Chapter 186
Bad Roleplaying
(Mallory)
“Good question, wait right here.” Cass, who was in the form of the Deolar King and my Fiancé replied. Then just like that she Teleported away. At least I think that’s what she did as she was there one moment and then gone the next.
Mallory was about to say something, but was distracted by the giant fire elemental that now looked like a piece of charcoal that had been lit at one point, but was slowly dying away.
“OHH! Why my King, why did you punish me so?” Flumberro asked with pain filled words, as he lifted his claw to his chest and held on tightly. Fortunately for Mallory all of those private lessons she had been taking on learning ancient elven, the language of her soon to be people was paying off, as she could understand this conversation.
“Oh, don’t worry. We have a healer coming. She can and will fix you.” Mallory responded in ancient elven, hoping that she got most of her thoughts across correctly.
“Don’t tell me that you intend to send the little monster to do to Flumberro what she did to me?” Nagingah asks.
With this Mallory could see the way Flumberro shifted uncomfortably, still grasping at his chest he looked and finally saw the small glowing bright blue Pomeranian that stood next to me, former Cardinal Protector and guardian of these lands.
“Well yes, that is the healer, but don’t worry. I’m sure she has learned her lessons.” Mallory stated, trying to be diplomatic with her response, though she felt things were quickly spiraling out of her control.
Fortunately, before anyone could respond, Cass arrived in her normal form.
“Someone called for a Doctor?” Cass asked, in her overly nice voice.
“Run, it is she, the one who will change you into a mutated form of a pet if you show her an ounce of resistance.” Nagingah said.
“Now, Nagingah that was not a very nice thing to say.” Cass begins, and with just the slightest lowering of her voice got the great Nagingah to bow her head in supplication.
By this point Flumberro tried to crawl away. Have you ever seen a giant three-legged dragon try to crawl away while using its fourth leg to clutch at its chest?
Rumble, stomp, splash.
Even trying to be quiet, the beast couldn’t help but make noise. It didn’t help that the beast was in a giant black water dish that swished around noisily with every movement the big beast made.
Exasperated sigh.
Mallory heard Cass let out an annoyed sigh, and wanted to say something to help but then saw the intense look of concentration that she had on her face and stopped.
Silence.
With that Mallory realized that the three had become completely silent for a moment.
“Is everything…” was all Mallory could say, before a quick hand came up to stop her from talking. Mallory was busy watching Cass who was clearly in the middle of mental communications with the three beasts. As even Nagingah seemed to nod her head or add gestures with her front paw at random moments.
Mallory was so caught up in what was going on that she failed to notice the moment a figure dressed in black seemed to casually stroll forward and stand next to her. Her mind saw the black and remembered it from somewhere recent, that and the fact that there was no hostile intent from the figure let Mallory lower her guard around the character. However she was quickly pulled from her musings by the words that came out of his mouth next.
“Hey babe, did I miss anything important?” A confident male voice asked.
“Babe?” Mallory all but hissed, hating the word and about to release fiery vengeance against said speaker, then paused.
She paused as the person she was looking at was none other than King De’Arcaneri, the person that she was supposedly engaged to.
“What?” Mallory asked, turning from King De’Arcaneri to the busy Cass who was clearly still in the middle of mental negotiations with the two dragons. Then back at the King, where she stared at him long enough for the king to let loose a smug thousand-watt smile. Looking at the king for the first time in the light, and not in the center of an undead empire, Mallory could see the appeal of such a leader. He had a pleasantly symmetrical face, with a strong jaw. He had eyes that all but glowed with power, though Mallory almost swore that this was an effect of her friend being there.
Moving closer, Mallory looked and tried to see a vertical slit on the forehead where a third eye would sit, but instead found only smooth contours. Being this close to the elven leader, Mallory could almost swear she smelled the scent of ivory, cedarwood, and something else. The combination of scents caused even more of her mind and body to awaken to the presence of the figure next to her.
Seeing her in her current state, the King could only smile in that half face smirk that Cass always did when she found something particularly funny. That was the proof, the only thing else this king could do was stick out his tongue in that upward flag thinking pose that Cass always did, but hated when you pointed it out. Seeing the signs, it was clear to Mallory that the King before her was in fact Cass. Which meant that the other Cass couldn’t be Cass, right?
Turning to the other Cass, the real Cass, or at least the real avatar of Cass, Mallory paused as she tried to take everything in.
Hmph.
The King let out a knowing laugh that almost infuriated Mallory, as she turned back, but her response was already too late.
With a quick pat on the butt, King De’Arcaneri sauntered forward stating, “don’t worry I’ve got this, Babe.”
Anger.
