All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 65: Coming Clean

Chapter 65: Coming Clean

Bee was horrified. First, Tony gave Void pats like a dog, then he called it cute? He didn't seem to notice her expression, though, as he was too transfixed with Void. Tony leaned down close to examine Void more closely. He reached out like he was about to cradle an adorable kitten. Bee began backing up to give them some space. She didn't want to be any more involved in this than she absolutely had to.

Bee feared an eruption like the last time Void had seemed angry when the three adventures came. She still remembered the twister of terrified demons swirling around her master as it advanced on the humans. Being anywhere near that didn't seem like a good idea.

However, it seemed that her fears were unfounded. Void made no such display of power move. It simply reached out with its claw and batted aside the reaching hands. Tony recoiled, clutching his fingers with a sharp yelp. "Ow! that hurt!"

Bee wasn't surprised. She had been smacked in the knuckles with a ruler many times in her short life, and that would always sting. She couldn't imagine what being hit with a thin metal stick would feel like, especially wielded by someone with Void's power. Tony pointed at Void and made it as if to scold a puppy for nipping. That's not going to end well, Bee thought to herself.

In an attempt to avoid disaster, she finally stepped in. "I think it would be a good idea to avoid antagonizing it. It clearly does not want to be picked up. Also, it is way stronger than you. Let's just get back to the library, and I can finish explaining."

***

Tony had given Void a wide berth the rest of the way back. That rebuke must have hurt even more than she realized. Sitting across from her at the table and library, she could see that there were already red welts forming where Voids claw had struck.

Still, she would probably let it heal naturally. Better for him to learn the lesson of not messing with Void this way than some other way. Sighing, Bee steeled herself for the conversation ahead. "So let me explain from the beginning what happened. So the mages had some big summoning ritual planned for the day that everything went wrong. It didn't go right, obviously. This led to all the mages running away; however, the mages were running away from something. And that something is…."

Bee continued telling her story with more information than before. About hiding in a broom closet for days and hobbling around on a stick, running from lesser demons and learning basic alchemy, being attacked, and meeting Void. Though she left out a good amount of details from the last part. Tony let her talk uninterrupted, though she could tell he hadn't really gotten over the first point. The increasing looks of disbelief weren't helping her stay focused. When she started explaining the decision to enter the catacombs, he finally broke in.

"So you're telling me that this little guy just pointed you to the catacombs, and you just followed him. Why would you do that? Catacombs don't seem safe to explore, and you had just finished making the castle safe." Tony started with pretty reasonable objections. But Bee realized she forgot to tell him about the adventurers. Though that was probably for the best right now.

She had also left out the whole "swearing her soul to Void" thing for a couple reasons. But primarily because it was kind of embarrassing. Tony had never seen her master in its full battle glory. So the idea of swearing her soul to what appeared to be a cute, friendly, almost pet-like thing would seem rather ridiculous. Of course, she also didn't want to make Tony assume that she was a demon cultist or anything. She supposed she was. Well, maybe not a demon cultist, but some sort of cultist. But that was beside the point.

"Yeah, well, Void kind of makes the decisions. Void is way stronger than either of us and is the only reason I survived the lesser demons let alone everything else." Bee said. Even to her, that explanation seemed kind of weak.

"He's also the only reason that you're in the situation, to begin with. The mages ran away from him, right? That's why they left? You don't find that a little bit suspicious? He's probably dangerous." Tony was starting to get a little worked up. But Bee looked over at Void. She was concerned Tony's voice didn't even come close to being respectful. Also, she had never had to talk about Void to someone else. In her mind, she'd always referred to Void as it, but Tony seemed to think it was masculine. She looked over at Void to see if it had any complaints. It didn't really seem to be listening.

Leaving that as it was, as long as Void didn't complain, she wouldn't tell Tony what to call it. "Well, I have some theories about that. I'm pretty sure the mages didn't need to run away."

"Come on, they couldn't be that stupid. They're experts in their craft, after all! They wouldn't just run away from something harmless for no reason." Tony said. That was a good point, Bee thought. With full knowledge of the situation, the mages' decisions did seem kind of silly. She could only imagine that stuffy headmaster Harold's reaction if he knew the truth.

"One thing you probably don't know is that Void is apparently immune to demon magic. So they probably ran away more because of that than any real aggression. Don't get me wrong, though. Void is powerful enough to warrant running away from. I just don't think it has any aggression towards us."

Tony leaned back, taking her words in. He started stroking his chin, and she noticed a few wispy hairs of a beard beginning to grow there. "Okay, assume I buy that. The mages all ran away because of a misunderstanding of intent rather than power. But if this guy is as benevolent as you seem to think, why are you obeying his every command?"

