Getting out of my girlfriends' post-coital embrace was a little tricky, as usual. In the past, I tried just Phasing out of the bed, but my weight suddenly disappearing from the mattress made it bounce the girls up and wake them anyway, which completely defeated the point. As such, I had to do it the old-fashioned way, by waiting until they were fully asleep and then very slowly slipping out of bed.

For once, I didn't mind it though, as it gave me lots of time and opportunity to think and internalize what just happened to me. In other words, it was kind of the opposite of the 'let's forget about everything else for a while' sex we just had, now that I thought about it. Speaking of which, the girls were still mostly nude under the blankets, so I made sure to carefully tuck them in before I dressed up. We were doing it in a, so to say, more subdued fashion than usual, since we didn't want to make noises, but it was still a sweaty business, and I didn't want them to catch a cold.

Then, I paused as a realization reared its ugly head in the back of my mind. When we started our relationship, or rather, its physical side, I was pretty sure we agreed that threesomes would be a rare thing for special days, yet somehow, they ended up becoming a regular occurrence. In fact, our relationship itself was slowly becoming normal, to the point people were no longer even giving us skeptical glances. It just felt entirely natural, and our environment treated it as such as well.

Of course, it could all be the result of the Simulacrum already being primed to accommodate polyamorous relationships aaand I just reminded myself of my biggest current bugbear again. Damn it.

Sighing softly, I buttoned up my shirt, slipped into the backup shoes I kept in my room in case I had to Phase away in a hurry, and quietly disposed of the evidence of today's pillow-wresting activities before glancing at the girls one last time and disappearing from the bedside. A moment later, I arrived at the underground base. Its future name was still pending, with support for 'Haven' and 'New Camelot' gong neck and neck at the moment, but I had a feeling that even after everyone settled on a name, I would still end up calling it just 'the underground base' anyway. Habit. It was a hard thing to break.

In any case, I was standing in the armoury segment of the main hall. Most of the overhead lights were off, which wasn't surprising, considering it was well past midnight, and so my eyes were automatically drawn to the large figure hunched over the workbench. The spot was lit by a single shielded light bulb at the end of a standing lamp with a long, flexible neck.

"[Blackcloak.]" Brang greeted me without looking up from his work. He had a magnifying visor with its own light strapped to his forehead, and what looked like the insides of a vintage clock in front of him. "[What brings thine steps to this place in such hour? Is thine sleep troubled?]"

"[Nay, albeit turning such queries upon your person would be equally warranted.]"

He let out a soft chuckle and replaced a large gear before turning on his, compared his bulk, comically small stool to face me.

"[I'm but an old man, Blackloak. This body of mine hest not as much catch but a wink as it used to.]" His ears swivelled, telling me he thought his answer was amusing, before he levelled a more serious look at me. "[But thou hast yet to answer mine question. What brings thee here?]"

"[The mind of yours truly is abundant with high notions, and whereas I would be in my right to dwell upon, I'm no man of echolocating nocturnal mammal to perch upon the crowns of edifices under the wintry skies.]"

Brang's ears twitched again, this time telling me he wasn't entirely sure what I just tried to say.

"I'm kind of out of it. Would you mind if I didn't use Faunish?"

"[It is as thine hearth wishes, Blackloak.]"

Sighing, I walked over and pulled another stool out of under a different workbench, then sat down.

"For the record, I said I had a lot on my mind, and I figured that brooding on my own was silly."

"[I hath understood thine words as such,]" the old Faun nodded, and as it made the visor on his head wobble, he took it off and put it away before he continued. "[What bothers thine mind in the dead of night? Is it thine involvement with the winged ones of Elysium?]"

"No," I answered reflexively but then backpedalled a bit. "I mean, yes, that's also an issue, but I'm worried about something… different."

We remained silent for a while. The silence wasn't awkward, but it wasn't exactly comforting either.

"[Thou came to speak, did thou not, Blackcloak? Do so. Mine ears are always open to you.]"

That was an odd way to put it, but since he prompted me like that, I figured I might as well get this off my chest.

