More Letters
Frill felt faint. True, it was to be expected. No Iristan had any right to stay this long in the Nightmare Lands, even if said land was merely a patch taken away from the source. But that was merely part of the reason she felt nauseous.
The low-lit room, designed with sparkling stars on the ceiling, gave emphasis to miniature spotlights highlighting Katherine’s prized collections.
The treasures in front of her far exceeded Sam’s extravagant claims. She couldn’t put an estimate on any of them, but she knew some of these were valued at ridiculously mind-boggling price tags.
Katherine casually unlocked a meiyal-crafted display case of an ancient looking tome.
Frill’s eyes immediately widened at the title. “Isn’t that Kristella Irista’s?”
“Hmm? Ah, yes.” The Lady presented the ancient tome still in its pristine condition thanks to meiyal-crafted casing that contained it. The handwritten title cover ‘The Artistic Meiyal by Kristella Irista’ still glowed with the remnants of the Second Monarch’s meiyal signature. “I thought Frein might be interested in the original edition of the book. He might glean some unique information if he has the original manuscript. He’s a bit of a bookworm.”
Frill was dumbfounded. “Isn’t that something for the museum?”
Katherine raised an eyebrow. “I think the author of this book would rather have her work studied than be displayed in a case. Besides, it waited here long enough” She tore open her Spatiera and stored the book after depositing it inside a smaller casing. “Now what else do we need?”
“What are these?” Deciding she wasn’t going to get a better answer than that, Frill turned her attention towards a series of vats on an isolated corner. Grotesque body parts of what she could only assume were Nightmares floated within the contained translucent liquid. Long limbs with scales, overgrown claws, tendrils wriggling on carapaces, a diamond-shaped head with missing eyes; the parts didn’t seem to originate from a single body, at least as far as Frill’s knowledge was concerned.
“Those are just samples, references for the final trial below,” Katherine replied without looking. She walked slowly towards the other end of the room, mumbling to herself whether she wanted to bring an item along or not. “Bringing all of these treasures outside could be dangerous, and I don’t really have enough meiyal to store all of them in my Spatiera.”
Frill understood the conundrum. Tearing up space for one’s personal use wouldn’t cost a lot of meiyal. Storing a meiyal-charged item was another story entirely. Katherine would have to match each item with her own meiyal before she could store them in her personal space. Not to mention, the item’s size in reality would be different inside a Spatiera. Basically, the bigger the cost, the more space the item required, unlike mundane items that stay the same size and required no meiyal to store.
So, even if Katherine could take the time to essentially pay for the storing cost of each of these treasures, Frill believed that the size of the Lady’s Spatiera would have to be at least half of Minaveil Town to provide space for them all.
She can’t possibly have that large, Frill thought. She somehow doubted herself.
Regardless, Katherine moved on from the invaluable treasures that Frill decided to skip over for her own sanity. They both entered a smaller room divided into three sections.
“Sam, did you take care of my flowers?” Katherine asked.
“Those three measly flowers? What’s so special about them? You made it, like, priority number one on my automated protocols, but you never explained why. Are they more special than me?” Sam’s orb whirled around the Lady, throwing her ponytail in all directions. It reminded her to undo her hair and return her cloak inside her Spatiera.
“Only if you forgot to take care of them.”
“They’re there. The last section. I’ve already unlocked the first one for Miss Frill, you should give that one first. I’ll go process the other locks.” He spun around once more before zipping towards a locked door.
“Fine.” Katherine gestured for Frill to follow.
She, the Aria in Red, couldn’t help but feel a sudden sense of trepidation. If her assumption was correct, this would be her first charged-meiyal material to put on her Exhibit. What sort of effects would it have? Side-effects? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to find out.
But with Katherine beside her, at least someone would be there if something were to go wrong. They both entered a section of the room that was no larger than five meters across. In the middle was a pedestal that held a domed crystal case, different from the glass varieties from the previous treasure room. The jagged angles of the crystal casing made it difficult to discern what it held inside. Katherine placed her hands on it.
“I wasn’t exactly expecting that I’d be giving this to you. I planned to give this to Kristel to aid with your fusions. But now that you have a permanently fused meiyal system, I think you’ll benefit with this the most. Maybe…”
“You sound like you’re not sure,” Frill implied.
“Technically, yeah. That’s how it works with integrating an Exhibit.” Katherine deftly tapped her fingers around the angles of the crystal casing. Shimmers of glittering colors plunked on each tap. Frill realized Katherine was entering a code of some sort. The hiss of air escaping the pressurized containment signaled her success. “I honestly have no idea if this will work either. I was only told of the two prerequisites required to put this on Exhibit. And obviously, we can’t really test it beforehand.
