Chapter 84: Chapter 84: Magnificent Obscura’s mysterious maze of many ways

Hineni wanders through the stone corridor that leads towards the forge, on his way out. It is dark and everyone is asleep. The air is cool and crisp and it carries with itself a smell of freshness that wasn’t present during the evening hours prior. The house is light-less and he stands there, staring up towards the looming, yellow eyes that watch him from above, from the shadows, with a curious gaze. There, in the darkness, no physical body is visible.

 

There are only eyes.

 

The eyes spin around in a circle, vanishing for a moment as the owl looks into all directions, her crooning voice breaking through the heavy darkness. “Who~” hoots the owl-god. “Who wanders through Obscura’s magical hallway?”

 

Hineni looks around himself at the old, dusty corridor. “’Magical’?” he asks. “It’s barely functional.”

 

By the time he looks back up, the eyes are gone. He tilts his head. He recognized that playful tone of voice he heard, while she was trying to sound mysterious. It seems that she’s interested in playing another one of her games. Not that he minds, he thinks it’s charming. But less so, when she chews through the furniture.

 

The man narrows his eyes, walking on ahead through the dark corridor, back out towards the restaurant area.

 

---

 

It is only a few moments later.

 

Hineni finds himself in the stone corridor again. Despite walking straight ahead, he just sort of… wound up at the start again, like he was just leaving the forge.

 

He looks behind himself, seeing the forge that he had walked away from a minute ago.

 

His eyes wander back up towards the rafters, where a pair of yellow eyes sit, just as before.

 

“Who~” hoots the owl-god. “Has the Hineni man come to play Ob~ scu~ ra’s magical corridor game?” she asks, turning her head to the right in a full tilt.

 

“Actually, I was thinking about going to bed,” he explains, looking around the area. “…What did you do?” he asks. “How?”

 

Is this some sort of… spatial magic? Did she move the room? Or did she move him?

 

A wing spreads itself out in the darkness. “Diligent husband Hineni has been working hard,” says Obscura. “Obscura’s beautiful talons now stretch from a far place all the way to an even further away place!”

 

“I guess the military has started equipping people with the weapons we’ve been shipping,” he says. These are ranging in the hundreds already. That must be giving her a significant boost in power.

 

— Although this means that this also counts for the other gods who are supplying the military with weapons. He’s far from the only craftsman on the job.

 

“Anyways,” he says. “Let’s go to bed. We can play your game tomorrow, okay?”

 

She clicks her beak, hissing loudly before vanishing into the night.

 

Hineni looks around the corridor, seeing nothing else and then shrugs, walking towards the restaurant.

 

---

 

The man ends up right where he started once again.

 

Hineni puts his hands on his hips, looking up towards the owl, who is sitting on the rafters.

 

She hoots, feeling his narrowed eyes landing on her. “He will play? Please?” asks the owl-god. The yellow eyes, going wide in the darkness, stare his way.

 

He rubs the bridge of his nose. “You know I have trouble with the eye thing,” he says, feeling his spirit giving in.

 

“Hineni has fallen for bewitching Obscura’s beauty,” she says. “It can not be helped! Irresistible! Magnificent! Mysterious Ob~ scu~ ra!”

 

“— Fine,” he sighs. “But we’re going to bed after this and don’t forget that it’s time to change the sheets tonight too. So we still need to do that also.”

 

“Fool!” hoots the owl-god, leaning down towards him. “While the Hineni-man was lurking in the shadows of the house-home, magnanimous Obscura already skinned the bed!”

 

“Oh. Thanks,” he says. “And I wasn’t lurking. I was working.”

 

“Work is over! Game now, yes?”

 

Hineni nods. “Okay. Let’s hear it. What’s the game?” He looks around himself. “I doubt it’s a labyrinth this time,” says Hineni, looking at the perfectly straight corridor.

 

She clicks her beak excitedly, letting out a breathing hissing noise at the same time. “The rules are simple, yes?” she says. “The Hineni-man must find his beloved in the big-big house!”

 

“What? Hide and seek?” he asks, almost let down. “I mean… sure. But that seems kind of easy. I know this place like the back of my hand.”

 

“Then we shall see, yes?” she asks. “How the Hineni-husband-man will fare with backwards hands!” she hoots, vanishing into the darkness.

 

Hineni blinks, looking down at his hands, which are still perfectly normal.

 

— That must have just been another one of her weird ways of saying something.

 

Oh well. He shrugs, walking down the corridor. It can’t be that hard to find her. Knowing her, she’s probably upstairs in their room. Or if she’s feeling really clever today, she’ll be in the library, inside the shelf, behind the ‘O’ books.

 

Hineni yawns.

 

---

 

The house is upside down.

 

Hineni has finally reached the end of the stone corridor, after his third try and now finds himself in the restaurant.

 

The only problem is that he’s on the ceiling.

 

The hanging lanterns are disrupting the floor before himself and all of the tables are up above his head. Thankfully, nothing seems to be falling down.

 

“How the hell…” he mutters, walking around in confusion. The problem with the ceiling of the restaurant is that its a high ceiling, with rafters in the mid-way. This means he only has a narrow walking space along the rafters. If he falls, he’ll land on the ceiling of the room.

 

Grabbing one of the lanterns, that is pointing straight upward, he gives it a slight push and it wobbles, moving exactly as he would expect it to under normal circumstances with a slight swinging motion.

 

— Except it’s upside down.

