Morning brought with it something wonderful – comfort. I’ve read many a story where the characters had to survive awful living conditions for years on end, so it did feel a little pathetic to feel this kind of relief after only ten days in the wilderness. It felt really good though, so I didn’t care. Even if I can turn to water to get rid of most muscle soreness, not having to upon waking up is fantastic.
I lay in bed and simply enjoyed the comfort up until Cana woke up on the other side of the room. I mirrored her when she sat up and stretched, almost cat like. Definitely didn’t subtly ogle her as she was doing it. I would never.
I imagine Cana was grateful that I had gotten all my urges to surprise clean people in the mornings out back in Magnolia, for it was only after I caught her watching me warily that the thought of doing so occurred to me.
‘Damn, I need to remember to do that at some point after she lets her guard down.’
Packing our things was trivial. We hadn’t really even unpacked and throwing what little we did back into out storage items took all of a couple seconds.
I felt a small flare of magic as I walked out the room. Before I could react, I was enveloped in a cloud of pink mist.
I took a quick breath in alarm, though the mist dispersed rather quickly.
A quick spin brought Cana’s smug grin into view, and my concern about some sort of attack faded. I looked down and sure enough, the remnants of a Card replica were quickly dissolving into pink motes of light.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“I said I’d get my revenge” she replied.
I cast my thoughts back to what the hell she could be taking about.
Ah, right, the punching the water ball thing.
Well prank for prank makes sense, I guess. I looked down at myself, expecting to be colored pink or something. I wasn’t.
I quickly conjured some water to act as a mirror, but still couldn’t find anything visually off.
“What did you do?” I was beginning to panic a bit now. A change in aesthetics or even some pain I could handle, but this was an unknown, and I don’t like unknowns like this.
“You’ll see” she said, still smugly.
And see I did. Or, rather, feel.
Panic was quickly replaced with confusion, then anger, and then frustration. For the feeling spreading through me was very familiar. I’d gotten well acquainted with it when I was getting well acquainted with suddenly being female after all. It was also making it really hard to stay angry at Cana considering how much more attractive she looked now than about five seconds ago.
“Cana,” I forced out slowly and carefully, “Why do you have an aphrodisiac card?”
Cana, finally realizing that maybe, just maybe, drugging someone isn’t an okay thing to do, started stammering out an explanation.
“W-well, I, uh, use it sometimes when I, uh – “she continued in that vein as I tried to reassert proper control of myself. Turning myself to water worked temporarily, but once I turned back, the aphrodisiac turned back with me.
Cana was swiftly moving towards panic, but I ignored her as I fully liquefied so I could think this situation through.
‘First things first, I need to calm down. Yes, Cana fucked up, but I can also guilt her about it for days to come and make fun of it for years. Maybe I’ll even tickle her into unconsciousness or something. Right now, she’s panicking and I’m in exactly zero condition to sort this out.’
‘What needs to happen is for Cana to leave while the aphrodisiac runs its course, and to make that happen…’
I turned back to normal to the sight of Cana in a full-on panic.
“Cana!” I snapped. She looked towards me.
“Go get the materials for your new Card, and then find someone who can heal me.”
“But – “
“Now!”
She scampered out of the room.
I sighed in relief. Then I proceeded to lock the door, get in bed, throw a pillow over my face, and deal with the aphrodisiac.
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When Cana came back, I was sitting in bed fully cleaned, cleansed and ready to sort shit out as fast as possible.
“Did you get the materials?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you find a healer?”
Her face scrunched up “No, there’s something going on that has all the healers busy. No one would tell me what, though I think it has something to do with why the town is so quiet.”
“Good to know. We’ll investigate that together later. Right after this.”
I took a deep breath “First of all, drugging people is not okay. I thought that was self-explanatory but different worlds and different upbringings and all that so I’m willing to let it go this time. Secondly, why in all the hells between here and my home world, did you use so much!?”
“But I didn’t use that much. I usually use way more for myself.” Cana defended.