“Anyway, you already know the first requirement: Have a fused meiyal system. It can be temporary or permanent. I imagine the effects for a permanent fuse would be greater, or at the very least, more apparent, since—allegedly—the effects this has on your Exhibit only works when you put it out on Display while in a fuse.
“Second is that you have at least sixty meiyal marks.”
While Katherine’s motto: ‘it’s not about the marks’ held true when it came to Gather, Milling, and Drawing Meiyal Arts, meiyal-charged materials to put on Exhibit for a practitioner’s Display employed the complete opposite.
One of the reasons why Frill never bothered with filling her Exhibit was due to how low her marks were before her fusion with Liona’s meiyal system. Most of the meiyal-charged materials under the nine-mark range were pitiful at best.
Katherine lifted the dome case to reveal a silver cube.
Frill scrutinized the object. It looked like a cube with a particular sheen upon its texture. As if the surface was slowly flowing, dripping in and around itself.
“Mercurial Liquid,” Katherine began in her presentation voice. “Taken from one of the frozen blood pools of Oh’strol Continent.”
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“You’ve been in Oh’strol?” Frill had a myriad of questions, but this struck her as odd the most.
“There were reports of Palar’Gog worshippers trying to do blood rituals and sacrifices to call fort the Deitar. Obviously, these were just rumors getting way out of hand, but we couldn’t afford to just take them for granted. In case a Deitar eventually returned and bypassed their need for divine connections, we have to know about it and prepare accordingly. Part of the Order of the Void duties, so to speak.
“So, we checked, found nothing, but I got this for my troubles.” Katherine pressed a finger on the cube which responded with a jelly-like bounce and flipped in the air. She caught it with her palm which caused to cube to liquify and drip off her skin, returning to the pedestal where it then returned to its cubed form. “As you can see, retrieving it underneath a dead frozen blood pool wasn’t easy.”
“Dead frozen blood pool?” Frill had been grasping on the number of details being thrown at her direction. Most of it she had to process and compare to what she had learned during her time at school. A blood pool—frozen or not—being referred to as either dead or alive was a new concept to her.
“It’ll probably take us the entire day for me to explain,” Katherine smiled, understanding Frill’s confusion. “But yes, technically, you can kill a blood pool. It’s an Oh’strol thing.” She flicked on the Mercurial Liquid which rolled towards the Aria in sort of a gloopy fashion. “Anyway, you’ve never integrated a meiyal-charged material into your Exhibit, yet, have you?”
“No, but I think I remember how. We used to practice on dummies in the academy.”
“Wanna give it a shot, then?” Katherine asked. “I’m presenting this as a gift, but I’m not forcing that decision on you. As I’ve said, I only know about the requirements. We don’t exactly know the exact effects this would have.”
Based on the lessons Frill had during her studies, some meiyal-charged materials refused to separate from the practitioner’s Exhibit. This usually led to a certain Meiyal Art they’ve been practicing or nurturing to be permanently malformed, oftentimes leading into less desired results compared to their basic functionalities.
Still, a treasure that came from a continent that had been continuously terrorized by a Deitar long after it’s death—allegedly—was enough of an origin for it to be deemed worth the risk. As far as meiyal-charged materials or treasures went, a richer history with regards to its creation led to more impactful results.
Frill only hesitated a moment before moving to integrate with the Mercurial Liquid. She activated her meiyal system, revealing the floating marks above her left purple eye. The formless marks had been struck by lightning and their revelation caused small sparks of electricity to spew out of her eye.
It reminded her too much of Liona.
“Remember to take it slow,” Katherine advised.
With the Lady’s help, Frill focused on the task at hand instead of letting the grief consume her. Placing both hands around the Mercurial Liquid, she began to surround it with her own meiyal, controlling it until the treasure was completely enveloped. Slowly, she began retrieving the meiyal along with the treasure back into her system, careful enough not to lose concentration.
It took her ten good minutes until the entire process was done.
Katherine nodded, content. “You’ll have to Mill in order for you to set the treasure in your Exhibit and let it fully integrate. We can’t do that here since we’re still technically surrounded by the Nightmare, so we’ll leave that for later.”
“I’m a little scared, to be honest.” Frill was truthfully more scared than she cared to admit.
“I’ll be with you until you can fully integrate. That’s a promise.” Katherine led Frill out of the small section of the room and into another one where Sam was waiting patiently.
“I thought you girls dissolved into the air.”
