"Did you pack away my polish yet?"
Oryen looked up in a panic from where he sat on the bed with his head resting in his palms.
'Still in the bathroom, thank the gods.'''
"Not yet darling I was just getting to th-"
"I'm glad I reminded you then. Polish and those three pairs of heels I picked out. And the jacket in case it gets chilly," Petrina stated.
"We are staying one night for gods... Just warm yourself with mana you... ugh," he mumbled under his breath as he begrudgingly stood up and continued packing, dragging one of their three large, bright red suitcases around the room to collect the things she'd strewn about.
His earlier love, patience, and overall magnanimous attitude had been worn down by the woman of late, ever since the letter.
"And the matching jacket for yourself as well!" she yelled.
Oryen dropped the shoe he'd been holding while in a crouch and sighed. At least he'd been able to keep her to three suitcases.
"Sweetheart, we talked about this. One night. I don't need the jacket. No one needs a jacket. I can at least keep myself war-"
"It's not to keep you warm," Petrina declared, voice instantly becoming louder and more intense as she poked her head around the corner of the bathroom door. "It's about matching me. And about looking better than the godsdamn Human filth she's attached herself to."
Oryen looked up from where he was crouching and saw her angry eyes, one looking slightly darker around it than the other. She still looked just as upset now as she did the first time they'd read the letter together.
"It's almost impressive how long you can stay upset, my love," Oryen said.
Petrina squinted her eyes at him for a second. He squinted back.
"Thank you. It takes practice," she eventually said before returning to the bathroom to continue... whatever it was she was working on.
"Humans aren't all filth though dearest," Oryen called after her retreating form.
"Oh don't tell me you buy into that-"
"Most Humans have more decency and mettle on the line than any Celestial I've dealt with. I've been uniquely gifted with the opportunity to work among them, something most wouldn't have, and they show such grit and determination. Our race could learn a thing or two from them. Though, they can be a little aggressive once a battle is won, killing more than needed," Oryen explained, interrupting her inbound racism with animated speech. "I know we haven't spoken much about this since I've been back, what with catching up on family affairs and all, but one of these days I'll have to tell you a few of my stories. Sure they can be rough around the edges, but Humans aren't all b-"
Oryen stopped speaking the moment he noticed no more sound was coming from the bathroom. Yelling, arguing back, criticizing, grunting in dissatisfaction... all good sounds. Silence....
He stood up, walked over to the door, and looked inside. There was his wife with both of her hands on the sink and her wings drooping. Her pure white hair hung loosely down her back and she stood unmoving. She looked older like that. Tired.
He moved up behind her and wrapped his arms around her stomach, resting his head on top of hers as he gently squeezed her.
"I'm sorry. That was insensitive," he said as she placed her hands on top of his around her waist. "It is true though. They aren't all bad. He's just a silly boy. Give him a chance, dear."
She didn't respond for a couple minutes, staying still with him hugging her. Eventually, she removed her hands from his and picked something up off the counter. She took the strange pen-like object and began to line her eyes with it as Oryen watched on, interested.
His wife had never used to apply makeup, yet now here she was, putting it on like a professional. It was refreshing to see such a unique change in her after so many years.
"You said you didn't think a Human would be a good fit for our daughter last we spoke of this," Petrina finally said in a calm manner.
Oryen cringed a bit. He had said that to appease her mounting anger at the letter last time. And to help her believe that her daughter was not having intercourse with a Human.
"I did say that, yes."
"What has changed that you think so differently?" she asked back.
"I just think it would be wise to judge his worthiness to spend these years with our daughter based on his merit and who he is as a man rather than what he is. Could you honestly say you would rather our daughter be with an abusive husband from the families than a loving, caring, strong, and supportive Human?"
"She'd just beat the man into submission if he laid a finger on her. She's a fighter and she's strong, remember?" his wife responded, causing a slight grin to spread across Oryen's face.
"She's strong because of him, though if her letters are to be taken seriously," he countered.
She didn't respond again and he mentally chalked a win for himself. Not a very recurrent occasion, but a happy one indeed.
He let go of Petrina's waist and moved out of the bathroom back towards the bedroom to continue packing.
"It just would have been such a good opportunity to fix a few things politically," she said, a bit exasperated. "They all weren't happy when I called off the meetings entirely and explained why."
"Let them play their games, who cares," Oryen called back. "She deserves the full time until she's one hundred to be free of these nonsense rituals the families have anyway. If she has a good man to spend that time with, well then all the better," he responded.
