noct
patreon
309. Puppets in Harmony
🕑 Added 2025-02-19 15:00:04 +0000 UTCOut of the alley the spiral staircase spilled out into, and onto the main road. Mages wandered all around them. Children ran and laughed, chased by their parents. Adults hurried about on their chores, or chatted with friends. A man and a woman walked arm-in-arm, giggling and transparently flirting. Shopkeepers peddled their wares. After the strange city above, with the nondescript puppets working on endlessly repetitive tasks, this was an extreme change of pace. For all intents and purposes, they stood in an ordinary mage city.
But… why is it underground? And what the hell are those puppets up to? Ike looked around, searching for the man who’d caught them, but he was long gone, and with him, their chance to try probing him for answers. He twisted his lips, then shook his head. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. They could figure things out on their own. Besides, asking someone would only be more suspicious.
A mage kicked off the ground and floated upward. Ike watched them go. They grabbed onto a flagpole high overhead. A tattered flag, worn to rags and worm-eaten, clung to the pole. As he watched, they stripped off the flag and replaced it with a new one, bright and fresh.
Across the road, another mage kicked a door. Old rotten boards fell away, and they slotted a fresh door in its place. Another mage pulled dusty, moth-eaten clothes from decayed mannequins at the front of their shop, and quickly replaced them with intact mannequins and fresh clothes. Ike frowned. It was almost as if they had just encountered an ancient, decayed city, and were just now, in this moment, fixing it up.
His eyes widened. No—that’s it! It wasn’t an ancient city. This was the mages’ city. The one they’d lived in all this time. It was just that these mages were all puppets. Puppets who had just awakened, according to the ants. Who knows how long the puppets had sat in cold storage, gathering dust, while their town slowly decayed?
But that still leaves questions. Like why are they waking up and becoming active now? And why are they down here, instead of populating the town on the surface? He bit his lip, wishing he had someone he could ask. The problem was, even if he stopped a passing townsperson, he wouldn’t get answers, he’d only draw unnecessary attention to himself. After all, the townsfolk knew why they were awake, and they knew why they were down here. Maybe if I could sit in on a history lesson for children, Ike thought to himself, then scoffed to himself. Putting aside how absurd the thought was, would they really teach their children the truth about their current puppet state?
Or am I the most foolish one? Wouldn’t the children already know? They’d be like Shawn. Children only in appearance, but just as ancient as every other puppet here. Why would they need to be taught history?
Then again. He looked up, where the children struggled with their first broom ride. Why would they need to get taught how to ride a broom? If they spent most of their time in cold storage… but even so, why would Brightbriar bother to create puppets that needed to learn? He could simply make them all like the puppets on the surface, who already knew everything they needed to know.
He understood the puppets acting exactly like the person they were replacing in the invasion stage, and even in a situation like Shopkeep’s, where one man’s obsession forced the puppets to continue to act in his memories of them eternally. But Brightbriar surely didn’t have a particular obsession with this random city he’d never heard of. If the man did, he was certain that the Anti-Brightbriar League—What did they call themselves? The Anti-Llewyn League? Something like that—would have heard of it, and researched everything they could about it.
Or was that why the town was underground? He considered it, but only for a split second. No chance. Brightbriar wasn’t overly concerned with the tiny group that opposed him, from what he could tell. Not to the point of defending against them, anyways, and certainly not to the extent of descending an entire city into the earth so that they could survive. If he cared that much, his home city, where he and his precious daughter lived, would have had more barriers than the singular wall with its many barely-patrolled gates. The state of Ike’s home city was not that of a city ruled by a man who feared others.
Even then… why the accelerated production with the simple puppets upstairs? Ike wondered. Unless he was trying to pretend like the city was running the whole time, and not in cold storage… but that only made sense in the early invasion stages, surely. By now, when everyone knew that Brightbriar had completely overridden the region and replaced all the people within with puppets, there was surely no need to keep up such an artifice. Ike wracked his brain, but he really couldn’t come up with anything. Whatever was happening, their best shot to figuring it out, was to lay low and watch it all play out.
He nodded to Wisp and Mag. “I think we’re gonna hang out here for a little while, see if anything happens. What do you think?”
“Makes as much sense as anything. Hey, what do you think? That alley is just about the right width for a web,” Wisp murmured, leaning to the side to get a better look.
Ike thumped her on the shoulder. “We’re laying low, not eating people.”
“Who says we can’t do both?”
“Me!” Ike replied, exasperated.
“The words of a man who isn’t an ambush predator,” Wisp muttered.
Ike squinted at her. “Are you an ambush predator?”
She grinned, baring her fangs at him. “When I want to be.”
Mag nodded. “It’s like they’re making a new nest after winter.”
“I was thinking the same exact thing,” Ike said.
“So that can only mean one thing,” Mag continued, as if he hadn’t heard Ike.
“Oh?” Ike asked, startled. Had Mag blown the whole mystery open, while he was still lost in his thoughts? Was the boy using his bird brain, for once?
Mag hopped in excitement. “A mate! They’re expecting a mate!”
Ike’s jaw dropped. He stared at Mag. For a second, the image of Lord Brightbriar building a nest, then sitting in it, chicken-style, all proud, his chest puffed, waiting for a mate to come along, flashed through his head. A second later, he shook his head. “Mag, I don’t think…”
“Oh, that’s true, that’s true. Humans do flirt like that,” Wisp agreed, nodding.
He gave Wisp a look. “Sure, because you’re the human expert.”
“I know a lot about humans. More than you do.”
“Like which parts are tastiest?” Ike guessed, before she could finish.
“Like—” Wisp narrowed her eyes at him. “Hey! Don’t steal my fun.”
Ike laughed. “And you, stop lying to the little bird. You’ll confuse him.”
“I’m not confused!” Mag insisted, crossing his arms.
“Yeah, yeah. Come on. I’m sure there’s something fun to do, somewhere in this city,” Ike said, gesturing for both of them to follow. Just because they were staking it out, didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy themselves while they were waiting.
