ATUHOR'S NOSE: D'you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
While I know I've caught everything on this chapter, any inconsistent spellings of Sorcerer's Ring in future chapters are not an intentional joke on my part. The joke isn't as funny the second time around, and in any case proper nouns are allowed to be spelled different. :p
I woke up bleary-eyed from having rotated cryptic goddamn nonsense in my mind all night instead of sleeping. Mercifully, the inn offered free coffee, which I drank with great alacrity despite the absence of sugar. Still, I was hoping to get through today without any more mysteries.
And something did go my way, for once, as there were no further plot twists all the way to the House of Salvation, and then the entire next day to... as it turned out also a House of Salvation that handled the trip to and from the geyser.
A trip we would be taking in washtubs.
I glanced at Raine, who was looking a little green already. "You good?"
"I... I'm going to wait here," she said.
"... you sure? Your healing magic is kinda important. Not to mention your general archaeological expertise and... whatever it is that makes you so much better than Lloyd at scanning monsters. Also, it'd just feel weird to leave you behind," I added when it looked like my practical arguments weren't convincing Raine.
"Come on, Professor, it looks fun!" Colette declared cheerfully.
"Wait, you can fly, Colette," I pointed out. "Do you even need a washtub?"
"No, but like I said, it looks like fun!"
"It looks like those things are gonna capsize any second," Raine muttered.
"True," I admitted, "but I can swim... actually, I'm more worried about my stuff -" and then my brain caught up with itself and I realized the obvious problem here. "... Hm." Raine probably couldn't swim, and it seemed like she didn't want to admit that from the way she was currently not admitting it. And even if she had decided to admit it, it wasn't like we had time for her to learn real quick before washtubbing out to the geyser. I didn't remember learning how to swim myself, but I had a sneaking suspicion the process had taken a non-trivial amount of time.
"... On a completely unrelated note," I lied, "have they invented life jackets out here?" The blank looks all around suggested no. "Okay, then maybe I thought to bring my own." I started rifling through my backpack...
...
... "Eleven. Eleven of these things I brought. Under what conceivable circumstance did I expect to need eleven inflatable life vests‽ That's so ridiculous I can't decide whether it's even funny or not."
"Maybe you could donate the extras," Colette suggested.
"Maybe. How many actually are extras, though?" There were six of us here now, and my notes had said Sheena would be joining at some point. Would she need to come back here? I didn't know enough to rule it out. But even if she did, that was still only seven, leaving the question of who in the world were the other four supposed to be for‽
Maybe donating them had been the entire idea, since apparently this world hadn't invented personal floatation devices yet in the first place. Though that in turn raised the opposite question of why I'd only brought eleven. Also, why, in this scenario, I would have thought it was a cool idea to just drop into a foreign culture unprompted and donate them some of my future technology without even asking them first. This angle was seeming increasingly implausible, unless of course past me was a dumbass which was seeming increasingly plausible.
I'd have to work it out later. For now, we were obviously still using the things ourselves. Raine finally looked less likely to implode, Colette somehow managed to make the bright green of the vest clashing with the pink of her wings look cute, Genis looked like he was ready to take the additional safety measures as an excuse to be extra reckless, Kratos looked irritated that he was being asked to wear one too, and Lloyd just looked excited to be doing things.
"Are we ready to... washtub?" Yeah, even with safety gear, I couldn't entirely get over that we were about to travel in washtubs.
"As close as we're ever getting," Raine muttered, eyes squeezed shut. I briefly considered questioning whether that was a good idea before deciding that she would figure it out herself.
...
Incredibly, the trip across didn't kill anyone. The tubs didn't even capsize, despite Raine's terror. We arrived at... well, a tourist trap. People were walking around looking at the scenery, there were signs pointing to souvenir shops... you know the kind of thing.
"Where might the seal be, then..." I mused. "Nothing to do for it but to start wandering aimlessly, I guess."
"I think it might be over there, actually," Colette said, pointing to a cluttered little setup of stuff near an unfinished signpost. "That looks like an oracle stone."
We headed over to check... well, we headed part of the way. Lloyd got distracted looking at the geyser. Actually, once I realized what he was doing, so did I. It wasn't erupting right now, but it still managed to look really cool just being a big hot pond.