 

Or is he the thing that’s upside down? He isn’t sure. Her magic must have really gotten powerful, if she’s able to influence their home so significantly.

 

His eyes wander around the room, looking at it from a perspective he certainly never has had before.

 

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“How the hell am I supposed to get around here?” he asks the room, looking at the door-frame to the kitchen, which is fairly high up. He receives no answer. But his eyes wander down the length of the room towards the front desk, which seems more reachable if he grabs hold of the poles attached to its corners. From there, he could feasibly hoist himself up onto it and then try to get into the library.

 

Maybe that will be easier to navigate? The shelves in there are fairly climbable, as far as household objects go.

 

Carefully, he balances his way along the rafters and goes through with his plan.

 

---

 

Hineni pulls open the door to the library. “Seltsam. I’m coming in,” he says, standing on the top of the door-frame.

 

A rustling comes from behind the shelves. “Huh- wha-? Ah? Oh,” She yawns and he can hear a ruffling of bedding material. “You’re up late.”

 

“Don’t mind me,” says Hineni, stepping inside. “I’m just looking for an owl. I’ll be in and out in a minute.”

 

“…Huh?” she asks, as he looks around. The problem with the library is the high roof, but the upside is that he can just walk along the bottom of the inner-balcony inside of the room. That at least makes it easy to get around. “Oh, I don’t think the owl-god is in here,” she says. “I would have heard her. I think.”

 

Hineni thinks for a moment, nodding.

 

Seltsam is hyper-aware of her surroundings. If she says the owl-god isn’t here, then he thinks he can take that statement as is.

 

“Thanks,” he says, walking around the balcony to get to the door to the upstairs corridor.

 

“…Are you upside down?”

 

“Don’t worry about it, Seltsam,” says Hineni. “It was my own poor life choices that brought me here.”

 

“…Huh…”

 

Hineni grabs the rim of the inner balcony, pulling himself up around it. This part is going to be a bit tricky, because he has to get to the door to the upstairs corridor, which is opposite of him now. He might be able to swing himself around and ‘fall’ through. But he won’t be able to do that while it’s still closed and opening it while falling is out of the question. “Can you open this door for me?”

 

“- uh… I mean- I- uh, I’m in my pajamas,” she replies.

 

“So?” asks Hineni, looking back towards the shelves.

 

“Wait. Let me get changed,” she says.

 

He rolls his eyes. “First of all, I’m already engaged,” says Hineni, lifting an eyebrow. “Second of all, I’d get petrified if I tried to look and thirdly…” He’s quiet for a moment.

 

“- Thirdly?” she asks.

 

“I don’t have a third point,” says Hineni. “Wait. No. Work hours are over, so wear whatever you want.” He nods, satisfied that he found a third argument. “I’m closing my eyes. Just tell me when it’s open and I can look.”

 

“Hold on,” she says and he can hear an awkward shuffling. A moment later, he can feel a tentative presence moving past him, awkwardly shuffling along like a wary fox, sniffing out if it is safe to leave its cover. She walks up over the balcony above him and then he hears the door opening up and her shuffling away again. “Okay. It’s open. You can look,” she says a moment later, back down below the shelves.

 

“Thanks,” says Hineni, grabbing the edge of the balcony and then dangling down. Swinging his legs, he gathers some momentum and then throws himself forward, latching onto the door frame and pulling himself in. “Good night.”

 

“G- good night!” she replies as he shuts the door and looks around himself.

 

Hineni hopes that Obscura isn’t hiding in the ice-cellar. That would be a real problem at this point… The talon-dagger taps against his leg as he moves. He doubts it though. She and Eilig don't really get along.

 

He sighs, trying to finagle his way down along the ceiling of the hallway, towards the nearby bedroom door.

 

Awkwardly jumping to reach the handle, he grabs it and swings it open, before climbing inside of their upside down bedroom.

 

Well, no, apparently he himself is upside down. The house seems to be normal.

 

— It doesn’t look like she’s here though.

 

---

 

Hineni makes his way down the hallway to the attic. He assumes she’s not going to be in one of the rented rooms. That feels like it's ‘out of bounds’.

 

Opening the door just as awkwardly, he steps inside and ‘falls’ towards the ceiling, hoping that it will support his weight and he won’t fly off through it.

 

He looks around the attic. She isn’t here.

 

He turns his head to look at the last door remaining, the one to the small bedroom.

 

Finding a way to go towards it, he grabs the door that likes to get stuck and pulls it open, looking inside.

 

— She isn’t here.

 

Damn it.

 

Hineni sighs, rubbing his face.

 

What if she really is in the ice-cellar? He’s going to have to go all the way back down and then…

 

He stops mid-thought, realizing where she is.

 

Hineni turns his tired head around, realizing that he has to go all the way back again to where he started.

 

---

 

Hineni finds himself in the stone corridor, leading towards the forge.

 

He plants his arms on his hips, looking at the owl who sits before himself, in the exact same spot she was at before she flipped him around, up on the rafters in the corridor. She never left. She was hiding here the whole time.

 

“Who~!” she hoots, spinning her head around. “He has found her!”

 

“Very cute,” says Hineni, bending down and picking the owl up. “You knew I’d run through the entire house, didn’t you?”

 

She nibbles on his finger as he looks around, trying to figure how he’s going to get back upright. “His darling Obscura waited here patiently. But she did enjoy the tease.”

 

“I bet. Come on, let’s go to bed,” says Hineni, walking off along the ceiling, carrying the owl with him beneath his arm as he goes.

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