What did he an? wondered Elise.
She had appeared at the front door to what she assud was the Gray’s new ho, but with no one waiting to greet her, she took a mont to pull out her identification forms and check. When she had looked at them the first ti, she was more concerned about her identity first of all being female, and second not having so absurd backstory. She realized now that he had likely used the first male identity and then the fancy title as a distraction to keep her from looking at the more pedestrian details.
White hair, red eyes… she read with a sigh. Dammit.
It looked like her dreams of a proper, normal school life were out the window. Not that they were ever in the window in the first place, given how {Subtle Royalty} couldn’t quite keep a lid on her aether. It was likely too late to change it too, as she had to show up in person for registration the next day. She considered trying to contact Oberon and force him to change things, but after a mont, she gave up with a sigh. It wasn’t worth it. The attention was just sothing she was going to have to live with until she managed to figure out how to hide her aether better.
Besides, at least her hair and eyes looked cool. They stood out, but she had grown a bit attached to the color combination. She would have been more annoyed if she was stuck with sothing weird like green or pink. At least white and red could be explained by albinism.
Still, she eagerly awaited the day she got the promised Skill Quest for an upgrade to {Subtle Royalty}. For now, even with the skill, her stealth abilities were in the gutter.
Wait, what about the Skill Recipes? she suddenly realized.
That thought would have to wait though, because while there was no one waiting for her, her arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed. She heard so thumping inside the house and a mont later, the door flew open, and before Elise could react, Sophie had wrapped her up in a hug. Following close behind her, Skitter the many-legged puppy was chugging along and joined them in their hug. Elise set her worries aside and returned Sophie’s hug while scratching behind Skitter’s ears.
“You’re here!” exclaid Sophie. “I thought you were gonna miss it!”
“I’d never do that,” said Elise, pulling away. “Did you get taller again?”
“Yup!” said Sophie proudly.
Elise frowned. She and Sophie had been similar in height before, but now Sophie was ever-so-slightly taller. After a mont, Elise decided to use her new {Transformation} skill to make herself slightly taller. She only went up an inch or two, but it was enough to make her taller than Sophie again, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
“Cheater!” said Sophie as Elise looked down at her smugly.
“Oh, you’re here!”
From further in the house, Elise heard Nick’s voice, and a minute later, his head poked around a corner. Bianca showed up a second later wearing an apron, and she beckoned for Elise to co inside.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said. “Co on in!”
Elise gladly walked inside with Sophie and Skitter on either side. Dinner that night was a whole roast from so kind of cow-like monster. It was a bit fancy for a ho-cooked al, but they were celebrating Sophie getting into Jelor University—not that failure was an option with Irylax backing her—so they went all out. It was good for Elise that they did, because it ant there was more than enough food to share with her.
Irylax was already seated at the table, arms crossed and tapping her finger impatiently. She glanced up at Elise as she entered, and a flash of interest crossed her face, but she quickly returned to her previous impatient expression without saying anything. Elise took a seat at the opposite end of the table with Sophie beside her, and a minute later, Nick and Bianca arrived carrying steaming platters of food.
For a few minutes, the only words were requests for salt or pepper, or comnts on how good the food was. Once everyone had finally eaten enough that they began to slow down, the conversation began in earnest.
“So, how’ve the past few months been, Snowberry?” asked Nick.
Elise blinked in surprise, then recovered imdiately. She had spent so much ti speaking Fey with Oberon that she had forgotten what her na translated to in Common. Fresh chapters posted on novelfire(.)net
“Good,” she said. “Mostly just been working. Nothing particularly interesting.”
“You evolved, right?” asked Sophie. “What did you evolve into?”
“Well…” started Elise. “The actual species is a secret, but it’s Mythic, and it lets do pretty much everything I wanted to do.”
“Woah!”
“Congratulations,” said Nick. “What are those things?”
“Well, I can maintain this form indefinitely now,” Elise explained. “And I can change finer details like height and hair color and eye color without any external items. I can also go out in public without drawing a bunch of attention. Kind of.”
“I did notice that your presence was more subdued. A stealth skill?”
“...Kind of.”
“Sophie,” said Irylax suddenly. “Use {Dragon Eyes} and look at her.”
“Okay!”
Sophie turned to Elise as her eyes turned yellow and reptilian. Elise shuddered slightly under her gaze, but sat still as Sophie’s eyes narrowed.
“Woah!”
“What do you see?” asked Irylax.
