Profundus Inferni - Part 2

Any considerations of waiting around and taking it easy were gone from John's mind in an instant, only the barest threads of his promise still ringing in his ears. He didn't even take the time to give himself a once-over before World Shift carried him away, and he didn't find the presence of mind to stow the book back in his inventory until he'd nearly reached the door of their training building.

"Can you tell me anything else?" John asked as he stomped across the wooden floors, mechanically tossing the door open. "Any traces of magic, any signs of a hostile presence, any strange markings where she was?"

"No, Father, I'm sorry. There was nothing; she was here one moment, then gone the next. We were fortunate enough that she came out to speak with us in the first place. She has largely been holing herself up in your room the last few days." There was a short pause before Sophia continued, "I believe your emotions were causing her some small amount of distress. Farrah as well; she mentioned that she'd been speaking to Aria on the matter, but neither was sure how to approach you."

John wasn't sure if the string of self-flagellating curses echoed loudly in his mind to carry across the connection. It didn't matter; he was ashamed, and he had no reason to hide that growing disdain for himself from the others. They knew just how stupid he'd been.

"I'm sorry. I didn't even realize how bad it was until- well, until it was too late," John said, saving the details of just how severe things had gotten for later. They could focus on his issues and what he'd seen after they found Aria. "It must have been even worse than I thought, if even you didn't feel like you could speak to me directly about it."

"I was confident I could speak to you. But I could tell that the words would not reach you. I never feared you, Father. I only feared for you."

The blossom of warmth in his chest might have carved a smile onto his face any other day, but not that day. John's eyes scanned around with laser-focused precision as he reached the front door of the house and barged inside unceremoniously. He took in everything, as if expecting some obvious clue, or perhaps an intruder. The others were already gathered in the lounge area just inside, most of them already seated, with Lerianna halfway down the stairs as he stormed in. The kittens were just visible, their faces poking over the railing on the second floor with a nervous hesitation.

"All of you, I want you to know, I'll spend the next three days doing nothing but apologizing and making up for lost time," John swore, trying to **** away enough of the protective anxiety inside to sound at least somewhat empathetic. "But right now, one of us is in danger. I need to know—has anyone seen any signs of her? Sigils, demonic markings, strange magic, signs that someone else was here, or anything else that could explain why she vanished, or mean she's trying to contact us?"

"Nothing," Orria confirmed, shaking her head regretfully. "Everything has been normal, aside from her disappearance."

"Alright, well then, given the timing, I think we have to hope for the best," John declared, crossing his arms and starting to pace.

"The best? What's the best case scenario here?" Lerianna asked. "She's been gone for two days. You think you've got an idea what happened?"

"Yes. But you're not going to like it. At least not the reason it happened," John said, **** seeping into his tone. "Moira told me that she didn't contact you until I was on the mend, but she didn't say just how much she told you. It was bad. Apparently, for a few minutes there, I was- well, I was dead. Clinically dead, at least. No pulse, no breathing, nothing."

There wasn't a great deal of reaction on the faces of the others. Shishun and Sophia remained as stoic as ever. Orria gave a little sympathetic frown. The Nekos clung closer to each other, soft mewls escaping their lips. Lerianna's outright grimace was the strongest reaction, and she made no comment on the matter.

"Well, you probably knew it was bad when I didn't come home for two days, whether they told you the exact details or not," John concluded. He did his best to shrug off the guilt, to focus on the task at hand. "But there it is anyway. I finally did something stupid enough to get killed. Guess it was only a matter of time. But that might point us in the right direction on how to find her."

"The timing would be one hell of a coincidence if that wasn’t it," Lerianna admitted. "You think dying broke that vow you made?"

"Exactly! I've explained the pact before, and I'm sure she's talked about it with all of you on her own time," John continued. "Without someone to tie herself to, Aria gets pulled back to Hell. There are other possibilities, but it'd be way too much of a coincidence for most of the other options I can think of. Like someone figuring out how to kidnap people from our new world at the very same time I happened to be dying."

"So Aria will be stuck in Hell until we can retrieve her?" Sophia concluded.

"I really, really hope so," John said. "But what worries me is that this world doesn't have a Hell. And I don't think the old world has one, either; at the very least, it's not confirmed anywhere in the divine books I've been reading. In which case, I have no idea where she might have gone. Or..."

"...Or if she's gone nowhere at all?" Orria posited, the implication looming over them like a great shadow.

"Yes. But I won't believe that until we've exhausted all the other options—even ****," John insisted. "For now, we assume she's just stuck in whatever passes for Hell around here. If that's the case, it's an easy fix. Well, easy-ish. If that's all it is, we just have to summon her, and re-seal the pact I made with her. Thank Gaia she taught me her summoning ritual; that's gotta be the luckiest break we've had in a while."

"We'll need materials. Tell us what is required," Sophia said immediately.

