselves."
"You don't sound too sure." Mishone treats the 'adults' to a frown for their poor efforts of deluding themselves and others. "I asked that same question at Galtaire's Adventurers' Guild, an' everyone just laughed. Not a single person gave me an answer. So why doesn't anyone know?"
"Alright, alright." The chestnut-haired mage gently lays a hand on her puppy's knee before approaching the topic from a different direction. "What does the Church say about Dungeons?"
"That they're un-holy places filled with demonic energies."
Beatrice nods at her old roomie's statement. "That, and they can never be fully cleansed."
"So... filled with dark energy and can't be cleansed... if I were a world-class cynic, I might interpret those comments to mean that the Church either created the Dungeons and can't figure out how to purify them, or they know exactly how they came to be, and simply choose not to cleanse them, for whatever reasons."
Mishone offers her mate a nod at hearing the good theories. "I'd go with the first one, jus' 'cause I could see the Church tryin' to conduct human experimentation and winding up with Dungeons instead of their perfect version of humanity."
"Oh! That's a good one!" Jessie flashes a wide smile to her wife at the thought of such a nefarious idea. "We should find someone to write a book like that! I bet it'd be a huge seller!"
The white-furred Husky snickers while wondering which of their Sisters would be best suited to being an author... but the dead silence around the table quickly brings her back to reality, where she finds the four twenty-somethings glaring at her. "What. What'd I say?"
Zen ignores the cute puppy's question in favour of looking at the former librarian. "The Church was founded twelve hundred-some years back, right?"
"Yes."
"And their first headquarters was in the capitol."
"That's correct."
"And the capitol's Dungeon is just over a thousand years old."
"From what I've read."
"Are there stories or whatever from around that time that deal with things that now inhabit Dungeons?"
"Like what?"
"Wraiths, Valkyries, Liches, Titans, Lepricauns..."
Beatrice absently glances around the surface of the table while connecting the suggestions with specific accounts of events long since passed. "Yes. Some of the oldest eddas deal with each of those. From before when the first Dungeons would have been found. Mostly in accounts of skirmishes with other nations."
Gerald reaches up to minutely adjust his eye-patch as he struggles to put things in place. "From other nations... so those places could've been experimenting on people, an' the Church decided to fight fire with fire?"
The blonde scare-crow offers a shrug in lieu of definitively answering the query. "All I know is that the Church waged war continuously for seventy years against a huge swath of barbarians in the west. Had the Church lost, then we'd undoubtedly have been brought up sacrificing babies and eating the hearts of the elderly in order to take in their wisdom and experience."
"Huh?"
"That's what the Church says would've happened."
"Ah. Lovely."
"Y'know..." Zen looks to each of the other professional divers before reminding them of something else lurking in the depths. "There're barbarians in the Dungeons. Like... a lot."
"Yeah."
"That's true..."
"They smell so bad."
The small Scout gives a quick nod to her wife's wrinkled nose. "Aside from the Filth Demons, they're practically the worst."
"Oh. Saint Jude battled a Filth Demon."
"Yeah, whatever." Zen dismisses the blonde human's comment in favour of looking around to the others. "Alright. We've got some work to do, and we've gotta split up for it. Jess 'n Mish, I want you two stayin' in Jozejemi for the next week."
"What?!"
"Why?"
"'Cause I'm expecting retribution." The short Cat-woman leans against the edge of the table and send a serious stare towards the married youths. "We'll be pulling a few of the more-capable girls from there an' Kileah, swappin' them out for some 'f the newbies at Galtaire, too. Gerald 'n Carson will be in charge of the defence up there, an' Jo 'n me will look after our Sisters in Kileah."
"You'd really trust us to look after a bunch of teenage girls."
Zen looks to the homeless Labrador and offers a wicked grin. "I know my brother won't touch any of them-"
"'Cause he only-"
"Don't say it."
"Fecks old whores."
"Fecking Dog!"
"Exactly. And if you tried to bed any of my Sisters-"
"Then you'd cut me in ways that'll make me useless to a woman."
"Precisely." The small Scout gives the smart canine a curt nod of approval before laying out the immediate plans. "So, for now, we're in lock-down. Scouts patrol the area and set up traps where no normal civilians will wander into them. One person is to watch the teleportation-businesses at all times. No-one goes anywhere alone, and no-one goes outside unless someone of my choosing is escorting them. If and when these feckers attack, only those who're authorized by me will engage in combat. The others will withdraw to a safe-room under the hotels."
"You'd better authorize us."
"I'd be more likely to deny Gerald an' Carson, since they didn't get a single kill this morning."
"Fecking Cat."
Zen shrugs off the slanderous remark before reclining in her chair. "Just remember that these feckers are ruthless. They may take other townsfolk as hostages in an attempt to make you submit. Unfortunately, we look after our own, first and foremost. If that means sacrificing innocents, then so be it. We'll make restitutions later."
"Alright."
"A-yup."
"Good. So, I need my mirror back."
Joanne displays a frown, but still reluctantly hands over the precious magical tool to it's rightful owner. "I take it we'll be evaluating the girls in Kileah and Jozejemi all day?"
"Wrong. I'm gonna do that. You're gonna look after all the ones who're here."
"Shouldn't we just take them back? Like, now?"
"And deny them the chance to explore? No. Likely, this'll be their last frivolous day for a while... and some 'f 'em might wind up dying, anyways." Zen stands up from her seat and leans over to trade a pair of kisses with her wife and two frequent lovers. "I'll be back in the early afternoon. 'Til then, keep your eyes open."
"Alright. Love, you, sweetie."
"Mm. Love you, too. Jess, Mish. New librarian."
Beatrice knits her brows together in a display of her confusion, but the little feline disappears before she can reply. "Huh. Teleportation really is handy."
"I'll teach you later, Bea."
"Can I just make a comment, here, about how worried Zen must be?"
"Hm?" Joanne looks to the concerned puppy and raises a curious brow. "Why do you say that?"
As Mishone opens her mouth to voice her answer, the silly Cat returns to the exact spot she'd just vacated.
"I'll start right after brunch."
The white-furred Husky-kin lets out a heavy sigh of relief as the Sisterhood's leader sinks back down into her chair. Apparently, Zen wasn't worried enough to skip a meal... which was actually a very good sign, indeed. "Never mind."