Ch. 2.23 | Unraveling
PoV: Zahira, Lania, Sanya
The two suns set from the sky, casting orange and pink glows across a sea of blue and puffy white. Grass waved amidst a late breeze.
Somewhere eastward between Calderae and Ranyoris, Esmat, Zahira, a random Temporal mage from the Guild, and one of Nadiyya's ravens teleported off to, touching to establish a link for the spell. The raven croaked and cawed, probably trying to point them in the right direction. It would flap its wings and caw urgently when they went off in the wrong direction, and seemed to nod in satisfaction when they continued in the right.
Some random Temporal mage was in their group because Nadiyya and anyone else could not be spared. The Temporal mage, Fajr, had a generous time bubble up around the group. Not that it was saving them much daylight or anything, because they were moving mostly by [Organic Displacements]. Ah well, maybe this would end up saving a minute or two on the occasion they walked up a hill or out of a copse of trees or the time spent casting the spell through words.
Their trio reached the top of a rolling hill. Down, an orange portal bubbled and warped. Oh, yeah, the temporal mage could probably counteract any time shenanigans from any monsters from this thing. Orange probably meant temporal magic.
As for why Nadiyya could not be spared, unlike when she had been with them for the past day, she was at the guild hall—probably biting or getting bitten by the vampire girl—um, having all her animals report to her and doing whatever fancy important intelligence things she did. Like smooching vampires.
Lucky girl, maybe Zahira wanted to smooch some vampires too.
Zahira wondered if Calinichia was single. Not that it mattered! Zahira didn't need to be monogamous, or care if Calinichia was. Zahira was never going to leave Esmat. They would have to leave her first.
Also, Calinichia was, like, at least two hundred years old, gross. Even then she looked thirty.
Hmm. Were there any hot and sparkling vampire guys?
The three of them paused in front of the portal.
“We get in, we break the node, we get out in time to get a decent night's sleep,” Zahira said. No, Zahira would not make room to have any fun with Esmat. Once she'd get back home, she was going to drop like a light.
What a day . . .
Since this was a new portal, none of them knew what the place would look like. They'd be up in unfamiliar territory, against unknown monsters, and a magic that could prove to be extremely difficult to deal with.
It shouldn't be too hard, right?
Zahira glanced around, she saw no monsters exiting from the portal and loitering around. Their Intel was extremely underwhelming. The raven had seen nothing. At least the red and blue portals had been spewing stuff. Purple and black too, of course. No one could get near the black one because of the death aura, though, so no one needed to be prepared for what lay beyond.
The group took the pause to snack or to empty the contents of their bladders behind some bushes. [Pocket Repository] was a massive convenience, because it allowed for the perfect storage of food—it was as it had been when it entered the space.
“We ready?” Zahira finally asked.
Esmat nodded.
“Yes!” Fajr, exclaimed.
The raven dove and flew into the vertical pane of orange magic. Zahira took this as the cue to enter.
Their group of three and bird left their familiar reality behind them and entered into the unknown. All in the name of buying some time.
I hope this goes smoothly and I can get enough sleep tonight.
Zahira was going to need it.
☆ ☆ ☆
The second floor of the guild hall had a balcony towards the back. Here, a dozen bird houses sat affixed to the railing or against the building's wall. There were even feeders and some pools of water for the birds.
It was here that Lania and Nadiyya sat next to each other, enjoying the evening chill during the new, cold season. They had stolen some pillows and sheets from a room and decided to get comfortable on the floor. A floor that may or may not have been covered in old bird droppings.
Ah well, sheets and pillows could be cleaned.
They had eaten dinner some time ago, Lania, Nadiyya, and the rest of the guild's inner circle. Calinichia had shown up too. Most of them had taken baths to wash up the filth from the day. So, now, Nadiyya smelled decently nice. It made Lania want to bury her face up against Nadiyya and just exist there . . . Anyway, after the dinner and baths, everyone had been given tasks to do in preparation for the end of the world.
Nadiyya was on intel duty. Her birds would come and go, and so did some cats. Lania still did not know anything about the wolves.
With their backs to the walls, the two of them touched at their sides. They took turns resting on the other's shoulder.