"Why are you so sure he'll be good to her?"
"Oh please," he said, shaking his head and holding back a laugh, "We both raised that girl; I know exactly how much of your attitude and ferocity she inherited. Any man able and willing to put up with that for the years they've been together must be a good man, if a bit of a masochist."
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Because I'm willing to bet he and I have a similar taste in women, and it takes our certain type of crazy to handle your type of crazy," Oryen responded with a chuckle, dodging the black pen that came hurtling out of the bathroom towards him.
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Carien sauntered around his office, tidying up the last of his scattered papers into a pile to go over later. Always something to do in this room, whether it was handling domestic affairs or organizing the physical reports. Rarely did he have time to do the cleaning himself but every now and again, a window of opportunity arrived.
"You're going, right?"
Then again, whenever that window arrived, it was usually because he had something on his schedule he was avoiding.
The voice had come from behind him at the door. Carien lifted his head and tilted it back until it was staring at the ceiling as footsteps approached him.
"Sriel, I don't exactly have the time to-"
"Your daughter invited you. You need to take the days to go spend time with her," she interrupted, gently shoving him aside and finishing the tidying job in a much quicker and efficient manner than he was.
He had just been piling everything together into one stack and she picked it apart and organized it based on country, faction, and importance. Soon he had three piles in front of him, all organized perfectly for when he sat down next.
"She hasn't invited you before," Sriel pointed out.
"Two days though? Right now? I should be using that time to-"
"I heard the N'morans are both going. Petrina is extremely displeased. That boy was never part of her plan. She told me nothing would make her happier than to take her daughter home and be rid of him forever. It would be a great opportunity to meet him, no? Not to mention Lemshire may have some insight on handling some of the issues you're trying to resolve right now. Perhaps you could even receive some assistance from the old nutcase, you two got along swimmingly when you attended and have kept in contact ever since."
Carien sighed as small hands reached up and massaged his shoulders, causing them to unwind and droop low. He smiled.
"When is it?"
"A few days. I already have everything packed for us," she explained from behind him.
"Of course you do," he replied.
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"Is that all of it?" Emily asked as she watched Vanessa walk through the front door of their new home carrying three large boxes.
Vanessa nodded as she set them down in the corner of the living room. No longer was their home Garrett's shop as well; it was just a home for their family.
Garrett's head poked around the corner of a hallway.
"Is that the last of it then?"
"Vanessa said yep," Emily chirped.
"Ok great. I'm gonna head over to the shop then to unload my work junk. I'll see you when I get back," he stated, moving for the door with a very energetic pace.
Emily leaned forward and smacked his butt as he moved past her and leaned back against the wall, taking in their new front room and smiling. She was barefoot, something she couldn't be in their old home due to the hardwood floors. But this home had carpeting. Very comfortable carpeting, as well.
Once Garrett had left, Emily turned to look at Vanessa.
"Come onnnnn Vanessa. It doesn't make sense for you to-"
"I'm not going to live with you two, Em," she interrupted.
"But-"
"I've already agreed to move to the larger town with you, it will be a great way to expand my duties and work on more serious injuries, but moving in with you is not happening," Vanessa asserted.
"Just try it out, you might like it!" Emily suggested. "Your door even has a lock on it I swear."
"Yeah but you have the key and that's the problem," Vanessa replied with a shake of her head.
"Oh whatever you love when I-"
"Did you tell Damien and them when we'd be arriving?" Vanessa quickly interrupted.
Emily pouted. Vanessa wasn't good at lying to her and she knew it, so trying to get her to deny incriminating statements like that was a surefire way to be allowed free reign of her room. Unfortunately, the Celestial had gotten rather good at interrupting her during moments like that of late to avoid such situations. They might have been getting closer, but Vanessa still had her pride.
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'One day I'll get past that,''' Emily reafirmed, grinning as Vanessa looked at her uneasily.
Emily let her back slide against the wall behind her until she sat on the floor of the room with her knees bunched up and smiled.
"Yep! I told him you and Marci would be showing up... wait where are Marci and Jasper?" she asked.
"Probably exploring. That little nuisance always disappears randomly. You didn't tell them you and Garrett would be coming as well though?" Vanessa questioned, moving near her and leaning on the back of a couch.
"Nope! It'll be a surprise. They'll love it. We should bring balloons and embarrass them," Emily said with a mischevious grin.
