The Simulacrum

"This way, future young master."

I sneakily rolled my eyes at the braided maid's words and told her, "Yes, I know. This is not my first time." While I might have grumbled, I still followed after her before adding, "Also, I asked you already, but please stop calling me that."

"What could future young master be referring to?"

"... Do you really intend to keep going? Is this some kind of passive-aggressive power play?"

"Please forgive me, but this lowly servant still cannot understand what future young master is talking about."

It was at this point I could no longer hold my exasperation at bay and I let out a groan that made my throat sound like it was made of sandpaper.

"Fine, do whatever you want."

My words, which were not an admission of defeat, by the way, made the chambermaid visibly brighten and she told me, "I shall endeavor to do so."

I decided to leave it at that, and for a while, we silently walked through the corridors of the mansion. To be honest, I was feeling a little tired at the moment.

It might sound obvious, but even if you love spending time with your significant other, devoting your full attention to them for an extended period of time can be a little exhausting. Considering I followed that up with a family dinner with my self-proclaimed in-laws and then a business discussion with Abram, it was no wonder I was feeling a little puckered out.

However, there was one more item on the table for today's agenda, and I was heading right towards it, which only added to my enervation. Needless to say, I blame all of the above for the fact that I was caught completely flat-footed by Melinda's next words.

"Does future young master's sister enjoy the uniform?"

"Pardon?" I blurted out in a surprised and uncomfortably high-pitched voice.

The chambermaid looked at me like I was an alien or something, and it took me several long seconds to finally realize she wasn't talking about the magical uniforms.

"Oh, you meant the maid costumes!" I exclaimed as I theatrically hit my forehead with the heel of my palm. "Yes, she liked them very much. Thanks for giving them away."

"The uniforms technically belong to the estate, so please direct your gratitude towards Lady Eleanor."

"Yes, I know, but you were the one who was using them, so it's only fair that I thank you too. Anyhow, Snowy doesn't have many chances to wear a maid uniform during the day, but she dresses up every evening when we make dinner and wash the dishes."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I think she even customized one of them a little by adding more ruffles to the edges and to the headpiece. Oh, and now that I think about it, she only wears stockings with the other one. She even made a lacy garter for that. I never would've figured, but she is surprisingly handy with the needle."

"Shocking."

"Isn't it? You would think as the ex-heiress of an Abyssal house she would be pampered, but instead it turned out she's unexpectedly self-reliant. Though again, since her brother is an asshole, I guess it might not be that surprising after all." I paused here for a spell, then I hastily added, "I meant her blood-related brother, not me."

"Naturally."

"Anyhow, the important part is that she really likes the uniforms, she made them cuter, and she looks cute in them. That’s all that matters."

"I'm glad to hear that."

That's what she said, though she sounded quite unenthusiastic. But who knows, maybe she did mean it? Maybe there was a form of unspoken camaraderie between maids and maid-enthusiasts and she was just shy about sounding excited about it in front of a relative stranger. It wouldn't have been the strangest personality quirk I've seen. Not by a long shot.

Anyhow, while we kept noncommittally chatting about maid stuff, we quickly arrived at a certain annoying butler's study.

"Thank you for your guidance. I'll take it from here."

My words were little more than a formality, yet Melinda acknowledged them with a graceful curtsy. She held the pose for a few seconds, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was supposed to do or say something in response, but before I could figure out what, she straightened her back and wordlessly walked away. That was weird, but I had no time to ruminate upon its implications, as already stood at the doorstep of the lion's den. Though again, maybe calling it the dragon's den would have been more accurate. Or was it too on the nose?

Semantics aside, I took a deep breath to prepare myself and knocked on the fancy hardwood door in front of me.

"Come in, it's open," came the surprisingly neutral response from the owner of the room. I wasn't shy enough to just meekly stand in front of the door even without permission, but since I was invited in, I had even less of a reservation about throwing it wide open.

"Good evening!" I greeted the visibly startled old man sitting at the heavy desk at the other side of the room, my upbeat tone further reinforced by a shit-eating grin so wide it made my mouth hurt.

"Oh. It's you." Sebastian accentuated his dour response by pointedly setting the porcelain cup he was cleaning down onto the desk with a sharp clanking noise. "I was told you would be paying me a visit, but I didn't expect you to arrive so soon."

"What can I say? Visiting you is like pulling a tooth. The sooner it's done and over with, the better."

"You are charming as always."

"Thank you, I'm trying."

Saying so, I closed the door behind me and took a slow, meticulous look around the study.

It wasn't the first time I was here, but the thick, slightly moldy scent of history still tickled my nose with every breath. More importantly though, maybe because now I was just a teensy bit more acclimated to the magical sub-layer of the world, I couldn't help but marvel at the various, softly glowing curios lining the walls and filling the shelves. I couldn't wait to get my hands on them, but as much as I wanted to just rummage around, I was still in my girlfriend's home, so a certain amount of tact was required.

"So? Why exactly are you here?"

The bothersome butler raised the obvious question and I promptly told him, "I came over to play with your toys!" Hey, I said 'a certain amount' of tact, not a lot. Still, Sebastian looked unduly surprised by my response, so I amended, "And by that I mean I came over to study some of your artifacts. Didn't Abram tell you about it?"

The old man rewarded my slightly more forthcoming words with an odd look, and he followed it up with a tired sigh.

"No, he didn't. It appears the family head hasn't grown out of his mischievous phase. Still a child in every manner but his stature."

"Are you sure it's okay for you to say things like that about the patriarch?" I teased him a little as I walked closer to his desk, and he invariably rolled his eyes.

"Don't feign idiocy, boy. You know of my identity, so you should be well aware that if there is a person on this island who may call the esteemed head of the Dracis family the child he is, it is I."

"Got it, great-great-great-grandpa. Just checking."

He obviously found my stellar wit too much to deal with, as he let out a defeated sigh and stood up with an excessive display of weariness.

"So, you wish to 'study' my collection. I never imagined you as an admirer of antiques."

"Nah, I'm more interested in their enchantments than the items themselves," I admitted freely.

"Really? Do you perhaps fancy yourself as a fledgling artificer, boy?"

"It's a recent interest of mine, old man," I retorted back with an absolutely genuine friendly smile.

"Normally I wouldn't tolerate the idea of allowing your grubby hands to lay a single finger on my possessions, but as it was a request by the family head, I'm willing to make an exception under one circumstance."

"Which is?" I asked, ignoring the devious way the old man was angling his brows.

"It is quite simple." He slowly walked around the desk, his right elbow set in his left palm while the fingers of his other hand began to slowly and methodically stroke his beard. I had to give credit when it's due, the guy got the 'diabolical mastermind' look down pat. "I only require you to ask. Humbly."

"That's all?" I inquired a little suspiciously, but Sebastian nodded in the affirmative. Was that really the whole breadth and depth of his demands? That was... kind of adorable, actually.

"Okay then," I responded absent-mindedly before I took a deep breath and put on my most innocent face. "Sir Steward? I humbly request your permission to study the magical properties and enchantments of your prestigious collection. May I have it?"

The antiquated butler looked at me like I was a white raven riding on a black sheep for a couple of seconds before he ultimately let out a supremely baffled 'huh'.

"I am not going to lie, boy; I thought your pride wouldn't allow you to agree to my request so easily."

"Oh please. Why would I have a problem with something like this? They are just words, nothing more. Kind of like your idle death threats."

Sebastian's eyes immediately narrowed into annoyed slits and he vehemently started, "I assure you, my boy; my threats are anything but 'idle'."

"And if you can honestly believe that, I bet you can also believe that my previous words were sincere." The skunk-striped butler let out a groan that sounded like it came from the bottom of his soul (or at the very least his pancreas), which I naturally disregarded, and instead I asked, "So? Can I start?"

Sebastian gave me a look that said that he could drown me in a spoonful of vinegar (in other words, slightly more agreeable than usual) and stated, "Whatever piques your interest. But be warned; I'll be watching you."

"Naturally," I responded before I carefully swept the whole room with my eyes, looking for my first object of interest.

There were certainly quite a number of attention-grabbing items on display, but none more prominent than the spear in the corner. In fact, it was practically impossible to miss, as the bloody thing was glowing as bright as a neon sign. I even found myself subconsciously filtering out its light so I could see the other enchantments, and while it was tempting to go for it right away, I was afraid picking up the dragon-slaying lance first in the dragon's lair might lead to a misunderstanding.

As such, my first 'victim' was the creepy Japanese doll sitting on the shelf by the doorway.

"I'll start with this," I told my observer while lightly shaking the doll, which earned me a curiously raised brow.

"An odd choice," Sebastian mused under his breath, but I simply ignored his comment and used my phantom limb to peek inside the enchantment on the creepy little thing, and it didn't take me long to furrow my brows.