"A geyser is a type of hot spring that periodically erupts with boiling water," Genis explained, completely unprompted. "The spray can reach over 200 feet high sometimes."
"I... knew that..." Lloyd lied unconvincingly.
"I also knew that!" I cheerfully... technically also lied, in that I was implying that I believed Lloyd's lie.
"No way," Lloyd said. "You have amnesia, can you seriously remember something like that?"
"Well, I didn't know geysers were specifically a type of hot spring, but I knew the rest of it. Like Genis pointed out, it's only my episodic memory that's completely shot. I've forgotten all the events in my life before, but I still remember some facts," I clarified at the confused look on Lloyd's face.
"If you didn't know geysers were hot springs, what did you think they were?" Genis asked.
I shrugged. "I dunno, their own thing. It's a lot more obvious actually seeing one, though." I frowned as something caught my eye. "Speaking of seeing things — what's that statuette doing back there?"
Lloyd and Genis looked where I was pointing, at the winged sculpture half-buried on the other side of the spring. "Huh," Lloyd said. "That's a Spiritua statue. Every chapel has one of those. But this isn't a chapel."
I hadn't recognized it immediately, out of place as it was, but now that Lloyd had identified it I knew he was right. "Weird. Did someone drop it?"
"Maybe? I don't know why someone would bring it here." Lloyd considered the statue for a moment. "It's too bad it's behind the geyser. The boiling water makes it too dangerous to try getting it back."
"Well, it's not like we have any reason to go get it anyway," Genis pointed out.
Any further discussion of the subject was cut short by a bunch of rocks suddenly falling out of the cliff wall and a bridge of light suddenly showing up, leading to a cave that I could only presume must have been where the seal was. "Guys, I found the seal!" Colette declared helpfully.
We delved into the cavern, which was much more straightforward than the ruins at Triet had been. Sure, there were floating sharks and seahorses and jellyfish and walking starfish and big tentacle monsters (‽) but we didn't have any trouble with those, not with Genis's new lightning spell and me copying it.
There was a funky little device a short way in, right before the first branching point. Lloyd touched it and it made his ring — the Sorcerer's Ring, he called it — start spewing water instead of fire. The significance of that became clear in the next room, when we could see a little balance setup with a jug on one side.
I hopped over the little gap to fiddle with it and noticed that the jug was sealed, but it didn't matter since I could still tilt the scale manually. This caused a door to slide shut on the lower level, and I immediately wanted to jump down and investigate that, but letting go of the scale caused it to slide back. "So we need to hold it down while we go downstairs..."
"I think I was supposed to use the Sorcerer's Ring to light those torches, first," Lloyd pointed out. "I should go and change it back so I can do that."
"I bet I brought something to light 'em myself while I'm over here," I said, and started rifling through my backpack...
"I feel like this isn't what the temple architects had in mind when they designed this mechanism," Raine said.
"Probably not, no!" I acknowledged cheerfully. "They probably expected people to walk back and forth the long way around. (C'mon, matches, a flamethrower, something?) I'm actually surprised that we're not running into any kinda anti-cheat here. It's not like it was that big a gap, they have to have imagined someone would try jumping it."
"Maybe they thought people would be scared of falling down," Colette suggested, eyeing the distance to the lower level warily.
I paused in my search to consider that. "Maybe. Though in that case, I'd still expect them to consider the possibility of someone carting in a few planks to cross the gap safely."
"I wonder if they left it in on purpose," Genis said. "A faster way to get past the puzzle in an emergency."
"If that's the case, then I have some good news for them! Say, Colette, can you fly down there and check what the door might be blocking off?" I couldn't see everything down there with the floor in the way, but I was pretty sure it was a dead end that would be totally inaccessible on foot with the door closed, unless there was something very well-concealed, perhaps behind the floor I was sending Colette to check on.
"Mm-hmm!" Colette winged down and flew below the floor to investigate the area out of my sight. "It looks like there's another balance jar down here. I can't move it, though."
"Either we've skipped something important," Raine opined, "or the architects left a failsafe in the mechanism so that it can't be bypassed entirely."
