Feeling refreshed, I woke up. Lendwrek, Mendry, Tara and Hybry, were all already awake. The couple was taking a dip in the lake, and the two little ones were practising their aim. Each time Tara fired a web, Hybry would try to hit it with a poisonous breath attack.
Looking through the living room window, Lavanda and Caryly were talking on the couch. I decided to not bother them this early in the morning, these two probably had a lot to catch on with each other.
Instead, I joined Hybry and Tara training. Using plants I was controlling as targets, I order them both to aim at the grass tentacles. Moving the vines to avoid their projectile was harder than I thought. Not because of Tara and Hybry accuracy, although Tara did have a high hit ratio, mainly due to the difficulty of anticipating where the attack would hit after it launched.
After a while, my reaction speed was slowly increasing, and I was able to avoid more hits. To add to the challenge, I joined my plants as an aiming target. Tara web is in itself inoffensive, and with my plague affinity, I thought that I could take Hybry gas without any real consequences. Knowing that they would do little harm to me, they started to bombard me with their projectiles.
Controlling both my plants and my body at the same time proved to be as challenging as I thought it would be. Each time I failed to dodge, I took multiple following hits that I could not avoid. To minimize the risk taken, when I knew I couldn’t escape an attack, I threw a vine in front of me. In a real fight, as long as I can move and act, I could always keep on fighting. My plants were expendable and could be replaced easily, contrary to me.
As I dodge attacks, something was tilting the edge of my mind. Natural roots, not the ones I was controlling, were trying to connect to the tentacles I was using. When I allowed it to do so, the plants were moving on their own, without needing any input from me. If I wanted them to do something specific or go somewhere, they still obeyed but could act without any order or magic from me.
Even when detecting the plant presence and mind, I still wasn’t able to fully identify what it was, for now at least, it was way too abstract for my skill level. The one thing I knew for sure was that it was friendly, and that was plenty.
As I was thinking, a web was about to hit me but met with a vine instead. Since I connected to nature's mind, I didn’t even have to worry about being hit, the plants were forming a protective wall on their own.
I stop the training when Lavanda called me inside. I let Tara and Hybry train with the plants since they didn’t mind helping them in my stead. Walking inside, the two friends were getting lunch ready. It was already noon. I would have helped them if I could, but you know. I can’t cook.
Sitting silently and listening to bits of information they were talking about here and there was the best I could do.
I could see some frustration in Caryly as she opened every cabinet without finding what she was looking for. “Lava, where is the salt? Don’t tell me you don’t have any.” She said, looking desperate.
“I have salt, I assured you, I just need to find it.” She paused to think a moment before continuing. “Emery can you check the lab to see if you find any, with all the potion-making I do, it might be there. Cary, you can check the cellar.”
“Ok,”
“There better be salt in there,”
Inside the lab room, potions were everywhere, with vials and ingredients filling every shelf from top to bottom. Luckily, Lavanda had the decency to write the content of everything lying around.
A very potent smell assaulted me the moment I opened the door. I rushed to the other side of the room and slide the window open to breathe some unfermented air.
“Salt, salt, salt,” I sang as I check the most obvious glass container with a white thing inside. “Monosodium of glutamate, that not salt!” It looked almost the same, but it wasn’t it, so I kept looking.
“Mandragore white powder, white charcoal, powdered ice, grated parmigian,” I would have mistaken all of them for salt if it wasn’t for the labels. “Where the hell is the salt?” At every sight of something that look similar, I was deceived. The salt wasn’t there. I felt I could scream to all the world, “Where is the salt?!” and no answer would come. Now I knew how that chef was feeling when there was no lamb sauce to be found. Absolute disappointment. With some luck, Lavanda already found it.
As I was leaving the room, a faint smell caught my attention. It was a miracle that its odour could overcome everything else in that room, since not all displayed substance was sealed. As I followed the smell, I was able to discern what it was, some lavender with burned mana leaves. Normally, these leaves smell nothing different from the normal ones, but when cooked, they gain a very distinct strong and fresh smell. One that I personally love, probably due to my affinity.
As I followed the scent, I discerned something else in it. Blood. On top of one of the potion brewing desks, there was an uncovered pot. Looking at the label, there wasn’t a name to it.
“LAVANDA USE ONLY!” It read. Shame, I almost wanted to try it, but there must be a reason why she didn’t want others to taste it. She did mention that she was a vampire, but she never asked for blood or anything like that, so I almost forgot. If she doesn’t feed on other blood, maybe she eats that weird soup once in a while. Although I admit to never seeing her eat anything like that.
Getting back to the kitchen, Lavanda was already cooking the meat, while Caryly put a red thick sauce on plates with some rice on the side.
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“I didn’t find any,”
“Shame, me neither,” So Caryly was right, there was truly no salt in this house.
“Cooking with no salt,” Caryly continue with an exasperated expression. “Your number of blasphemous actions keep growing, still to this day,”
“Huuuuhhuuuuh comes on, it not the end of the world,” Lavanda replied with a wild smile.