Apparently Nadiyya could cast a spell that made her aware of the presence of all her animals, or just the particular ones she wanted to be spatially aware of. She could get vague impressions of feelings and images from them too.
While Nadiyya did all her precious Fauna magic stuff (the guild really needed more of her), Lania was relegated to . . . whatever she wanted? In the end, “whatever she wanted” was hanging out with Nadiyya. She'd like to think she was emotional support or something. She was probably just a distraction for Nadiyya.
Magic! Lania wanted to learn magic. She was on their side, and was promised it by Aisha, after all.
Unfortunately, Lania had frozen up when asked what kind of magic she first wanted to learn. She had no idea. There were so many kinds, and they were all intriguing! There were also probably many that she did not know of. Like, if Lania wanted to learn Celestial Summoning, Sanya had the only book of it that Aisha knew of. Sanya had not given it off for copying, unlike Mai and her Fleshweaving.
Maybe a city outside of Aisha’a jurisdiction had a similar grimoire or something, not originating from the library of the academy, repurposed from an abandoned monastery. What kinds of magic were there that the monastery or Glorestra or some place did not have on record? Maybe there were dozens of other unique grimoires off in some other city in Zulfaqar territory . . .
One that Lania would want to learn for her first magic.
Not that those ones were real choices, she'd probably never see those.
Also, Lania could stand to learn her vampire traits from Calinichia.
Alas, Calinichia was off trying to round up the loose vampires and either talk some sense into them, or, like, imprison them? Maybe kill them?
Or she was off gallivanting and wasting time. Only Nadiyya knew, with her birds and other animals.
Nadiyya let out a long sigh, tension draining from her body, shoulders relaxing. She turned her head towards Lania, angled.
“You're paw-sitively fetching,” Nadiyya murmured. “And you smell nice, too. It makes me want to gobble you up, the carrion to my wolf.”
Lania flushed. “U-um, thanks? You too. I-I hope I'm not distracting you from your work.”
“‘You too?’ Does that mean-nya want a bite?” Nadiyya's toothy grin revealed her sharp canines, rivaling Lania's vampire fangs.
Heat rushed through Lania's body. She stared at Nadiyya for far too long before pulling her gaze away.
She shut her eyes and took deep breaths. A fiery tingling zipped through her.
“Are you feline okay?”
“I'm fine. I'm great. Everything is fine,” Lania paused. If her heart still beat, it would be slamming in her chest. Right, her heart didn't beat, she tried not to think about that.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Aaaarghhhhhh. She was crazy for this girl! She had been so caring to Lania and yet so strange and alien. Another weirdo, just like Lania now that she was a vampire. Lania thought she would be an outcast, a monster, but she had found a place. This Fauna mage with her strange wolf-bird-cat backlash turning her into something other than human, something more. Someone who seemed to have struggled getting socialized—she could not just have forgotten or regressed, maybe.
Lania's eyes snapped open and she glanced towards Nadiyya, whose intense gaze was still consuming Lania. Dang, girl, those eyes wanted to do things to Lania, she could tell.
Maybe . . . maybe she wanted things done to her. Lania also wanted to do things. Biting and drawing blood and—what if they went further than just a little nibbling?
One last deep breath before she lost hold of it. It was clear trying to calm down would work—her body would not let her escape this.
“You first,” Lania blurted, pale face flushed an intense red. She found herself short for breath.
Nadiyya tilted her head like a curious bird, eyes blinking. “. . . What?” After rebuffing Nadiyya's attempts and flirting for the past two days, she seemed surprised Lania had finally given in. Oh . . . It had only been two days. Weren't they moving fast?
Lanka didn't care. “Bite me.”
“You want?” Nadiyya's ears perked up.
Yes. Definitely. “Yes.” It came out breathy—and needy.
Without a second more, the wolf descended onto her prey.
☆ ☆ ☆
“Ohhhhh Sanya!” Mai sang, opening the door to Sanya's house and stepping inside.
Sanya sat at her stone table, Celestial Summoning grimoire opened, laying flat against the surface. She practiced a half dozen spells and familiarized them, allowing her to cast them with just a name. She pushed herself to tackle some of the more complex spells too, with head-dizzying mana structures with diagrams that took up entire pages, showing them off from every angle and still hurting her skull to parse.