“Not that much!? I barely kept myself from jumping you!”
I’ve never seen Cana go so red so fast.
“W-what do you mean jump me?”
“What do you think? You’re hot and you pumped me full of ‘make horny’ drugs!”
You know what? If I’m already venting, then I’m going to do it properly. I started pacing.
“Its already frustrating enough living in a house full of hot girls while knowing all of them are straight, but I can deal with it because I’m a normal human being.”
I whirled on Cana.
“But that becomes a lot harder when my best friend, not to mention the hottest one, throws fucking magical aphrodisiacs at me!”
I stopped. That last bit wasn’t supposed to come out. Well, whatever, I’ll deal with the consequences later.
I looked around. There was nowhere to go. Guess I’m dealing with consequences right now. Damn it.
Cana was giving me a very strange look. “You’re into girls?”
“Of course I am! I was a guy in before coming here, my mind hasn’t changed.”
“You’ve…never mentioned that.”
“Yes, I have – “wait, maybe I hadn’t.
“Well I didn’t want to make thing awkward. I know you guys are all straight.” I finished lamely.
I looked down. I’d probably have to find my own place to live now. All the guild members were prudes, even the one’s that didn’t look the part (*cough* Lucy).
“You…like me?” Cana asked.
No point in hiding it now I suppose. “I spend most of my time around you, and when it came time to go on a mission, I barely even considered anyone else before asking you to spend months alone with me. What do you think?” Doesn’t mean I’m not going to be evasive about admitting it though.
There was silence for a bit.
“I’m not”
“Not what?”
“Not straight”
Silence.
“Oh”
We looked at each other.
“Is this the part where we throw away inhibitions and go at each other?”
“I think so”
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We didn’t end up throwing away all inhibitions, but we did throw away a lot. Throwing away the rest we decided to save for the after the mission, what with Cana having exactly zero ideas about sex outside of private fantasies, and my own lack of experience with girl-on-girl sex. No, our first time would be thought out and special, not the climax (heh) of an emotional roller coaster. This rational decision making was in no way assisted by the fact that my boobs were unavailable for play due to medical reasons.
Those same medical reasons also got us out of bed about an hour later. The tavern was unchanged from yesterday, though the two men were gone, and George was giving us a funny look as we walked out.
I felt a flash of embarrassment when I realized what the look was about, though I ignored it with practiced ease. Cana’s reaction to the look was far more muted than I expected, and when I asked, she just told me that if getting stared at was all it took to be with me then it was worth it.
…
I’m sure that if my heart had been flesh at the moment, it would’ve burst out of my chest. ‘Calm, calm, you’re supposed to be the experienced one here. No melting down from casual compliments.’ I told myself.
I wrenched my thoughts back towards the task at hand.
“Right, so, you said that the healers are all busy right now?” I asked.
“Yeah, something is apparently taking up all their time. Or that’s what the Southern Wolves guy told me.”
“And he didn’t tell you anything else?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Nope, not even when I pushed. He almost seemed offended.”
That’s not normal. If there was an issue that was taking up all of the healers’ attention, Ghareon should have already sent out a help request. It was standard procedure, and every city in the country needed that kind of help every decade or so (except Magnolia and Crocus since that’s where the help usually came from).
“Should we see if we can find one of the healer’s and ask them directly then?”
Cana looked at me askance. “How would I know. I did monster hunts, you’re the people person.”
I choked a bit at the insinuation that I was a ‘people person’. I’m the only mentally stable person in the guild under forty, there’s a difference.
If the decision is up to me, then I suppose I can take a page from the guild’s book and be at least a little spontaneous about it.
“Alright, we’re going to go find one of the healer’s and talk to them directly.” I stated with far more confidence than I felt.
Cana nodded, “How?”
I opened my mouth to reply…
And then closed it.
“Good question.”
----------------------------------------
After a bit of deliberating, I figured that getting a map of the city and then figuring out where the healers would be from there was our best bet. Cana, in response, produced a Map card.
