Chapter 71
A long time ago, when we were still in the first half of the single-digit levels, Akane had made a pseudofamiliar in the form of a magitech corvid. Today, however, I was a Level 13 Wizard and a Level 12 Sorcerer; if I wanted to create a magical robot the size and shape of a human, then I absolutely could, and so that's what I did. Three times.
"Alright, teleporting them in..." Anzerath said, before a pulse of blue light washed out from her and over the three body doubles I'd created, disappearing them to their new destination, our sensory links to the pseudofamiliars still active.
Through the pseudofamiliar I was linked to, I cast a broad-spectrum active-scanning spell, and picked up a lot of information: most of the spellwork over the vault was of a preservative variety, keeping things cool and dry, although there were four exceptions, in the form of a series of glass tubes with metal fittings, filled with fluid and big enough to hold a person.
Two of these four tubes were more-or-less empty, the goop inside completely uniform. The other two, however, each contained... a monstergirl. One an angel, one a demon.
"...Huh," Lisa said, having noticed this as well. "I wonder, was I..?"
The glass tubes had a lot of magic on them, mostly aimed at keeping the inhabitants alive and in a state of suspended animation, and replenishing the containment slime- which was, apparently, an alchemical method of suspended animation. There was, however... a mechanism for releasing these monstergirls from the tube, that'd react automatically if there was a person detected in-
Ah, it seems that directly-piloted pseudofamiliars do in fact count, as far as tripping the release mechanism.
The slime drained out rapidly through fine grates in the bottom of the tubes, and the tubes opened, to release two absent monstergirls as well as an angel and a demon, whose eyes opened in unison.
They were a study in contrast, singular. The angel's skin was golden, with pale yellow hair, while the demon's skin was a purplish blue, with midnight blue hair. The angel had big, feathery wings, and the demon had equally big and leathery wings. The angel had a halo. The demon had horns that curled back over the crown of her head.
They were identical fucking palette swaps of each other, and there was no way in hell that was a coincidence.
(There was also the fact that they were both curvy, buxom beta exemplars, but after the time I've spent in the Red Forest alone, let alone the rest of this world, I was beginning to grow numb to the fact I was surrounded by hot chicks with huge cans. It was just a fact of life, now. I mean, it was still exciting when those huge cans were something I was actively engaging with, but their mere presence no longer got my motor running on their basis alone.)
"...Lisa?" the angel said, in Old Elvish. "Anzerath? How did you two get all the way over there?"
"Do I... know you?" Anzerath asked, through her pseudofamiliar. "I feel like I do, but..."
"I found Lisa in a dungeon, as an unawakened monstergirl, and made her my Familiar," I said. "Anzerath here was found in the same way, by a different person, but these days she's now also my familiar."
"Huh," the demon said. "I guess you two got bored of waiting for someone to come find this place, didn't you?"
"Is that... What?" Lisa asked. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I think what happened is that you two were originally in those tubes that were empty when we got here, but then, there was something that happened to take you out of those tubes and pop you into a dungeon as loot."
"...Huh," Anzerath said.
"That's what I'm thinking, too," the demon said, nodding. "Anyhow, I suppose introductions are in order. I'm Lucy Corcoran, and this is Ariel Gold."
"Oh that is obnoxious," I said. "You two really do know Lisa Fox."
"Is... is my name a pun?" Lucy asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Lucy is a possible shortening of Lucifer, the most famous name for a demon slash fallen angel in my culture," I said. "The figure it refers to is often simply known as The Devil. Meanwhile, 'Corcoran' is a perfectly ordinary family name that happens to etymologically mean 'purple' in another language."
"...Motherfucker," Lucy whispered.
"Is Ariel a pun on anything?" Ariel the Angel asked.
"Not to my knowledge?" I said. "In the language it's from, the ending -el means 'of God,' and denotes a certain amount of holiness, so angels typically had names that ended with -el, like Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel. Ariel specifically means something like 'Lion of God,' I think? But unless you are, in fact, some kind of celestial catgirl-"
"Don't," Lucy ordered, snapping around to address Ariel.
"Nya," Ariel said, having clearly had a lot of practice.
"Oh okay, so it's not just Lisa," I said.
"Hey, I am not a catgirl!" Lisa protested.
"You have a fluffy tail and fuzzy triangles for ears, and you let me call you Kitten," I said. "That sounds pretty conclusive to me."
"What year is it?" Lucy asked, trying valiantly to steer the conversation away from 'young women being terminally horny at each other.'