“Ha.” There was exasperation in Katherine’s obvious sarcasm.
“Yes, thank you for taking my joke. Welcome to section two.”
“This one’s for me, stay here for now.”
Without an option to argue, Frill was left alone with Sam.
“So, you really are sentient?” she asked the M.O.B.I.L.E. The thought was slightly unnerving but surprisingly curious.
“Yes, deary. I have my own thoughts, my own desires—though limited—my own way of doing things. You don’t really need freedom to be sentient, so I don’t need that requirement. I do have dreams, both when sleeping or daydreaming. What else? I have opinions that a lot of people will get offended by if I blurt them out without constraint. I usually just keep it to myself.”
“You talk this much every time Katherine asks you something? No offense.”
“No, no. I’m just making up for the three years of pure silence without anyone to talk to aside from chatting with some mindless goons over the High Palace Network. It’s a drag, you know! I had to keep myself entertained.”
“Do you have recordings of people in the manor?”
“No. Not allowed. Besides I can only see a few sections of the manor, mostly just to monitor the security of the entrance to this wing. You’re basically the only guest I have whenever you’re nearby cleaning around my door. Thanks again for that.”
Frill had a small hope to see recordings of Liona. She conceded the thought and decided to look around her own M.O.B.I.L.E. when she found time.
As Katherine returned from the second section of the room, Frill tried to sense for any changes around the Lady, but found nothing at all. Katherine seemed to notice this, but presented her with nothing but a smile.
Finally, they went into the last section.
This one was a simple closet behind a door. The back of it had a small window to allow for sunlight and inside were three small flower pots. Immediately, Frill saw something was wrong. While the flowers were beautiful and rich with meiyal, there were only two of them. The middle pot had a folded piece of paper instead.
It reminded her of that same paper from that day. It was folded the same way.
Katherine reached out and undid the fold, showing it to Frill at the same time.
> I apologize for taking the liberty to retrieve this one flower. Please do not worry, I will be sure to nurture it and use it for its intended purpose.
>
> Lady Katherine of the Void. Tomorrow, when you meet with the Jaws Lurking in the Forest, you will find something more than you expect. Please trust me on this. If it holds true, you will find the Forest Jaws is dead.
>
> From its corpse you will find a meiyal-charged scale. Use it however you want, but do not let Frein integrate with it. He won’t take it anyway.
>
> I know this is all rather confusing and it may even sound condescending, but please understand, I am not your enemy.
“Did someone get into this wing, Sam?” Katherine finally asked after reading through the letter. Frill took it without any resistance from the Lady whose focus was directed at interrogating her sentient M.O.B.I.L.E.
The handwriting was the same. Frill retrieved her own paper to verify and compare.
At the same time the paper from the flowerpot began to change. Additional lines appeared.
> Dear Frill,
>
> I’m really sorry about Liona. I really wish I could find a way to save her. Save both of you. I’m sure you’re thinking it is not my place, not my right, to decide that. Maybe you’re right. There’s no excuse that I can say that will make you feel any better. You may not know me, but I am here to support you. All of you, but you most of all, Frill.
>
> The world has chosen you, and so have I.
>
> I will meet you when the time comes. For now, take care of yourself.
“Oh, you know who wrote this?” Katherine asked after not finding any answers from Sam.
“No,” Frill replied absentmindedly, showing both pieces of paper to Katherine. “But whoever wrote this, they helped me find Liona.”
The Lady took a while to read the new lines before ultimately deciding they couldn’t do anything about it at the moment.
“Fine,” she said, returning the papers to Frill. “Whoever your mysterious helper is, they better make sure to take care of my flower.”
That brought Frill back to her senses. “What’s it for anyway?”
“Oh, right.” Katherine had the same reaction. “You still make clothes and battle gear designs, right?”
Frill gave a nod, understanding where this was going.
“Well, these are supposedly for the three of you. But now that there’s only two, you should make one for yourself and Kristel. I’m sure you can come up with something, right?”
Excitement filled Frill. These flowers exuded fine form and rich meiyal, something she could stitch up into a magnificent battle gear. It had been a while since she last came up with one.
“I’ll make good use of it!” she said, accepting the flowers and storing them in her Spatiera. The meiyal cost of storing the pair surprised her. Together, they siphoned Frill of a quarter of her reserves.
With a smile, Katherine breathed with satisfaction and placed both hands on her waist. “Alright! Now that we’re done, we should go to the market! Lots of shopping to do!”
“Are you leaving me again?” Sam whined. The Lady snatched her up from the air.
“Of course not, you dummy.”
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