"Right. Hang on, I wrote it down somewhere, uh..." John trailed off as he angled himself toward the others, keeping his screen against the wall as he paged through his inventory until he found what he was searching for. "Got it! Let me look this over for a moment. Yvara, can you run to the lab and grab a few things for me?"

"Right away, Lord John!" Yvara swore, hastily heading for the door, only pausing for instruction when she had a hand resting on the frame. "What materials should I retrieve?"

"Well, let's see here. Mmm..." John scanned the list quickly; he hadn't read it since Aria had originally dictated it to him, and his memory of the last few days was still fuzzy. Thankfully, the list's ingredients weren't all so esoteric as he'd feared. "Some of this stuff we already have, or we can Craft pretty easily with what we have on hand. Sigil drawn in basic chalk and sprinkled with bone dust, candles crafted from wax mixed with—uh, it just says 'your favorite bodily fluid' there, actually—specifically five spritzes of floral perfume, 'blood from a willing lover', that's lovely... Yvara, see if we have any black lotus petals, nightshade, and obsidian left. I know we had at least two of those stored in the drawers in the lab, but I can't remember how much we used - or how much we converted into material for Aclysia to eat."

"At once, my Lord!" Yvara turned and zipped away in a flash, barely managing to flick the door shut with her tail as she went.

"Orria, what about your plants?" John requested, turning his gaze to the elf perched at the edge of the L-shaped couch. "If you can grow anything we've run low on, that would be a tremendous help."

"I've been working on replicating many of the plants you've brought back already. I thought you'd appreciate having a source of reagents on-hand, just in case," Orria professed, looking quite pleased with herself.

"You're an absolute life-saver," John sighed, a little flutter in his chest at her thoughtfulness.

"I've been growing them in a few places; once Yvara returns and we know what we are lacking in, I can retrieve them quite quickly." Orria nodded with a comforting little look of understanding. "Growing them from scratch might be a little more difficult, but if we have at least a sample, I can do my best."

"That would be amazing. Between you and the lab's stash, we might have most of the plants covered... the ones we've found at least once before, anyway. The rest of this we'll have to find— and none of these seem like ingredients the Order is likely to keep on hand, if these items even exist in the Abyss at all," John griped. "Abyssal sand might, if it's even the same thing as this is referring to, but we also need dreamlily and a hellfire ember. We're going to have to do some dungeon runs. I'm not even sure where to find some of this stuff; I'll have to look through my loot tables, and…"

John trailed off as the awareness settled on him. He didn't have to look up to know that the eyes focused on him had shifted their tone. With a sufficiently shamefaced expression, John lifted his eyes to meet the now obviously concerned gazes pointed back at him.

"...and I'll sit out while you all handle things in my stead," John finished after a moment, nodding with conviction. "I know I fucked up. I'm not going to rush back into things, and I trust you all to handle it. I always did, I just... I wasn't thinking straight."

There was a collective sigh of relief. Lerianna visibly unclenched, as if she'd been about to leap across the room and personally put him back in that hospital bed.

"You really had us worried, you know," the toned woman grumbled as she stood up, beginning to stretch and flex. "Personally, I voted to knock your ass out. Figured you'd have settled down by the time you woke up... or if not, at least it'd be pretty satisfying."

"Moira and Kim had a different approach... although I think they had the same idea as their backup plan." John snickered. "It won't be necessary. I learned something, I'm just glad I- well, I'm glad I made it back, in the end. Besides, we're not doing this for experience, we're just doing it to get Aria back. I'm going to set the dungeon levels as low as I can while still getting the right items, that way you can rush them as much as possible. I trust all of you to handle this."

"Nyaa, that's the Myaster I missed!" Maera yowled, leaping up and throwing her arms around John. John wasn't in the most celebratory of moods, but he gave Maera all the effort he could muster, until the white-haired Neko pulled back with a satisfied purr. "You set 'em up, we'll knyock 'em up!"

"Knock them down," John corrected, not fighting the smile as it rippled across his lips.

"I dunno. This one's already worked up enough, she might be okay with either," Lerianna snarked, turning John's smile into a ragged grin as Maera only nodded along with the comment.

"Alright. Just give me a minute; I need to figure out where to find the ingredients." It only took John a handful of minutes sorting through loot tables before he had a list of what they needed. By an act of either the divine or the demonic, most of it was relatively easy. The Hellfire Ember was a rarer, lower-quantity drop that needed at least a level 50 dungeon... but everything else was at or below the level 30 mark, dungeons that they could practically speedrun at this point.

"We'll form two groups. Sophia, Orria, Shishun, Lerianna!" John's voice boomed out in a more commanding tone than he'd meant it to, and for a moment, he worried they might think he was losing it again. But the eyes that shined back at him were eager and unflinching. If anything, his tone seemed to amp some of them up. "You four will be going after the Hellfire Ember. Orria, do you have good enough control over Barriers to target specific enemies? My abilities are showing this one dropping from anything Infernal-type, I can get you a list of names, if you want."

