Eggman popped his head above the water and yelped. The cold was a shock to his system but he quickly adjusted.
"Had you agreed to be my friend I never would've pulled you in!" The woman was spitting hair out from her mouth between laughs. Unfortunately, when submerged, her hair became a deadly net and stuck to her face.
"You're in trouble now!" He bellowed. He picked her up and held her over his head.
"Wait!" She yelped as he threw her into the deep end with little effort.
She broke through the surface and took several deep breaths. The pressure of the water on her chest felt comfortable; like a tight hug.
"Why does the water smell like it does?" She flipped her hair out of her face.
"Chlorine. Keeps the water clean so it doesn't get gross." He took off his glasses and set them on the tile.
"It kind of stings." She bobbed her hair with a glamour but that didn't stop it from sticking to her face. "So what's up with what you're wearing?"
Eggman is a conservative person. His swimsuit was an Edwardian style one piece with red and white horizontal stripes. He looked like a mustachioed peppermint candy that was shy about its arms and thighs.
Eggman swam over and circled her like a shark. "Sunburn raises your risk of cancer and I am very fair-skinned."
"I can't burn, but I can tan a little browner." Tilly shrugged. "We usually swam nude." She stated it so matter of factly.
"I'm surprised you can swim at all." He eyed her.
"Why?" She turned to keep eye contact.
"You're from the desert." He said.
"Oh," she chuckled, "We had pools, too. I think I mentioned it back at the ziggurat… that one was dried up and looked like a big hole in the floor."
"So much happened back there it's hard to keep the details straight, honestly."
"I assure you I'm not as ignorant as you think I am." She stuck her nose in the air.
A pause, and then: "Is that what you really want, though? A family?"
"Hm…" He hesitated. "No, I don't want a family." Eggman shrugged. "The last thing I need are sticky fingers all over my work."
"Family just gets taken from you." She frowned. "The moral of the story is don't love anyone. Don't care about anything! Exist in the void! Nothing hurts in the void!" She cackled.
"Except Shadow." Ivo waved a finger.
"All hail Shadow!" Sheptilah pumped her fist in the air. "King of the Nannae!"
"King? What do you mean king?" Eggman furrowed his eyebrows.
"Shadow is functionally my brother and because I'm queen that makes him royalty. Rulers of nothing; but you understand how inheritance works, yes?"
"If Shadow is king… what does that make me?" He leaned in expectantly.
"Hmm," she grinned, "The court jester."
Eggman pouted. "I suppose I deserve that."
She looked down at her hands and looked like she was counting something off on her fingers. "King, prince…" she stuck out her tongue, "You're a duke. I think that's the order in which it goes."
"Ooh, a duke," he snickered, "Don't I feel fancy?" He wiggled his shoulders.
Sheptilah grinned mischievously. "Who was that other redhead from the ziggurat? The one with the big breasts?" She shook her chest a little for emphasis.
"Hah! That was Katella!" He pulled on his mustache. "She was something else."
Sheptilah dove under the water and swam to the shallow end of the pool. The weightless feeling was nice.
"She was in love with me but she was really violent. I had no peace whenever she was on Mobius." He followed her to the shallow end.
"You didn't even like her?"
"No," he rolled his shoulder, "I'm pretty sure I still have scars from the last time I saw her."
"Maybe if she comes back to Mobius I'll make her my wife. Healing powers, you see."
"You can have her!" He laughed. "You really are suicidal; she collected rare species. You, by definition of being the last of your kind, would be something she would keep in a cage."
Tilly blushed a bit. "So do you think I have a chance with Katella?" She stuck out her tongue.
With a broad motion of his arm Eggman splashed her. "Don't invoke her, you reckless woman!"
Tilly spit out water and coughed. "I was only kidding! She sounds awful."
"You are reckless and it's gonna get us both killed."
Sheptilah rolled her eyes and made her way to the ladder. "I have no interest in someone who would try to pry the stone off my chest." She tentatively took hold of the metal ladder banister and was relieved to learn it didn't hurt her hands.
"Aluminum," as if Eggman could read her mind, "That's why it's not hurting you."
"Au-rumin-um…" She tried to pronounce the word, "I like it! It's shiny." She ascended the ladder and wrung the water out of her skirt.