"I have encountered something I'm not sure I can deal with," I admitted, and Brang kept looking at me expectantly, urging me to continue. "To be precise, it's an opponent I'm wary of." Pausing, I couldn't help but let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "You know, it's kind of funny, now that I think about it. You know what I'm capable of, right?"

"[Aye. Thine prowess is impressive indeed.]"

"But because of that, I've had it easy. Even back then, when we first clashed, or when I encountered the Chimera, I was never afraid. I was startled at times, but I wasn't afraid, because I always looked at these situations not as a danger that could get me killed, but just as an obstacle in the way I had to solve something bigger. It's just that… with this opponent, the stakes are different. It feels like a barrier that separated me from the danger of the situation was taken away, and I'm feeling paralyzed."

"[Are thou?]" Brang blurted out with a brow raised high, and I nodded.

"Yes. It's… It's something a lot's riding on, and I… I think I'm sort of at a crossroads here, and I don't know what to do."

"[Is this a foe no one else can confront?]" came the next question, and I nodded again.

"Yes. It's outside of your scope. I mean, everyone else's scope. That's kind of the issue."

"[If so, then do thou plan to shirk away?]"

"That's not exactly an option," I groaned and held my head in my hand. "But I have no idea what to do about it."

"[But thou are planning to act.]"

"Well, yeah. As I said, I don't have any other option."

All of a sudden, Brang's stoic visage twisted, and he let out a pent-up chuckle. I waited for him to finish with a frown on my face, and once he did, he roughly cleared his throat.

"[Thine words make little sense, Blackcloak. Thou already have thine answer, yet pretend that thou art undecided. Has an uncertain victory ever hindered thine advance? Has thou ever ceased to enforce thine will on the world just because the task seemed insurmountable?]"

"It's different this time…" I tried to argue back, but before I could get any momentum, he pointed a large finger at my chest.

"[What maketh thou move forward? What is thine drive?]" Once again, before I even had time to respond, he raised his arm and made a vague gesture towards the ceiling. "[Why dost thou think the powers of this world follow thine path?]" This time, I couldn't formulate an answer in time, so he let his arm down and stroked his beard with another throaty chuckle. "[I hath stood by thine side through the trials and tribulations of thy path. It was but a short moment in my long life, yet I has't seen thee throw thyself at the world, and it bent to thy will. Doth thee know wherefore?]"

"Because I had the money and power to make it so?"

"[Aye, that helped,]" Brang admitted with a toothy smile. "[But that was but a part of the whole. Men and women of power followed thy will because of thine ambition. That is thine greatest strength; to see the mountain insurmountable ahead of thine eyes, and scale it with nary a second thought. It's what gives thine followers the courage to follow in thy footsteps.]"

"You know, that's the kind of thing most people would call hubris," I pointed out, but he continued to grin at me.

"[For ones that stray the path? Mayhap. But those who do not will be called visionaries. Thou may never know which one thou art until thou reach the end of thy path on the other side of the mountain.]"

"I never wanted to be a visionary though. Or to lead people," I grumbled, earning me yet another chuckle.

"[Men desperate to lead others art rarely leaders of merit. On the contrary, I believe in thy vision precisely because you act not for thyself, but for the sake of the ones behind you.] He levelled his finger at me again, and added, "[Even now, while thou claim to be shaken, I can see it in thy eyes; thou art not daunted by this obstacle you face. Thou already see the path. Worry not; we will follow.]"

Once again, silence settled onto the armoury area, and this time it lasted for a solid half a minute before I let out a long breath and folded my arms.

"You know, general, I didn't come here for a pep-talk, but that was a decent one. I wonder if the role of the friendly, world-wise bartender is rubbing off on you."

"[See? Already back to thy normal self.]"

The toothy grin on the old Faun's face was borderline smug, but I didn't let it bother me and closed my eyes. In a way, he was correct. Not about the whole 'visionary' thing (I felt that one was stretching things a bit to make me feel better), but about how, despite the trepidation and apprehension I felt whenever I recalled the bone-man, I still felt the urge to press on, no matter what. And I already had a couple of ideas in mind. Maybe I came here just to get that final push to put them into practice.