At this point Lloyd got back with the Sorcerer's Ring changed back to fire mode to light the torches, which turned out to open the jug up top just as he'd guessed. With the lid gone, the intended next step was obvious, but while we waited for him to go back and re-change the ring, Colette again tried fiddling with the balance on the lower level. It still wouldn't move no matter how I positioned the upper one, so ultimately it seemed like we'd have to do this puzzle "properly".
Out of curiosity, I took out my phone, shook it to turn on a flashlight (I don't get it either, but I randomly figured that out a while back), and looked into the now-open jar. "If tilting doesn't unlock the jar below, maybe there's something inside that reacts with water?"
"Before you try anything completely off the wall, you should know that there's a block down there," Raine said. "If there turns out to be sufficient protection against circumventing the mechanism, that block may prove critical to solving it as intended."
I hopped back over to the intended part of the path and looked down. "... is that a floor switch under the door? Yeah, that's definitely meant to have a block on it. Colette, while you're down there?" There was a click as she moved the block into place, but the only apparent effect was to slow down the lower door as it apparently pretended to be blocked by the block.
At this point Lloyd got back with the Sorcerer's Ring in water mode again, so he filled up the upper vessel, which finally freed the mechanisms on the lower balance, but Colette tilting it manually still didn't seem to do anything, so Lloyd handed over the ring so she could fly down and fill the jug like the good little railroaded puzzle-solvers we were apparently gonna be.
"Hey, we still skipped the part where we would've had to walk back and forth the long way around," Genis pointed out as a platform rose up out of the water, revealing the portal to the seal.
"Yeah, there's a lot of monsters in that part of the temple, so I'm glad we didn't have to deal with them," Lloyd said.
"We are still gonna have to deal with the seal's guardian," I reminded them. "... and Colette's trial."
"She's gonna have another trial‽" Lloyd exclaimed, looking between me and her in a panic.
"Was that not — obvious, to you‽" Now I was panicking as I realized that I'd just dropped that on everyone unintentionally.
Colette didn't look happy to be hearing this herself, but I wasn't getting the impression it was new information to her, just something she had been avoiding thinking about.
"If the Chosen is to go through another trial," Kratos said, heading off any potential panic spiral, "then we will have to deal with that when it happens. For now, we must release the seal."
"Kratos is right," Colette said. "I'll be okay. We need to face the guardian."
I didn't think it was as simple as she was making it sound, but she probably didn't want to dwell on it. "All right. So, big fishy monster incoming, I imagine? Lightning magic is our trump card?"
"You won't be able to rely entirely on elemental weaknesses forever, you know," Kratos said.
"All the more reason to do it now while we can," I declared cheerfully as I stepped on the portal.
...
The battle against some kind of seahorse-mermaid and its two babies went as uneventfully as a boss battle possibly can, in that nobody was severely injured.
And of course, Remiel showed up afterward to bless Colette again.
"The next seal lies to the north, in an ancient city. Hurry there, and offer your prayers at that seal."
"Um... Father? Have I done something to displease you?"
I had no clue where she got that idea, but clearly I hadn't been paying close enough attention to Remiel. I immediately started scrutinizing him while he apparently took a moment to think of an answer.
He did seem... cold. I wasn't sure whether it was just flat affect or what, but he didn't seem as happy about seeing his daughter for the third time ever as I would have expected.
"It matters not... my beloved daughter. I will be waiting for you at the next seal, beyond the mountains, in an ancient city."
And without waiting for acknowledgement, he vanished.
"... what is his deal?" Genis exclaimed. "He always makes it sound like he's so important."
"I guess it's not that weird a thing to think in his position," I mused. "He is an angel, after all. Still, he could try to tone it down and rember that he's going among mere mortals."
"I can't believe you two," Raine interrupted. "That is Colette's father you're badmouthing. Apologize to her!"
"It's all right," Colette said. "Fa... Lord Remiel really does sound that way."
I had been about to apologize anyway, but the words caught in my throat. There was definitely something wrong here between Remiel and Colette, even if I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was causing it.
"Well, uh, shall we get going to the next seal?" Lloyd interjected. "He said it was in an ancient city? Spiritua's book said something..."