"Getting out already?" He frowned.
"Yeah. I'm still a little tired." She took off the glamour and dispelled the water still on her.
He followed after her. He grabbed a towel from the nearby rack and dried himself off. "I'm glad I changed into my swimsuit."
"What about your gauntlet?"
"Ah, this thing is waterproof for the most part. It's fine."
"Speak for yourself!" MARI complained.
"MARI!" Eggman yelped. "I told you to go away!"
"You almost died because you didn't listen to me! However, I have been listening to you." She displayed an ear emoji. "I've identified a few words in the woman's language. If I listen long enough I can put together a dictionary for you."
"You're a glorified boombox." He furrowed his brows.
"I was made to analyze sound." MARI displayed a megaphone emoji. "I added it to the dossier you started a week ago."
"Huh." He said. He accidentally made a program that's actually useful.
"I'm going to go take a shower," Sheptilah waved to him, "Have fun yelling at your bracelet!" He looked up from his gauntlet at the shadow of the woman who had just left the room.
"Hey, boss?" MARI showed a question mark emoji on the gauntlet.
"Yes? What is it?" Eggman typed away at his computer in his office. He was updating many of his files and preparing for what was sure to be an uncomfortable trip to Sonic's shack.
"I found something." Her melodic voice chirped. "When you talk about a bond, she uses the word pâdu. It's Akkadian for 'to take prisoner'. She considers herself your prisoner."
"Akkadian?" He raised an eyebrow but did not stop typing.
"Akkadian is one of the oldest languages we know of. Stems from ancient Babylon and the fertile crescent. Her language is a mishmash of everything."
"That makes sense. She did explicitly say her culture was extremely mixed."
"Another troubling thing is she sometimes refers to herself as wardum, Sumerian for slave. Next time you talk to her ask about Gilgamesh. Also please refer to her as Nin Sheptilah so I may gauge her reaction."
"What is nin?"
"It means 'queen'. If you are also curious you can have her read ancient cuneiform writing. I can analyze the text and compare it to what she says and how she says it. This way I can extrapolate what words are borrowed from what language and which are purely Nannaeic, if there even was such a language."
Eggman let a small smile form at the corner of his mouth. "MARI, you are proving to be very useful. Nosy, but useful."
Eggman had sent Thunderbolt home and went to Sonic's house with Sheptilah. Shadow and Rouge arrived later having looked for the two Overlanders at the lair only to be directed to the shack on the island.
Over extra cheesy pizza the group discussed their options. Sticks was outside sitting under the window listening in.
Sheptilah cleared off the coffee table and put the royal grimoire on top. She thumbed through the pages with one hand and with the other enjoyed the savory mess that is pizza.
"This is disgusting," she said with her mouth full, "But delicious. So far this is the best thing in this century."
"Why isn't anything bookmarked in this mess?" Shadow was growing impatient. Amy looked at the book with great wonder and desire.
"Mm," Tilly finished off her slice, "Okay I found something." She licked her fingertips clean and tapped the page. "Somebody write this down." She sighed.
"I got it." No less than four voices spoke in unison. Tails with his laptop, Amy with her notebook, Eggman with his gauntlet and finally Rouge with her phone.
"A giant round pearl, roughly the size of my head. Three ingots of pure silver-"
"Are you making a magical scepter or one Hell of a piece of jewelry?" Eggman frowned.
"Zzt zzt!" She flapped her hand to hush him. "Five golden power rings. A frozen heart. A golden apple, mercury, witch blood, a nazar, salt, sulfur, five mermaid tears, mummia, Yggdrasil dew, Hellfire… and lastly iron cauldron large enough to cook an adult in but not for that purpose." Sheptilah chuckled.
"Oh, Mama Tiamatu definitely wrote this; she had a dark sense of humor."
"What the heck are most of those things?" Sonic scratched his spikes in thought.
"Ugh, it's a MacGuffin quest." Eggman leaned back on the sofa and sighed heavily. "This is gonna take forever."
"I actually know what all of that is… and where most of it is." Amy spoke up. The group looked to her pleadingly.