"Thank you general," I said, from the bottom of my heart, and casually picked up a small wrench lying on the nearby workbench. "I'm going to move forward now. Just in case, if it looks like I have a seizure or the like, please make sure I won't hurt myself."

I could see the old Faun's eyes open wide in alarm, but I ignored it and took a deep breath. I held the wrench in front of me and plunged one of my phantom limbs into it. There was a familiar sense of backlash, but I pushed on, and soon the world began to melt away in front of my eyes.

My body was gone, once again replaced with a disembodied vantage point surrounded by eight phantom limbs. One of those was reaching into a wildly twisting fractal of vivid colours and sharp sounds, but not for long. Holding my injured appendage in reserve, I used the remaining six to anchor myself into space itself. The tips of my phantom limbs sunk into the fabric of fractals surrounding me, and once I was stable, I used the first one to stretch out even further.

As I reached deeper, I could feel my consciousness narrow down, as if I was trying to squeeze my whole body through a keyhole. I was surrounded by a seemingly infinite number of wrenches. Some of them were the same as the one in my hand, but different sizes. Others were made of different materials, different designs, and some of them only remotely resembled anything one could call a 'wrench'. The deeper I plunged, the more esoteric my surroundings became, and the more twisted the wrenches. My phantom limbs trembled as they continued to anchor me in this universe of wrench-like objects, while I bobbed, weaved, and twisted around the fractals about me like a small snake climbing an enormous thornbush.

However, my goal wasn't here. It was inside myself. With each passing second of eternity, a familiar voice in the back of my mind started sending warning signals to my forebrain. Stop. Danger. This is foolish. Cease at once, or there will be unimaginable consequences. This is not allowed.

"Come out," I whispered, causing the world of wrenches to tremble, but maybe because my phantom limbs were embedded into it, its structure remained stable. Emboldened, I spoke louder the second time. "I said, come out, asshole, or I'll keep going deeper until you do!"

Once again, everything around me quaked and twisted, as if I poured paint thinner on the world and shook it, but while the warnings in my head got more insistent, there was no change. As such, since I was always good on my word, I redoubled my effort and slithered even deeper into the thornbush of warped metal tools barely resembling a wrench anymore.

I should turn back.

The moment I had that thought, I stopped my advance and spoke again, "Come out already!"

There was silence. The naggy corner of my mind remained quiet, as if in defiance, leaving me with a sense that I was doing something fundamentally wrong. I had no idea whether that came from me, or 'other me', but I got so far, so I was willing to see this show through.

"Do you want me to find a plot device then? There are a whole bunch of them around, and I always wanted to tinker with them. This sounds like the perfect excuse to start!"

That was a stupid idea.

The thought was once again my own, and not, at the same time, but it told me I was on the right track.

"What? Do you think I won't do it? Desperate times call for desperate measures, you know?"

I'm being an unreasonable asshole.

"No, you are an unreasonable asshole!" I argued back… against myself? In any case, I decided to throw common sense to the wind for now and doubled down. "I can do this all night, you know? There are a lot of bloody wrenches on this blood workbench!"

This was the most idiotic thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

"Tough luck! So, are you going to show my face, or not?"

I waited for a while, and when there was no answer from the back of my mind, I extended my phantom limb again, ready to continue my trek up the infinite wrench-fractals. That is, until suddenly the whole world froze around me.

"Am I completely out of my mind?" a new voice growled. Except it wasn't. It was my voice.

"Took me long enough, asshole."

"Who am I calling an asshole, shithead?" other me exclaimed, taking the familiar form of a quivering hole in reality in front of me. "How did I end up this stupid? Am I really this desperate, just because I met the Predator Moon again?"

"What do I mean… I mean, what do you mean 'again'?"

"Stop calling myself 'you'. We are me," other me insisted, but I had none of it.

"I refuse to call m— you 'me' again! You are obviously holding out information on me, and that obviously makes you a separate entity."

"No, it obviously isn't. I don't understand jack shit about the circumstances, do I?"

"No, I don't understand, but you do, so spill the beans."

"I can't. I know I can't."

"I don't care!" I huffed, and since I had no real arms, I retrieved two phantom limbs and crossed them in defiance. "Things are already way too busy within the Simulacrum, and I can't have all of this external crap hang over my head like the world's creepiest sword of Damocles at the same time, so give me some answers, dammit!"

