"Oh I an that if you’re moving faster you experience less ti than everything outside of what’s moving at your sa speed, but your mavenry seems to be having the opposite effect, forcing your body to move faster than - or maybe it’s proportional to - your speed increase..."
"You said-"
"Aha! I just rembered. It’s called ti dilation! Which ans the opposite effect is compression..."
"What about-"
"Sorry girly, you got her going," Darlae shrugged apologetically at Rena.
"... and the fact that you’re experiencing both must an... hmm... how much mana does it take?"
"A lot but-"
"So mana is part of the exchange, and you move faster which ans the world outside you gets slower, but then you experience ti faster as part of it, which ans that the compression of ti for you occurs as a backlash? Or no... maybe it’s a trade... or wait, an effect caused by resistance to the dilation! Since ti itself is not an object the transference must be through motion... but no there shouldn’t be a reason you don’t fly apart unless... no wait! Everything is always moving!"
"Is she always like this?" Amarena asked. At this point, the three of them were standing in a brown patch that had been a lted snowdrift. How the woman was keeping control of her spells while tittering on was beyond Rena, but at least she could still have a conversation with Darlae. "She goes from thing to thing like... soone I know."
"Believe it or not, she learned most of this stuff from our son." Darlae chuckled. "I never had a head for it, but our boy read every book in the house by the ti he was thirteen. The things he ca up with - I tell ya - made us proud he’s in the Academy."
"Your son who might evolve..." Amarena said, her suspicions reaching a peak.
"Might. He’s half demon and half... sothing else," Darlae shrugged. "But he’s smart enough that I think he’ll do well no matter if he does or doesn’t."
"Half demon and half sothing else..." That’s exactly how Kir describes himself. "Perhaps... half angelic?"
Darlae blinked twice and stared at her. "Why would you-"
"Your son’s na is Kir. He has a succubus familiar and a tendency to talk like her-" she pointed at Brigit, whose theorizing had ground to a halt as soon as Rena had said the word "angelic."
"How do you know our son?" Darlae asked, her face sowhere between joy and concern.
"We were... companions on the road for a ti... When I was stranded in the far south."
"Where?"
"I recall a village called Darlbridge, where your son slaughtered a contingent of slavers, after we slew a squad of angels."
"Angels?!" "Slavers?!" Darlae and Brigit gasped at the sa ti.
"What do you an slaughtered?" Darlae raised her voice, her hand instinctively dropping to her weapon.
"Dar..." Brigit placed a hand on her wife’s elbow, before turning to Amarena. "It sounds like a long story. Before we move on, please... would you tell us what happened?"
Kir’s mothers... it felt like too much of a coincidence that Amarena would encounter them... Sothing about the whole situation reeked of fate... or perhaps design. Still, she might as well see what she could get out of it... if these won were as smart as Kir, they might be smart enough to help her.
"Once we make camp, yes. I will tell you if you help evolve, and teach how to use my mavenry without harm."
Without hesitation, both won replied, ""Deal.""
*
As another hour passed, the revelation had the effect of dampening conversation. For her part, Rena was trying to co up with what to say, and she suspected the questions that the Gale wives had were only snowballing.
That they hadn’t balked despite her admission that she and Kir had slain angels was a good sign. It ant they were most likely neutral towards Heaven instead of blind believers. Amarena still didn’t show her back to them, though.
Finally, they ca to a rise that had enough of a small cliff to see bedrock in greenish-purple strata.
"This looks like a good spot," Brigit said.
"It’ll keep us out of the wind, but what if soone attacks?" Rena grumbled, looking at the top of the cliff, which was about three asures up from the ground.
"Never fear, I’ve got this," Brigit said, cracking her knuckles. "Let’s back up a little."
"You just want to show off, don’t you?" Darlae smirked.
Thirty paces away from the rocky jut, Rena felt when the bubble of warmth ca down as Brigit started to mutter a chant to herself.
Between her hands a small ball of white light began to form...
I know that spell. Not the words, but the visual effect of the confined energy, powerful and yet barely possessed of any mana except for what contained it...
"... Nova Blast!"
An incandescent burst slamd into the strata, shrinking down on itself as it left only lted slag in its wake. The tunnel it bored into the stone went on for many asures before off in the distance a large explosion sent snow and frosted soil careening down in clumps.
As the mild surprise wore off of Amarena’s face, Brigit dusted off her hands. "Not my best work, but it beats digging."
"Is it safe though?" Darlae asked.
"I kept up the containnt for as long as I could... As long as we stay away from the explosion side, I think so," Brigit shrugged. "I’ll put up so plants. Besides, we’ll only be here for a day or two."
Putting up plants turned out to be a literal thing, as Darlae scraped up enough frozen soil for Brigit to spread a few small seeds onto the patch. A long, ditative silence later, and the plants were grown, covering the still-warm hole and hopefully preventing whatever harm the spell she’d used might cause.
Amarena didn’t recognize the plants at all, but one seed to have edible grains, and she reached out to prod at it.
"Don’t eat anything off of those," Brigit warned. "They’re mostly there to absorb any bad radiation."
"What’s ray-dee-ay-shun?" The concept sounded familiar. Perhaps one of the many things Kir had talked about during their journey.
"It’s like... heat. But bad for you. The easiest way I have to describe it is that the parts of matter that spell uses tend to dislodge other parts of matter and those parts don’t play nice with bodies if you’re exposed too long. Oh, but most of it should be gone in a day or so."
"So instead of staying in this death-hole you want to, what? Walk around for a day until it’s no longer a death-hole?" Amarena half-joked.
"It’s not a death hole!" Brigit said defensively. "We’ll be safe. Darlae and I have done this before."
"One ti."
"Darlae and I have done this before!" Brigit repeated. "Just don’t wander near the blast crater."
"What happens if I do?" Rena asked.
"Ever seen a stead fish? Like when it’s so cooked the skin falls right off?"
"I have."
"Imagine that, but it happens out of nowhere. But we should be safe here. I only used the heat to bore through the rock."
"How will we know if we’re not safe?" Rena asked.
Brigit pointed at the plants. "If those turn brown in the next couple of days, we’ll find a new spot.
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