A candle flickered at the end of the table, on a porcelain dish so the wax would not get onto the table. It illuminated the words—and, well, the diagrams—so Sanya could see in the dark. She, unfortunately, did not have any sort of dark vision.
Also on her to-do was wrangle the eldritch entity within her and see the exact limits of what she could do with it.
“How was it?” Sanya asked, glancing up. Mai was in . . . different clothes than earlier. That skirt was kind of short . . . she was also wearing a top that exposed her midriff and yet showed a bit too much boob at the same time. Uh, Sanya hoped she hadn't worn that twenty minutes ago.
So, had she changed since then?
Mai had gone to help attune a group of people to Fleshweaving, to have more magical healers for the time to come. Being able to grow limbs freshly lost would be—and was—a very desirable skill.
“Miserable,” Mai smiled. “You weren't there.”
“Aisha wants me to—”
“Is it Aisha, or is it you?”
Sanya paused, then sighed. “It’s me too, I want to get stronger—as much as I can.”
“Well!” Mai skipped up to Sanya's desk. She leaned forward, palms of her hands against the table's top. “My night just got a thousand billion times better! Because I'm here with you!”
“Y-you broke into my house,” Sanya was just playing it up for fun. It was fine. She had expected this.
Mai shrugged. “The door was unlocked.”
“That's not an invitation,” Sanya glared at Mai. Mostly because she still wanted her head facing the pages of her book, not that she was actually upset at this wonderful ball of energy, optimism, and . . . sparkles?
“It was and you know it.” Oh wow that face was cute. It almost made Sanya weak in the knees, good thing she was sitting, and, key word, “almost.”
“Oh I didn't realize I had an invitation out to all burglars,” Sanya retorted flatly. Her retort was also flat. She could have done much better. Her head wasn't in the verbal fun.
“Tsk tsk Sanya. You should have locked your door. Anyway, there aren't any in Calderae—Aisha takes good care of everyone's needs.”
“What's with the clothes?”
“Ooh, I see that topic change,” Mai grinned. “I'm right and all you said was excuses and lies—you are fine with me here.”
“Mmhmm. So, the clothes?”
“The mood struck me.”
Sanya raised an eyebrow. “I hope the mood isn't ‘really horny?’”
“Sooooo,” Mai started. She pushed back against the table and stepped around towards Sanya. “I recall you saying something about giving it a chance because it's the end of the world and everything.”
Oh. That. Sanya frowned.
Mai leaned forward and brushed her lips against Sanya’s ear. “I was hoping to cache in on that, maybe.”
Sanya shivered.
She really wasn't interested. She . . . just . . . couldn't get into the mood. It's not that Mai wasn't attractive or anything.
“I would call you a ‘good girl,’” Mai continued. “But that's not true, is it? You've been verynaughty. Opening portals . . . dooming the world . . . You'll have to make it up somehow.”
“Wow,” Sanya snorted, looking towards Mai. “You're atrocious at the whole flirting thing. Reminding a girl about the impending doom she caused and suggesting sex will make up for it is crazy work.”
“I—uh. Oh,” Mai wilted, backing off. Her face was almost as red as blood, forget being pink. “So, um. You wanna get called a ‘good girl?’”
“We're going to war tomorrow, and eldritch entities will break through any day now . . .”
“Yes! The perfect time to have some fun,” Mai winked. “Ugh, don't you get all anticipatory at the thought of being all naughty near the end of the world?”
“N-no?”
Mai sighed. “Maybe this is a lost cause.”
“You realize you might not have fun if I don't look like I'm in it at all, and miserable.”
Mai suppressed a giggle. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“What? Oh. You know what I mean, the mood.”
“I knew I should have slipped that aphrodisiac into your dinner,” Mai grumbled.
Sanya tilted her head, she bookmarked the grimoire—with an actual bookmark, not folding the page, ew—and closed the book shut. She set her staff down onto the table.
“Don't worry! I'm joking.”
“Mai . . .”
“I know. Just, you said that, and . . .”
Sanya stood up and pushed in her chair. Okay, too tall. One hand gently grabbed a hold of Mai's wrist. Sanya took a deep breath. “Maybe this will be fun,” she muttered.
She bent down and planted her lips against Mai’s.
Mai squeaked in surprise, then moaned in delight and joined in the kiss.