Vol.4 Ch.6 – Settling In
Chapter 6: Settling In
The next week passed by in a blur. We slowly got used to living in Anna's mansion, Selene and I both writing letters to our parents to inform them of our new address, and all of us found little ways to personalize our living space.
Yume and Alisha spent a lot of time in the back garden, planting seeds of all the fruits we'd found in the dungeon and then mothering them, pumping the fields full of mana to make sure the magical trees would actually grow in this mundane soil, though Anna's mansion was located close enough to the palace and thus the Crystal Crown for the soil to not be entirely devoid of mana.
I spent a lot of time helping Anna with her potions, pills and salves, learning a lot of alchemy in the process. I would never be a proper alchemist but I did roughly double the amount of medicines I could make for myself in a pinch.
I also kept teaching Selene how to wield that sword of hers but most of all Yume was teaching us all new Qi techniques at breakneck speeds now that we all had wells of Qi inside us that should have been all but impossible for us to attain and with so much more Qi learning new techniques was far easier. It now took far longer for any of us to exhaust ourselves and so we could train techniques for much longer, which in turn made practice far faster.
Within the first three days of training I had already learned to use the flash step, though I was breathing like a bellows after only a single use of it. Yume hadn't been joking when she'd said that it was horribly inefficient compared to a normal Qi Dash, but the ability to just will myself to appear anywhere within a hundred feet had applications that far outstripped the uses of the normal Qi Dash, especially since I didn't have to worry about momentum or vertical distances.
It was quite astounding, really. I could just will myself to appear on top of a building and didn't have to worry about the roof cracking from my impact the way I would have with the normal Qi Dash. But with how exhausting the technique was it was still just a last resort when Qi Dash absolutely wouldn't do.
Alisha and Anna meanwhile learned how to do the normal Qi Dash. Qi Dash was really just a very specific application of the Qi Burst, but Alisha at least had no use for a technique that allowed her to swing a weapon at preternatural speed. When she wanted to hit hard she amplified her slaps with air magic instead, which came far more naturally to her. Anna, on the other hand, enjoyed both applications of the ability and quickly learned to incorporate them into her normal fighting style. Just a shame that she would snap her bowstring if she tried to use Qi Burst on her bow.
It wasn't like my throwing knives, where I could use a Qi Burst to speed up my throw to the point where the knives flew as fast as if they had been launched from a dwarven musket, but there was another technique Anna could use when firing her bow and as if Yume could read my mind she taught it to the princess the moment she had gotten the hang of the Qi Burst. She taught her Qi Projection, which allowed one to project the force of a blow forward or outward. Yume usually used that trick to project the cuts of her sword outward but I had used that same technique to use a mace to hit an area the size of a watermelon and to fire one ballista bolt but hit with the force of two and it was that last one that Anna had been intrigued by.
And so, a day after learning how to use Qi Projection Anna was able to use it to fire one arrow with her bow but put four holes into a target in addition to the one punched by the physical arrow, allowing her to essentially fire five arrows at once.
To an onlooker these techniques looked like magic, to the point where we had mistaken Anna's use of Qi as magic even though we'd all known what Qi techniques were, but even people without a shred of magical potential like Selene and me were able to make full use of them.
But of all the things we trained, the most important was our bodies. Not that any of us were weak. Quite the opposite, in fact. After all the mystic fruits we'd eaten our bodies were stronger than normal in all sorts of ways and it took more than a bit of getting used to. We took a few easy quests just to test out how powerful we now were and it was still hard to get a conclusive answer. We determined that even Alisha, who was far and away the weakest of our group physically, could now go toe to toe with even a moderately powerful human fighter without using either Qi or magic and I could arm wrestle even the burliest of brick outhouses at the local pubs into submission.