Before Mallory knew what she was doing, she blurred forward, spun around and stood directly in front of Cass, well in front of the avatar of King De’Arcaneri, who she thought was being controlled by Cass. It was this thought, that it was her friend and not some chauvinistic creep that kept Mallory from going full battle maiden on the person. Angrily she stared forward, and then realized that she actually had to shift her head slightly up to lock eyes with the King.
Smiling wide like the cheshire cat, the king just locked gazes, then continuing with the random smug attitude continued. “Don’t worry, today I will have to subjugate this foe for you, so that our lands might prosper in harmony with each other.”
The King spoke loudly. Clearly saying his part loud enough so that both the Delorian soldiers behind them and the pain infused dragon before him could hear his decree.
Rage.
Mallory was still angry, but her rational business-oriented side of her mind realized that this was for the best, and that Cass as always was going deep into her characters. Almost too deep for Mallory’s tastes, but she could understand that this was who Cass was, if she played a part, she would act out that part until the scene ended, the lights came on and she was able to finally break character. Until that point, whatever she thought the character would do, is what she would do. Thus, the butt tap and the references to the future queen as, Babe.
Yet, even though she could understand it, didn’t mean she had to like or accept this.
Mallory opened her mouth to speak, but soon found her mouth smothered by a gently tingling finger. With that touch, that one caress, Mallory felt her entire body pulse and fill with energy. The pulse went through her lips, to her brain, then down to her legs that suddenly felt weak.
Mentally Mallory knew that this was some type of power, maybe an expert healing power, some type of advanced use of Qi that could cause a body to tingle and come to life. Regardless of whatever the actual reason was, this was the most alive Mallory had ever felt. In her mind she tried to think back, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of a moment when her entire body felt more alive than it was right now.
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It was like a spell had been placed upon her, one where she finally felt alive, truly alive. For the moment she felt like she could simultaneously cause the world to kneel at her might, and utterly unable to stop anything from happening all at the same exact moment.
Then just as quickly as it began, the moment was shattered by the King opening his mouth.
“Whatever fiery words you have to say, save it for our wedding night.” King De’Arcaneri said, as he pulled away his finger from Mallory’s lips, causing an intense cold sensation to fill her body. Not so much that it was cold, but that she suddenly knew just how empty she was now that she no longer had that surge of energy pulsing through her.
Mallory barely noticed the way the King gracefully side-stepped his way around her and gracefully sauntered past her.
Her mind was fuzzy, as it tried to determine what had happened. That was simultaneously amazing, frightening, and unknown all at once. It was amazing in that she had never felt that way before. Part of her already wondered if she would be able to feel that way again. It was frightening in that she felt utterly powerless to stop that sensation. Had there been malice, or other ill intentions behind the gesture Mallory was certain she would have felt that and been able to mentally combat the unwanted touch. Yet, it was the fact that there was no intention behind the touch, maybe other than to deescalate the situation, which was why her mental defenses never triggered. Then again it was Cass she was thinking about, that girl was probably capable of doing almost anything to get past standard protections. From her guidance, people had been working on more intent-based skills to prevent mental coercions, which was why Mallory felt fairly confident with her ability to avoid such situations, until now.
Mallory was so lost in her own diagnostic thoughts that she could only vaguely understand that Cass, or the King who was hopefully Cass was speaking. If it was Cass, well that would complicate things as this was clearly something she needed to tell Gwen about. If it wasn’t Cass, then this would likely complicate things even more, as she wouldn’t know what to do if she found herself feeling that way for someone other than Cass. She and Gwen had an open relationship, which meant they were able to talk about challenges that they faced, and so long as they were honest and never acted upon those challenges, everything would be fine. However, in this case Mallory for the first time didn’t know if she could avoid acting on those challenges. As the wedding night was just forty-two days away, and the server would know if it wasn’t consummated, right?
Panting.
After a few minutes, Mallory found herself forcefully pulling in deep breaths of air. Only now realizing that she had been holding her breath for a very long time. Yes, she would need to tell this all to Gwen, ask for forgiveness, and then make sure that she pushed Gwen to ask for the secret voodoo that she did from Cass. Yes, that was all she could do, ask for forgiveness and then try to recreate the same events with her Gwen.
“Hey Babe, you done over there?” King De’Arcaneri called out.
At the word Babe, anger filled Mallory’s mind as the spell that Cass had cast on her mind and body broke, allowing her to turn angrily around. Mallory was about to say something, when Cass, the real Cass, well Cass’s avatar of Cass replied. “You’re up.”
Then before Mallory could say or do anything, she saw and felt the mission prompt appear in her mind.
Flumberro the strongest of the Cardinal Protectors wishes to form a contract with you, will you accept his pledge of loyalty?
