AA-93

  “Do you mind if I help?” Mia asked, her gaze lingering in the ball of dough her mother was kneading before flickering up to meet Helene’s warm eyes smiling back at her.

  “Sure, honey,” Helene said warmly, shuffling a bit to the side and splitting her dough before handing half to Mia.

  Mia got to kneading, despite not having done it in years, the motions were familiar and she easily fell into the rhythm.

  “What are we making?” Mia asked, glancing over the assortment of ingredients spread over the table. “Where did you get all this stuff anyway?”

  There were even eggs, milk and other animal products Mia was pretty sure would be extremely challenging to produce with the ongoing apocalypse.

  “You’d be surprised how thankful the regular people of the city are for our help,” Helene said. “The soldiers are hard to tell apart, but we are like … local celebrities to some of them, ones that go out there and fight the horrifying monsters for them. I barely had to ask and there were a dozen grandmothers handing me baskets full of everything I could need. Also, we are making some linzer cookies.”

  That brought back memories of her and Gabe kneading tiny balls of dough, standing on chairs to reach the table while their mother worked on the rest next to them. It brought a smile to Mia’s face.

  “I hope you’re staying safe,” Mia said. “You are much less bulletproof than I am.”

  “You aren’t bulletproof, dear.”

  “My point still stands,” Mia said.

  “Fair enough.” Helene chuckled with a rueful smile. “Yes, I am staying safe. I am also … thinking of getting some extra protection.”

  “Really?” Mia asked. “Why only now? We’ve been in plenty of danger already.”

  “We were,” Helene said. “But my Skill is being difficult with me. I am a Sorceress, you know what that means, right?”

  “That you rely on spirits for most of your magic?” Mia asked, remembering the entry she’d read about the Class type in a book.

  “Yes,” Helene said, followed by a sigh. “My two Subskills are Lightning Bolt and Storm Calling. The first is just a simple mana to lightning bolt converter, but the second is what’s making my life difficult. I can use it to call on simpler elemental spirits like air ones to make me basic Air Wards, but I can’t for the life of me get a single Storm Spirit to answer my Call.”

  “Huh.” Mia took a moment to think, letting the room dip into a companionable silence as the two of them worked beside each other. “Have you tried doing it inside an actual storm … there hasn’t been one since the start of this thing, has there?”

  “No,” Helene said. “We have been blessed with clear blue skies and warm sunny days ever since that initial magical storm passed.”

  “I suppose that means you’re waiting for one?” Mia asked. “Will you try to form a bond with the spirit or something?”

  “That’s the goal,” Helene said. “If all goes well, I’ll be getting a new Subskill and a new companion for the foreseeable future. If not … well then nothing changes. Storm Calling by itself is already quite useful, if only to enhance my Lightning Bolt.”

  “That’s why they have two colours?” Mia mused and got a nod in response. Cool.

  Helene nodded, grabbing a rolling pin from the side before coating it in a generous amount of flour to keep the dough from sticking to it.

  “I think the dough is ready,” Helene said and Mia handed over her own bit of it, which Helene mixed back together with her own. “What about you? How has your meditation and catch session with Carmilla gone?”

  “Pretty good, all things considered,” Mia said with a grin tugging at her lips as she watched her mother work to flatten the dough. “I managed to get the Order aspect for my mana, so it’s much easier to handle now. The spars with Camie also went well with only a tiny hiccup.”

  “Really?” Helene mused, turning to Mia with narrowed eyes that had the younger woman stiffen up. Should she have kept that to herself? “What hiccup?”

  Well, it was a bust now. She was not going to lie to her mother about something like that, even if she would feel bad if it made Helene keep the poor vampire at arm’s length for a bit.

  “I … might have teased Camie’s vampiric prey drive a bit too much,” Mia said, taking all the blame for herself. “As it turns out, vampires really hate it when they are blasted in the face with a spell when they are only a moment away from getting their claws on their pr- target.”

  “What did she do?” Helene asked, the dough forgotten as she squinted at Mia.

  “Nothing,” Mia said quickly, holding up her hands calmingly. “She just … was a bit rougher in the last bout, that’s all. She gave me a bit of a scare, but she wrestled her instincts back under control before she did anything. She didn’t even drink my blood.”

  “Good.” Helene nodded, but she still tugged at the collar of Mia’s shirt to check her neck for wounds. That made her let out a relieved sigh. “She is a good girl and God knows I get why you fell for her so hard, but try not to poke the sleeping bear too much, okay honey? I know Carmilla loathes the new urges she got with her vampiric awakening, so do respect her boundaries, alright?”

  “Yes, Mom.” Mia bowed her head, wincing at the admonishing tone. “I got a little over excited after eating the gems. I’ll be more careful going forward.”

