This Thing Don't Look So Tough

[China]

China-

“No, no!” he berated himself, “Must stop-stop think old name! Me-me must use-use nice, shiny new-fresh name new master give-give! Afrátos! That-that right, me! Call-name self Afrátos!”

Afrátos (not China!) clung onto the Hell Fairy for dear life, with arms, legs and tails all, snuggling against her and taking comfort in her presence. No one could hurt him while she was around, he was sure.

“Uh… right.” Dane’s tone was dry, through from his current position, Afrátos could not see his expression nor any gestures or gesticulations he might have made. The golem was staring over his master’s shoulder, and so couldn’t actually lay eyes- well… eye, upon any of their little group’s members. He could still hear just fine, though, “Well, that moronic interruption aside... yes, Cassandra, that sounds like a fine idea.”

Hah! The joke was on him! The golem had been thinking those words in his head, so there was no way any of the others could have heard them! Since surely they couldn’t all have that crazy mind-reading power. Strangely, though, no one commented on the swordsman mentioning an ‘interruption’ which none of them ought to have noticed.

Well, Afrátos reasoned, they were probably simply afraid of upsetting that lunatic… except master, of course. She was just too good a friend to point out that Dane must have sounded like he was a crazy person hearing voices. The Ceramic Beast chuckled softly to himself as he imagined what everyone else here must be thinking of the swordsman now.

“Aside from taking the time to wait for Cirno, working out what supplies we’ll need and what mode of transportation to use, Afrátos and I – Afrátos especially – could really use some time to heal up after that last fight. I doubt he’ll be much help against the Tarrasque if he can barely walk without falling to pieces, after all.”

“And whose fault is that!?” Clownpiece demanded shrilly.

“... I said I was sorry.” came the muttered reply, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Right! Well, let’s g-” Renko piped up cheerily, seemingly eager to move the conversation along. She was interrupted, though, by the sudden arrival of someone else.

“Hey Clownpiece, I hope you realise how difficult it was to get here with literally no information to go off of. It says, and I repeat, ‘Pale mores, you Dane and Yuuka were fighting something large, get over here’.” turning his head, the Ceramic Beast observed the blue-clothed newcomer coolly through his one, slit-pupilled eyeball. She looked a lot like a tasty food, but he wasn’t fooled, oh no. She had addressed his master by name, and from this tiniest, subtlest of hints, his extraordinarily powerful mind deduced that she already knew her. And, of course, alas, that meant she was a person, not a food.

She sighed, but then carried on speaking without waiting for a response, whilst holding aloft some square thing with a crude and ugly brown scribble on it, “Also your drawing was not helpful, what is this supposed to be? Oh and I was dealing with some bounty. Also can someone get me up to speed on what I missed? It seems like I missed a lot.”

Crossing her arms, demands made, she stood and waited to be brought up to speed. Afrátos fought to suppress a groan. First Dane, with his take-charge attitude and meanness, then this grassy-haired lady who hated walking anywhere, and now someone else who showed up out of nowhere complaining and expecting to have their every wish heeded by the world at large.

“Poor-poor master! So much-much powerful-strong, but terrible-horrid taste at choose-pick friends. This three should bowing and scraping at master feet, not act-behave all rude-nasty and high-uppity!”

“Um… what?” asked the blue fairy, “What did that thing just say, Clownpiece…? And... why is it clinging to you?”

“Oh, don’t mind him, Cirno.” Dane spoke up before the Hell Fairy could get a word in, “That’s Afrátos, her new pet. We found him over in the Tangled Green. I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s monologuing internally, so feel free to just ignore anything he says.”

“Uh… right.”

“So anyway, as for catching you up: we came here looking for something to do, since we figured the Moors always has plenty of monsters around, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find something fun to kill. We also met a few other people along the way. These two are Cassandra Myst and Renko Usami,” the swordsman gestured towards each of the pair as he introduced them, then turned to the no-walking lady, “and since Cirno said ‘Yuuka’, I guess that must be you?”

“Yes. Yuuka Kazami.” she introduced herself politely… but then, after a moment’s hesitation, carried on speaking, “Now, weren’t you saying something about beds? Or rest… on beds? At an inn. In comfort. How about we finish filling in Cirno while we… ugh… walk?”

“Sure, why not. The nearest inn can’t be far.” and so, following along behind Dane like mindless sheep, the group strolled off down dank and gloomy streets, always on the lookout for Afrátos knew not what. To him all these stone boxes might as well have been identical, so he had no clue how to tell an ‘inn’ (whatever that was) from any other building.

As they walked – after the Hell Fairy had drifted down to the ground and disentangled herself from Afrátos’ grasping limbs – master and her friend filled in the blue person called ‘Cirno’ on what they had been planning, and Renko used some sort of magic square thing (somewhat similar to Cirno's own) to find a picture from a place called ‘Dataverse’ which she showed to the newcomer, who incredulously commented that it looked not remotely similar to Clownpiece’s drawing. Afrátos had to admit, even if only privately, deep within the confines of his own mind, that she may have had a point. Master of course had many, many wonderful talents, but her artistic renditions, it seemed, were of the... well… unintentionally abstract variety, to put it gently.