"Oh, that," I said. "Uhhh, honestly, that's a complicated question, because as far as I know the only even remotely standardized reckoning of years counts forward from an event that we're pretty sure you predate, but... well, that event was almost three thousand years ago, so."
"Ah," Lucy said.
"The Elven Epoch," Anzerath said, as though reciting from a book. "A long time ago, there was a nation where Dorn is today, which held a vast empire over the entire world, whose riches flowed in one direction to the coffers of the Emperor and never flowed back out. A caste of immortal elves was kept by the Emperor as bureaucrats and tax collectors. The empire did not last forever, however, and one day, it fell, catastrophically. Nearly all of the immortal elves died then and there, and the remainder have either been killed since or have successfully hidden themselves away from a world that hated them for their role in the Emperor's exploitation."
"So the Empire did fall," Ariel murmured. "I suppose our master's paranoia was justified."
"All empires fall," Lucy said. "Entropy always wins."
"So, you predate the collapse of a huge and important civilization, and therefore know a lot about it?" I asked.
"Yes, but," Ariel said. "I should clarify that we are not, in fact, well-educated scholars who know all about how the Empire functioned."
"We're a quartet of monstergirls from the Imperial Ranch who were given Awakening Stones and a few months of basic education," Lucy said. "Frankly, depending on what things are like above-ground, it's likely that Lisa and Anzerath have a better education, even if they've completely forgotten everything that happened before they became Familiars."
"...Awakening Stones?" I asked.
"Those are a rare dungeon drop, but not usually regarded as a useful one," Anzerath said. "If you give one to your Familiar, she stops being a Familiar and is independently awakened, able to take Familiars of her own. If you give one to an unawakened monstergirl, though, pretty much the same thing happens, with her personality generating as though she had been your Familiar. It's a very, very expensive way of making a new person, which usually just costs one creampie and eighteen years of childcare."
"In our day, it was mass-produced by the Imperial Forges," Ariel said. "The only reason it cost anything at all is because the Emperor pursued a policy of artificial scarcity, to ensure that money was still worth something, and could be used to control her subjects. Even so, though, it wasn't really that expensive; four of those didn't cost as much as even one of us from the Ranch."
I hummed calmly.
"So... how likely is it that the library in here is missing vital information because the Emperor didn't want it becoming known?" I asked.
"Well, as it so happened, this project was in fact done with the Emperor's blessing," Ariel said. "She contributed a set of enchanted codices that could only be read in the event of her death, reasoning that just because she couldn't rule the world didn't mean nobody should be able to rule the world."
"Alright, well... I think it's safe down here," I said. "I'm gonna shut down these pseudofamiliars and teleport down myself. Anzerath, Lisa?"
"Seems fine," Anzerath said, nodding.
I severed most of my link with my pseudofamiliar, and then, using the remainder of the link as the targeting component of a teleportation spell, I appeared in the space where my magico-mechanical doppelganger had previously stood, joined a moment later by Anzerath and Lisa's real bodies.
"Alright, well," I said, sighing. "Ariel, Lucy, welcome back to the world of the living, sorry about the mess. Let's copy these books so everyone can read 'em, yeah?"
"Sounds good to me," Lucy said, nodding.
"Can we become your Familiars too, since Anzerath and Lisa got that chance?" Ariel asked.
"...I don't have any open Familiar slots," I said. "I'm only Level 13."
"Well, we do have these," Lucy said, producing a very familiar white ball from her inventory- a Familiar Slot Unlock, like what Anzerath had given me when she joined me. "So... Your call."
"...If you two want to join a big, messy, and complicated polycule involving at least four other people you haven't met, and likely also including one elven king and, tangentially, the very sexy parents of one of our number who are nonetheless off-limits, then..." I glanced at Lisa and Anzerath.
"Do it," Lisa said. "My memory of these two is coming back, and I think they'd be a hilarious addition."
"Do you like them enough to want to sleep with them?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, but that's secondary to the comedy of errors they'll cause," Lisa said.
"...Anzerath?"
"I'm beginning to remember them, as well, and I remember liking them well enough," Anzerath said.
"...Alright, well, if you two are sure you wanna join a big and complicated polyamorous relationship, then..." I shrugged. "Welcome aboard. I'll get around to milking your prostates soon enough. Right now, though, I'm pretty focused on archaeology."
"We can wait," Lucy said.
"We've been down here three thousand years," Ariel added. "What's another day or two?"