“Please don’t jinx it, not again,” At these words, Lavanda rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, the meat ready, time to eat,”
When we were all set, we began eating. Scooping the rice into the meaty sauce, I enjoyed every last bite, and my stomach accepted the offerings without complaints, asking for more of the spicy dressing each time.
“So Emery, Lavanda told me you come from another world. Is it true? I never got the chance to ask.” She was the first to finish her plate, and instead of going for second, she had some questions to ask.
“Yes,”
“Prove it,”
After thinking for a second, I started to speak in English. For a while now, my understanding of this world language reach a good enough level that I didn’t need the translation collar anymore. I was actually surprised by how easy it was to learn it. Although I never try to learn a language before this one, I was a bit underwhelmed by how fast I learned it. That or Lavanda was that good of a teacher. It was one of the first thing I learn after all.
As I speak in a tongue she never heard before and cannot comprehend, I could see through her face that she had something to say.
“I can’t believe it. Then how did you get here?” She looked at me, but I had nothing to say. I had no idea what got me here, and as long as it got not plan to send me back, ignorance was all I needed.
She asked me a lot of questions about Earth, and I did my best to answer them. With how little experience I had before, there wasn’t much to say. Most of what I learned was because of the internet. With my disease, I spend my whole life at the hospital. No school, no university, no job, just my bed.
Knowing my story, Lavanda and I already got plenty of these conversations under our belt. She only added a few details when talking about what I already told her.
“I think I may have a hypothesis on how you got here,” Well, although I didn’t really care if the answer appeared in front of me, I wouldn’t ignore it.
“It’s probably the work of the gods. If your original world doesn’t have magic, then the power to transport you must originate here. As far as I know, which is a lot, teleportation magic is impossible. Only the gods and goddesses have been recorded to use similar magic.” It was the gods then! I don’t have anything that could refute her idea, and at least now I had a reason to investigate the gods.
There is absolutely no case in which I go back to Earth, but if I could transport someone here it would be another story. I didn’t have much before, but what I did have was a friend and family, and I did miss them a little. Knowing them, they would mind living here, a world of swords and fantasy was too good to refuse. So yeah, new secondary objective; learn about the gods. Still not as important as my primary one: survive, but better than nothing else.
In the middle of cleaning up the table, an uncomfortable feeling washed over me, it was like my magical senses were warning me about something. Before I could say anything, the ground started shaking for a few seconds before stopping.
“What the!”
Without any warning, the door opened with Tara and Hybry running at me. As the hydra jumped in my arms, coiled in fear, the spider stuck her leg to my shirt and drag me outside. With no idea of what was happening, Lavanda and Caryly followed.
Laying in the grass just in front of the house was Mendry. She was bleeding, but her wound didn’t seem to be too severe. The bag containing her egg was attached to her neck and seemed just fine, but I check just in case. Her egg was still intact, she was the one I needed to worry about.
Looking up at the sky, I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Lendwrek and Randal were in battle against a flying nine-headed hydra. The monster was exactly like the definition Lavanda gave us. Massive, and unpredictable. Our dragon and wyvern had difficulty simply scratching the monster, let alone doing serious damage. The movement of its heads were too hard to predict to land any hit, and its scales only allow shallow wounds to appear.
The monster had the same white line tracing it back, just like Hybry. It was without a doubt its parent, and Caryly confirm to me that it was the father, meaning we need to fight or flee. As much as I wanted to avoid a confrontation with that thing, I would need some time to make sure Mendry was in a good enough state to fly. Luckily, we already got two angry boys distracting that bastard.
While Lendwrek and Randal had a thought time doing anything, the calamity already covered them with more cut and bite marks than I like. My only comfort was that it seem to take the fight seriously, meaning that with enough firepower, we had a chance.
Without me noticing, Lavanda and Caryly were battle ready, having gone back inside while I checked on Mendry. It was when I notice that I was still in my plain shirt and pants, I had taken my coat and equipment off when I went inside. I obviously would not fight a calamity monster like that. As I was about to fetch my stuff, Lavanda seem to have read my mind and stopped me.
“Don’t you dare, that thing is out of your league! Go get some meds for Mendry when we deal with that thing!”
“But,”
“There is no but! Leave it to us, and prepare the emergency bags in case we need to fly away!”
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Lavanda
As Emery rushed inside with Tara following behind with Hybry saddle on her back, Caryly and I stand side by side, making sure that our equipment was tightly strapped. Considering our opponent, the battle would take place in the air, and we wouldn’t want our swords to slide out of their sheath by accident.
“Just like old times?” She said curiously.
“Yeah, you remember that time we launched that huge spell that erased half the throne room? I say we use that one.”
“No problem with me, but we need to make sure we are high enough this time.”
“Still can’t believe it was that effective,” I said ironically.
“Maybe a bit too much, but this is exactly what we need against a calamity monster.”
Now finally ready, I put two fingers inside my mouth and let out a loud whistle. Noticing my call, Randal left the fight to Lendwrek and flew to us, landing just long enough for us to climb on his back.
A moment later, we were up in the sky, ready to give this calamity monster a taste of the women who annihilated entire legions of monsters on their own.