"Yes," Raine said, "it mentioned an ancient city and an evil impersonating an ancient force. I believe the seal is in either Asgard or the Balacruf Mausoleum, but Remiel didn't say anything that would distinguish between the two."
"I guess we'll just have to check both," I said. "Give 'em a quick once-over for oracle stones to start with?"
"Either way, we will first need to return to Palmacosta," Kratos reminded us. And with that, we headed out...
...
As I predicted, Colette collapsed shortly after we exited the temple. We set up camp for the night while she recovered.
I wanna say it was an uneventful night. It almost was. But another text came in and woke me up in the middle of the night.
Aren't you forgetting something, Leaf?
I groaned as loudly as I thought I could get away with at this hour (not particularly loudly at all). "Yes, I'm forgetting something. It's called I have amnesia, I'm forgetting most things. Why you gotta be all cryptic about this?" But of course I couldn't text them back with my phone locked up tight, and they didn't seem inclined to follow up.
Irritated, I turned my phone off entirely and decided to take a quick walk around the camp to clear my head.
I wasn't surprised to see Kratos still awake; he had taken the night watch again. I wasn't convinced we needed a night watch — we hadn't even made it back to the washtubs, much less the actual wilderness — but I had decided to just let him do what he wanted.
I was surprised to see Colette still awake. She wasn't doing much, just sitting by the oracle stone looking vaguely unhappy.
"You feeling any better?" I asked, sitting down in front of her.
"Yeah, hehe." Colette gave me a big grin, as if to prove how great she felt.
"Mm. You manage any sleep yet? Sleep's kinda important to recovering from illness."
"Not yet," she admitted. "But I'll be fine. Anyway, you're awake too."
"Yeah, I got another cryptic message. Had to take a walk to clear my head. But I am planning on going back to sleep soon. ... Wait, are you not able to sleep?" From the way she froze up in shock, I knew I was right on the money. "Yeah, that happens to me too, sometimes." (And she immediately relaxed. I guess she'd been expecting me to get mad at her or something.) "When I get like that, I try to tire myself out by rotating cubes in my mind."
"Rotating... cubes?" Colette repeated, baffled.
"It's just how it sounds — visualise a cube, then imagine it rotating. Once you've got that, add another cube and rotate them both at once, and more cubes until the framerate starts to fall apart."
Colette stared blankly for a few seconds. "Umm... I guess I can do that?"
"At that point," I informed Colette, "your brain is using all its thinking power on cubes, so there's no room left for whatever's keeping you awake."
"I see... that might actually help. Thanks."
I grinned, happy to have been helpful. "No problem." I yawned. "... should probably get back to sleep already, though. See ya tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow, Leaf," Colette said.
...
"Y'know," I said the next morning, as we were preparing to take the washtub trip back to the mainland, "I had the weirdest dream last night. I was looking at the stars, but for some reason, I was looking down. They were below me, and above was nothing but a void."
"Huh," Lloyd huh'd. "You think it means anything?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. I've been writing all my dreams down in case they're actually memories floating back up, but I can't figure what this could possibly be if it's a memory."
"I see. I dreamed the world was made of pudding!" Lloyd declared cheerfully. "I don't think that means anything, though."
"I dreamed about doing homework underwater," Genis said. "I think that means that I just spent hours in a water temple and then hours doing homework."
"You're still doing homework?" I exclaimed.
"He does still need an education for his life after the world regeneration," Raine pointed out. "Speaking of which, did Lloyd get his homework done yet?"
"I'm... working on it," Lloyd said, probably lying.
"Hm," I hm'd. "I get the education point, but..." I tilted my head and frowned. "... I can't remember anything specific, I just feel like it's weird to have homework."
"The technology you have access to suggests that you're from very far away," Raine said. "It's possible that your home culture has different methods of education and doesn't use homework."
I considered that point. "... could be. It doesn't immediately seem incorrect, that's for sure." Like a cube, I rotated that thought in my mind as we floated the washtubs back.
...
We arrived back at the mainland to a waiting Palmacostan soldier. "Chosen One! I have a message from Governor-General Dorr! He requests that you and your companions... delay the journey of regeneration briefly. Specifically, he requests your assistance on the matter of a recent Desian attack upon a tour guide group."