"Hey, old man?"

"Have I told you that I disapprove of your disrespectful conduct?"

"Not today, but that'

s beside the point," I dismissed him while shaking the doll again. "Did you know that this thing is cursed?"

"Cursed," he repeated after me, his voice more than a little baffled. "How so?"

"Obviously," I retorted, but since he didn't seem to appreciate it, I cleared my throat and clarified, "I mean, you could tell just by looking at it. It is a creepy doll straight out of a cheap horror story. Furthermore, if you put it under the right circumstances, which is, if I 'read' this right, a high school classroom after midnight, it will cause people in a large radius to become paranoid and hallucinate all kinds of nasty things and then try to murder each other while thinking that the others are monsters or something." We both fell silent after my explanation, but as I looked at it one more time, I couldn't help but let the bubbling indignation trapped in my belly out by loudly asking, "By the way, just who in their right mind would even make something like this?! And on a related note, why would you have it?!"

"For the record, regardless of the nature of the enchantment, it is still a unique, one-of-a-kind item," Sebastian stated a tad defensively.

"I hope so!" I exclaimed while indignantly shaking the thing in my hand. Again. "Having just one creepy doll from a cheap Japanese horror story is bad enough; I don't want to live in a world where there are more of them!" It took several deep breaths to regain some of my cool, after which I promptly asked, "I hope you don't mind if I'd take apart the enchantment on this thing."

"I absolutely would!" Sebastian responded rather indignantly. "Studying my collection is one thing, but I never granted you permission to—"

"Oh come on! This thing is literally cursed!" I interrupted him while waving the object of our argument in front of his nose. "Why in the nine layers of hell would you want to keep a curse on a doll?!"

"It's a collector's item!" he riposted and tried to snatch it out of my hand, but I was just a smidgen faster and managed to evade him.

"Okay, calm down!" I stressed hard while keeping the doll away from him with one hand and holding him back with the other. "How about a compromise?"

"What kind of compromise?" the old man eyed me suspiciously, no doubt weighing his options. I really hoped one of them wasn't about whether turning me into a pile of ash on the floor was a reasonable response.

"Simple. I'm not going to destroy the enchantment; instead, I'll modify the trigger mechanism. Say, I add a few more conditions, so it would only activate under needlessly convoluted circumstances. Say, only after midnight, in a high school classroom, with a single person present, and only if said person is dressed as a clown. You can keep your stupid curse, but at the same time the activation trigger will be so unlikely it might as well not even exist. Think of it as removing the firing pin from a gun in a museum. It's for safety."

The owner of the doll kept eyeing me without even bothering to hide his suspicion.

"Are you able to make it so?"

"I'm fairly sure I can." My words apparently didn't project enough confidence, at least according to the skeptical look Sebastian was giving me, so I amended, "I mean, modifying the framework of an enchantment is somewhat more involved than tweaking just the effect, but it's doable."

The old man ruminated on the idea for a disturbingly long time, but eventually he gave me a nod, though his expression said he could not believe he was doing it.

"You are correct in your assertion that removing the trigger of a cursed item is the prudent thing to do. However, if you damage my property, I swear I will make you pay."

"There you go with the threats of violence again..." I shook my head, but the man only scoffed at my comment.

"No, my boy; but once our family lawyers drag you to civil court over property damages, you'll wish for corporal punishment."

"Scary," I stated while channeling my inner Judy before I pointed at the antique sofa by the similarly aged coffee table on our right. "May I sit down?"

"Of course." The annoying butler indicated where I should take a seat by a courteous wave of his hand, though considering the context, he was probably sarcastic. It didn't stop me from returning the gesture with a polite nod that was about as sincere as a presidential campaign speech, after which I casually plopped down onto his vintage furniture.

Now, to be perfectly honest, what I was going to do didn't require me to sit down. In fact, aside from the middle stage of the process, it didn't even require too much concentration either. I didn't lie when I said that the modification I was attempting was 'involved', but it didn't mean it was particularly complicated. How should I put it?

How about this: in essence, an enchantment can be broken down into multiple, interlocking functional parts. For example, the 'Magiformers' were designed to remove clothes from the wearer, store them, and then replace them with another, preset outfit. The first part was essential for its functionality, as it was impossible to put a full set of clothes on a person without removing the one they were already wearing. The second part was slightly less rigid, as, for example, instead of storing the clothes, it could vaporize them to make space for the new ones. As for the 'preset outfit' part, it was by far the easiest to modify, as the whole framework was designed with that option in mind.

Now, the enchantment I literally had in my hands was slightly different. Since it was a curse in the broad sense of the word, it wasn't designed with post hoc modifications in mind. It only had two main components: a detection mechanism tied to the trigger, and the 'curse', which was an ongoing perception manipulating spell. There were also some miscellaneous parts as well, such as the mana accumulation and storage elements which allowed the whole thing to work, but those were beside the point.

What wasn't, is the fact that, since the curse/enchantment wasn't meant to be changed after the fact, it was like a giant clockwork filled with interlocking gears that were already in motion, and moving any one of them would wreck the whole thing until it would collapse in on itself. In retrospect, I figured my anti-magical abilities probably worked on a similar, implody principle, but that was beside the point now.

So back to the enchantment: to modify it, first I had to isolate which of the gear-analogs belonged to which of the various parts that made it up. Funnily enough, this was the easiest part, as I could tell them apart at a single glance. I had a feeling it was supposed to be a lot harder, but I decided that it was something to think about for later.

As for the second step, it was... how should I put it...? I would like to say I had to unravel the enchantment, but I already went with the clockwork analogy, so... let's say that I had to take the gears and... so, it's like the gears are made of plasticine, but they are frozen solid, so before I could do anything with them, I had to thaw them, but before I could thaw them, I had to make them stop spinning, and once they became pliable I had to…

…

Damn. Maybe Judy was right. Maybe my analogies are horrible.

…

Or maybe it's the system that was horribly counter-intuitive and complicated. Actually, it was probably the latter. Definitely.

After I concluded that, I took a deep breath and began the process, which was… not particularly riveting. I mean, what I was doing at the moment was… hard to describe without another analogy that may or may not backfire on me, so let's just say it was simple, repetitive, and unfortunately absolutely crucial. So, I did it in silence for about a solid minute… right until the moment when I ran out of patience with the butler intensely staring at my face.

"Is there a problem?" I inquired with a single brow raised high, and Sebastian sharply shook his head in return.

"No. I was just observing what you are doing." He purposefully paused here to lean a little forward and stroke his beard before he added, "It doesn't look particularly impressive so far."

"I'm laying the groundwork as we speak," I told him a little bit indignantly, and it was his turn to raise an intrigued brow.

"Then why are you talking to me instead of focusing on your task?"

"It's not particularly hard, so I can pay attention to other things as well."

"Really?" Sebastian straightened his back again and mused, "I thought paying attention to two things at once was only something women could do."

"Nah, I think it's one of those pop-science generalizations that people just believe because it sounds nice. I personally think the individual differences dwarf the general trends."

"I see," the old man responded a little absent-mindedly before he finally sat down on the nearby canapé. "It can be hard to keep up with the shape of the ever-billowing cloud of human knowledge."

"That's a needlessly fancy way to say it, but yes, I agree. I guess it must be even harder for someone like you."

"Someone like me?" he repeated after me with a critical edge to his voice, so I proceeded to clarify my statement.

"I meant someone as old as you are. I imagine it is hard to keep up with modern minutiae, such as whether or not women are better at multitasking, when you were born before they were even allowed to vote. Or rather, before democratic votes were even a thing."

"My boy, I might be old, but I assure you that ancient Athens was before even my time," Sebastian emphasized a touch indignantly, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"You know that I meant modern democracy; don't be a pedant."

My incensed host let out a soft grunt, which I could interpret in a myriad of ways, but I naturally picked the one where it meant he was ashamed of himself and his heckling ways. Hey, I didn't say I picked the most likely one, did I?

Anyhow, the silence in the room was getting heavy again, so after making sure things with the enchantment were progressing smoothly, I sharply cleared my throat and turned a very cordial smile towards my grumpy host.

"So, staying on the topic of you being an old geezer..." When I said that, he whispered something along the lines of 'Rude as always' under his breath, but I effortlessly passed over his comment and continued, "Can you tell me a story?"

"What kind of story?" he blurted out, apparently baffled by my suggestion.

"An old one?" came my clarification in the company of an innocent smile. "For example, how about you tell me about your romantic escapades? I bet you've accumulated quite a number of them over the years," I posited harmlessly before I added, "Or if that's too personal, you can always tell me about your collection here, like how it came to be and such."