At no point did any of us even consider testing our powers out in the dungeon, though. Of course that place would have given us the necessary challenge but the problem was that the enemies in the dungeon gave us no frame of reference for how strong we were in the outside world. Even with all our newfound strength the beasts on the fifth floor had been able to overpower us but out here we found out that monsters of roughly the same size as the Flower Wolf we'd fought down there weren't much of a challenge anymore. We'd gone and fought a cockatrice, one of the first monsters Alisha, Selene and I had fought together as a team, and it had been laughably easy. Where before Alisha's air blades hadn't managed to cut through its tough feathers now she could have killed the beast on its own had she wanted to. And both Selene and I were able to take the beast's pecks on our shields to no ill effect. And, weirdly, we found out that the beast's paralyzing stare was a mental effect and that Yume could interfere with it if she focused on doing nothing but that.
In the end it was hard to quantify just how much stronger we had gotten but we were all certain that foes that had us slightly concerned before were now beneath our notice and only a small part of that was because we now had Anna along.
But the true reason none of us even considered training in the dungeon was that we had spent weeks down there, living like moles, and we just enjoyed being outside again, not having to worry about darting from safe spot to safe spot and fighting all the while.
Of course, the most interesting part was how we spent our time in Anna's home. Previously Alisha, Selene, Yume and I had shared a room with just one bed at the inn but now we each had a space of our own to unwind. Naturally, at least one bed remained empty each night anyway and more often than not we all ended up in a tangled pile of limbs in Anna's bedroom since she had the largest bed of us all, but it was still nice to be able to just be alone, even just for a little while.
**
But then, after a week of getting used to our new living arrangements, we were surprised by a knock on the door. Anna was in her laboratory working on making more Radiant Life Elixirs from the ingredients she'd harvested on the fifth floor, Alisha was chopping vegetables for dinner and Selene and Yume were working in the garden so I went and opened the door to find Richard standing there. His clothes were very similar to what he'd worn during the duel and I realized that this was the sort of thing he considered casual wear.
“Oh, it's you," he said when he saw me. There was no heat in his voice, just mild surprise.
“Your highness," I said in a neutral tone. I wasn't going to hold the way he'd treated Anna against him anymore since they had made up but I was still very much annoyed with how he'd treated us before so I wasn't going to be kissing his feet. “Did you want to speak to Anna?”
He bristled for a moment at the way I called his sister before he remembered that I had every right to call her by a pet name. “Y-yeah," he said. “Is she around?”
I nodded and stepped out of the way. “She's making potions," I said. “Come on in and I'll get her.”
“Thank you," he said. “Look, we got off on the wrong foot before. May I ask your name?”
I looked at him for a moment, showing him that I was considering my words carefully, before I said: “Felix Tailor, the Godsforsaken.”
His eyes widened a little at the title.
A lot of people had heard of the Godsforsaken. It was hard not to when at any time at least a dozen gods were pissed off at me and ranting to their clerics about me, about the cur who had the audacity to have slain almost a dozen Dark Lords without ever having been chosen by a god.
But at the same time few people knew what this Godsforsaken looked like. My reputation preceded me but it had been blown so out of proportion that many people didn't believe that I was him. Richard clearly thought the same because he gave me a look of extreme skepticism.
“Really? You're telling me my sister's lover is the Godsforsaken, the slayer of Dark Lords?”
“The very same," I said.
He narrowed his eyes, but then shook his head. “You know what? I believe you, considering what you all accomplished together.”
I gave him a small smile at that and then went to get Anna.
It wasn't as easy as simply knocking on her door as she could get pretty lost in her work. I rapped my knuckles against the door once, waited for five seconds in case she was going to scream any warnings, and only then did I open the door. Once I had tried to enter and had found her sitting in a foul-smelling green cloud, wearing a mask of blessed cloth so the smoke wouldn't harm her, and so I had made it a habit to knock in case she was fiddling with dangerous substances again. She'd said she was working on Radiant Life Potions but her setup let her make multiple potions at once and she was more than good enough at what she did to multitask, but when I entered her lab she truly was only making the glowing blue potions.