"Don't do that," Vanessa replied with a sigh and forward tilt of her head. "There will be other people there too you know."
Emily just shrugged and smiled while Vanessa stared at her friend while shaking her head.
"Did you tell them about...?"
"Of course not!" Emily said, throwing her arms up in the air. "Oh gods, I wanted to though. I actually wrote two letters and let Garrett choose which to send. He burned the one where I told them. Oh but that will be the best surprise, Damien's going to love it," she ranted, continuing off into her own little world.
Vanessa smiled down at her then looked back up around the house. It was nice. Big. Just a little bigger than their other one had been, but a lot of the space that had been used for the shop was divided into other areas. A good home for them, for now.
"Well, just don't go too big for your reveal," Vanessa sighed out.
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Damien moved down the hallway of the main building during his Basic Spells class. He was looking for a better place than outside to practice his sound magic today, perhaps a vacant room.
Alexa had told him that her father dabbled in the magic, so he wanted to work on his own to try and impress the man with a song. To finally, finally, be able to play a song from his old world. At least, her dad seemed like the one that Damien could win over, so why not put in a bit of extra effort here and win him over with something he'd never heard of before?
He didn't do this often, perhaps spent one day a week on sound magic. He was getting very good with its dampening effects and at using it to mimic other noises, but that wasn't the issue he was having. The problem was getting it to do multiple noises all at once. It was like trying to play every instrument for a concert by yourself all at the same time so usually, he stuck to diversifying the sounds he could mimic and changing the intensity/locations he created it from.
Other days, he took this period to practice deconstructing spells he couldn't wrap his mind around like messaging spells and navigation ones. He'd learned how to cast [message], [silence], [light], [fire], [water], [fire bolt]... and many more basic level spells, but could only cast them with a matrix. Whereas the elemental ones were easy to deconstruct and cast chantless, since he always could do that already, the others were much more confusing to grasp.
Each was based out of an element though, some out of two. [Message] in particular was a combination of light and air magic. From what he understood so far about it, it wasn't as simple as words traveling the world at a fast pace to find your target. You had to root the light spell inside of an air spell, then send it off. The entire [message] matrix did that on its own for you. Finding out how to root the spell himself so he wouldn't have to create the matrix every time...
Damien wasn't having much luck with it. Hadn't been all year long. He couldn't wrap his mind around it, and every explanation he'd heard was about how it felt, not the specific logistics of it.
The spells themselves were simple enough to learn, all you had to do was make the matrix correctly and with the help Mr. Feival was offering him, it was going smoothly.
Damien rounded the corner and noticed a few of the creatures in the paintings following after him, going from one to the next. Huge Elk, a few Sylphens, a Gryphon... he was the only one around right now, and they were all curious as to what he was doing outside of class apparently.
"Terren?" Damien tried.
Perhaps the Golem would know where a vacant room was. He'd seen people ask it for help and receive help from it on more than one occasion, so why couldn't he?
Damien swung his head from side to side, looking for the Golem in the picture frames on the wall to the right of him.
"Terr-"
"Dwarf," a mechanical, gruff voice asserted as a hand landed on Damien's shoulder from behind him.
Damien did his best not to swing around and scream like a little girl at the creature's giant plated hand resting on his shoulder. Slowly, with composure, he turned to look up at it.
"I was wondering if you knew where a vacant room was? One I could practice things in without having to go outside, or to the library?" Damien asked.
"Spare parts room," the Golem stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Damien nodded, pleased with himself for thinking of asking the Golem. It would definitely know the best room void of other people. Though a spare parts room could be quite small, he didn't need a lot of room anyway. So long as it wasn't a closet, Damien was happy.
"Leaving then," Terren stated as he turned around.
Damien saw the painting Terren had emerged from for a brief moment when the Golem was sideways. He had been in a forest this time and for some reason, there was a large bear waiting at the forefront of the painting. It looked to be pawing at the air.
Terren took one step and thrust kicked his gigantic right boot into the painting, sending his foot into the wall like stepping into a calm pond that had a very unfortunate bear just beneath the surface. It had looked like the huge eight-foot tall Golem was about to completely eradicate the wall to Damien's tensed up self.
"Wait," Damien hastily said, remembering his purpose as the giant Knight put a hand on the top rim of the painting and started squeezing its body into it. "Could you show me where that is?"
The Golem removed his foot from the wall with a jerk and seemed to stumble a bit on one foot to regain balance. The bear, which had been sent tumbling back across the forest floor and landed against a tree, was slowly getting up and looking around for where the Knight had gone again. This time, it was avoiding that specific area his boot had emerged from, and it was pissed.