My request was very much on the nose, but it naturally wasn't without reason. As a wise man has once said, asking a question from your enemy without an ulterior motive is a breath wasted. I would've only liked to add that, if you are already asking, having just one ulterior motive is an exercise in inefficiency. As such, I found it quite respectable that I managed to squeeze no less than three of them into one request.

The most obvious one was naturally how I might sneakily learn something about relationships from the old man. I mean, he should have quite a lot of experience, and even if it turned out his history with women (or men, I won't judge fire-breathing flying lizards) was an absolute royal mess… hey, a bad example is still an example! However, if he decided he didn't want to share his love history with me, by providing him a second option to talk about, he would most likely pick it before even recognizing he had other alternatives, like talking about his old pet turtle called Perry or something.

However, my request also had a third layer to it. Here's the thing: at this point, I have more or less concluded, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was a constructed, artificial world. That meant someone made it, which meant that it had to be 'finished' and 'turned on' at some point. In other words, this world had a beginning. My question was: when?

I had two hypotheses at the moment. According to the first one, the world we lived in began recently, maybe as recently as the day I first woke up, while the second hypothesis said that the world had been around for a long time and it's only the 'plot' that picked up not too long ago. In some ways, the two options were a microcosm of the whole young-Earth versus Big Bang debate, except for the first option also making a modicum of sense, but I digress.

Let's look at the options in turn: if the world was young, it would explain why everything is clean and brand new, why placeholders would be underdeveloped, and why things have been rapidly adapting to our expectations, at least on the technological front. On the other hand, it meant that all the memories of the people around me are also artificial and have been already in place the moment the 'simulation' started, or they were retro-actively created when the framework at the bottom stratum of the world decided that they needed fleshing out.

While this option sounded fairly reasonable, and it fit a number of our previous observations, such as how placeholders developed, it left a bad aftertaste taste in my mouth. I mean, if this was true, it would make Judy and Elly less than two months old, and it would make me a bloody toddlercon!

…

By the way, don't look up the definition of that term. Just don’t. The internet is the final frontier, and it's a scary, inhospitable, and oftentimes rather a squicky place.

Anyhow, let's focus on the second option, which thankfully solved the whole underage issue, but it regrettably did much worse when it came to explaining the other problems this world threw at me. In this scenario, the world itself wasn't brand new, and it had been running for some time, which would allow the ages and elaborate, independently verified memories of my friends to be true, but in exchange, it did little for resolving the questions of the brand new world or placeholder behavior.

And so, we were back in the present situation. As the oldest living person I know, followed by Brang, probing Sebastian for his early memories, however insignificant they might've seemed, could help us shed some light onto the timescale of the world and refine our current hypotheses. He was especially useful in this regard as, unlike my self-appointed Faun subordinate, the Dracis steward was likely much more involved in human affairs and history, and thus his memories might be cross-referenced with records.

Now, granted, there was no way for me to know whether those records would be 'real' or generated in real-time to fit his memories and keep the world consistent, but if I kept suspecting that every single memory, record, and element of the world might be subject to retroactive continuity, I might as well hang up the proverbial brainy specs, because then there was no way to ever gain any reliable information about anything ever. And yes, I just said 'ever' twice, because it's just that big of a deal.

As such, for the time being, I decided to shake the tree and see what falls down, because the alternative was an existential nightmare where I couldn't even be sure that there was even a tree in the first place. Speaking of which, my idiomatical woody perennial plant let out a soft grunt and seemed to come to a conclusion of some sort.

"You wish to hear a tale of romance? How peculiar." He fell silent for a few seconds, with only his left hand stroking his beard in slow, methodical motions befitting of a hard thinker, or failing that, someone with an itchy chin. "Very well. I might as well indulge your curiosity."

"You would?" I exclaimed in surprise, and Sebastian seemed to wring an uncomfortable amount of joy out of my expression as he replied with an almost grandfatherly smile that simply didn't look right on his eminently annoying mug at all.

"Certainly. For you see, my habit of collecting rare memorabilia is intrinsically linked to my last companion. Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?" Sebastian let out a mild chuckle that was so natural that for a moment I almost believed he didn't do it just to annoy me. In the meantime he also rested his back against the canapé and, after a wistful sigh, he began to speak in a clear, somewhat melancholic voice. "I have lived a long life, yet I only ever loved three women. Do you find that hard to believe?"

"Not at all," I answered, mostly just to keep the conversation rolling.

"Is that so?" He sounded genuinely surprised, but it didn't last long, as he immediately proceeded to continue his tale. "My first lover… she was one of my kind. She was older than me when we first met; not by much though, just about a century or so, yet she captivated me the moment I laid my eyes on her."

"I guess she must have been beautiful."

"Beauty… such a thing means little to my kind," Sebastian shook his head with an amused little smirk and continued as if he was explaining things to a child. Well, to be fair, from his perspective I was one, so there should've been no hard feelings, but it was still annoying. "We are radiant beings, not this crude flesh and bone."

It took all my willpower to stop myself to ask if he was making a thinly veiled reference, but after my recent blunder with the princess, I managed to keep the question down. It must have been just a coincidence.

"If so she chose, she could be the most gorgeous woman in a king's court, or an old crone selling apples in a market. She was a free soul, and no place or identity could hold her for long. I adored her for it, and wherever the wind took her, I followed. My courtship lasted for well over two decades."

I wanted to point out that following someone around for twenty years sounded incredibly stalker-ish, but I figured the jab wasn't worth breaking the current peaceful atmosphere, so at the end of the day I only muttered, "That's a long time."

"Indeed it was," the butler agreed with me, much to my surprise. I would've thought he would have a different outlook on time, but based on the self-deprecating chuckle he followed his words up with, I figured he was aware of how weird his situation was. "Our hearts could not connect with ease. It wasn't her fault, but mine. In my youth, I used to be brash and oftentimes quite irascible. It led to… complications."

"In your youth?" I couldn't help asking, with an added load of implications, and my host gave me a critical look in return.

"Yes. If I was as short-tempered as I was back then, you would be but a scorch mark on my floor."

"… Point taken," I relented a little reluctantly before clearing my throat and asking, "So, if you pursued her for twenty years, I imagine you were madly in love with her."

"Yes," the old man readily admitted in a clear way only old men could. "I can still remember the feeling; the constant, burning yearning in my chest, the deep, immaterial pain of separation whenever I couldn't meet her, and the sweet bliss of speaking with her again."

"Sounds intense."

"In a way you most likely couldn't even imagine."

"I think we can agree on that," I admitted absent-mindedly before pausing for a moment to tweak the enchantment a little. Once I was done, I turned back to Sebastian and stated the obvious. "So, after two decades, the two of you finally became lovers."

"Yes," he confirmed with a nod and a nostalgic look in his eyes. "We shared our lives for three centuries. We never stayed in one place for long, and we saw much of the world, from the throne room of Charlemange to the gardens of the emperors of the Song dynasty. We sailed on the boats of the Viking to the cold north and visited the Empire of Ghana in the heat of Africa. There was no land on this world our feet didn't touch."

"… Wow. I'm not going to lie, that actually sounds kind of awesome."

"We had all the time in the world… or so we have thought." Suddenly Sebastian's tone took a sharp left turn into melancholy-country, and for a moment I was tempted to just outright ask about what happened to her, but I decided I might as well not poke at some millennium-old wounds. In its stead, I inquired about another thing that was on my mind.

"Did you have any kids?"

The irritating butler's expression turned on a dime and he frowned at me as if he wasn't sure if I was serious.

"No, of course not. It is well known that we cannot have children among ourselves."

"What? Really? I didn't know that."

"Are you serious?"

Sebastian looked exceptionally skeptical, so I gave him an enormous nod to emphasize my words.

"Yes, I really didn't know. But if you cannot, you know, 'procreate', then where did you come from?"

"The mountains," he stated matter of factly, but he must have recognized the puzzled look on my face, as after a tired sigh he proceeded to explain himself. "We are born from nature itself, much like the other phantasmal beings of the land. Leviathans of the seas, behemoths of the rivers, rocs of the skies…"

"… dragons of the mountains," I finished his sentence for him, and he nodded in acknowledgment. "Wow. So, does that mean that you don't lay eggs?"

"Even if we laid them, 'I' obviously wouldn't," Sebastian scoffed at my question. I didn't mind it though, as this was brand new info, or at the very least I didn't remember reading about this anywhere. Though again, considering how surprised Sebastian was about my lack of knowledge about the subject, maybe I should ask Judy first, just in case it was already in our notes and I just skimmed over it.

Anyways, that was for later, as I already had another question on the tip of my tongue.

"So you cannot reproduce with each other, but you can with humans?"

"After taking a human form, obviously."

"Yes, obviously. If you couldn't, there would be no Dracis family."

"Correct."

"The same goes for the other… what did you call them? 'Phantasmal beings'?"

