“Up!”

Raina emptied the full contents of her bucket onto the sleeping form of their would be captive.

Jerking him awake with a cold slap of well water, she only took a small amount of pleasure from the way he coughed and spluttered.

If her life had, by necessity, become this nightmarish crucible, and would effectively remain so for as long as they continued to circuit these backwater provinces, she’d be damned if the little brat got to go on catching up on his beauty sleep like he hadn’t a care in the world.

It’d been somewhat more manageable back down in the under, when she’d quite literally been the furthest thing from the whispers of temptation—outside of maybe a desert, a nunnery, or the middle of the fucking ocean.

Now though?

Now, when she couldn’t turn the corner without stubbing her toe on a tavern, an inn, or some panhandling bum clutching half a bottle of the good stuff, staying sober had become what basically amounted to torture.

Well, to be fair “good stuff” might’ve been pushing it a bit, but whether it tasted of pig swill or cat piss, it was a hell of a lot more alcohol than she was in possession of right now.

From her perspective, that poorly concealed bottle of who knew what was as precious to her as a small fortune might’ve been to them. She wondered idly how the beggar would’ve reacted had they known just how much she’d be willing to pay for a sip.

“Blood and brittle bones Raina!” Viviana swore. “Watch where you aim that thing! Argh! Just look at me! My clothes are ruined! Gah! And my hair! I swear you did that on purpose.”

“It’ll dry,” Raina deadpanned, deftly evading the question of intent.

“Was that really necessary?” asked Edmond. “You just got him all patched up. What if he gets sick?”

Raina paused. She hadn’t actually thought that far ahead.

“His spirit body isn’t a physical thing. It can’t actually contract something like a common cold,” she lied.

Though, was it really a lie when she had no idea? It could’ve been true. Who was to say?

“Besides, it’s precisely because I just finished putting the brat back together again that we need to get a move on. We’re burning daylight people! Time that could’ve been used to astronomically further our cultivation base has already been wasted playing nursemaid to this ingrate. I’d rather we not waste another two good weeks on similarly unproductive activities.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” Edmond allowed. “Still, do you really think he’s okay to be moved again so soon?”

Raina glanced down at the boy, tattered robes completely soaked through, as he calmly surveyed their surroundings. She watched him take in first the golden barrier restricting his movements, then the sorry state of the barn interior they’d effectively called home for the last two weeks.

Pungent, filthy, and with a few drafty holes in several unfortunate places, it hadn’t been the worst working accommodations they’d ever suffered through, though it was a far cry from their best.

She was unsurprised to note the crimson aura that wafted up from his pores—it’d been present all throughout the painstaking process of recovery after all.

What did surprise her, however, were the color of his eyes. Shot through with that same vibrant red as his aura, when they met hers, they did so with an oh so familiar sheen of razor-edged contempt.

Creepy little fucker, aren’t you?

Then, much to her surprise, without even a single word exchanged, the boy simply lifted his chin up a degree, dismissed her with a glance, and gave a condescending sniff, before his crimson aura was abruptly snuffed out, and in its place arose a bright yellow mist.

Mother of-! Just how many damn alignment’s does this boy have?!

It was ludicrous, shouldn’t even have been possible, and yet the proof was right there for all to see.

“Holy…” Edmond gaped. “You guys…?! You’re all seeing this too, right? I mean… I’d thought… I could have sworn that he was cutting aligned, no?”

With a flash of purple light Arthur disappeared from where he leaned against an upended water trough, only to reappear at the other end of the barn—as far away from the boy’s position as line of sight would allow.

If he could’ve helped it, Raina honestly doubted he’d have remained with them in that barn at all. Were it not for that handy little restriction on short cast teleportation, it was likely he’d have been miles from there.

“Edmond! Maximum quarantine protocol! We may only have seconds before the dissonance backlash levels this entire barn and all the surrounding area! Damn it! I knew this was a terrible idea! Why didn’t any of you listen to me!

Edmond, who was now practically vibrating with panic, quickly waved his hand, summoning several hundred runes as if from thin air, to rocket towards the kid like tiny shooting stars made of liquid gold. At which point they swiftly interlocked to create several overlapping, arcane looking circles.

As the others huddled in terror, and Viviana obstinately drew her sword and leveled it at the barriers—as if that would actually do anything—Raina merely rolled her eyes in exasperation.

They didn’t have time for this.

Before she could set them all straight, however—whatever this was, it wasn’t anything that appeared to be immediately volatile—the boy beat her to the punch. After taking in a deep, seemingly contented breath, he spoke.

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“Ahh! Wonderful! Wondrous! Stupendous even! It’s just bound to be an extraordinary day, don’t you agree? Can’t you just smell it in the air?!”

They all paused. The words so nonsensical, not to mention so far out of left field, that, at first, they completely failed to register.

Once they had, however, Raina was the first to speak.

“Uh…? Yeah, I must have missed that bit. You know, past all the mildew, rancid body odor, and persistent notes of animal dung.”

“The earthy scents of success!” he exclaimed, completely undeterred.

“R-right…”

Raina took a closer look at the boy, beginning to wonder if she hadn’t gotten him sick after all.