  “Good,” Helene said with a loving smile as she caressed Mia’s cheek with the clean back of her hand. “I’m glad you found someone who reciprocates your feelings honey. I know it’s hard, but you don’t have to rush into it. Let everything happen in due time, you’ve only met a few weeks ago. Relationships take time and you both have plenty of it. It is inevitable that you step on each other’s toes a few times with this being both of your first serious relationship, that is doubly so if you are rash and rushing into it without thinking.”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, really ready to be done with the topic. Thankfully, her mother was both insightful enough to notice and nice enough to change the topic herself.

  “You said you also managed to do that aspect changing exercise, right?” Helene asked, returning to rolling the dough out into a flat blend. “What does that actually give you?”

  “Oh!” Mia perked up, jumping on the new topic like a drowning woman thrown a lifeboat. Noticing the knowing smirk tugging at her mother’s lips, she coloured a little but forged on. “It makes all of my static conjuration spells firmer. The Shield, the Spectral Blade and even the Wards and especially the Phalanx should all be at least twice as hard to destroy. Even my silly Mage Hand is harder to shatter now, though that just means smacking it with a pillow isn’t enough to disrupt it anymore.”

  “That’s great, it’ll help protect you now that your amulet is broken, but I’m guessing it means your explosive spells are much less dangerous now?” Helene guessed, hitting the nail on the head.

  “Yeah,” Mia said with a grimace. “Its power is not even half as much, more like a third. In efficiency, it’s better to just use piercing Bolts or regular Bolts now. It also means I can’t just pump mana out of my fingers as a form of attack.”

  To show what she meant by the last point, Mia sent some mana flowing out of her fingertips. It was like a sludge, like some thick pink viscous fluid was flowing up her hand with absolutely no haste in its movement.

  It went still and started crystallising when she stopped actively pushing it to move, turning into a crystalline shell encasing her hand. Only, it quickly dissipated into glittering dust as her control over it faltered, leaving her hand bare once more.

  “Well, it’s quite pretty,” Helene noted with a smile, waving her hand through the quickly dissipating glittering mana. “And I’m guessing it’s quite hard to destroy too. You could grab a bladed weapon with it in a pinch.”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, a pout almost creeping into her tone. “I prefer melting pointy stuff coming at me though.”

  “Can you just apply the Wards with this aspect before a fight and then switch over to the other one for combat?” Helene asked, casting a scrutinising gaze over her now-flat dough. Nodding, she searched for the Linzer cookie cutters and came back up with a whole bucketful of them.

  “I … think I might be able to,” Mia said absently, eying a particularly cute cutter shaped like a bunny. “But I think it might only last for a short while. If the new mana I feed the spell to refresh its duration is chaos aspected, it’ll remove the order aspect’s buff.”

  Helene, attentive as ever, snatched up the bunny-shaped cookie cutter and handed it over to Mia before she grabbed a generic cookie cutter for herself.

  “And switching back just to reapply the spell is not in the cards?” Helene asked as they both got to cutting as many cookies out of the dough as possible.

  “I don’t think so,” Mia said absently, smiling at the thought of how the bunny cookies will look.

  The topic turned to more mundane topics after that and Mia enjoyed the nostalgic moment for all it was worth, happy to just do something together with her mother.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  *****

  Mia knocked, then hearing a vague ‘come in’ from the other side cracked the door to Carmilla’s current room open just enough to peek inside and see the woman in question sprawled out across the bed like a starfish. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” Carmilla said, raising her head to watch Mia tiptoe in and kick the door shut behind her with a plate held in her hands. “Hi?”

  “Hi yourself,” Mia responded with a smile, sitting down at the end of the bed and gathering her legs up under herself. “I made cookies … well, I helped mom make them, but anyway! Want some?”

  “Yeah,” Camie said, sitting up and lazily crawling over before taking out a cookie that looked vaguely like a bunny. Shrugging, the vampiress bit into it before saying, “It’s delicious. Homemade?”

  “Yep,” Mia said, eying the cookie in her girlfriend’s hand. “That was supposed to be a bunny … but it kinda melted for some reason.”

  “A bunny?” Carmilla asked, taking another look at it and squinting before glancing up at Mia’s somewhat disheartened look. “Yep, certainly a bunny. It’s … cute?”

  “Well, cookies should taste good rather than look good anyway.” Mia sighed, nibbling on her own cookie as she stared out the thin window. “I … I’m sorry for pushing you into something you didn’t want to do earlier. I hoped I could bribe you with cute bunny cookies to forgive me, but, well … you can see how those turned out.”

  “I love them,” Carmilla said quickly, making a show of eating the one in her hand before she scuttled closer to where Mia sat and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You are forgiven. As I said, it was me who gave in and agreed to do it. You shouldn’t blame yourself for it.”