Terren finished getting his balance, looked down at Damien, and seemed to sigh.
"Sorry, you don't hav- ahhhh!"
Damien had just begun to retract his request when the world had flipped upside down and he'd been thrown against something cold and silver in color.
"Stop yell Dwarf. Terren get you there quick, not have lot of time out of master's art," the Golem scolded as he held Damien by his ankles.
'No one else was helped like this!'''
Damien felt his midsection impact the things giant shoulder and realized he was being ferried like a large sack of potatoes. He opened his mouth to protest again but that was right as Terren started moving, so Damien's open mouth impacted the steel Golem's hard shoulder blade.
He closed his mouth and held it with one hand, tasting blood while rubbing the pain out. Train as he did all year with that sadistic Kreel, things that hurt were still unpleasant.
The hallways blurred by as Terren blew through them, up and down staircases and around corners. The thing was in a full-on sprint and it took Damien all he had not to throw up from where he was, seeing what they were leaving behind. He might have even thrown up a bit already and just forgotten from his head bouncing off of Terren's back time and again. At least most of the time he was able to cushion the blows with well-timed air blasts or his own arms.
He was certain at one point they'd smashed through a wall.
The two went from the usually well-lit area of the academy's main building to a much more dim area in a remote location Damien didn't know existed. The Golem had taken him down about two more flights of stairs than Damien would have thought this building would have had as well; they were definitely underground.
Finally, they slowed to a stop and Terren pulled him back over his shoulder and dumped him on the ground unceremoniously. Damien lay on his back, facing up at the Golem.
"That one," the metal monster said, pointing to the left.
Damien nodded. The Golem nodded in return and then glanced around itself. Finding no works of art that suited him, Terren turned around and strolled back down the hallway at a leisurely pace, not seeming afraid at all for the supposed short amount of time he could stay out of his master's paintings.
"Why..." Damien asked the retreating form as he propped himself into a sitting position against the wall to his right.
After a few moments of collecting himself, Damien stared at the door in front of him across the hall. It read Spare Parts.
'Well that's simple enough, but why is it so far away from... everything? And so far downstairs...'''
Damien's eyebrows knit as he shook his head, standing. The door, as with everything around him except the moving wall art, was all covered in a layer of dust. It was obvious no one had been here in years, yet Terren had stormed in with Damien like it was no big deal so...
"Well, if anything I can follow his footprints haha..." he laughed to himself nervously as he looked down both ends of the hallways.
The dim lighting made it impossible to see very far, but he could at least tell where Terren had come and gone. Nothing else had disturbed the dust so this was truly a remote place to practice his sound magic but... he really, really began to consider just heading back down Terren's trail to a more well-lit area. To an area where there wasn't potentially things lurking beyond his vision.
"Oh come on. Ghost stories. Let's just look at the room and see if we can't..." Damien mumbled to himself as he dusted himself off. "The unicorn doesn't look terrified at least, how can I be?" he commented as the creature cocked its head at him from a nearby painting.
Damien moved toward the old looking door and turned the handle, finding it unlocked. He pushed the door inward and felt the heavy wood door give way, swinging inside the dark room while the sound of a thick layer of dust sweeping away swished into Damien's ears.
Poking his head around the handle, Damien created a ball of light and ushered it into the room to reveal piles and stacks of things all covered in sheets. Nothing was uncovered, which made sense if you were trying to keep it clean, but that was no less nerve-wracking.
He stepped in and explored the room trepidatiously, finding it in a similar style to the other classrooms minus a raised portion for the class to sit. It was flat all the way through save for a stage where the lecturer would stand behind his podium.
Finished exploring the sheet covered room, Damien turned back to the doorway to close and lock it. He wasn't about to chance something sneaking up on him while he was making loud noises. Even if it was just a stray student and not some denizen of the night, Damien was sure if anything randomly clasped his shoulder in here, it would give him a heart attack.
He walked to the stage area and took a deep breath to sigh in relief over not having found anything alive, or dead for that matter. Immediately he had a coughing fit due to the dust he'd kicked up and used some earth manipulation to condense all the dust in the far corner.
"Now then," he mumbled to himself as he began to wonder which song to be the best to play for Alexa's father.