It really wasn't too surprising. The ingredients were incredibly hard to get and she clearly didn't want to waste even a single leaf of those plants and so making those potions required her utmost attention.
She was wearing her spectacles and had a pen tucked behind one ear as she kept staring at a bubbling vial and when it slightly shifted hues, so slightly that I wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't spent the last seven days helping her on and off, she grabbed the pen and made some notes in an open journal. Only then did she look up and notice me.
“Oh, Felix!" she exclaimed. “How long have you been there? I didn't notice you.” It was always so endearing how lost she got in her potions. Outside of her lab she was incredibly aware of her surroundings but in here she always lost track of the world around her and I loved watching her like this, totally in her element.
“Not long," I said. “Your brother Richard wants to talk to you. Can you come talk to him or do you need to keep an eye on the potion?”
Her face twisted up before she remembered that she'd made up with him and then she said: “If you stay here and make sure it doesn't boil over I can talk to him.”
“Sure," I said and went over to her workstation as she rushed to the door.
Her lab was enchanted to slightly dampen noise and so despite my now supernatural hearing I could only barely hear them speak in muffled voices, though I could hear enough to tell they weren't yelling at each other. That was a good sign I guessed.
The boiling in the flask became a little intense and so I swished my finger over the control panel of the hot plate, lowering the heat until the mixture stabilized.
After a few minutes the door opened and Anna rushed inside. She had pushed the door closed behind her but Richard had caught it before the door could actually close and so he could hear perfectly when Anna said:
“Richard sort of invited himself along for dinner. Is that alright with you all?”
I frowned at her. “Anna, it's your home.”
She looked sad all of a sudden and said quietly: “I thought it was our home now.”
Fuck. I rushed over to her and cupped her cheek, tilting her head until she looked up at me. I was painfully aware of Richard watching us but Anna was more important.
“That's not what I meant. I just mean that if you want him to stay for dinner, you don't have to ask for my permission or approval. He's your brother. I'm not going to tell you you can't.”
She looked up at me, searching my face for any trace of deception and finding none. “But are you alright with him being there, considering how he treated you?”
“We're all grown-ups here, Anna," I said. “He's your brother. I told you I'd take you any way I can get you and obviously that means accepting your family.” Then I hugged her to me, not caring what Richard might think.
“Alright," she finally mumbled into my chest.
I kissed her on the forehead and then turned her around to show her Richard standing in the doorway. She immediately blushed so hard I could see the red traveling all the way along her neck and down her cleavage.
“R-Richard," she stammered out. “I didn't notice you there.”
He had his arms crossed but he was grinning. “You two are surprisingly cute together," he commented. “So?”
Anna looked from him to me, then back at him. “Tomorrow night?" she asked hesitantly.
“Sounds great," he said.
He turned away and left without another word, leaving me to comfort Anna in peace.
It had taken me until then to realize just how careless of a remark I'd made and I hugged her to me and apologized again:
“This is all still new to me," I said quietly. “I'm sorry. It wasn't my intention to make you feel left out. I just don't want you to think you need my approval for anything. Even as part of our group you're still your own person. That's what I meant.”
“I think I get it," she said just as quietly. “It's all new to me as well so I'm sorry for reacting this way.”
I wanted to tell her not to apologize for that but I knew we'd just be getting into a back and forth if I did so I just hugged her tight.
**
Later Anna and I told the others about Richard inviting himself over for dinner. Alisha and Selene were fine with it but Yume still seemed a little sore at his comments during his and Anna's duel, though not enough to object.
Eventually Anna told us: “I don't really know if I should bring this up, but it's going to bother me if I don't. Richard will likely bring his, um," she trailed off, then said in a long, hesitant and drawn out way: “lovers.”
Alisha's eyes sparkled a little at the insinuation. “You mean he has..." the elf trailed off, waggling her eyebrows, but Anna shook her head.