After Dane had finished speaking, they strode on in silence for a couple minutes, which was totally fine with Afrátos, who was content walking around on all sixes rubbing up against Clownpiece’s side like a particularly large cat, with both tails up in the air. The others, however, seemed to get tired of quiet before too long, and soon Cirno had launched into a story about how she got paid a bounty for beating up some lady, telling her employer that this had somehow reformed her psychotic victim and made her a decent person, then taking the cash and hurriedly leaving before the guy worked out that hitting people doesn't magically cure severe mental disorders.

After which, there was another short bout of peace and quiet, before the Hell Fairy spoke up, telling her green- and blue-haired friends about the fight in the jungle which she, Dane, Afrátos and that metal thing had had. Once that was all over, and they still hadn’t found a place to hole up for the night, it finally occurred to Renko to look for the answer on this mystical Dataverse thing of hers, since following Dane on his aimless trek had yielded little in the way of results. Unless Yuuka’s pouting expression and frequent complaints about sore feet could be considered ‘results’, at least. A few minutes later, they had found a place.

The swordsman opened the door and walked in at the head of their group, as if he were the one who had actually led them here. Within, they found a skeletal old lady at a desk, behind which a wooden staircase ascended to the next level of the building. A large fire roared in a hearth off to their left, and a furry blue rug just before it covered a fairly big part of the otherwise bare, wooden floor.

“Wha’ d’you want?” the crone demanded, her tone toxic. She had a hooked nose, tanned skin stretched so tightly across her emaciated frame that barely any wrinkles marked it, despite her clearly advanced years, white hair tied back in a bun, and tiny, dark, beady eyes. She wore a thick, leather overcoat, unbuttoned, over a cream blouse. The rest of her attire was concealed by the counter, upon which sat only four items: a glass filled with some sort of dark liquid; an open brown-glass bottle, half-full; and two more identical bottles, completely empty.

“Three rooms for the night.” the swordsman said smoothly, opting to overlook her rudeness. They had briefly gone over this during the journey here. Based on what Renko had read, it seemed that this place's rooms wouldn't be big enough for a large group, so they were splitting up a bit, “One single room, one with two beds, and another with three.”

Yuuka was going to room with the two fairies, and Afrátos was perfectly content to sleep at the foot of his master’s bed like a loyal hound. Renko and Cassandra, the sensible pair, would take another room, whilst Dane would be on his own because he sucked and nobody liked him… well, okay, that hadn’t been the exact reason… something about him being a guy. The porcelain golem wasn’t sure why that mattered, but yum-yums had lots of strange ideas, so he barely even paused to think about it.

The hag’s eyes narrowed as the rest of the band came forwards. Once they were all inside, Myst shut the door behind them. The old lady scowled, “We’re full.”

“Really now?” Afrátos was utterly lost, but Dane seemed to know what he was doing, so the Ceramic Beast let him talk uninterrupted. Judging by their silence, the others all had had similar thoughts.

The fast person held out a hand, palm up. A moment later, an orb of flashy rainbow lights rose up out of that palm, identical to the one that the golem remembered being handed by that strange, white person, after arriving in the dark place. Once it had fully formed, he tossed it to the crone.

“Primes.” the the word was spoken in a sibilant whisper, an ugly sneer twisting her upper lip, as though she were revolted by their very presence. She clutched the sphere tightly in her hand, though, making no move to return it, “And you want three rooms, y’say?”

“Yes. We checked this place out on the Dataverse. That Omnilium should be more than enough to pay for them.”

“Should be...” the old hag agreed with a nod, but then turned her head to the side and spat, before looking back at the fast person, “would be. If we weren’t full.”

“We can always go elsewhere if that’s-” Dane began, but was interrupted by a soft growl from Yuuka, low enough that the innkeeper likely never even heard it. Afrátos did, though, and sidled as subtly aside as he could, putting master between himself and the grassy-head lady. He’d never known laziness could be so scary, “ah… on second thought… I can’t really be bothered.”

Calling forth another shiny ball from his hand, the swordsman tossed this one to the crone as well. This time, his pitch was a little harder, and to Afrátos’ eye, looked to be aimed directly for her face. Nevertheless, the old lady apparently had no trouble snatching it from the air. She seemed surprisingly spry for a senior citizen. Both orbs vanished into her coat with little more than a flick of her wrist. She then reached under her counter and pulled out three small, metal objects, which she threw to Dane.

“Room numbers ‘re on the keys.” that said, the hag gave them a long, penetrating glare, before speaking up once again, “Just one thing, though. If I hear so much as a whisper ’f the words ‘adventurer’ or ‘quest’ from any one ‘f you, you’re all out on your arses. Got that!? I’ve had it up to here with all that crap.”

“Uh… sure.” Dane replied, a tad quizzically. They headed upstairs then. The second floor held ten rooms, but the master’s friend ignored those and continued up to the third and highest level, which held ten more. Their keys, he told them, were all for this floor; rooms number eleven, seventeen and twenty, to be more specific. Afrátos didn't know numbers, though, so these words meant nothing to him. What he did notice was that, based on the absolute lack of noise, this floor was almost certainly entirely unoccupied.