"No," Sebastian categorically denied my words. "Unlike us, the 'others' were far more territorial and less inclined to mingle in human society. Because of this, they didn't leave behind many offspring of mixed heritage, if any. Quite unlike my more infamous kin from history."

"Please don't tell me you are referring to the whole 'dragons kidnapping princesses' thing…"

"No, of course not." It wasn't particularly surprising, but my host sounded almost offended by the concept. "That was done by first- and second-generation draconians hoping to preserve the strength of their bloodline by choosing what they considered to be 'outstanding' partners. It was a reasonable assumption at the time, considering nobody had any idea about genetics and inbreeding." He paused here for a while, only to awkwardly scratch his chin and add, "I may have also engaged in the practice a few times, but only for sport. It was a phase."

"I'm not questioning that part," I cut in, completely disregarding the way he downplayed this 'phase' that, if my sources are to be believed, lasted for well over a century, and focused on the more important point. "If it's not the kidnappery, then who were you referring to when you said 'infamous'?"

"Zeus."

"… Pardon?" I responded, so surprised that I almost botched my enchantment manipulation. After making sure I didn't mess it up, I let out a relieved breath and inquired, this time a little more calmly, "Excuse me, but did you just say 'Zeus'? As in, the Greek god Zeus?"

"Among other things," Sebastian told me in an awkward fashion, as if he was talking about an embarrassing uncle. "My older kin have developed certain, somewhat unsightly habits over the centuries. Posing as the gods of the fledgling human civilizations and taking advantage of them was but one of them."

"Wait, hold on for a bloody moment!" I cut him off again. "Are you telling me that the greek gods were dragons?"

"Some of them."

"What about the other pantheons?"

"The same. I mean that literally. Unlike your ancestors, mine had access to wings and could travel around the continents. One of them could be Zeus on Monday, Donar on Thursday, and on the weekend he could be Indra."

"And all of the demigods are…?"

"First- and second-generation draconians, though it is likely even they weren't aware of their true origins. After all, in ancient times, there weren't any theologians to debate the nature and definition of gods, so as far as they were concerned, their deities and my kin were not fundamentally different."

"Wow… So, I guess if even just a fraction of those legends are true, there were hundreds… no, rather thousands of draconians all around the world."

"You are most likely correct."

I'm not going to lie, I was floored by this discussion. I expected that I would hear some supernatural tidbits about the world, interwoven into the old man's romantic endeavors, but I didn't expect that it would all go back to ancient Greece and the Greco-Roman pantheon! Thankfully I quickly recovered when I realized that the enchantment finished 'thawing', so I quickly did all the necessary modifications while I could. If truth be told, I felt like there was an easier way to do all of this, without all the extra steps, but I figured it was important to get a solid foundation via practice before I would start experimenting.

Sebastian must have realized what I was doing, as he also fell silent and merely watched me work, though he probably couldn't see anything of the actual process. Subjectively the recalibrating of the enchantment's trigger took about ten minutes, but if the time dilation effect stayed the same as before, about a minute should have passed on the outside. At last, I let out a pent-up breath and, after shaking the doll a little on principle, I handed it back to the elderly steward.

"There you go. It should be relatively safe now."

He reached out and gingerly took it from me, and after a few seconds of intense scrutiny, including actually smelling the damn creepy thing, he stated, "I can't say I can discern any changes."

"What kind of changes did you expect? I simply altered the trigger conditions, nothing else."

"If so, then how can I be certain you did anything at all?"

"It's simple," I answered with a wide grin. "Take the doll to a high school after midnight. Nothing should happen. Then put on a clown outfit, and then you should get cursed, proving that I changed the trigger. It's simple as that."

At the outset, the Dracis ancestor looked at me funny, but after I met his gaze for a few seconds he exhaled a defeated sigh and told me, "I shall take you on your word then."

Saying so, he stood up and walked over to the shelf from where I took the doll in the first place. In the meantime I stretched my back, followed by a small groan, prompting the old man to send me a curious glance.

"Do you want to take a break?"

"… Maybe?" I answered, a little uncertainly, and after a soft grunt, the owner of the room walked over to the cabinet at the back of the room.

"Do you drink tea?"

That question also threw me on a loop for a moment, but after inspecting it from every angle for some kind of trap, I tentatively nodded.

"Earl Grey, English Afternoon Blend, or Russian Caravan Tea?"

"Um… Surprise me?"

That was apparently enough for my suspiciously amenable host, as he began to methodically prepare something in a large, vintage metal kettle. In the intervening time I also stood up and began looking through the shelves for my second 'victim', so to speak.

After some consideration, I decided on the small fertility idol that caught my interest the first time I came to this study. I carefully poked its insides with the phantom limb, and after less than a second, my facial muscles cramped up in indecision over whether I should look intrigued, incredulous, or just straight-up baffled.

"… must be a fluke," I muttered under my breath as I placed the idol back down and I picked up a small, blunt knife; maybe a letter opener of some sort?

Anyhow, after a short inspection, my facial muscles got even more indecisive, so I hastily put the item back down and moved over to a nearby cabinet, where I chose a large metal brooch of some kind. It was quite eye-catching, as it was in the shape of a large fly or cicada, with gems in place of its eyes. I raised it to my eye level and went through the whole routine again, and this time all the tiny muscles in my face reached an agreement and they twisted my expression into a supremely exasperated one.

"So, Sebastian?" I called out to my host, who was in the middle of sorting out various tea leaves in waxy brown paper bags.

"Yes, my boy?" he looked at me over his shoulder with a somewhat apprehensive look in his eyes, but I completely disregarded his body language and showed the item in my hand to him.

"I was just curious, so I wanted to ask you a question."

"About that fibula?"

"It's called a 'fibula'?" I mused as I was momentarily tossed off my tracks, but I hurriedly recovered by shaking my head and telling him, "No, actually, I was curious if there is an item in your collection that isn't cursed?"

"I think I figured it out," I stated just a hint cryptically before taking another sip from the best damned cup of tea I ever had.

"And pray tell, just what did you figure out?" Sebastian prompted me with an exhausted yet at the same time inexplicably smug expression, so he was... smughausted? That sounds about right.

Putting my impromptu wordsmithery aside for a moment, I took a deep breath and explained to him, "I think I figured out your plan."

The old butler gave me a look that hovered somewhere between curious and exasperated, but at last he set his own cup onto the table and said, "My plan," in a flat voice. "What plan?"

"Your plan to ruin any future teas I would drink by treating me to one that would make all of them taste like lukewarm water in comparison, and thus ruining my favorite drink forever! Absolutely diabolical!"

My elderly host gave me a strange look that turned straight-up funny when I took another sip from my cup, and he ultimately let out a short groan, rolled his eyes, and asked me, "Was that your attempt at a backhanded compliment, my boy?"

"Definitely not," I stated defiantly as I sloshed the spoonful of tea remaining in my cup, and after a moment of consideration I begrudgingly extended it towards him.

He glanced at my outstretched hand, then back at me, and after another roll of his eyes he graciously gave me a refill while muttering something about how there should be a limit to how difficult someone could be. Since it was not only obvious but entirely reasonable to conclude that he was talking about himself, I silently applauded his ability to self-reflect.

Putting my own rationalization aside, I took another sip and savored the frighteningly rich taste for a moment before I set my drink aside for the time being and focused on the eclectic array of curios lined up on the table in front of me.

As it turned out, the collection of the old man could be sharply divided into three categories. The first one contained all the unenchanted things, like the lion trophy on the wall and the various porcelain tea sets. The second category was for all the cursed items. The third category was the spear.

Yes, that actually meant that every single enchanted item in the room, aside from the eyesore in the corner, was cursed in one way or another. Now granted, none of them were as nasty as the Japanese denpa horror doll, and a lot of them weren't necessarily 'cursed' based on the context, but still...

For an example, let's look at the fertility idol. According to its history, which Sebastian explained to me in excruciating detail while he brewed his tea, it originated from an old African empire most people probably never even heard about. Long story short, it was a wedding gift from one particularly influential noble family to another, and while it was entirely functional in its intended role, it was actually part of a devious ploy.

You see, while the enchantment would, in simple terms, strengthen the sperm cells of the man if placed on the bedside during horizontal gene transfer, it would do so in a very specific way. I don't want to go into the particular mechanics of this thing, as I didn't fully understand them during my quick look-over, but the idea was that it would actively kill off about half of them, and in return make the remaining half super-hardy.

Now, here comes the twist: that fifty percent it eradicates? That's all the sperm cells with a 'Y' chromosome, leaving (and strengthening) only the 'X' chromosome ones, raising the overall rate of conception, but in return guaranteeing that the resulting child would always be a girl. How is this a curse, you might ask? It's not one for an average person living in a modern society, obviously. In fact, if I ever wanted to have a daughter in the future, I would be tempted to borrow this thing, because it was just that straightforward and handy.