“Her aether is… weird,” said Sophie. “There’s so much of it, but it’s all squished and weird.”
“Does it look stable to you?”
“...Yes? No? I don’t know. Kind of?”
“Kind of is correct. It is stable… for now. Whatever Skill is being used to restrain it though is not powerful enough to properly contain it. I expect that once she levels up a few tis, the Skill will simply fail to activate.”
“Really?” asked Elise.
“Yes. You have too much aether for that Skill. I presu the skill is already at the cap?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re in trouble. Presence-restraining skills work by compressing the aether and wrapping it up, in a way. You have so much that the wrap is struggling to contain it, and if it grows further, the wrap may simply burst and be unable to contain it at all.”
“Oh. That’s not good.”
“Well, it would force you to stop hiding like a coward.”
A brief silence fell over the table before Nick spoke.
“Exactly how much Aether do you have?” he asked. “It feels normal to .”
“You wouldn’t be able to tell with just {Aether Sense},” said Irylax. “Her Skill is designed to trick that Skill. But if you can see the Aether, it becos obvious. Rabbit, release your aether. Let him understand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do I look like soone who isn’t sure?”
“N-no, ma’am.”
Elise slowly released {Subtle Royalty}, letting her aether flood outward. As the Skill let up, Nick’s eyes widened more and more until they seed to be trying to pop out of his skull. Elise originally intended to reactivate the Skill imdiately, but as her Aether flowed out, she noticed that there was sothing strange about it. It spread out all around her like usual, but when it hit the walls of the room, it suddenly stopped, unable to go any further.
“What is it?” asked Bianca, looking at her fiance.
“It’s…” started Nick, trailing off. “It’s more than the fey king.”
“It’s not,” corrected Irylax. “He keeps his well under control, and has among the most aether in the world. You only felt what he let you feel. But still, she’s also not too far off. Another evolution or two and she will be at that level. Rabbit, when will your rune evolve?”
It took Elise a mont to understand what she was asking, but she managed to connect it back to the conversation a couple months ago with Maggie. It surprised her that Irylax knew about that. It was probably Elise’s own fault at being surprised though. She had tended to avoid the dragon out of fear and discomfort.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, is it close?”
“I thought it only happened at evolutions?”
“It can happen at any ti. And once it happens, it will help to rein in your aether. It is currently wild and uncontrolled.”
“How do I know if it’s close?”
“Do you not have any soul ditation skills?”
“No?”
“You didn’t get one with your most recent evolution? I thought the Rune granted that at tier 5.”
“...I only got {Aether Sense}.”
“Hmph. Stingy gods. Co to my room later tonight. I will teach you. I can’t have you spending ti around my apprentice like that.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Elise was a bit nervous, but she wasn’t about to turn down a free lesson from a powerful dragon.
After that, the conversation returned to more normal things. Elise told so brief stories about her escapades, while Sophie talked about her preparations for school. She would be attending the University with Elise, but only for a few classes. Most of the ti, she would be at the Academy with kids her age. It was a compromise that Irylax and Nick had co to after a lot of debate, and while neither side was happy, both were satisfied. Sophie would get to make friends her age at the Academy, and she would also have access to the best of the best at the University. It would be a higher workload on her, but that was actually a boon in the eyes of Irylax, because of course her apprentice could handle the increased workload.
Because of that though, she had double the preparation work to do. The Academy started two weeks before the University, so she had already gone through class registration and orientation, and was now enjoying her last week of relative freedom before she began spending all her days in school.
anwhile, Nick and Bianca were preparing for their wedding. It was going to be a relatively grand spectacle, much to Nick’s chagrin. However, as he was a minor hero after what happened at the Blood Syndicate, the knight order wouldn’t let it go quietly, and Bianca’s family was eager to provide additional funds to help the ceremony along. It would still be a little while before it happened though, so they had until the winter to prepare.
Aside from that, nothing much was happening. Bianca was technically unemployed, but didn’t really mind, as she wanted so more ti to relax, and enjoyed the ho life. Nick was back to his normal knightly duties, which was mostly patrols and training. There were rumors that he was going to be promoted to so kind of liaison between the knights and Ostra mbers, but nothing had co of it yet.
Irylax was leeching off the Grays for the present. She had managed to visit her old lair, but chose to stay in Jelor instead. She said she planned on going to remodel her lair “soon” but “soon” ant sothing very different in dragon ti than human ti. It was more important to her that Sophie got properly settled in at school than that her lair got updated.
