11. Wonderland (22)
11. Wonderland (22)
Oz laid out his plan to Rumi.
He sketched diagrams directly onto the floor, walking her through the layout of this place—its structure, the guard patrol routes—step by careful step.
The finer details took time, but the summary was simple: gather the scattered children, rescue the captured troupe leaders, and escape Wonderland.
When he'd first claimed to have a plan, Rumi hadn't expected much. By the time he finished, her expression was full of surprise. She studied the terrain map of Cadsun he had drawn on the ground, then her antennae stood straight up as she looked back at him.
"Have you been to Wonderland before?"
The Scarecrow shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Hm... a few times?"
Rumi couldn't tell whether to believe him. Plenty of acrobats claimed they had visited Wonderland. Most were drifters who had never received a single Inspira, lying to scrape together some fame. Their stories all sounded alike—patched together from Abyss Travelogue or similar sources. The plagiarism showed.
But Oz's intel was different. No one else had known these things. He grasped the broad strokes of Wonderland's social structure, its administration, its city geography. Like someone who had lived here for years.
"You should memorize all of this too, Miss Rumi. It'll make working together much easier going forward."
"Hoo, fine. Got it."
She set her questions aside for the moment. She scribbled down everything he dictated and committed it to memory, then went over it again. When a concept didn't click, she conjured illusions to sketch it out and pressed him for further explanation.
"You're not all that clever, are you, Miss Rumi? Miss Maya would memorize even the most complicated things at a glance."
Ugh.
Rumi's face twisted. Of all the people to compare her to—
"She's absurdly brilliant!"
"Your illusions are so superb I assumed you'd be similar."
"Illusions are my people's gift. The Mystery of Image is like breathing for us. Even our toddlers can do it."
"Ah, now that you mention it, those kindergarten kids made excellent ones earlier."
She glared at the Scarecrow, who was nodding along with an utterly unruffled expression. Saying it out loud had somehow made her angrier. It had turned into an excuse—as if she owed it all to the race she was born into.
She kicked halfheartedly at the diagrams he had drawn on the floor.
"Anyway. Are you absolutely certain about all this? If we get there and you say, 'Oh, it's changed since I last visited'... you're gonna get it."
"Ho-pfft—ge-get it? Puhahaha!"
Oz burst out laughing.
Rumi's face went crimson. Traveling in a form she hadn't worn in so long, her old fairy speech patterns had slipped out before she even noticed.
"Th-that was a slip! Is it really that funny?"
She put on a stern face, and the Scarecrow struggled to steady his breathing and shook his head.
"Pffhehe. F-funnier than—no. Cute?"
"Wh-what?"
The mock anger she'd been maintaining crumbled. Cute. She'd heard it often as a child, but never once since she'd begun living under a hidden identity.
Flustered, but also a little pleased.
She fought back the smile threatening to break through and tried to project the dignity of a senior troupe leader.
"Listen here. I've lived twice as long as you. My career in this industry is far longer! I'd appreciate a little respect!"
"Yep. Understood. Since I don't wanna get it."
"Hey!"
As she worked up another flare of temper, the Scarecrow smoothly changed the subject.
"That aside. Regarding your concern about the accuracy of my information—don't worry."
He had already verified what he knew. On the walk here, while pretending to chat along with the guards, he'd woven in fragments of game lore here and there and fed them back. They'd nodded along with most of it and accepted his words.
Rumi fixed him with a fierce glare as he resumed his explanation as if nothing had happened, but she didn't press further.
With the plan fully shared, they began the search in earnest for the companions who had fled the guards.
Rumi fitted him with wings. Four semi-transparent membranes, fairy-like, sprouted from his back.
This was one of Eunmak Arno's proudest spells. After losing her own wings, she had missed them so keenly that she'd poured immense effort into manifesting false ones through illusion. Mere mimicry of shape hadn't been enough—she'd needed to imbue the illusion with physical force, and to truly fly, she'd had to study the aerodynamics of how wingbeats lift a body.
The finished spell was often used to let guests experience flight.
"Wahaha, look at this, Miss Rumi! I'm flying!"
She watched Oz zip back and forth in front of her, wearing the wings she had created, and marveled. Her current perch was atop a building dozens of meters high.
Normally, this Fairy's Wings act was something she operated from the ground. But Oz had listened to her explanation and immediately asked to operate it himself.
She had smirked at the request. She'd seen his type plenty of times. Operating eighteen separate channelings in three-dimensional space was never easy—especially from a first-person perspective. Most people couldn't manage even basic movement after weeks of practice.
Yet this Scarecrow pulled it off instantly.
Admittedly, his own idea had helped. He'd asked her to link the wing channelings to an illusion of a tool—a rod fitted with several buttons. He gripped it in both hands and worked the wings through that.
Ascent, descent, hover, banking turns.
He demonstrated everything she asked for without a hitch.
The Scarecrow recalled the flight simulators he'd played in his past life. He'd piloted everything from light aircraft to helicopters to massive passenger jets. Compared to the days when he'd had to track a mouse cursor with his eye movements and combine blinks with a virtual keyboard to manage button inputs, this was overwhelmingly comfortable.
"This is amazing! With this, I'll find people in no time! Shall we go?"
She stopped him just as he was about to launch into the air.
"Hold on. There's one problem. You can't fly high with those."
"What? Why not?"
"I told you earlier—magic is difficult here. The wings are no different. A radius of about fifty meters from me... that's the limit."
The Scarecrow tilted his head.