“No," the princess said. “It's a little complicated. I mean, I know you all to be tolerant people but I want to tell you so there aren't any misunderstandings tomorrow.”
I frowned at that. What was she going to tell us? Was her brother gay?
“So, Richard is in an arranged marriage," Anna explained. “Not a bad thing, mind. He got incredibly lucky and ended up betrothed to his childhood sweetheart Linda. Her father is a count with huge stakes in the caravan system. Thing is, Linda has a twin named Charlie and, well, I don't know the whole story, but Richard will marry Linda and take Charlie as a mistress.”
“Twins, huh?" Alisha said with a sly smile.
I felt myself smiling as well. Good on him. But what was so bad about that that Anna had felt the need to preface it with a comment on tolerance?
But then Anna finished her explanation by saying: “They're not identical twins.”
I frowned a bit until it dawned on me. “I'm assuming Charlie is a pet name for Charles?" I asked.
Anna blushed and nodded. “Not that you would know it," she explained. “The two of them look very similar and dress the same.”
I was beginning to assemble a picture of what she was saying in my head. Oh my.
But it was Selene who asked: “So this Charlie looks and dresses like his twin sister. And Richard is dating both of them?”
“Yes," Anna said.
Selene was quiet for a long moment as she digested that, then said: “Hot.”
Anna blinked. Apparently she'd expected at least some of us to find it weird.
It sounded a little weird to me, but mostly because I wondered how that relationship had come to pass. I could imagine a noble marrying a woman to keep up appearances and have children but then taking a man as a lover, but loving a woman and then opening that relationship to her twin brother was a new one.
I decided to ask: “So, how did that happen?”
Anna blushed scarlet and then explained: “Apparently Charlie was crushing on Richard and Linda devised a plan. She dressed him up the same as her and then switched places with her brother. Richard didn't notice at first and when he did Charlie broke down and confessed his feelings for Richard, who was hesitant because he didn't want to cheat on his fiance until Linda came in and admitted it had been her idea.”
“Yeah, I'm with Selene on this," Alisha said. “Hot.”
“I can't help thinking that your brother is a bit of a hypocrite," Yume remarked. We all turned to look at her. She explained: “Wasn't he the one who tried to shame you for dressing in men's clothing?”
Anna looked away in embarrassment. “It's not the same," she said too quickly.
Yume and I gave her a look of extreme skepticism.
“Look," Anna explained, “there is a certain etiquette that must be followed at court. What I did that night of the gala dinner is one of those things that is just not done. You may have noticed that Richard was at the dinner alone, very pointedly not accompanied by either of them.”
I considered that and remembered that she wasn't wrong. In fact I had wondered why someone as handsome as Richard, whom all the unattached women (and most of the attached women for that matter) in attendance had been ogling, had been there without company.
“On top of that, Charlie doesn't just wear women's clothing. Sit him down next to his sister and I think none of you would be able to tell at a glance which one of them is a man. I, meanwhile," she paused. “Never mind.”
I narrowed my eyes and was gratified to see that everyone else was doing the same. She had been about to say that she was still recognizably a woman wearing men's clothes but had then stopped herself, remembering how often people had questioned her femininity based on her lack of bust.
But before I could say anything Selene hissed at her: “Finish the sentence.”
“I..." Anna said, then paused and looked up to see us all glaring at her. “Sorry," she muttered, then took a deep breath and finished her earlier thought: “Unlike Charlie I am well known to be a woman, so dressing as a man is seen as weird.”
I relaxed at that and saw the others do the same.
Anna added: “It also helps that few people in the usual noble circles even know that Charlie exists so he can just switch places with his sister when he wants to.”
Alisha tittered and asked: “So, how many important meetings did he attend while pretending to be his sister?”
Anna chuckled and said: “A lot of them, apparently.”