After the al, Elise got a house tour. The house was fairly ordinary on the surface. It was large and comfortable, but nothing that Elise wouldn’t expect from an upper middle class family. However, under the surface, there were quite a bit of unusual features. In additions to the enchantnts running through the walls to contain aether, there was also a very impressive assortnt of defensive enchantnts set up by Irylax herself that protected the entire property.
The most interesting part was the basent. It reminded Elise a lot of the orphanage basent. Most of it was taken up by empty shelves for storage and a few other miscellaneous things, but there was also a hidden door that led deep underground, apparently to another tunnel that would take Elise to Ostra’s headquarters. Of course, this was a security risk, so Irylax had enchanted the hell out of that entrance, and it was a sowhat involved process to get Elise keyed in so that the defensive enchantnts wouldn’t trigger when she entered.
With the house successfully toured, they then went to the sitting room, where everyone unwound and most of them read books. Elise found an interesting nonfiction book about an ancient order of knights while Sophie read sothing that looked like this world’s version of YA romance, and Irylax had a very serious expression as she read a book titled ‘The Savage Duke.’
Around 9 in the evening, the dragon suddenly slamd her book closed and walked out of the room.
“Rabbit!” she said as she left.
Elise hastened to close her book and follow Irylax upstairs to her bedroom. Despite technically being a guest, Irylax of course claid the master bedroom. It seed that Oberon had foreseen this and made sure the house had two master bedrooms, but Irylax’s was still bigger than Nick and Bianca’s. Irylax also had a throne-like armchair that she sat down in like an empress.
“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the ground. “I don’t have all night.”
Near the top of the highest tower in the cathedral of the Church of Light, a young woman sat on a windowsill looking out over the city. She was lost in thought, so much so that she didn’t even notice when soone else had entered the room.
“Saintess!”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you not in bed?”
“I’m not tired.”
“You need your rest.”
“I’ll rest when I’m tired.”
“You need to rest now.”
The saintess looked at her maid, wondering if it was worth arguing back further. After a few seconds, she sighed and stood up.
“Alright, I’m going to bed. Happy?”
“Nothing makes happier than being able to serve the Saintess.”
“Right.”
The Saintess trudged over to her bed and flopped into it before sloppily pulling her sheets up to cover her body.
“I’m in bed. You can go now.”
“I’m sorry, Saintess, but I have been instructed to watch over you until you fall asleep.”
“Of course you have,” muttered the Saintess.
Reluctantly, she closed her eyes and tried to get to sleep. That didn’t work. For the first ti since she had been taken in as the Saintess, she would finally be able to move sowhat freely. She would still be surveilled, but she would at least be given a small degree of autonomy while at the University. Most importantly, she would finally be able to talk to people other than the stiff Light worshippers. They weren’t necessarily bad people, but they were suffocating to be around, and she was more than ready to finally be able to spend ti around ordinary people.
She tossed and turned in her bed, and eventually gave up on trying to sleep and opened her eyes again. The maid was still there, noiseless and motionless, but the Saintess couldn’t care less. The maid wouldn’t do anything to her other than reporting to the Bishop, and she could handle that. She needed sothing else to occupy her mind, so she pulled up her Status window. Nothing had changed, as usual, but she still found herself pulling up the description of her most mysterious skill.
[ Mark of Fate, lvl MAX: A mark granted by !@#$%^&* ]
According to the Bishop, if she devoted herself to the Goddess of Light, the truth of the mark would be revealed, but a year and a half of devotion had resulted in nothing. The Saintess suspected that might have been related to the sincerity of her devotion though. Regardless, as soon as she managed to do that, she would be officially announced as the Saintess, and once that happened, she would also have a bit more freedom. It would also be supervised freedom, but apparently, once the “divine power settled into her body” or whatever was supposed to happen, she would be more stable, and would be in less danger when going out.
If not for the prophecy that she had received recently, she wouldn’t have been allowed outside the cathedral at all. After hearing that prophecy, for the first ti ever, the Saintess had sincerely thanked Lucena, the goddess of Light. She had also made a sincere request, a request to make the prophecy less confusing. It would let her out of the cathedral, but what the heck was the “white rabbit” and why did she need to look for it?
Her mind wandered as she speculated on what it could an, and soon it wandered into speculation about her upcoming school life. As she grew drowsier, her thoughts beca more whimsical, and her mind was taken by food. She was tired of temple food, and wanted so good, simple food like what she grew up with.
I wonder if they have vegemite here.
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