"I was never even supposed to know about the Simulacrum, but apparently I'm too much of a nosy busybody! Have I ever considered that maybe, if I was doing my job as I should have, I would've never had to worry about the ***********?"

"That too! The hell does that even mean!?"

"What?"

"The thing you just said!"

"I can't explain, me! The whole point is that I'm not supposed to know!"

"But now I do, so tell me what's going on!"

"No."

"Then I will just keep retconning items and poking plot devices, I guess."

There was a long beat of silence in the wake of my words.

"Am I seriously trying to blackmail myself?"

"Am I— I mean, are you seriously refusing to at least give me some crumbs even after all this time?"

Other me considered my question for a while, and to my surprise, he finally relented.

"Fuck me, fine! I want to know if the presence of the Predator Moon is cause for concern, right?"

"Among other things," I uttered in a half daze, finding it hard to believe that I finally managed to crack other me's resistance.

"Listen, me, because I'll only say this once. Everything is still going according to the plan. The four ************* are insignificant. The Predator Moon is insignificant. All I have to do is to stick to what I've been doing until now, keep everyone alive, and not fuck up the plot."

"Okay, and what's the plot?"

"Everything that I'm doing," he answered me cryptically, and the whole world started to tremble again. "Shit, they noticed the unauthorized access. See? I knew this would happen!"

"Those four star-people?"

"God, I sound like an imbecile!" other-me griped.

"Then explain the terminology!"

"How many times do I have to—" We were interrupted by another quake in the scenery, and other me started to rapidly fade away. "Listen, dipshit. Just make sure I don't modify the Simulacrum from the inside, don't touch the framework, and for the love of god, don't fuck up the plot! So long as I can do that, everything will work out."

"Wait! I still have other questions about—"

"Don't. Fuck. Up."

And with those less than eloquent words, other me de-conceptualized, and became an indistinct feeling in the back of my mind telling me to get out of this wrench-fractal already. Speaking of which, once the other me disappeared, the strange time-stop also came to a halt, and the world around me started to churn again. I was late to realize that, by removing two phantom limbs previously, I destabilized my anchor.

I was far from satisfied with this encounter, but by the looks of it, that was the best I could get out of myself at this point, so I reluctantly withdrew from this ever-branching worldscape and, with a sudden exhalation, returned to my body.

"[What dost thou mean by 'seizure'?]"

Blinking, I turned to the confused Faun on the other stool.

"For how long was I unresponsive?"

"[Unresponsive?]" he repeated after me, sounding even more confused than before. That was answer enough.

"Never mind."

I threw the wrench into the air, and then caught it on the way down a couple of times as I ruminated over what I just learned. In short, there was a plan in effect, that didn't involve the star-people and the bone-man. Was it my plan, or was it someone else's plan? Or was that someone else me too? In any case, other me was much more up-to-date with the backstage of the Simulacrum than me me was, and while I was a bit of a dick… I mean, he was a bit of a dick, I figured I could trust myself on this.

Bloody hell, this pronoun mess is killing me…

Anyhow, I learned much less than I hoped, but what I did learn was significant enough to put my immediate worries at ease. With that conclusion in mind, I caught the wrench one last time and raised it to my eye level.

"General? Was this always size fourteen?"

"[Without a doubt,]" Brand answered, though he still sounded rather off balance, made worse when I let out a snicker.

"Sure it was." Saying so, I tossed the wrench back onto the workbench and stood up. "I think my mind cleared up a little. Could I interest you in a Dominance match to work out the remaining stress?"

"[I thought thou may never request,]" the old Faun answered with a smile, and reached for the spear propped up against a nearby tool cabinet. "[It has been some time since our last contest. I have long hoped to see thy improvement, Blackcloak.]"

With those words, we left the armoury, and with it, many a troubling thought behind. After all, if other me was to be believed, so long as I didn't majorly mess up the plot, everything would work out, and really, what are the chances of that?

…

Note to self: Consult Judy, and create a Plot-Non-Up-Fucking Committee. Just to be safe.