"Then couldn't you just fly with me?"
"I already told you. My illusions in this state are limited to one person's worth."
She rose from her spot. It would be somewhat inefficient, but the only option was for her to keep walking while he searched from the sky.
Oz had a completely different idea.
"Then I'll just carry you and fly."
"What?"
Her body went rigid. His shadow fell over her.
"Here, come on."
"Hey—hey! You—you idiot! Fly by yourself—eek!"
She tried to evade his hands, but he caught her before she could take more than a few steps. His current height exceeded two meters—nearly three times her stature.
His stick-built arms pulled her against his straw-made body. An ordinary human would have felt only the Scarecrow. But she was half Spirit Body. She could feel, with perfect clarity, the soul of another touching her own.
His outward form was completely different, and his behavior was frivolous, but this was unmistakably that Wonderstein bastard's soul.
"Put me down this instant!"
Her face turned bright red as she shouted.
The Scarecrow replied with a shameless grin.
"Ha-ha, please bear with me a moment."
His body rose into the air with a deep hum. Afraid she might fall, he held her securely with his arms. Both hands had to work the wing controls—it was the only way.
A tingling sensation shot through Rumi's entire body. Since losing her wings, she had always lived wrapped in layers of illusion. Skin-to-skin contact with another person was something she hadn't experienced in a very, very long time. And her partner had shed even the shell of a physical body. This was, quite literally, soul touching soul.
"Put me down now! Or I'll dispel the illusion!"
"Then we'll both fall. We're several hundred meters up, you know."
He had risen to the top of Cadsun's Arch Gate and was scanning below with the Diagnosis Function. He could see far more people than before.
She watched him concentrate earnestly on the search. Right. We agreed to cooperate to escape. Even if I hate it, I have to endure. Nothing to be done about it.
She rested her chin on his arm, pushed out her lips in a pout, and muttered.
"You'd better find them fast. With two of us hanging on and flying, my current magic reserves won't last thirty—"
"Ah, found one! See? Get up high and you spot them right away!"
The Scarecrow let out a hearty laugh and began gliding back down toward the ground.
Already? That made her angry, too.
***
Ella fixed a hard stare on the two figures who had appeared before her. Her gaze was full of wariness.
She had been captured by Wonderland's guards and had only just managed to escape by using her wits. She'd tried to slip into the enormous tent, but the guards had gotten ahead of her and were now watching the entrance—she couldn't risk approaching. All she could do was hide among the crowd, observe from a distance, and wait for a chance to sneak inside.
She hadn't been this tense at first. Touring Wonderland while alive was something many acrobats dreamed of. Even mistaken for an intruder, she'd assumed the matter would be cleared up quickly. Abyss Travelogue described Wonderland as one of the safest regions in the Abyss for humans.
But earlier, she'd overheard people emerging from Cadsun. The intruders' sentences would be carried out soon in the central plaza.
A public execution. She'd never imagined such a thing existed even in the acrobats' paradise. She had to rescue them before that, no matter what. Yet the guards screening the routes to Cadsun's entrance only kept multiplying.
Stuck, unable to move forward or back, she was pacing in place when a man and a woman approached and introduced themselves as "travel agency staff."
"What business do you have?"
"We thought you might be interested in sightseeing around Wonderland—you're a 'living person,' aren't you?"
At the words "living person," Ella swiftly stepped back. How had they spotted her? She had hidden herself thoroughly. After her earlier capture, she'd used the binding cloth she had taken with her to cover every bit of exposed skin—her face, neck, thighs. It had been enough to keep passersby from noticing her.
Yet these two had walked straight up and asked if she needed help.
"Who are you? What do you intend to do with me?"
"We only mean to help!"
At the Scarecrow's words, Ella eyed him with suspicion but felt her interest pricked. She knew nothing about this place. She didn't even know how to reach the central plaza where the sentences were to be carried out. If someone familiar with the area was willing to assist, that would be welcome.
But could she trust them?
"I'm being pursued by the guards."
"Yes, yes. We're aware. A wanted order has been circulated inside the city as well."
The Scarecrow spoke as he recalled what he'd heard from the patrol guards earlier.
"And you'll still help me?"
"Of course. Honestly, half the city welcomes anyone who's alive."
Ella bit her lip for a moment, then spoke.
"But... I have nothing to offer as payment."
"You're acrobats, aren't you? At least, that's what you've been insisting. All we ask is that you show us your skills."
Ella found herself nodding. The guards had said something similar when she was captured—she'd even been released after promising to show them her talents. In the end, these people were Kirkeus's faithful. After reading Abyss Travelogue and seeing this place firsthand, she had a rough sense of how they thought.
"...Then you must also have a way to get through that tent entrance."
"Of course!"
Ella studied him for a moment, then let out a sigh. It felt uneasy, but with no other options, she had little choice.
"Fine. Then I'll ask for your guidance."
"Ha-ha, the contract is sealed, then. Shall we exchange names? I'm the president—call me Oz. This here is Vice President Rumi. And our customer's name, if I may ask?"
"I'm El—"
She started to give her real name, then stopped. There was no need to reveal even that much.
"El...phi. Call me Elphi."
The Scarecrow and the fairy exchanged a glance and a smile. The fairy pointed a finger at her and cried,
"Excellent, Elphi! Welcome—you are now a customer of Wonder Tour!"
The Scarecrow adjusted his straw hat and bent at the waist in a comical bow.
"Then allow us to guide you to Wonderland's exit! Miss Elphi."