**
We spent some time deciding on what to cook and after Anna assured us that none of them were picky eaters we decided on a menu that allowed us to brag a little. We would serve a large roast of Tiphereth meat with seasonal vegetables and follow it up with a dragon berry cake, a menu full of ingredients harvested in the depths of the Crystal Crown's dungeon. Alisha had been hard at work trying to find a way to cook with the berries and found out that they were great for topping a pound cake and we were already well aware of how well the Tiphereth meat worked as a roast.
On the day of the dinner I was helping Alisha with preparing the meat and vegetables while Selene and Annabella busied themselves with cleaning up the place, though it already looked spotless to me.
Once I was reasonably sure Alisha could handle the rest I went looking for Yume, who had been conspicuously absent for most of the day. Finally I found her in the garden, tending to the mystic fruit seeds that had already sprouted into tiny little saplings, aided by liberal dousing of mana from both Yume and Alisha whenever they had some magic to spare.
Yume was busy pulling out weeds with more force than was strictly necessary and I crouched down next to her and laid a hand on hers. She looked up at me and her angry expression relaxed a little as she saw me.
“Everything alright?" I asked quietly.
“Sorry, did you need me?" she asked.
I shook my head. “No, we're good," I said. “What's wrong? Still sore because of Richard's remark?”
She sagged. “Yes," she said. “I know the reason he said all that because he was fighting with Anna, but that doesn't make it better.” She paused, then added quietly: “It hit too close to home.”
I frowned, then considered. Yume had owned nothing but the clothes on her back when she had joined up with us. Of course, by the time she'd officially joined our little group she had killed her Chosen One and thus his rather hefty coinpurse had belonged to her, but early on she had subsisted in large parts on our charity. None of us had seen it that way because Yume was a precious part of our group and if anything she had more than repaid us with her lessons on Qi, but I could see how it was a sore spot for her. She had been a fiercely independent woman before some slavers had taken her captive and then sold her to Ares, the bastard god of war of the Olympians.
I wanted to reassure her but I also couldn't just brush off her concerns. “I do think he was really just lashing out," I told her. “He seemed like a pretty alright guy yesterday.” She opened her mouth but I continued: “I know, that doesn't make it any better and I admit I'm a petty enough person to make a jab or two at him for those remarks, but I think we should at least give him a chance.”
“That's just it," she said. “He made up with Anna and they had this whole tearful reunion in that courtyard so I know we're supposed to be nice to him now, but... I can't just forgive and forget. That's not the kind of person I am, not the kind of being I am.”
“So your kind holds grudges?" I asked.
“Like you wouldn't believe," she said with a slight growl in her voice.
“Well, I can only speak for myself," I said, “but as far as I'm concerned I'm willing to give him a chance because he hasn't said or done anything truly unforgivable. Unlike Wilhelm. Unlike the bastard.” She knew exactly which bastard I meant and a low vibrating growl emanated from deep in her chest before I finished: “And unlike Ares.”
The growl was now pronounced. “Did you mean what you said before?" she asked quietly, the fury bubbling just under the surface.
I'd said before that if I ever had the opportunity I would make Ares pay for what he had done to her, for enslaving her and giving her to that Chosen One who had used her for his own pleasure. That I would make Prometheus' torture sound like a children's tale in comparison to what I would do to him.
And I had meant it. The gods couldn't die. If they died they just popped back up in their seat of power, fully formed and healthy. But that would only happen if they actually died. If they were just injured they would simply heal, just like poor Prometheus, whom Zeus had sentenced to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day while he was chained to a rock, as punishment for the crime of bringing us mortals the gifts of warmth and wisdom.
And if Zeus could use that loophole of immortality to torture one of his forebears, then that meant that if I got hold of Ares then his torture would never have to end.
“Yes," I said, a growl in my voice as well.
Yume kissed me. It wasn't a gentle kiss, either. She mashed our lips together and shoved her long, rough tongue into my mouth as her hands clawed at my tunic.
When she pulled back we were both out of breath.
“I love you," she finally told me.
I scratched behind one of her furry ears. “I love you too, my little fox.”