Any would work really, but he wanted something that would blow the man away. The only music Damien had really been introduced to in this world so far was the nursery rhymes his mom used to sing to him and the occasional bard playing a guitar on the street for money. Songs about valor and adventure... all telling a story. No music or instrument for the sake of music, just some chords thrown together so that a man could tell his story.
There was nothing wrong with that either, it just didn't suit his purpose for impressing Oryen with actual sounds. For that reason, he wanted to play the man a song without lyrics in it. Something that was solely instrumental and still impactful.
"Ah but what should I... Maybe orchestra music? An epic? Something out of Pirates of the Carribean? Do I even remember that stuff well enough?" he mused, pacing on the stage. "Well, I'll figure that out later. How do I mix the soundsssss- a spell, you idiot. Really Damien!?" he shouted at himself. "That's why you learned spells! Ah god I'm so..."
Trying not to rip out his own hair, Damien sighed and began crafting a simple, linear sound matrix that would play the chords of a violin. He'd spent so long learning how to craft a spell matrix, and had spent weeks alone trying to figure out how to multitask all the instruments he needed at once, yet combining the two hadn't occured to him until weeks into his practice.
It was simple to make new sound spells due to the fact that they were basically the old one, just with a new sound to play in it. It took a few minutes to create the first one, Damien's hopes being it took almost no time to create duplicates.
Finished, he floated the spell matrix above himself. With hope in his heart, he whispered the activation word for it.
"[Violins]"
Immediately, and much too loudly, the intro for the Pirates of the Carribean theme song 'He's a Pirate' started blasting throughout the room. It lacked the percussion instruments and some of the darker tones brought on by the larger string instruments, but it was unmistakably the first minute of that song. It was as if he'd taken the sound memory directly out of his mind and imparted it into the magic.
Damien grinned like a madman and while the song played, quickly crafted the same exact spell in almost no time at all and played it just as the first version was finishing. Then, while it was going, he built it a third time.
Still smiling like a fool, he tried to add cymbal percussion instruments to the spell and found he once again needed to spend some time getting it all together. A few minutes went by and with expectation, he let it play.
"It's jumbled..."
-only to be sorely disappointed.
"It was easy enough to do the first... maybe the multiple components make it..." grumbling along, Damien worked through his spell and eventually decided to separate the two sounds.
After a few more minutes of tinkering, Damien sat on the edge of the stage and once again stared at the two yellowish matrices of spells in each of his hands. More expectation and nervousness in his heart, he looked up.
"Alright... here goes nothing. [Violins]"
The moment he spoke, his first matrix activated and the violins began to dance through the air.
"[Cymbal]!" he cried out four seconds into the song, right as the first hard bass should hit and the violins started picking up the pace. "Ahhhh! Dammit. Stop, stop," Damien commanded, breaking apart his mana and dropping to the floor with his hands on his ears when the altered soundwaves started screeching loudly in protest, expelling their full runtime in two seconds before fizzling out. "Ooookay... next time, let it run its course..." he mumbled, head hunched forward as his palms were practically inside of his ears from the pressure he was exerting on them.
Standing up slowly, he once again recreated the two spells and decided to create a third [cello] spell and a fourth [Bass] to deepen the tone. Five minutes later, he was ready to try again
"[Cellos][Violins]!" Damien shouted back to back, pointing his fingers to different corners of the rooms as the sounds began to boom from them.
The two string instruments began playing in almost perfect unity, the tiniest of offsets giving it a three dimensional sound that didn't displease Damien. There was a way to set spells off at specific times, without needing words to activate them, but he hadn't looked into that particular branch of spell-based magic yet, so he'd have to speak with Mr. Feival about it and settle on his own timing for now.
"[Bass][Cymbal]!" he called just a little bit later than he had last time.
The bass was meant to hit first and he couldn't quite pin down where it was supposed to go after that first one, so he just set it to go off every time the string instruments started picking up again timing-wise.
"YES!!!" he screamed out.
The sounds had landed at the perfect times and it felt almost as if he was listening to the original version of the song. Fifteen minutes of practice in and he had broken through the wall he'd been slamming his head into of late.
"AhahahAHAHAHA!!!" Damien cackled out, pumping his fists and jumping around the podium like a lunatic. "I MISSED THIS SHIT! YES!! LOUDER!"
He didn't understand why, but something about the pirate music was just so damn intoxicating right now. For the entire rest of the period, Damien spent his time lengthening that specific song, blasting it so loudly it almost hurt his ears, and working on other songs. All the while, a few tears of immense joy and satisfaction found their way to the floor.