Seeing the prompt, Mallory let out a slight breath to relieve some of her tension, but then just nodded and mentally accepted the prompt. As her mouth seemed momentarily unable to create words at the moment.
Hidden Guild Quest Completed: Mastering the Cardinal Protectors: Your Guild, the Midnight Hunters, has begun the process of conquering the four key protectors of the great wastelands. Legend has it that if the four Cardinal Protectors fall, then the monsters that plague the wastelands will be free to spread their pestilence and attack the inhabited territories of the world. You must protect your lands, while not fully destroying the Cardinal Protectors of the Wastelands. Current status of protectors that have been subdued but are still living (4 / 4). Rewards: Experience, Guild Title, variable.
Experience Gained: 1,500,000
Ding.
Level up.
Your level in Ethereal Valkyrie has risen to level 1017.
Guild Title: Guardians of the Cardinal Protectors: Your guild has managed to subdue and work with the opposing elemental forces of a region. By doing so you helped maintain the balance and stability of the region. This will have a cascading effect allowing all Midnight Hunter Guild Members to have an increase of +25% to the use of all elemental powers. Along with a Partial-Neutral rating to all elemental and guardian forces.
Personal Reward: Due to your personal contribution to the efforts, your contribution is the ability to speak to and guide the four Cardinal Protectors of your region to guide and help maintain the natural balance of your land.
Looking at everything, Mallory couldn’t help but be impressed with her constant improvements. Ever since she got Cass onto the guild’s roster, she and by extension the guild has managed to level up at a surprising rate.
Less than a year ago, she was almost dead, and hadn’t managed to level up in years. Since meeting Cass, that problem of not leveling is a thing of the past as she gained over fifty levels since then.
Mallory was so lost in her thoughts, that she failed to notice the tall silhouette approaching from behind her. Well she noticed it, but then instantly dismissed it as none of her senses were telling her that the approaching figure was a threat.
This was why she was once again shocked when for the second time that day, she was once again pulled from her own thoughts by yet another light pat on her behind.
“Good job,” the smirking words of King De’Arcaneri rang out. Mallory turned, almost ready to strike, but suddenly felt a strange tingling sensation from where he had touched. Mallory was about say something anyways, when he spoke arrogantly. “I know what you are thinking, but please we must save it all for our wedding night. Now if you will excuse me, I still have some preparation to attend to.”
Poof.
Yes, the King, who was hopefully being portrayed by her best friend had touched her not once, not twice, but three times and then having the last word disappeared before Mallory could say anything about it.
Mallory stared forward in complete shock, as anger began to fill her mind about what just happened.
Snickering.
Just as she was staring forward, she heard the Deolarian soldiers snickering at her discontent. To make matters worse, apparently that little act by the King and then sudden disappearance had served as a morale boost as the troops were now at an all-time high.
Auxiliary Deolar Elite Guard Troops:
Morale: 70.
Break Morale: 20.
Increased Productivity Morale: 70.
Now there was a new option, that informed Mallory that from their completion of the quest and the way the two of them just interacted, morale was at an all-time high, meaning that even more could be done from these troops that had come to help.
She was about to say or do something, when her more pragmatic mind won out, letting her know that they might need this. Also, they witnessed the impossible, that of watching their King subjugate an enraged cardinal protector. This was amazing as they had been close to breaking not more than an hour ago.
With their change, Mallory instead turned to see who she could yell at to relieve some of her stress, then paused as she saw Cass, well Cass’s avatar of Cass, who could or might not be Cass? Regardless, she knew from her discussions that any conversation with Cass’s clones would eventually get back to the real Cass, which is why she decided to take out her frustrations on this Cass.
“We need to talk!” Mallory said, while she wasn’t yelling her words were clearly terse and brokering no argument from Cass.
“Yes, we do. I also have a few things that I need to say to Gwen as well.” Cass said.
At that, Mallory paused, realizing that she too needed to talk to Gwen, oddly enough about Cass and her antics.
“Fine, let’s go find her and talk about boundaries.” Mallory said.
“Exactly.” Cass said, nodding emphatically before sprouting her now standard pixy wings and flying forward.
As she rose up, she met with Zero, who gracefully ran into her flying form and then air tackled her. The two just hugged the way Mallory always imagined her daughter would with the pet dog when she came home from school. Of course, in this case, the daughter was a magical daughter who could fly and apparently tame elemental guardian dragons at her discretion.
Seeing the two and the giant smile forming on Cass’s lips, her real lips, Mallory could only sigh as she felt her anger at being touched by Cass’s portrayal of the King fade away. Seeing her in that small compact form, so full of life and love, Mallory realized it was hard to stay angry at her. Even going so far as to rationalize the fact that Cass was just being a little prankster with her antics.