Was that rosy tint to his cheeks in fact the first signs of fever? Because, despite his features never changing, for all intents and purposes he might as well have been a different person entirely.

Gone was the look of utter contempt.

And in its place was this feverish light in his eyes—open, intense, and more than a little disturbing. His newfound look of wide-eyed curiosity showing off their now bright yellow cast to great effect.

“He’s speaking,” Edmond said hesitantly. “Do you think this means he’s not going to explode?”

“We can’t know that!” cautioned Arthur.

“I have to agree. The handsome man is clearly speaking sense!” the boy broke in. “Who's to say I don’t go up in a brilliant blaze of glory any second now?! Who’s to say it doesn’t happen to each and every one of us?! Truly, all we can ever do in this fickle world is try our utmost and hope for the best!”

“Huh. You know I have to say the kid is kind of growing on me,” said Viviana, sheathing her sword. “I mean, clearly he’s batshit insane. Some sort of… personality disorder? But this is obviously the best one out of the three.”

“Three? How did you get three?” asked Edmond.

“I’m still stuck on handsome,” Raina tried not to gag. “I mean, sure he’s tall… for a scarecrow I mean, but- Actually, no wait. Lanky is honestly being more than generous. Seriously though. Handsome…? Really? Are we seeing the same thing?”

“You didn’t notice back at the clearing? No aura, but he was all simpering sentiments and bribery. Brought to mind one of those damnable merchant caravans. You never can trust one of their ilk, you know. Slimy bastards.”

“Indeed!”

“Four, actually,” Raina cut in. “You didn’t see what I saw when I’d just about finished with my ritual. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a piercing alignment tumbling around in there too, don’t you boy?”

“I have no idea what any of you are talking about! But, that being said, I wholeheartedly agree!”

Raina snorted.

“Three martial alignments. Three, Raina?! This is no laughing matter!” Arthur exclaimed. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone off already! This entire endeavor has gone from extremely ill advised, to nigh on suicidal! It’s as if you’re begging for a true death-!”

“Which is all the more reason to pass him off onto the locals, yeah?” Raina cut him off. “Make him someone else’s problem. That was the plan, correct? So now, like I’ve been trying to urge this entire god’s damned time, let’s get to it then, shall we?”

“But-!”

“I couldn’t agree more!” the kid exclaimed. “Truly, there’s no better day than today to give it our all!”

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

Meredith Carver, government functionary and appointed official under the employ of the Azure Queen herself—if not in as direct a capacity as she’d have likely preferred—sat primly upon the raised dais of her modest reception hall.

Idly tapping her nails against the armrest of her almost throne, she tried very hard to stamp down the ever-growing impulse to wring the scrawny neck of the next person to walk through those doors.

If it wasn’t already obvious, it had been a very trying number of days.

Ever since that royal chit had decided to make her impromptu pronouncement, and in so doing effectively throw the entire queendom into disarray, Meredith had been bound by sacred oath to contend with a never-ending stream of idiots thinking to capitalize on the vagueness of the princess's appeal.

Announced during the most highly anticipated, widely attended, and extravagant social event of the year—the inaugural winter ball planned in celebration of the princess’s fifteenth birthday—it had taken a day, maybe less, for her words to dribble down to the common people. And from there, the cascading effects had been catastrophic.

“Mother finally relents that I’ve come of age at last, and so it is that I suddenly find myself in need of a familiar. I refuse to take the path most trodden, however, which is why I propose to you this. To any that hear my words, I would ask that you bring me something interesting. Something that’s never been seen before, that I might bind it as my combat familiar. Do this, and I swear to you, here and now, that I will reward your bravery, ingenuity, and expense by more than a thousand-fold.”

Ever since that proclamation not an hour had gone by without her having some bloodthirsty adventurer, malodorous peasant—or, really, anyone with easy access to a household pet, a bucket of bright paint, and a stubborn streak dead set on making their fortune—just waltz on into her domain, tracking muddy boot prints all over her expensive floors.

And for what?

Given the land she’d been given to govern, it went without saying that nothing noteworthy had ever, nor would ever come out of this inconsequential valley, let alone something even remotely exceptional.

Doomed to preside over a worthless noname province of insubstantial repute—barren of tillable land, harvestable forests, and so lacking in quality resources that not even the stone was worth quarrying—the very best she could hope for from the bumbling serfs she oversaw was their monthly tax.

And even then, it rarely came in the form of coin.

Truly, this was not the life she’d imagined for herself when she’d first taken the exams to become a royal functionary.

“Shall I summon the next in line, great mistress?” came the soft voice of her standing attendant. “Or do you wish for me to send them all away?”

Meredith hesitated. The temptation to simply give into her frustrations and call it a day was strong.

In the end though, she really couldn’t afford to. Even if she had the ultimate say in this provincial backwater, there were others—many, really—to which she had to report. Not the least of whom of her very own blood. Not that those familial ties seemed to soften her regard any.

Meredith sighed.

“On with it then.”

If it was going to happen regardless, she might as well get through it as expeditiously as humanly possible.