  Carmilla rubbed Mia’s shoulder, squeezing it a little in just the same way Mia had done to her once.

  “Well, thank you,” Mia said, leaning her head on the vampire’s shoulder. “I’ll try to keep your boundaries in mind in the future … Mom gave me a talk about boundaries and not rushing things and I think she might be right. I’ve never been in a relationship before, not in one where we actually agreed that it was one anyway, and I was … rushing it.”

  “It’s fine,” Carmilla said, doing some more awkward shoulder rubbing. “It really is. I’m sorry I’m so … slow.”

  “All in due time,” Mia mumbled. “I’ll live for five centuries and I don't think old age is a particularly big problem for vampires either. We have all the time in the world.”

  They stayed in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the cookies and the warmth of the other’s body before Carmilla spoke up.

  “How did you bake these by the way?” Camie asked, waving a cookie around. “Is electricity back or what, did you get a fire mage to keep the oven warm?”

  Mia couldn’t help but giggle at the question before answering, “no, no fire mages have been harmed in the making of these cookies. The oven in this apartment runs on gas.”

  “Oh.” Carmilla smiled sheepishly, scratching her cheek which made Mia’s giggle turn into full-blown laughter. It wasn’t funny, not really, but maybe because of the relief of getting some weight off her chest, Mia couldn’t help herself.

  *****

  Mia raised a hand to knock.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, Mia?” Helene asked, more than a hint of anxiety creeping into her voice and Mia halted mid-motion before knocking on Nikki’s door.

  “I’m about … 80% sure she won’t shoot us in the back,” Mia said after a moment. “Which beats the about even odds I’d give to a stranger. So yes, I do think this is a good idea. She is a proper mage, unlike everyone else in the city and has an actual education in being one. I’m sure she’s strong. Which will come in handy.”

  They had debated about sitting back and letting others make the push towards the last rift, but getting actual combat experience against the escaped monsters could be crucial if they were the ones who’d end up delving the rift.

  Plus, it wasn’t like they had to fight without stopping until they reached the rift and then delve the rift without rest. No one would stop them from killing some wolves, then coming back to rest before going back out.

  With none of the people standing behind her having any more objections, Mia rapped her knuckles on the door and took a step back, ignoring the pair of stoic guards standing to either side of the door like they weren’t even there. A small, paranoid part of her was whispering about how close their hands were to their holstered weapons and how their eyes still tracked her.

  Mia just tugged on her temp-Bond with her Familiar rousing the cat and sending an urging to be alert to it, causing the cat on her shoulder to perk up and hiss as it looked around for trouble. Her nerves thusly calmed, Mia put the two guards entirely out of her mind.

  They in turn just stood further aside with small nods Mia took to be out of respect or something of the sort.

  “Come in,” the answer came from inside in Nikki’s voice but in broken German instead of Imperial Common.

  “Hi,” Mia said, opening the door and switching over to Common. “Do you mind if we come in? I have a quick question.”

  “Sure,” Nikki said, audibly thrilled to have the one person who understood her over. “Come inside.”

  Mia did so, finding the blue-haired woman with a slew of books spread haphazardly over her kitchen table, her hair held up in a bun and wearing only sweatpants and tank tops. Mia blinked, finding it hard to match the image of the woman dressed in fancy embroidered clothes seemingly custom made just for her with the one she was seeing before her.

  “Hi,” Nikki said, looking up and giving a little wave as the group streamed in behind Mia. “You had some more questions, or … ?”

  Her eyes lingered on the people behind Mia and she quickly turned to introduce them, “These are the friends I’m in a ‘Party’ with. Brent, Lina, Carmilla and Helene. We also have two frontliners, but they are busy beating each other up at the moment so they couldn’t come … anyway, to make this short, we were planning on going out and helping the army clean out some monsters and we were interested in whether you’d want to join us?”

  “So not actual rift delving, just killing monsters?” Nikki asked, tilting her head thoughtfully before shaking her head and rising to her feet. “No matter. I’m bored out of my mind as is and I might as well get the material I need for some artificing myself. Will those silent guards of mine outside allow it though?”

  “They should.” Mia shrugged, not too worried by that hangup being a problem. “We’ll handle it, if you want to come with us.”

  “Ask her whether she knows about the Starhaven operative likely trying to incite chaos and kill us,” Carmilla whispered, leaning over Mia’s shoulder. “However she reacts just to the question should be answer enough.”

  “Do we really need to do that?” Mia asked back in german, sending an apologetic smile to the blue-haired woman looking on curiously.

  “Yes,” Carmilla said with certainty. “It’s not a Skill, but I do have instincts for catching micro-expressions. If she knows or is involved in the secret service of her home country, I’m reasonably sure that I’ll be able to tell based on her reaction.”