Only after coming to that conclusion did Mallory realize just how dangerous Cass was. As she was clearly a genius, but her size and spirit made her hard to take too seriously.
Reluctantly Mallory pulled out her own wings and began flying off in the direction of Cass and Zero.
Cass, not even turning to face Mallory, just straightened up in mid-air while petting Zero, then began flying off in a random direction.
Mallory was going to ask if Cass knew where Gwen was, but then realized that was a stupid question. Instead, she followed her, to the traveling Healer’s tent that had been set up near the southern defensive lines.
Once there, Cass began to descend rapidly, with Zero by her side.
For a moment, Mallory thought everything would be peaceful. That was of course until she heard Cass call out for her daughter.
“GWEENN!” Cass called out in that way that only a parent could do, which almost sounded cute coming from Cass, who sounded like a child desperately imitating their parents.
“Yes,” Gwen replied back with an equal measure of sass. Hearing this Mallory quickly descended, using a few burst skills to get her down on the ground and inside the tent as quickly as possible. For a moment Mallory thought something was going to happen, particularly with what Cass said next as she got within a dozen paces of her daughter.
“You, I’ve got a beef to pick with you little missy.” Cass said, a faint tone of anger filling her voice as she spoke to Gwen, but by now Mallory knew this to be more of faux anger than anything. At least she hoped so, as there were still a lot of factors going on that Mallory herself needed to work out. The last thing she needed at this point was to be forced to pick sides between her girlfriend and her best friend and crazy quest completer, especially over what appeared to be family drama.
Gwen for her part just stared with a completely bored look, as if the most powerful mage and martial expert wasn’t just lambasting her moments ago. Then again when said magical and martial master was a third shorter than you, looked like a petulant, but beautiful teenager, and had a smile that seemed to be permanently etched into her face as she spoke, that probably lessened the intended threat. Also, being the daughter of said menace also meant that Gwen had likely built up a tolerance towards her antics, which was why she replied with an almost annoyed, “oh?”
“Yeah, because of you, I had that stupid bumblebee song stuck in my head.” Cass hissed.
“What?” Mallory and Gwen asked in unison, turning to each other after they realized their synchronized response to the chaos that was the soon to be mother-in-law, but that was a different topic that Mallory and Gwen both didn’t want to broach at the moment.
“You know that Sweet little Bumblebee, I know what you want from me…” Cass began, then you could see her shake her head as she almost bobbed her head to the lyrics.
“What?” Mallory asked, fortunately her response was drowned out by Gwen.
“That was never my song.” Gwen replied with a bit of sass to her words.
“You listened to it non-stop when you were twelve.” Cass replied.
“Yeah, that was a lifetime ago. Also, the only reason why I even heard it in the first place was that it was on your Zumba workout list.” Gwen replied.
With that Cass paused, as she clearly tried to think back to that moment. “Oh yeah, I remember now, that was the final push section where they made you burn out your energy. I hated that.”
“I know, we found it funny as you would finally stop running around for thirty minutes after the session. Then when we wanted to distract you, we would play the song and you would either leave us alone or go and do a hundred chores around the house, and get distracted from talking to us.” Gwen said.
“Hey, I wasn’t that bad.” Cass said.
“No, eventually you grew immune to it, especially after your second knee surgery. Then you would just get this sad look in your eye whenever we played it. That’s when we finally stopped.” Gwen began, but then corrected herself. “Well, I stopped, the others I think actually liked the song. Well, everyone but Rob. He just played it to annoy all of us.”
“Didn’t you have headphones?” Mallory asked.
“We did, but we would make exceptions for those types of moments.” Gwen replied.
At that Mallory just looked at Gwen, wondering if this was a topic she wanted to get involved with and then quickly realized that there was no winning side to this conversation.
“You know, just let me know when you two are done here, I need to speak to you.” Mallory said, first to both, then finished off by talking to Gwen.
“Oh, well, I think we are done here.” Cass said, clearly hearing the sudden seriousness in Mallory’s voice.
“Yeah, I think so too…” Gwen said, but then paused to turn and see that Cass the perpetual coward was already gone.
Poof.
Only a slight disturbance of dust could be seen from where Cass had just been.
“Anything important?” Gwen asked, turning from the open tent to Mallory.
Mallory gave a quick scan of the place to see that everyone had cleared out when it was just the three of them. In this case Mallory was somewhat happy about that, though it did make her have to form her thoughts even quicker than she had originally expected.
“I need to tell you something.” Mallory finally began, figuring that honesty would be best in this case.
“Okay?”
“Well, it’s about your mother…”
“What else is new…”