This was a card that could store maps she bought and then act a bit like a modern GPS app if given a starting position.
It was a real testament to the difference between our worlds that she was confused at my shock. She didn’t even understand why she should’ve brought it up when she mentioned that she had a ‘bunch of cards for specific item storage’, because of course she has a magical GPS, who doesn’t?
It didn’t help at all that looking at the map only let me figure out that the healers were probably all in the Southern Wolves’ guild hall.
Which I could’ve easily figured out if I thought for half a second about the fact that Cana was told to piss off by a Southern Wolves member and that there is nowhere else in the city for all the healers to congregate.
“It’s ok, its your first mission, you’ll do better next time” Cana pat me on the back.
And now Cana was comforting me too!
I disagree with this situation. I comfort other people, not the other way around.
I sighed. Frustration helps no one, better to be happy that we have a plan of action.
At least getting to the guild hall was a simple matter. It’s rather difficult to miss the stalactite castle in the middle of the cavern after all.
Under the guild hall, we were greeted with another marvel. A large wall surrounded the pit that led to the Catacombs. Though not very tall, the wall was embedded with a dizzying array of Lacrima crystals, enchanted to both to reinforce the wall and to create a hemispherical forcefield around the pit.
This forcefield, while insufficient in power to truly stop one of the monsters from barreling through physically, that was what the wall was for, nevertheless did an excellent job of keeping any ranged attacks from getting into and damaging the city.
It also served to decrease noise pollution, keeping all any noise from escaping the pit (a side benefit of preventing any thunder-based attacks from reaching the city). This function, combined with the strangely empty city, made the area around the wall eerily quiet. The kind of quiet that kept Cana and I from talking while we searched out an entrance, not because we had to be, but because it felt wrong to even whisper.
Eventually we found our way to the gate that led to both the top of the wall and the lift that carried people and equipment to the guild hall. Luckily, it was guarded by a different pair than the ones that Cana had talked to earlier. Unluckily, these ones were just as stubborn. I was almost driven to attempt seduction with how obstinate they were being, and while I’m not above such tactics, I literally just got a girlfriend, and this wasn’t worth putting my relationship in jeopardy. Not to mention the only thing I knew about seduction was that boobs and glances were involved (just because I had girlfriends in my last life did not mean girls had attempted to seduce me).
We did get them to slip up in admitting that the ‘healers don’t have time to talk to you’, which more or less confirmed that they knew what was keeping the healers, which meant that it was Southern Wolves business, which meant that they were in the guild hall.
A guild hall that we were barred from, but we were two of the best mages in the country – it was time to get creative.
There were a fair few empty buildings – former shops by the looks of them – close to the wall, so we set up shop in one with plenty of empty space for Cana to a pull an entire sofa out of one of her ‘specific item storage’ cards. Ridiculous, but comfortable and unfortunately too magically ‘loud’ to be pulled out in the wilderness.
Cana didn’t have any reconnaissance methods (tracking was a different matter though), so getting the lay of the land in the guild hall was up to me.
As I’d learned just recently in the encounter with the llysanwe, I could see even if only my eyeballs were flesh. Stretching this thought a little further, I turned the face, skull, and brain around my right eye into water and set the resulting ball hovering in front of me.
I went green from the sudden double vision – the human brain simply wasn’t meant to handle that kind of visual input. I closed my left eye to compensate.
Cana, in turn, went green at the sight of me.
“What?”
“I can see your brain”
Oh. Yeah. I can see how that could be disturbing.
I pulled my hood up so that no one would have to look at that.
I took a few minutes to try and adjust to seeing through two eyes in vastly different locations, but I just couldn’t get used to it. Maybe with a lot of practice, but not right now.
This time at least, I’d have to trust Cana to guard me while I was blind. After all, if not her, then who could I trust? The decision was in no way encouraged by the fact that I’d have to cuddle up t – I mean ‘stay close’ to Cana for the whole task.