  Mia nodded slowly, turning back to Nikki with an apologetic smile as she asked, “Just one question before that though, one my friend here wanted me to ask. Are you aware that Starhaven is having some secret operative trying to assassinate powerful or influential people in our city?”

  Nikki’s eyes widened for a moment, her body stilling, but that was all the reaction she gave. Glancing up, Mia saw Camie keeping her predatory gaze locked on the woman, observing, scrutinising and judging her.

  Camie nodded, her posture returning to normal as she hummed for a moment before turning to Mia. “I think she isn’t a part of whatever’s going on. I’m not certain, but I think she suspected something of the sort to be happening in the background. She’s also afraid, but not of us or for us, more for … herself? It’s weird. Though it might just be just my imagination, these instincts are vague at best.”

  “Sorry,” Mia apologised in Common. “You can ignore that question.”

  “Ah?” Nikki asked, coming back to herself even as her icy blue eyes lingered on Carmilla. Gulping, the woman shook her head a little. “For your information, I was not aware of any secret operation going on. For that matter, I am in no way in contact with Starhaven and have zero intention of being under their government’s thumb ever again. If I can help it.”

  “Seems truthful,” Camie mused under her breath, her words clearly intended only for Mia’s ears.

  “That’s good to know,” Mia said, smiling still. “Sorry again … it’s just that whoever’s choosing targets decided the two of us were easy pickings and had a go at us just a few days ago.”

  “Oh,” Nikki said smartly. “That is … monumentally idiotic. On their part of course, I mean … Hallowed Stars, did they send someone without a brain?”

  “What?” Mia asked, growing increasingly confused as Nikki buried her face in her palms as she let out a strangled sound.

  “Yes?” Nikki quickly snapped back to attention, acting like nothing had happened.

  “What was that about?” Mia asked, somewhat regretting asking as the woman winced.

  “I … am merely guessing here,” Nikki started. “But I am reasonably sure that you have the blood of Anachreon flowing through your veins. Even if you are just a half-elf with a Low purity Bloodline, the Astral Court doesn’t tend to take well to having one they consider their own targeted like this. Though I suppose they could be hoping that nothing would make it back to them, which is even more idiotic.”

  “You have lost me,” Mia said. “Somewhere around the second sentence. Why is having Anachreon’s Bloodline such a big deal? I’m sure there are thousands with it … probably many more, and why are you so sure I have it anyway?”

  “Gemlike azure eyes, pink hair and arcane magic. You might as well stamp the Astral Court’s insignia on your forehead. Also, it is a ‘big deal’ because the Astral Court considers everyone with the Bloodline of their King to be under their protection until the person does something that’d disqualify them,” Nikki said with a shrug. “Unless you’ve been murdering spirits, enacting blood rituals, skinning children for fun lately, or were engaged in some other deranged activity only an absolute lunatic would do, you are pretty much guaranteed to qualify.”

  The first bit of new information about how unique her looks apparently were had Mia regretting her choice not to take the path of illusions. If she understood it right, a simple illusion over her eyes could have turned her from fancy knock-off fae to a random half-elf with some arcane affinity.

  The protection could be useful though. However, Mia couldn’t help but feel it was too good to be true, this Astral Court with their godlike Spirit King would likely demand something of her in return. She didn’t know what, when, or how, but she just knew nobody went out of their way to protect strangers out of the goodness of their hearts.

  Some would say the governments protected their citizens, that they paid the police to keep them safe … but anyone even just mildly adept at using their brain could realise that they just wanted a content, alive citizenry to work and pay taxes.

  Maybe that was it, magical taxes. Could it be that her ancestor somehow gained power from every person who bore his Bloodline?

  Alternatively, it could be that she technically counted as a part of his family, and as such he held some political control over her fate she wasn’t even aware of?

  If this Empire was as backward as the name implied, the patriarch of the family might practically ‘own’ all of his descendants. Maybe that godlike Spirit considered all of its descendants as its own belongings, maybe toys or tools?

  “Mia?” Camie whispered, shaking her shoulder.

  “Yes?” Mia snapped out of her paranoia-driven spiral of thoughts. “Oh, right. Sorry. Where were we … ?”

  “I said I’d really like to go with you if you’ll take me?” Nikki asked, sounding somewhat awkward. Likely, it wasn’t the first time she said that sentence.

  “She wants to come with,” Mia translated. “Any last-minute objections? No? Alright!”

  Turning back to the Ice mage, Mia smiled and held out a hand, “We’d love for you to join. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you,” Nikki said, returning Mia’s handshake with a dainty shake of her own. Even with the loose bun of hair, the casual getup and the easygoing grin, Mia still felt like a peasant getting granted the honour of shaking hands with a princess.

  If nothing else, it would be interesting to have an honest to god runaway noble girl in their impromptu adventuring party.

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