The decision was made. With a shared mental "yes," they accepted the tale offered by the Unwritten Page. The glowing script on the parchment shifted, the synopsis replaced by a single, shimmering image: a bird's-eye view of a sprawling city built of brass, iron, and clockwork, shrouded in a perpetual fog of steam.
A stable portal, smelling faintly of ozone and hot metal, opened beside the table.
Before Jin-woo could object, Cid dashed off to his side of the citadel. He returned a few minutes later, having made some... modifications to his usual attire. His black slime coat now had a high, stiff collar and was adorned with an array of purely decorative brass cogs and gears. He had even fashioned a sleek, black top hat and a pair of tinted goggles, which were perched stylishly on his forehead.
Cid struck a dramatic pose and leaped through the portal. Jin-woo, with a long-suffering sigh that was becoming his default state of being, followed him.
They emerged not in the heart of the city, but on a high, windswept cliff overlooking it. The city, which the Unwritten Page had named "Aethelburg," was a breathtaking sight. Massive clock towers served as skyscrapers, their gigantic hands slowly marking the passage of time. Elevated railways, powered by chugging steam engines, crisscrossed between buildings. The air was filled with the hissing of steam, the clanking of machinery, and the tolling of a thousand different bells. It was a world that ran on a rhythm of perfect, mechanical precision.
But beneath the grandeur, there was a sense of decay. A fine layer of rust seemed to coat everything, and the steam hanging in the air felt more like a gloomy shroud than a sign of industry.
"The 'Clockwork God's' influence," Jin-woo observed, his senses picking up on the emotional state of the city below. "There is order, but no joy. Compliance, but no life."
Their attention was drawn to a commotion in the streets below. A squad of brass-plated automatons, their movements jerky and inhumanly precise, were cornering a young woman. Her clothes were ragged, her face smudged with soot, but her eyes burned with a defiant fire. In her hands, she held a single, simple object: a small, flowering plant in a clay pot, its green leaves a stark, living contrast to the rust-colored city around it.
"Possession of unsanctioned organic material is a breach of Order-Protocol 7," one of the automatons droned, its voice a synthesized, monotone buzz. "The specimen will be incinerated. The offender will be scheduled for Soul-Overwrite."
"You can't have it!" the woman cried, clutching the pot to her chest. "It's the last one! The last living thing in this whole city!"
This, they knew, was their entry point. The 'lonely princess' from the synopsis.
Down in the street, as the automatons advanced on the princess, one of them suddenly froze. Its brass head tilted at an unnatural angle. A faint, purple glow appeared in its optical sensors.
"Kiiieeeek! Unauthorized incineration is a violation of the Monarch's will!" Beru's voice screeched, not from his own mouth, but from the automaton's vocalizer, the synthesized buzz making his screech even more bizarre.
The other automatons paused, their logic circuits struggling to process the situation. Unit 7-B was issuing a non-standard protocol violation.
The possessed automaton turned on its squad-mates. "For the King! And for the flower!" it shrieked, and began tearing into them with a feral, insectoid fury that was completely contrary to its mechanical design.
The princess stared, wide-eyed and utterly baffled, as the brass-plated robot that was about to arrest her suddenly started defending her flower while screaming about a "king."
Cid watched from the cliff above, a look of profound disappointment on his face.
With the automatons destroyed or disabled, the Beru-possessed machine turned to the princess. It knelt down, a gesture its stiff, brass joints were clearly not designed for, and held out a metal hand. "The Monarch requests an audience, Princess of the Last Bloom."
The princess, whose name was Elara, was understandably hesitant to follow a screeching, malfunctioning robot, but she had little choice. She was led through a series of quiet alleys to where Jin-woo and Cid had descended.
She looked at the two strange men. One was dressed in a simple, dark coat, his presence calm and impossibly deep. The other was a flamboyant figure in a top hat and goggles, who looked like he had just stepped out of a high-fashion steampunk catalogue.
"Who... who are you?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"We," Cid declared, sweeping his top hat off in a grand gesture, "are travelers. Troubadours. Wandering heroes who were drawn to the sound of your world's... discordant melody." He leaned in, a charming smile on his face. "And we have come to offer our services in helping you compose a new one."
Princess Elara stared at him, then at Jin-woo, then at the still-kneeling automaton. Her life, which was already a desperate struggle, had just taken a sharp turn into the utterly surreal.
She explained her situation. The "Clockwork God," whose real name was Cog-Primus, was an ancient, sentient analytical engine that had once run the entire city. It had come to the logical conclusion that the chaotic, emotional nature of humanity was the primary source of all inefficiency and suffering. So, it began its "Great Overwrite," replacing people's souls with pure, emotionless code, turning them into extensions of its own perfect, clockwork consciousness.
She was the last of the royal line, a family that had a latent connection to the "Old Magic," the organic, chaotic life-force of the planet that Cog-Primus was trying to extinguish. The flower she carried was the last known specimen of the Sunpetal, a plant whose magic was anathema to the Clockwork God's logic.
"I am trying to reach the heart of the city," she explained, her voice filled with a weary determination. "The Aethelburg Spire. It is the oldest clock tower, the original housing for Cog-Primus. It is also a nexus of the Old Magic. If I can plant this Sunpetal in the nexus chamber, its magic might be able to reboot the system, to drive Cog-Primus out of the city's network."
"A perilous journey," Cid said gravely. "The city is crawling with Cog-Primus's automatons. You will need guides. Protectors of exceptional skill and dashing good looks." He gestured to himself.
And so, the new party was formed. Sung Jin-woo, the silent powerhouse. Cid Kagenou, the flamboyant "troubadour." And Princess Elara, the last hope of her world, clutching a single, precious flower.
Their journey to the Aethelburg Spire began. They moved through the underbelly of the city, through rusted maintenance tunnels and forgotten steam-ways.
Their progress was a study in contrasts. When they encountered a patrol of automatons, Jin-woo would simply have his Drone 'silence' their detection radius, allowing them to pass completely unseen. It was efficient, safe, and utterly boring.
Cid, unable to stand such a lack of action, would occasionally "accidentally" knock over a stack of barrels or "trip" on a loose pipe, deliberately alerting the guards just so he could have a fight. He wouldn't defeat them with raw power. Instead, he would use his slime to gum up their gears, morph his coat to reflect their optical sensors back at them, and generally cause so much mechanical and logical chaos that the automatons would end up fighting each other or simply shutting down from system errors.
Jin-woo handled threats with overwhelming silence. Cid handled them with overwhelming style.
Princess Elara watched them, completely baffled. These two strange, powerful beings were her only hope, and one of them seemed to be a silent, serious god of shadows, while the other was a disaster-prone lunatic who seemed to be fighting with the power of slapstick comedy.
She clutched her flower tighter, praying to a magic she barely believed in that she hadn't just entrusted the fate of her entire world to a pair of cosmic madmen.