I instinctively grabbed my spear, even though the Desians weren't anywhere near here. Since he was talking to Colette, I didn't respond yet. In any case, I had a feeling she'd have the same question I did —
"What tour group? Is everyone...?" Of course everyone wasn't okay and Colette knew that.
"Several tourists and employees have been captured and brought to the human ranch, including one Chocolat."
My grip tightened. After everything Chocolat had already been through, getting captured and put in one of those places was just too cruel to be allowed.
"The Governor-General requests your assistance with a raid on the human ranch."
The problem was, it was obviously a trap.
Raine, brilliant as always, hadn't even needed my notes to work out that Dorr was in league with the Desians, but they had made excellent confirmation.
"We should help Dorr out," Lloyd said, oblivious to my thoughts. "He's helped us out a lot, and the seal here is already released."
Unfortunately, somehow, my foreknowledge hadn't let me avoid this one — the opposite, if anything.
...
I didn't have to stew in my torment for long, though, as once we arrived at the human ranch, a voice called out from behind some trees. "Chosen One, this way!"
"Neil!" Lloyd answered, letting me conveniently not have to admit I'd forgotten Dorr's assistant's name. "We got a message from the guard — he told us Chocolat's been kidnapped."
"Yes, that's what I wish to speak with you about..." We followed Neil into the brush, further away from any Desian eyes. "... you should leave the Palmacosta region."
"Because this whole thing is a trap," I said. "Isn't it?"
"Wh- Leaf, what are you talking about‽" Lloyd exclaimed. I just motioned to Neil to continue.
"... she's right," Neil said. "I don't understand why, but Governor-General Dorr is working with the Desians, and they've asked him to lure the Chosen into a trap."
"I was afraid of that," Kratos grumbled.
"It really was the worst of all the possibilities," Raine lamented.
"Kratos, Professor, you saw this coming too?"
Kratos nodded. "The fact that the Desians simply ignored a city with an army... it didn't make sense."
"Yes," Raine said. "The seeds of rebellion were being sown in plain sight, and the Desians chose not to crush them? It could only be because they knew it was no real threat — perhaps even beneficial."
"Why would he do this‽" Genis exclaimed.
"I don't know," Neil said. "He wasn't always like this."
"The Desians have leverage on him, somehow," I said. "His wife, maybe."
"His wife was killed five years ago," Neil pointed out. "And he didn't change until much later than that."
I frowned. My notes had mentioned Clara repeatedly. If she wasn't their leverage, what was? "Hm," I hm'd. "Well, in any case, they've got something."
"Yes, and entering the ranch now will put the Chosen in danger," Neil said. "Please leave Chocolat to me and focus on the world regeneration."
"... it seems the most prudent option would be to abandon this situation here," Kratos said.
"But I can't just ignore this!" Colette protested. "Regenerating the world shouldn't mean abandoning the people in front of us."
"She's right!" Genis said. "If we ignore this, they might destroy Palmacosta just like Iselia!"
"You're not wrong," Kratos said, "but it's still an unnecessary risk. If we don't want to see cities destroyed, we should avoid contact with Desians entirely."
"... normally I would side with Kratos on this decision," Raine said, "but there's a confounding factor in this case. All the remaining seals are on the other side of Hakonesia Peak, which requires a road pass to cross..."
"... a road pass we had intended to get from Dorr," Kratos said, grimacing as he realized it.
A situation I had caused. Once again, I'd managed to ensnare myself in my own web.
"Obviously, we need to get our road pass somewhere else," I said. "He's certainly not gonna give it to us now, if he ever even was in the first place."
"Colette wants to save Chocolat," Raine said. "As the Chosen One, she's the only one with any right to make decisions on this journey. Given that we're doing so, there are two courses of action:
"Our first option is to infiltrate the ranch immediately. Once we've saved Chocolat and the other employees, we can ask them for help with the road pass. With this option, we'll be able to avoid Dorr entirely if need be.
"Our second option is the complete opposite — confront Dorr now, confirm his true motives and the nature of the trap. Barring any confounding factors, I would favor this option."
Everyone looked to Colette to see what she'd say...