"Well, I'm not. I'm just letting it make the final decisions. We talk about things…." Bee said defensively.

"And you didn't think exploring catacombs was one of those things worth talking about?" Tony asked incredulously.

Looking back at it, Bee realized that, yeah, it didn't make any sense. And she wasn't a good enough liar to come up with an alternative explanation. She might have to give a bit more detail than she really wanted to hear.

---

I started cleaning the library for the 47th time while Tony and Beatrice discussed things. It seemed like she was mostly explaining what she had been up to. I paid attention, and I had to say it was interesting to see what Beatrice thought of the events. It was quite a different perspective than I had. Looking back at some of those first interactions with the humans in the chamber, contextualized with what Beatrice was saying, things started to make a lot more sense. I probably could have figured that out earlier, but even now, it made my bristles curl with embarrassment to think about all the things I hadn't understood properly.

I still didn't like thinking about that, but I figured it was time for me to understand what was really going on. Now that I had a real understanding of the circles of white powder, my sudden appearance in them made a lot more sense. It also made a lot more sense why I was here. I still wasn't confident that my humans from back home hadn't sent me, though. Maybe they had just answered the summons from the mages here.

However, it was quite clear that I was not the intended recipient of said summons. Immediately wiping away the supposed restraints for a dangerous entity they were summoning might have caused some understandable alarm. It is sad, though, that I scared away the first humans I had met here. It would have been nice to clear things up, and I could have cleaned this castle quite well with more people in it. If anything, that would have been much more useful than keeping it for them while they were gone.

But surely, this misunderstanding wouldn't persist for long. Soon they'd come back, and we'd figure everything out. Beatrice could explain to them what was really going on, and they could come and continue using the castle for whatever they used it for, and I would just stay and clean it until my humans called me back. They might have to do some summoning of their own, but I'm sure they could manage it. They were very clever.

But judging based off of Tony's reaction, humans didn't seem quite ready to accept this explanation. That was disappointing. As I focused on cleaning the floor, I only was dedicating only 50% of my attention to the conversation. Beatrice was in the middle of explaining how we met for the second time. Even though this time it seemed a little more detailed, I already knew about this, and hearing the account from her perspective the first time led me to believe I had a fairly good understanding of the encounter. She realized that I was stronger than her and asked for guidance.

It was still a little bit weird to think of myself as stronger than humans, but I was getting used to that. Of course, I do think she had a bit of an elevated opinion of me. I was doing my best to teach her. However, before she could really finish the entire story. Tony exploded from his seat. "YOU DID WHAT?!"

This caught my attention, and I rolled closer, leaving behind a little bit of the library unfinished in this pass. However, my 46th pass had left it pretty clean anyway. It could wait until after this was explained. I was still wary of this human; I didn't want to let Beatrice near him while he was angry.

---

Bee tried to keep her story relatively innocuous, or at least as innocuous as such a tale could be. However, Tony had a knack for asking questions that ferreted more and more details out of her. Little by little, she found herself explaining even the parts of the story she had intentionally left out. She had just finished coming clean about the whole "swearing her soul to what might be a demon" thing when Tony overreacted. She supposed that was a little bit unfair of her, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. Her master was nice.

Tony stood up from his chair and started pacing back and forth, shooting looks at Void. "You realize what this means, right? It doesn't matter if he's a demon or not."

"Yeah, I realize. There's a lot more going on than I've been able to list. I have to say, with everything that I've learned, I can't regret my decision." Bee calmly explained. She still hadn't told him about the Lieutenant or the contents of the catacombs. Especially that bottom level. She figured that Tony had enough to think about for now. Plus, she wanted to get past the difficulties they were having here first. "I even got the class, Devotee. I've leveled way faster than I have any right to expect."

This brought Tony to a halt. "You have a class?"

"I told you I was level 18. Of course, I have a class."

"Yeah, I kind of figured you were exaggerating."

"That's why I broke that tree branch - to show you that I had some real levels. And remember the front door?"

"I kind of just figured you maybe had passed level one and gotten some sort of strength skill and were trying to impress me or something."

"Nope, I've picked up three skills in my class."

"As a Devotee, you must have some idea what Void stands for, then?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, I have figured out a couple of its values," Bee responded.

"Anything dangerous or interesting?" Tony asked as he slowly sat back down. Bee wasn't sure, but he seemed to be calming down. That was a bit of a relief.

She hesitated. "Well, erm, the most important thing to Void seems to be cleanliness…." After a slight pause, she added, "And a hatred of stairs."

Tony stared at her silently for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and let out a full laugh that reminded Bee of his father. Then he shot a worried glance at the small black disk that was now sitting at his feet.