However, the gifter and the giftee were not average modern people, but aristocrats living in an olden kingdom with primogeniture as their preferred system of inheritance. For them, having at least one, preferably more male heirs to inherit the family land and titles was paramount, and so this fairly innocent-sounding 'curse' was nothing less than the complete sabotage of their future. Heck, according to Sebastian it eventually led to the downfall of their entire nation. I have no idea how that happened, and to be honest, considering how long-winded Sebastian's original explanation was, I didn't dare to ask lest he would talk my poor ears off.

As for the other cursed items, some of them were non-functional, such as the letter opener that would inflict any wound caused by it onto the wielder as well... except it was completely blunt with a tiny decorative handle that was impossible to hold properly, and thus it was entirely unsuitable to be used as a weapon. Then there were the objects with utterly banal curses, such as the ornate, jewel-encrusted golden chalice that would make the drinker flatulent (and not in the 'pretentious' sense of the word), or the fancy military medal that would give the bearer male pattern baldness.

...

I already asked this with the doll, but I have to ask it again; just who in their right mind would come up with this kind of stuff? And just how unlucky this old man had to be to amass such a huge collection of these oddball artifacts? On the other hand though, since most of them either had a very narrow 'application', or unlikely trigger conditions, he was incredibly unlikely to trigger any one of them, so in some way gathering all of these at one place and inadvertently saving people from getting cursed was actually pretty lucky.

Putting my musings about the nature of fortune aside, I regretfully emptied my cup and, after sufficiently savoring the last drops, I put it aside and faced the elderly butler.

"Break time's over, let's get started." Saying so, I waved my hand over the items in front of me and told him, "None of these are terribly dangerous, but all of them are still cursed items. Are you sure I cannot just disable them?"

"I believe I've already told you about my stance on vandalizing my property," he responded with an annoyed frown, and I almost let out a groan in turn.

"I told you it's not vandalism; it's prudence! Why would you want to have dangerous cursed items in your study?"

"I believe you just said that none of them posed a hazard," he retorted, and I immediately shook my head.

"No, I said none of them are 'terribly' dangerous. As in, they wouldn't hurt you, but they could still cause problems. Like this one."

Saying so, I picked up the old fountain pen case I set aside ahead of time and showed it to him.

"It's a gift I received from the previous family head," he told me while looking more than a little skeptical.

"Well, I have no idea where he got it from, but I would advise against leaving it alone for long."

"Is it cursed as well?"

"Of course it's cursed! I wouldn't be talking about it otherwise!" I scoffed at him and after a momentary break, I explained to him, "It's a literal bomb."

"A bomb," he repeated after me, still obviously unconvinced.

"More or less. It's set up so that if a certain person used it to write a certain number of letters with it, it would explode. It might've been a novelty assassination tool or something."

"A certain person? Is it me?"

"No," I replied with a shake of my head. "I don't know who the original target was, but based on the way the pen accumulates mana for the explosion, my money is on a Magi."

"In that case, the previous family head might've received it as a gift from one of his associates amongst the Wingless Lords."

"Wait, do you also mean the Magi?" I interrupted him, and he nodded with an implied 'why?' in his eyes. "I'm just asking because I never heard them referred to that way." Also, while I didn't mention it, the term was still oddly familiar.

"It is an old expression, no longer in common use," Sebastian nonchalantly expounded before falling silent for a moment or five and then he leveled the question, "But if its target was a 'magi', then why does it require intervention?" at me.

"Because whoever originally owned the pen already filled it up to about halfway," I clarified. "Sure, that's not enough to cause too big of a kaboom, but it should be still as mean as a box of firecrackers, and while the enchantment should hold up for a couple more decades, considering your lifespan, I think it would be better to get ahead of the trouble before one day you would wake up in the middle of the night to find your study radically rearranged."

"… Point taken," Sebastian ultimately relented, much to my secret satisfaction.

"So, can I get started?"

"Be my guest."

"I already am," I replied as I put the pen down and picked up a handle. It looked like it originally belonged to a European sword with the blade snapped off at the base. It also had one of the more baffling curses, as it would make the wielder smell like rotten eggs, but only for members of the other sex. I couldn't decide if that was silly or pathetic, but either way, it was going to be removed. I mean, Elly already gave me a lot of flak for my magical smell, so I could totally understand how troubling it could be and how big of a dick the person who cursed this item was.

Once I began to do the groundwork, I once again looked Sebastian in the eye and softly asked, "So? Where were we before the tea break?"

"I believe we were discussing my kin's habit of posing as deities," he helpfully provided the answer, but I shook my head.

"No, that was more of a tangent… but since you already brought it up, can I ask another related question?" He nodded in response, so I inquired, "So if I get this right, dragons took the identities of local gods. What about the Abrahamic one?"

"What about him?" my host asked back with a somewhat puzzled expression.

"I mean, I don't think anyone really cares about whether someone pretended to be Zeus, because most rational people don't believe he exists, but then what about the Judeo-Christian god? Was he also impersonated by dragons?"

"Not that I know of, no," Sebastian replied in a tone that told me his answer was much less certain than what the wording implied. "I'm afraid I can't say for sure, as I was born a well after the times of the old testament, but I've never heard of anyone in the older generation who had done so."

"I see. What about the Celestials?"

"What about them?"

"Please stop answering my questions with questions! It's obvious what I'm asking!" I burst out a little indignantly in the face of him playing dumb. "The Celestials bear more than a passing resemblance to angels, and their leader was literally called Deus. You can't blame me for thinking that they might've also taken a page from your book."

"It's not impossible," Sebastian admitted with an expression that said it was a novel idea he never in a million years would have thought up on his own, even though it was blindingly obvious. But then again, depending on the nature and the intensity of the proposed perception filtering, it might actually be the case, so I was gracious enough to cut him some slack.

"I suppose I'll have to ask my sources about it," I mentioned off-handedly before I forcefully grabbed hold of the horns of the conversation and yanked it into a different direction, lest I would accidentally make the annoying butler meta-aware. "Anyways, I think before we went on the whole deity-masquerade tangent, you were telling me about your tumultuous love life."

"I don't remember ever calling it 'tumultuous', albeit I admit, my years with my first companion were undeniably eventful."

"Right, the dragon lady. I never asked, but were you actually married?"

The elderly man in front of me gave me a funny look, as if I just asked something unexpectedly naïve, and he answered, "No. Marriage was and is a human invention, for linking families and sharing property. What use would it have had for the two of us?"

"If you put it that way…" I admitted and, after a deep breath to punctuate the discussion, I did what I always do and steered the conversation into yet another direction. "That said, what actually happened to her? Was it the knights?" Now granted, in retrospect it might not have been the best direction, but hey, I was improvising.

To my eminent surprise, Sebastian let out a wistful sigh and slowly shook his head.

"No. In the beginning, the accursed knights were more concerned about the Lords of the Abyss and their secret war against the Lords of Providence."

"Whoa there! You are throwing old terminology at me again," I stopped him, my brows already in a frown. "Who are these 'Lords of Providence' again? The Celestials?"

"Precisely."

"And they fought a war with the Abyssals. I get it so far. So, were the Knights on the side of the Celestials in this war?"

"Were they?"

"I just told you to stop throwing my own questions back at me! It's annoying!" I objected, but the old man didn't seem fazed by my outburst at all. I paused for a long moment, and after mulling it over a little, I decided I might as well tell him a bit of my conjecture. I mean, I already told Elly a part of it, and knowing how bad she was at keeping secrets, I wouldn't have been surprised if the old steward caught wind of it soon anyway. "Fine, I'll tell you. You said the Knights were fighting against the Abyssals, right?"

"That is correct."

"And I presume they had all their fancy weapons and enchanted armor on them."

"That is also correct."

"Those came from the Celestials."

If this was a sitcom, this would've been the point where we had a blaring 'Dun-dun-DUN!' on the soundtrack, coupled with a series of gasps from the studio audience, but instead of any of that, all the reaction I got was a skeptically raised eyebrow from my host.

"That's a bold accusation, my boy."

"It's not an accusation, it's a fact. The Celestials supplied them with all their enchanted gear, and they stopped doing so relatively recently, at least if my sources are to be believed. Also, while diplomatic relations are nonexistent now, the Knights must have taken orders from them at one point or the other, because they are routinely referred to as 'rebels', 'failures' and 'oathbreakers', which, considering that they seem to be pretty big on oaths, had to be the result of a fairly big incident."

Sebastian listened to my rudimentary explanation, and after a few seconds of mulling things over, he told me, "What you just said is… hard to believe."

"If you don't believe me, just take it up with the Celestials. Oh, but not Angie."

"Who?" he responded a little absent-mindedly, as if this was the first time he heard her name.

