A knock came from the door.

“Cece, I wanted to apologize.” Eibon said, his voice muffled through the door.

“I can’t talk right now, Lotte is rebelling and I think it’s more pressing.” Cece cried keeping her eyes on the golem.

“I know you don’t like to talk about certain things but-”

“Eibon, I’m serious.” Cece cried towards the door while slowly stepping towards it, keeping herself facing Lotte the entire time. She gingerly opened the door ready to run at any moment. Eibon stood outside it looking just as she had left him. “Lotte repeat what you just said.”

“I want skin.” Lotte said simply, oblivious to the look on Cece’s face.

“See!” Cece cried in indignant fear.

“What kind of skin?” Eibon asked, in a mixture of macabre curiosity and amusement.

“Human.”

“Eibon what the hell!” Cece screamed.

“What!? I wanted to know.” He said nonchalantly.

“Why does she want human skin?” Cece asked. Lotte was originally inscribed to only speak when spoken to directly, but she no longer suffered from that limitation.

“I think I could learn more if I appeared human.” Lotte stated. The pieces came together in Cece’s mind as she gave more information. She sank in relief.

“Oh god, of course that’s why. You scared me.”

“Why did I scare you?” Lotte asked, her head tilting in feigned curiosity.

“To get human skin you would need to hurt people Lotte.”

“I see, then I will not be able to appear human, please disregard my request.”

“We don’t need skin to make you look human, Lotte. It will take a few days of work, but I should be able to do something.”

“I see, thank you.” Lotte said. Cece smiled softly before Eibon tapped her on the shoulder.

“Now that that’s dealt with, I wanted to apologize. What I said-”

“You were right.” Cece interrupted. “You shouldn’t apologize, you were right. I do fight like a mage, it just… struck a nerve. Thank you.” Cece said softly.

“What are accomplices for?”

“Friends.” She corrected.

“Pardon?”

“We’re friends.”

A smile flashed on Eibon’s face before he hugged her. Cece stiffened for a moment in surprise, she did not come from a hugging family, before returning the gesture.

“I should probably get to bed.” Eibon said suppressing a yawn.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I need to sleep soon as well, I just need to finish dealing with this.” Cece replied while shooting a withering look at Lotte.

“Goodnight, Cece.” Eibon said softly before walking back to his room. Cece shut the door behind him and turned around.

“Now that that’s dealt with. Lotte save a new order to your core, from now on if you want to request a modification to your body do not do it by asking for the body part in question, it’s both misleading and frightening.”

“Understood, core inscription capacity is now at 98%.”

“When did your capacity get so high? I’ll have to copy it to your ruby storage tomorrow morning.” Cece said more to herself than Lotte. Lotte did not reply. She understood she could, but every time she considered telling Cece how her core inscription reached that high, she remembered the conversation they had had.

“It would theoretically be optimal to explore the world on your own, but you have never even considered it, because you don’t understand just how many options you have.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

She didn’t know why it made her stop every time she tried to speak, but it did. She was silent as Cece got ready to go to bed, washing her face and changing into a pair of red silk pajamas. The second her body hit the bed Lotte saw her fall unconscious. She watched the world through the balcony. It was a full moon, but it was a quiet and peaceful night. Lotte only managed to raise her core’s capacity another one percent.

When Cece awoke she was assaulted by pain. Despite her behavior and demeanor the night prior she was the most intoxicated she had ever been, and now she was paying for it. At least for the few seconds it took for her to disconnect from her own sense of pain. She still felt a little weak, but she could stand to move her head now. She grabbed some water off the bedside table, downing the glass in one go.

She wanted nothing more than to waste the day away however she had two purposes for going to Pharum, the first was already accomplished, but lucky for her the second could be achieved from her bed. Wordlessly she removed her eyepatch and her “eye” floated out of its socket, glowing a vibrant red before fading from visibility. Cece clawed to her side to find her purse, from which she retrieved a platinum scroll. She activated it, creating a portal for the ocularis to travel through, straight to Astraev.

Dimitri Solastria was having a bad couple of weeks. He was barely making any progress on finding the culprit behind the attack, and people were starting to demand answers. He sat in his study staring at his suspect board, once again taking things from square one.

The eye appeared in an alley on the other side of town, just in case someone could trace it. Cece tossed and turned as the eye lazily made its way into the Solastria estate. She wasted no time with covering her tracks or stealth, she was here to make a scene. She went straight to their treasury.

Dimitri sat and considered the scene of the crime again, when he heard it. An explosion shook the building and he sat for a few moments. Dimitri was not a fighter and although he felt very cowardly his role in Solastria was important enough that he had been instructed hide in these kinds of situations. It wasn’t until a pair of footsteps made their way into his office that he considered leaving.

“Dimitri! Dimitri! There’s been another attack!” A young blonde woman, Hypatia, came running in. Dimitri cussed. In the few minutes since the explosion he had quickly come to that conclusion but hoped he was wrong.

“Was anyone hurt!?”

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“They destroyed the treasury.”

“How much?!”

“All of it.”

“All… of it?” He said confused. “But how? It’s designed so that any spell triggered inside will be blocked off from the rest of the vault?” He asked. If someone were to get a destructive spellbound item into their vault then the vast majority of the valuables should be shielded from it.

“It wasn’t triggered from inside, the spell was cast right outside the vault.”

“What!?” He asked. That meant two things, that the spell was cast here, and that the person who did it was powerful. He didn’t have time to ask follow up questions though, if they were here that meant he could find them, he was a diviner after all. His eyes glowed with golden light as he scanned the estate, his awareness branching out into a thousand beams of light. If they were here he would find them, no matter how powerful they were.

After triggering the phosphorous scrolls, one of the most expensive things she ever created, Cece groaned and rolled over, forcing herself to fall back asleep. She didn’t hurt, but the general malaise of her body was too complex to be gotten rid of, at least so far. She wanted to experience as little of it as she could and her body was still technically capable of sleeping so she did. She would have to go back to Astraev soon and she wanted to be well rested.