Preparations finished, I surrounded my eye with alternating layers of ‘hard’ water and shredding currents and sent it skywards towards the guild hall.
Looking at the ground and feeling the wind around my eye was an incredibly strange experience. On one hand, it was almost like I imagined flying to be. On the other, I could still feel my body leaning against Cana.
The inconsistency in sensory input took another few minutes to get used to, but get used to it I did, and finally start working on getting my eye into the guild hall.
Getting to the walls was no issue but getting inside was an entirely different problem. The place wasn’t as heavily warded as, say, the Magnolia lighthouse, but it still had its fair share. On top of the magical protections though, was the fact that it was carved out of solid stone and the windows were all shut.
A quick evaluation of the protections told me that getting past them wasn’t a problem, I was more than powerful enough to just blast through. Blasting through, however, isn’t subtle or friendly, and if I want healing, I have to come across friendly.
I spent a few minutes hovering among the stalactite spires of the guild hall, sticking to the shadows to minimize the chances of someone catching me by glancing out a window. The chances of that seemed small though since glancing through the windows revealed the place to be almost as quiet as the town.
The Southern Wolves guild was far larger than Fairy Tail, preferring a quantity over quality approach when recruiting. I passed the lack of activity on to Cana, and she agreed with me that there was something big going on.
A scant few minutes later, the issue was made clear. A hint of movement on the ground brought my attention towards the pit in the center. From the air it looked much like a funnel, the ground sloping downwards from the walls towards a large tunnel in the center that descended into darkness.
Or I imagine that’s what it looked like normally. Within a few moments of me looking at it, the tunnel started disgorging a veritable flood of monstrosities and abominations. From more mundane six-legged panthers, to floating masses of eyes, to slimes, and even a floating kaleidoscopic distortion.
In response, the walls boiled into activity. Men poured out of buildings built at the top of the walls, some taking up large shields and spears and moving towards the edges of the walls, others clambering up onto platforms set up behind the frontliners. The tips of the guild hall’s spires all retreated, revealing massive cannon barrels.
The men had barely managed to get in position before the monsters threw themselves at the wall. There was no caution, they jumped and tackled the wall as if unaware it was even an obstacle.
The front liners in turn began to push and throw the monsters back in displays of raw power I had witnessed back at Fairy Tail, but they had never been this brutal. Monsters were literally crushed in the guild members’ grip and pulped after being thrown.
The men in the back lines sent out blasts of fire and lightning in almost perfect synchronicity while the cannons cast down pillars of blue light that I’d never seen outside of cinematic sky beams.
The monsters responded with their own waves of magical energy, far more varied than the Southern Wolves’ attacks. Lances of warped space, fogs of acid, other monsters, one guild member collapsed, foaming at the mouth for seemingly no reason.
It was pure chaos the likes of which I’d never witnessed or even properly imagined. It was mesmerizing, the ebb and flow, if I let my eye unfocus it almost looked like a fireworks display.
It was that thought that brought me out of my reverie, for unlike a fireworks display the battle was completely silent. All I could hear were the muted whumps of the cannons around me, the barrier around the pit keeping any other noise from escaping.
“Well,” I told Cana, “I think I found what’s keeping the healers occupied.”
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The battle wound down surprisingly quickly, though it did leave its fair share of casualties. I suppose there aren’t enough monsters close by to support that kind of horde for any length of time.
Watching the corpses boil away to leave behind glowing Lacrima was also spectacular in its own horrific way.
I had debated helping, but Cana insisted that if they turned us away twice, there was something else going on. Its not like our guild marks were hidden after all, and as members of the most powerful guild in the country (and formerly of another in my case) we were pretty well known to other mages.
Though I didn’t mind not getting involved in that kind of battle, Cana’s insistence on it still surprised me. I was under the impression that she, like other Fairy Tail members, was a saint (the moral kind, not the magic kind).
“What? No!” was Cana’s response when I asked about it. “I’ll do anything for the guild, but I’m not a saint. Only Lucy and maybe Erza and Natsu are that nice.”