"Your abilities don't always match up with my own evaluations and terminology," Orria pointed out. "But make the first dungeon for us, and I'll be able to create the rest, no problem."

"Perfect," John exclaimed, nodding happily. "I'm counting on you all. I know she's new, but I trust all of you, and I know you'll do your best to help bring Aria home!"

"Yes, Father!"

"We won't disappoint!"

"At your word, Master."

"Just get on with it, already!"

"Maera, Mithra, Aclysia," John said in turn, meeting each of their gazes as he went. "Follow me; I'll handle your dungeons myself. We need quite a few lower-level ingredients, and I'll adjust the plan based on what Yvara finds in the lab."

"You got it, Myaster!" Maera said, giving a remarkably disciplined salute.

"Mithra, run off to the forest and grab Vallya while I'm getting the others started," John continued. "Meet us just north of the alchemy lab. I'll have to reshape the ground, I think, to make a perfect chalk circle, but given how she showed up last time, I really don't wanna summon her indoors. We shouldn't go too far, but if you can't find us, you can always ask Vallya to-"

"Take me instead, Papa!"

John's train of thought derailed in a gory fashion as Magnus charged down the stairs, shoving his way between the women encircling John. John's own anxiety flickered up at the sight of him - there was an uneasy uncertainty to the rest of the group, but Magnus looked more distraught than any of them.

"You don't need her! I can help you, I'm getting stronger!" Magnus pleaded. "Just forget about V- about her and let me come! I can do this!"

"I'm sure you can, Magnus," John said slowly, eyes wandering briefly to the others. Everyone looked just as confused as he did... save for Farrah. The brunette had been unnaturally quiet the whole time, leaning against the lounge's far wall with a troubled expression. As Magnus made his entrance and his plea, she shrank back into a corner, pushing herself into it as if trying to hide herself away from something.

"I'm sure you can, Magnus, but this isn't about proving yourself right now. Our friend is in danger, and-"

"I'll be in danger if you bring her here," Magnus growled, crossing his arms and huffing as he stared his father down.

"Magnus..." John heaved a sigh and fought the urge to kneel down. He wanted to empathize and console Magnus, but at the moment, every second could potentially make a difference. "She's not coming here. We'll be meeting away from the house. I can go a little further from the lab, if you want us to-"

"I want you to stop!" Magnus shouted. The words were half-demand, half-plea. He was standing up as straight as he could, body rigid and his fingers tensed around his own biceps, but his eyes were shimmering in the glow of the house's magical lighting. "I want you to stop spending time with her like... like nothing happened!"

"That's enough, big bro."

"Come on. Let's go play, nyaa."

It wasn't their mother, or even their aunt, that consoled Magnus and ushered him away. To John's surprise, Mika and Miya had slunk between the others, resting their hands on Magnus' shoulders and pulling him away with no small amount of ****. Magnus resisted at first, but his rigid form gave way reluctantly after a few heartfelt tugs. He still glared at John the whole time he was going.

John's lips hung half-open, but he couldn't think of anything to say, even to his own son. He refused to simply lie to Magnus; Vallya's strength was an asset, and he needed it from time to time, especially when others were in danger. But how could John explain that, without feeling like he was justifying something heinous?

"Nyaa, he'll be okay, Myaster." Now it was Mithra's turn to console. She nuzzled into John's side as she crawled over to him and weaved her arms around his waist. "He's getting better, I promise. This week was hard on all of us, though."

"I should've been here more," John whispered. "If I'd actually spent time with everyone, instead of training myself nearly to ****…"

"Don't." Orria rose from the couch to approach John's other side. Rather than nuzzling herself into him, she pulled the Gamer into her own embrace. He was too upset to really consider resisting, and the feeling of her body against his helped steady the slightest of shakes beginning to return. "Do not blame yourself, John. You are safe, Magnus will recover in time, and you have only ever done what you believed was right."

"I wish I could do better."

"And that is why we haven't seen you in two days," Orria said, the implication of her words far heavier than the casual tone they were spoken with. She playfully poked John on the nose and gave him a very pointed look as he blinked away the sensation. "You said you trust us. So trust us."

"Right. Uh... where was I? Vallya. Go find her, and bring her to where we'll be set up. Take Maera too. I'm not going to start any dungeons until all of you are together, anyway."

"On it. Let's go," Mithra said, giving Maera a quick, jerking nod. "We'll find her faster together." She pulled away only very reluctantly, giving John a wary look before the two of them bounded out the door.

"How may I assist you, Creator John?" Aclysia asked. She took Mithra's place at his side, and though she did not touch him directly, there was a comforting presence all the same to the protective aura she now emanated at all times.

"Well, you've got a steady hand, and I have a feeling I'm going to need that," John admitted unevenly. "Not quite sure how I feel about saying this, but..."