"Celestial girl, fun and energetic, our friend, something of a sleeper agent, knows considerably less about Celestial affairs than I do," I gave him a footnotes-version description of Angeline, but for some reason he seemed more confused than when I began.

"And where exactly does your knowledge of 'Celestial affairs' originate from?"

I really wanted to voice my distaste of the way he was putting literal air quotes around words, but I swallowed my complaints back down, and instead I flashed him a business smile and stated, "It's a trade secret." He naturally didn't take my refusal kindly, so I decided it was time to move the conversation along before he could start nagging me, therefore I theatrically put down the item in my hand and picked up another one.

"Okay, I'm finished with that one. On that note, why don't we finish this topic and move on to what exactly happened to your first lover?"

Sebastian was obviously a little grumpy about my refusal to elaborate, but in just a few seconds he regained his cool and he told me, "Very well. You have provided me with new knowledge, so courtesy dictates that I must return the favor… but mark my words: One day I shall draw out all your secrets."

"But that day's not today," I told him maybe a smidgen more cheekily than I originally intended, but the slightly-less-annoying-than-usual butler took it in stride.

"Don't judge the day until it's over," he warned me before shifting his pose in his seat and, after a short while, he continued his tale. "My first companion fell in the war between the Lords of the Abyss and the… and the Celestials of old. I had no ties with either of them. She, on the other hand, had numerous associates amongst the Celestials, so when they called upon her aid, she readily provided it."

"So she went to war on her own," I concluded in a neutral tone, and he nodded in confirmation.

"She was free to do so, and over the centuries I often wondered what could have been if I tried to stop her. But alas, it was not my place to restrain her, and at the time, the war seemed to be nothing but a series of quick skirmishes leading to a certain victory."

"That sounds familiar," I muttered idly, and I wanted to leave it at that, but my elderly conversational partner seemed oddly curious, so I elaborated by telling him, "You know, the first world war? Everyone thought it would be a slam-dunk victory for their side, but then more and more nations joined in, and before long, it became a long, drawn-out war of attrition. You should know, you actually lived through it."

"To be precise, I didn't live 'through' it," the once-again-slightly-more-annoying butler corrected me with his patented air quotes, and at this point I was afraid he realized they were irking me and he did them on purpose just to get on my nerves. "I didn't involve myself in the great war at all. That said, your comparison is truly apt, except that instead of nations, it was an unprecedented number of my kin who joined the fray. Some, like my beloved, joined the side of the Celestial Lords, while others of my kin aided the Lords of the Abyss. It was not out of loyalty, but due to family ties."

Right, Abyssals are actually hybrids of dragons and Celestials, so it made sense that they would throw down on the side of one or the other, probably depending on whether they had Celestial spouses or Abyssal children.

"So it was the biggest family feud in the history of ever," I concluded.

"And my companion was one of the first causalities." There was not a small amount of disapproval in his voice, so I hastily mouthed a 'Sorry, my condolences,' under my breath, which was enough to calm the old man down for the time being and he continued, "After her death, I was tempted to join the conflict myself, but I ultimately refrained from doing so."

"Really? I thought the young, hotheaded you would've immediately embarked on a roaring rampage of revenge," I mused as I finished with one artifact and moved onto the next.

"My boy, you are laboring under a misunderstanding," Sebastian told me with a smile that didn't reach his cold, vicious eyes. "I let you know, I personally gutted every single individual, be they mortals or my kin, who had anything to do with my companion's demise, and I did it slowly."

"Ah, I get it. You went on a vengeance spree, just didn't join either of the sides."

"Yes, that was exactly what I just described."

"Oh. Sorry for interrupting then. Please carry on."

Sebastian changed his sitting posture once again, and as he did so, the coiling tension in his body language slowly dissipated, crescendoing in yet another nostalgic sigh leaving his lips.

"For two centuries after that, I lived alone, wandering continental Europe and never staying in one place for too long. It was during my years as a vagabond that I became known to humankind, and there might have been a ballad or two written featuring me." I sneakily rolled my eyes at the old man's humble-bragging, but he didn't notice. "It was during my stay in Paris when I met the second woman I ever loved."

"Meeting her in the city of love. How fitting."

"Don't be daft, my boy. This was ages before that city reinvented itself in such a manner. Not that it matters. I met her when I was passing through the town. Our meeting was rife with coincidence and unlikely circumstances, yet once the dust settled, I found myself traveling in her company."

"That was pretty vague…"

"Do you wish me to share every excruciating detail of our encounter?"

"Well, no, but a little context would help."

My host released a deep sigh and began to elaborate.

"She was a young Celestial. After their war against the Abyss was over, her kind became an increasingly rare sight, as they hid themselves among the populace."

"So… kind of what they are doing to this day?"

"Indeed. It was also the time when the Wingless Lords became more and more prominent, and they were hostile towards both my kin and hers. As a matter of fact, she was chased by a group of their enforcers, which was the spark that ignited my curiosity."

"Oh, wait, let me guess: It was a rescue romance! You saved her, and she fell for you on the spot."

"Quite the contrary," he told me with a pained grimace, as if I just poked an old wound. "I indeed rescued her from her pursuers, and she became my traveling companion, but as for her affection… gaining it was truly an uphill battle."

"Come on, old man! Stop dragging your feet and tell me what happened."

I was rewarded with an annoyed glance and a subdued groan on one hand, but on the other hand, I finally got a proper answer as well.

"She was the sweetest person I ever knew. Every single pore of hers radiated warmth and her blue eyes were infinitely deep wellsprings of kindness, and once a man fell into them, they could never escape. It was the same for me."

"Love at first sight, but for you?"

"More or less," Sebastian responded curtly, probably out of embarrassment. Honestly, I really wished he would stop showing me more sides of himself, as it made it really hard to hate his guts. It was very inconsiderate of him. "She also had an uncanny penchant for attracting trouble wherever we went, and even decades after I first met her, she remained the same naïve, eternally positive girl inside." At this point, there was a long pause in the conversation as Sebastian waited for me to switch to another cursed item, and then he continued with, "Unfortunately, while she could capture a man's heart with a single glance, to the point where I had to employ constant vigilance lest she would gather unwanted admirers in every country we visited, her own heart was quite impenetrable. Worse yet, due to her childlike innocence, I never managed to resolve myself to employ more… 'direct' methods to express my fondness for her. As such, it took me nearly five years to slowly get her to realize my feelings."

I stifled a small chuckle at the old man's expense, and while I could kind of understand his situation, I never thought dense protagonist types were a thing so far back in history. I was about to gesture him to continue, but then something clicked inside my head and instead I hastily voiced a question that seemed more important the more I thought about it.

"Okay, so just to reiterate: she was an impossibly beautiful and sweet young woman who immediately wrapped you around her little finger, tagged along on your adventures, and she had numerous suitors that you had to fend off, yet she was completely unaware of any of this. Does my description sound right?"

"I would say it's adequately accurate."

"Damn," I whispered under my breath, which he seemed to take as a tacit acknowledgment of his troubles. To be fair, he wasn't entirely wrong about that, but the main reason why I was really shocked at the moment was due to the fact that what he just described to me sounded waaaaaay too reminiscent of a shoujo manga protagonist's attributes and escapades. It was easy to see how this information would have insane ramifications if my conjecture was even in the ballpark of being correct, but for the moment I decided I should consult with Judy first before I'd try to poke the elderly butler for more information on this topic.

Speaking of which, Sebastian continued to narrate his tale, completely disregarding my momentary daze.

"It took years, but once my feelings for her were successfully acknowledged, we found ourselves a quiet corner of the countryside and settled down. We did not have any children, though not for lack of trying, and although the peaceful and modest life we led was something I found stifling at the time, looking back through the lens of age, I have to admit that the few decades I have spent in her pleasant company were some of the happiest years of my life."

"It might be just me, but wasn't the way you loved her very different from the case of your first love?" I probed him a little, never forgetting to keep in mind my three initial ulterior motives.

"Indeed," he readily admitted, but no matter how long I waited for him to elaborate, he remained stubbornly silent. As such, I was forced to ask the next obvious question.

"I'm kind of dreading to ask, but what happened to her?"

"Old age," Sebastian responded with two quiet words that someone could almost mistake for being profound. "We lived a long, quiet life, and it ended just as quietly. There wasn't much else to say about the years we shared under the sun."

"You stayed with her until the end."