That…actually makes a lot of sense. The guild’s core philosophy was based around the bonds of family and friendship, not the ten commandments.
Whatever the reasoning behind the Southern Wolves not asking for help may be, the situation did give us an opportunity. Not asking for help is a decision definitely made by the leaders and from the look of the casualties, I highly doubt everyone is happy with it.
The issue would be finding the people unhappy with the leadership. Or rather, influential people unhappy with the leadership, I’m sure the rank and file on the frontlines aren’t particularly happy about dying when they could be getting reinforcements and not dying.
“The healers are keeping the Southern Wolves fighting so they’re probably pretty influential” Cana pointed out.
I felt another small pang of frustration that I hadn’t figured out something that obvious myself, but I ignored it with – unfortunately – practiced ease.
Talking and finding one of the healer’s shouldn’t be too much of a problem. We’d wait until they had likely finished patching up the wounded, then I’d send most of my head as water onto the walls to talk.
And that’s we did.
Getting my head onto the walls was a relatively simple matter. The Southern Wolves were busy resting or preparing for the next attack, and the barrier wasn’t meant to stop a direct assault, especially not by someone as powerful as I am.
Finding the healer’s tent, and from there the healer’s lodgings was similarly simple – just follow the trail of wounded towards the white tent filled with rows of beds and the moans and snores of injured Wolves.
The complications came from the fact that the three healers all slept in the hospital tent, though in small areas separated by a curtain. I could reveal myself in one of those areas, but they weren’t soundproofed, and suddenly being greeted by a disembodied head was bound to provoke an…extreme… reaction.
Thankfully, each of the healers’ rooms contained a journal and a pen. I wasn’t quite as adept at writing with water manipulation as I was with my hands, so my note to the healer ended up looking more like left-footed chicken scratch, but it was legible and that was all that mattered.
I spent the time waiting for whichever healer stayed in this room to arrive to look through their journal. It was filled with notes on their alchemical experiments, recipes and their efficacy at treating certain wounds and diseases, and how they’d combined their alchemy with Thread Magic to treat larger flesh wounds.
The reading was both fascinating from an academic standpoint and reassuring since it meant that they could probably treat me.
Eventually, my idle perusal had to come to an end, for the healer had come back. He, as I could now see, was utterly exhausted. He looked about forty with deep, dark circles under his eyes, a slouch so low one could mistake him for a hunch back, hair and clothes in utter disarray, a ten o’clock shadow – it was almost comical until I remembered the cause. He didn’t even collapse into the bed, he just stood there apparently asleep on his feet.
It almost made me feel bad for bringing my stuff to him now, but the sooner the better.
I sent out a thin mist to rustle the pages of his journal. I’d left it open to where I’d written my note.
It took a couple tries until he registered it, but once he did and read the note, he just leaned back and let loose a mournful sigh.
“Come out then, I won’t ‘freak out’”
I floated myself out in front of him.
He blinked slowly. I could see the gears turn, and I tensed in preparation to run.
“Oh.” He paused.
That was a lot more muted than expected.
“Appreciate the warning. What’d you want to talk about?”
“Initially I just wanted to ask for your services in a repairing a hole in my chest, but after seeing the situation here I also want to know why the hell you guys haven’t asked for reinforcements?”
The fact that he managed a pronounced grimace at that told me a lot about how happy he was with that last tidbit.
“New guild master. Hates the Fairies, hates the royals, got an ego bigger than a dragon’s.”
I started to question him about that, but he cut me off.
“Look, lady, I’m exhausted. I’d be happy to help after I’ve gotten a decent break. You look like you’re fairly powerful. You get us a break from these attacks, I’ll help you with whatever you need. Deal? Deal.” He stumbled into his bed and fell asleep.
That was…abrupt. But fair, I’ll talk this over with Cana and see if what he suggested is feasible, and then go through with it if she agrees.
‘After all, what’s an adventure without a good old fashioned delve?’