"A Nazar is a little blue charm that looks like an eye. Mermaid tears is sea glass, mummia is mummy dust and a frozen heart is a piece of permafrost. Yggdrasil is the tree of life, Hellfire is an eternal flame. The rest is obvious." She shrugged. She knew all of this offhand because she loved the supernatural.
Sheptilah smiled at her. "Ah, I'm not the only witch here I see." Amy blushed and looked away, biting her lip.
"Where are we going to find a pearl that massive? Or a giant cauldron?" Rouge's wings twitched.
"There's the family cauldron in the ziggurat. It's all the way in the cistern which takes up the whole base of the building." The witch nodded.
"It's probably rusted away to nothing." Tails frowned.
"It's magic; it's probably still down there." Sheptilah was already planning her next excursion back to her old house.
"Yggdrasil is real?" The black hedgehog was stunned. "It's not just a fairy tale?"
"Uh, no," Tilly said, "It's very real."
"I know where we can get the giant pearl." Eggman sat up with a start. "The Aquarium Park."
"I remember that place," Sonic sounded cocky, "I remember it being a piece of cake. Isn't it a rusted-out junkyard now, though?"
Eggman's face turned up with anger.
"What happens if we can't make the the staff in time? Or what happens if the staff fails? We gotta have a plan B." The blonde fox spoke up.
"We need all seven of the Chaos Emeralds. The beasts are extremely weak to the energy. I can go super and fight it." Shadow crossed his arms.
"Hmm," Sheptilah puffed out her chest, "You may not need to do that."
"What do you mean?" The black hedgehog side-eyed her.
"My gem." She pointed to it. "When broken it unleashes a ton of power vaporizing everything in the area for miles. All I have to do is break it, if push comes to shove." She spoke so calmly about turning herself into a suicide bomber.
"All that power in something the size of a coaster?" The blue hedgehog raised an eyebrow. Sheptilah nodded sagely.
"It won't come to that," Rouge said, "We've saved the world a million times without someone needing to turn themselves into a bomb to do so. Besides, what the Hell would that do to Shadow?" Rouge realized her mistake the second the words slipped past her lips. Alas, you cannot unring a bell.
"Why would her death affect him?" Amy reached for another slice of pizza.
"He is my familiar. My death would hurt him a lot, metaphysically speaking."
"Okay, wait." Sonic was very confused. He held his hands up on either side of his face. "He's your familiar? Is this a sick joke?"
"It's true," Shadow turned away and held out his hand, "I've already been able to do some magic." He imagined the figure of a little white bird sitting in his palm and it appeared.
"Oh, wow," Sonic leaned in, "So we absolutely cannot have her die; not that we would have anyway."
Shadow closed his fist and the bird vanished into vapor.
The cogs in Eggman's head were turning. Perhaps it was time to rebuild the Eclipse Cannon but build it better and more precise. He kept this idea to himself and he would work on it in secret. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the gauntlet showed a message from MARI.
Oracle Stone: lapis oraculi mentor stone / She is using Latin for some of her sentence structures and Akkadian for others.
Eggman made a mental note of that. A mentor stone? This suggested some level of self-awareness of the object.
"What about the ocean? If they're in the water then they can attack us from anywhere. So much of the ocean is unexplored, too." Tails was worried and nervously adjusted his goggles.
"We don't know that they're only in the water," the witch shrugged, "That's the problem."
Sheptilah shut the book. "Team Sonic: you should keep protecting the island."
"Team Eggman, that's you and I," she said to Ivo, "We'll get to work on getting everything I need to make the staff. Team Dark, you get to keep doing what you're doing at GUN The other Egg Bosses have been taken off their projects to monitor for witch-eater activity."
"Team Eggman?" Ivo was delighted the team was named after him and let out a grin.
"Don't push your luck." The witch rolled her eyes.
"I want to be on your team." Amy spoke up. She approached the witch, pushing pink hair behind her ear. "I want to help with the magical stuff."
Sheptilah looked into those innocent green eyes and frowned. "It's dangerous."
"I know." She put on a determined expression. "I can handle myself."
Tilly sighed. "Alright. If things get too dangerous I'm warping you home."
"Yes!" She jumped with joy.
"We should head back to GUN," Shadow gripped Tilly's shoulder, "There's still a lot you need to do. You need to be trained for combat."