"Until the very end," he confirmed with a solemn nod. "She left me in her sleep, and I buried her on my mountain." The old man seemed genuinely dispirited as he mused, "It's such a strange thing. My first companion and I were equals, and my love for her burns even to this day, yet the one I miss the most is my second love. I miss her smile, her voice, her touch… but maybe more than anything, I miss those serene days we shared." After he finished saying that, he fell silent for a long time, and I was tempted to say something to move things along, but before I could do so, he suddenly added, "Mark my words, my boy; be it a love of true companionship, a love of quiet tranquility, or a love of burning passion, you must treasure them. Nothing in this world lasts forever; only the memories remain. Therefore make as many of them as you can with those you love. A life well-lived is the most wonderful thing you can share, both with those who leave and the ones who remain."

…

God dammit, old man! Stop looking so pained and gentle and kindly! Stop being so sympathetic and making it harder to hate you! It's unfair!

Putting my gripes with my host's unnervingly benignant behavior aside, I took a huge breath and, after putting my thoughts in order, I told him, "I presume the 'love of burning passion' refers to your third lover."

"You are once again correct in your deduction," he answered with a level voice, his nostalgic melancholy seemingly losing its grip on him. I may or may not have looked more expectant than I thought, as Sebastian let out a gratingly grandfatherly chuckle and told me, "After I buried my second love, I couldn't bear to stay in our empty home, so I once again began to roam around the whole world. Not a lot had changed since I removed myself from human affairs, and no place could tie me down for long before my wanderlust would urge me to be on the road again. In the following centuries, humanity began to develop by leaps and bounds, and observing them from afar kept me from becoming bored for a long, long time. I also witnessed the acts of the Knights, the Wingless Lords, the exiled Abyssals, and others, but I never involved myself with their affairs either. I thought I would be content to just stay an eternal wanderer, until a fateful day in Vienna."

"I figure that is where you met your third lover."

"Yes," the old butler answered in the company of a soft yet delighted chuckle, which was certainly yet another of his attempts to lower my guard by acting all nice and likable. Fortunately, I knew better than that, so I only smiled back warmly at him for a few seconds, because I have principles, dammit. Anyhow, he continued by telling me, "She was one of the Habsburgs living in the city, and I met her during a birthday ball I attended on a whim."

"Hold on for just a second. Wasn't the Habsburg dynasty kind of a big deal? I mean, I don't know exactly which century we are talking about right now, but I'm fairly sure they were big shots for most of European history."

"I can tell you exactly when we met," the aged steward declared with a proud smile. "It was the fifth of March in 1870."

"So it was in the late 19th century… that means it was the time of the Austrian Empire, led by the Habsburgs, which means your lover was… an actual princess?"

"An archduchess, to be precise, but yes," he replied, and somehow I couldn't help but feel that his smile went from proud to smug in the blink of an eye. "I remember the date well, for it was her fifteenth birthday, and it was her birthday ball I unknowingly attended."

"I see. Was it love at first sight again?"

"In a manner of speaking…" When he said that, the smile immediately withered off the man's face and he let out a tired sigh, as if he just recalled a troublesome memory. "She was quite a splendid young lady. Unfortunately, as the first daughter of the emperor, she might have been pampered more than strictly necessary, so her personality was… how should I put it? She was sweet, yet passionate. Very passionate. She was also stubborn, easily embarrassed, yet at the same time often incredibly blunt and unladylike."

"So… kind of like Elly?"

"Precisely like her," Sebastian agreed. "In truth, even their appearances are strikingly similar."

"So it's in the blood, huh?"

"You could certainly say that," he replied with an uncertain shrug.

At this point there was another pause in the conversation as I finished up yet another cursed item on my to-do list.

"Done. So, where were we? The ball, I think?"

"Yes. At the time, I was posing as a successful merchant and I was invited by one of the nobles I helped to procure some rare items using the connections I made over the years. I did not expect that when she would arrive at the ball, out of all the hundreds of people in the grand hall, she would immediately single me out. Her attention was very… ardent."

"So she fell in love with you at your first meeting?"

"Yes. Furthermore, over my stay in the capital, she fabricated countless excuses to allow her to meet me again. She was incredibly persistent."

"Well, considering the present situation, I figure she must have grown on you."

"In a manner of speaking," Sebastian stated a bit awkwardly. "I never disliked her, but she was simply too young, and I imagined that the passion of her first love would abate once we were separated. As such, I prepared to leave not only the city, but the whole continent for the time being, yet I felt it would've been cruel to leave without a word. Because of this, I quietly visited her on the evening before my departure and told her not only that I would be leaving, but about my own nature. I told her that if she still felt the same way after my return, I would not turn her away."

"How did she take it?"

The old man let out another deep sigh and told me, in an obviously embarrassed voice, "To cut a long tale short, she forced me to elope with her."

"Forced you?" I repeated with my Joshua brand raised eyebrow, and Sebastian responded by awkwardly clearing his throat.

"She was really, really passionate, and she somehow grabbed hold of the conversation and never let it go, and thus, before I even knew what happened, we were on a boat heading towards the Americas."

"Wow, that's…" I wanted to say something snappy in response, but when I thought about how my own effort for 'letting Elly down gently' ended up, all I could muster was a flat, "… entirely too familiar."

The look in the aged butler's eyes felt grossly sympathetic, but before long he continued his story, so I lost my opportunity to justifiably tell him off.

"My relationship with her was both eventful and bountiful, as you could most likely gather from the existence of my descendants. It was also her who introduced me to the joy of collecting rare memorabilia. As she put it, since I would inevitably outlive her, she wanted me to have something to remember her by. That, of course, was wholly unnecessary, as her memory lived on within all our progeny, but I humored her. Mainly because she was really persistent."

"I imagine," I muttered as I just finished modifying the last item and exhaled a satisfied breath. "But wait, does that mean that these are items you two collected?"

"Don't be silly, my boy," Sebastian shook his head with a smile that said I once again asked something amusingly naïve. "These are but a part of my private collection. I keep all the important mementos in a safe place only I can access. Well, all of them, except this one." Saying so, I reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and retrieved a small silver locket. "This was her first gift to me, so I always keep it close to my heart."

"That's sweet," I began a little noncommittally as I vacillated whether or not I should address the elephant in the room, but at last I exhaled hard and decided to just do it, sink or swim. "Speaking of safety and access, don't you think that keeping that anti-dragon spear out in the open is a little dangerous?"

I could tell by the way the atmosphere in the room suddenly tensed up that its owner instinctively wanted to ask me how I knew it was the dragon-slaying spear, but before he could do so, his eyes sparkled with realization and he wearily asked me, "Did the young lady tell you about it?" I nodded, and he immediately let loose a deep groan. "I should've known. That said, the spear is perfectly safe here."

"Yeah, it's safe right now, when you are in the room, but what if you were away?"

"I would take it with me."

"What if you had to leave in a hurry?" Sebastian looked decently intrigued, so I elaborated on the idea by telling him, "For example, if I was a wily knightly type and I learned that the anti-dragon MacGuffin was here, I wouldn't try to get it head-on, but instead I'd do something devious and, say, stage a bomb threat or a hostage situation to draw you out, and then when the place was undefended, I'd swoop in and steal the spear while maniacally cackling all the way home."

For some ungodly reason Sebastian kept eyeing me suspiciously for a long while before he asked, "Then tell me, my boy, what do you propose we should do about the weapon?"

"Throw it into a volcano," I replied on the spot without any need to think about it. "We have a perfectly good one right here. Or if outright destroying it is not an option because of some esoteric reason, like say, there can be only one super-duper dragon-slaying weapon, and they can't make another unless you get rid of this…" I paused and sent my host a glance that implicitly asked 'is there?', and considering he shook his head, he must've understood my meaning. "Anyhow, if you don't want to just break it, cast it into concrete, and drop the slab into the Mariana Trench. Problem solved. It also works for immortals and really persistent tax collectors."

"Neither of those options is tenable."

"How so?" I asked by reflex in face of his hard denial, and Sebastian closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose before giving me an answer.

"It is the weapon that inflicted Lady Emese's wound. We are in contract with numerous artificers with the purpose of lifting its effects on her body, and for that, we must have it easily accessible for them."

"Oh? Artificers, you say?" I mused with my words coated by gallons of industrial-strength sarcasm. "Have any of them noticed that you were surrounded by cursed items?"

"No," Sebastian responded a little sheepishly. "Although, in their defense, I never let them study the items of my personal collection."

"Not a good excuse," I told him flatly before glancing over to the eyesore in the corner and tentatively asking him, "Would you mind if I took a look?"

My host was oddly wary of my proposition, and he mulled it over for several seconds before he stood up, removed the weapon from the hand of the mannequin wearing the damaged full plate armor, and he gingerly placed it on the table in front of me. He didn't say anything during the whole process, but it was easy to guess that I had his tacit agreement, so first I carefully extended my hand towards the spear.

It was a fairly simple weapon, not too long, but not too short either. It had a smooth, undecorated wooden shaft with a rounded metal cap at the butt end and a simple, leaf-shaped spearhead on the other. The blade of the spear was fairly narrow with an elegant curve in it, and at the base of the edges there was a small, rectangular crossbar. All the metal parts were made of a matte, bluish material, and they bore no decoration whatsoever. The whole thing was also impeccably clean, but that no longer surprised me anymore.

I tried to touch the spearhead, but the moment I did that, it felt like there was a mild electric current running through my fingertip and I instinctively jerked my hand back, much to the butler's surprise.

"Ouch," I hissed and shook my hand, then after a moment of awkward silence I whispered, "I think this thing doesn't like me."

Sebastian kept silent, so I took a determined breath and attempted to grab hold of the weapon again. This time I was prepared, and while holding the thing still felt incredibly uncomfortable, I managed to pick it up from the table and I could take a closer look at it. Of course, observing it from the outside was not particularly constructive, so after I sufficiently prepared myself, I poked it with my phantom limb to see what made it tick.

The actual enchantment was, oddly enough, not exceptionally complex. In fact, its internal structure felt quite familiar, and after a few seconds spent comprehending it, I turned to Sebastian and told him, "Okay, so, I have only done a preliminary inspection, so far, so correct me if I am wrong, but this thing works by messing with the injured Draconian's ability to transform and heal, right?"

"That is correct."

"In other words, it causes an ongoing negative effect to affect the target of the enchantment."

"… Yes," he spoke in a mixture of uncertainty and suspicion.

"Do you know what that means?"

"Enlighten me."

"It means," I declared, unable to keep the smirk off my face, "that literally every single enchanted item in your collection is cursed! How do you even do that?!"

My host only gave me a flat look in lieu of an answer, and after a short standoff he groaned aloud and stated, "This is not the time for joking."

"I'm not joking. A spear that causes wounds that cannot heal is an archetypal cursed item. I think it was a gáe-something-or-the-other? It's from Celtic mythology, I think; have you heard of it?" Sebastian was giving me the cold shoulder, so I shrugged my own and concluded with, "Whatever, it's not important."

"Neither is your harangue about cursed items," he spoke so sourly he could make limes jealous. "Can you actually do something about it?"

"Let me take another look."

Saying so, I once again delved into the enchantment on the spear, and my first assessment turned out to be completely accurate. While the actual 'surface enchantment' was insanely complex, most of it was grandiose gibberish. Multiple invocation phrases, multi-stage unsealing, particle effects up the wazoo, performance enhancers that boosted the user, the works. However, by observing it from a lower stratum, I could peel away all the special effects and presentation, which left me with a very simple conditional curse that only activated if the target happened to possess the 'essence of dragons'. It sounded fancy, but in reality, it was just something of a tag used by the supernatural layer of the world.

Anyhow, once I located the core, I was about to tweak it when the actual part of me that seemed to instinctively understand what was going on began to freak out, stopping me in my tracks. It took me a subjectively long time to figure out what the problem was, but after analyzing it from every angle, my conclusion was that I really shouldn't mess with this enchantment because it was 'important'.

Important to whom? That was a tall order to figure out, but after a few more minutes of pondering I came to a startling conclusion: it wasn't 'whom', it was 'what'. As in, it was important to the narrative. This spear was supposed to play some part or another in a grand design, and messing with it could have all sorts of nasty consequences. More surprisingly, my aversion seemed to only cover tweaking with it using my phantom limb, as I never had any negative reaction to the idea of throwing the bloody thing into a volcano.

Could it be because changing the enchantments my way was considered unnatural by the system that was running this world, while physically enacting the same thing wasn't? And how come every time I made a discovery, it just led to more questions?

"So?"

I was jolted out of my revelation-induced stupor by Sebastian's question. I glanced at the man, thought hard for a moment, and then I told him, "I have bad news. I don't think can disable this thing; it seems to be immune to my kind of tinkering."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Howeeeeever…" I drew out the words to pique his interest, and when he seemed expectant enough, I explained to him, "While 'I' can't change it, I believe I could give some decent pointers to whatever artificers you were in contact with."

"You think so?"

"Sure. My approach is somewhat unorthodox, but it should still help them."

Sebastian thought long and hard about my proposal, resulting in a shallow nod.

"I will discuss the matter with the family."

"Oh, and if you're at that," I interjected as I put down the spear and suddenly recalled something. "Since the curse is a continuous magical effect, I might be able to do something about my prospective mother-in-law's injury itself. I mean, I can't promise anything yet, as I might run into the same roadblock as I did with the main enchantment, but if it's possible, I'll help."

"I will convey your words," he stated emphatically while he simultaneously put the spear back in its place.

While he did that, I stood up and stretched out my limbs. For some reason, I felt really tired even though I was sitting in place the whole time. Though again, since I had no frame of reference, as far as I knew I might've been doing seven different kinds of impossible things that would have made your average artificer's head explode four times over, so getting a little tired over it probably wasn't that bad. Speaking of which, I glanced over the neat pile of miscellaneous odds and ends on the table, following which I addressed their owner.

"Thanks for letting me play with your toys. It was very educational."

"You are welcome." Sebastian's reply was a little odd, as if he didn't really have his full attention on me. In fact, it felt like he was internally debating over something before he ultimately exhaled a sharp breath and said, "Since you have already 'played' with all the enchantments in this room, I'm afraid I have nothing left to show you here."

The last word had an odd emphasis, so I involuntarily repeated it after him.

"What about somewhere else?"

"Well, of course. Did you believe this was the whole breadth of my collection? For example, the items I have left in our mansion in Berlin are not only more numerous, but I can also assure you that none of them are cursed." He paused for a second, as if waiting for me to ask something, but when I didn't, he awkwardly cleared his throat and added, "That said, if you do not believe me, I can arrange them to be carried here so you may see it with your own eyes."

"Can you?"

"Certainly. You need but ask. Nicely."

I couldn't decide whether I should laugh or cry, but I soon settled for a wry look and an absolutely unconvincing, "Pretty please?"

"If you insist," my host replied with a borderline mischievous smile, and… honestly, I didn't like it.

"Hey, Sebastian?" I called out to him to get his full attention. "Can I ask you something else?"

"Depends on the request."

"Well, this might sound weird, but could you get really snobby with me?"

"Pardon?"

"Okay, how should I explain this… Think of it as an experiment. I want you to act like the first time we met. You know? Annoyed, hostile, demeaning? That kind of thing."

"... Why?"

"I just told you, it's an experiment."

He looked both puzzled and unconvinced by my words, but he still played along by setting his mouth in a thin line, giving me an annoyed frown, and then stating, "My boy, your request makes absolutely no sense, and it makes me wonder about your mental faculties."

I looked him in the eyes, aaaand… nothing. Not a whiff of unnatural irritation.

"… Okay, this doesn't work. Let's try this again, but this time, can you use some kind of mystical intimidation tactic?"

"'Mystical intimidation tactic'," he repeated after me, getting more confused by the second.

"Don't you have anything like that?"

"I can't say I do."

"Aw man," I grumbled as I shook my head. "This is bad."

"What's bad?"

"The fact that I almost don't find you annoying anymore. It's a troubling development."

"… My boy, you really need to stop hiding your true thoughts behind wordplay."

"I'm not, and we are going to get back to this at a later date, when I won't feel so tired. Maybe that's what's throwing me off. … In fact, I should go now. I promised the princess I'd listen to her sing some more after I'm done here, and it's getting late. I should go to her before it's curfew-o-clock."

"In that case, I recommend you don't make her wait."

"I won't." Saying so, I headed towards the door, but before I could exit, Sebastian somehow got ahead of me and opened it for me. It was like he was a real butler or something. I gave the man my best nonplussed look and, after a momentary stalemate, I muttered, "Goodbye."

"I wish you a nice evening," he returned the gesture, and after I left the room, he closed the door behind me.

Well, that was awkward near the end. Still, while I did find it mildly disquieting that Sebastian was no longer just 'that annoying old coot' in my mind, at the end of the day I shrugged it off and left the premises of his study. My promise to Elly wasn't just an excuse, so I immediately looked her up with Far Sight, and found her still practicing in her 'singing room'. I was about to take a shortcut and just Phase over, but before I could get to it, a new thought stopped me in my tracks.

I've learned a lot of things. Most of them, like the stuff about Sebastian's love life, was, while not strictly applicable to my situation, at least mildly edifying. My slowly broadening horizons regarding enchantments in particular and the magical substrate in general were also promising. However, there was one bit of information that was vital enough that I figured I should share it right away.

As such, I took out my phone, dialed the first number on my contact list, and after just a few rings the line connected.

"Good evening, Chief," my dear assistant spoke in a way that sounded like she was yawning at the same time.

"Hi, Dormouse!" I spoke with only slightly forced enthusiasm and a not at all forced grin. "Guess what? I just found a plot device!"