It was the next day. Arpeggio awoke to the freshest air she’d ever woken up to. The birds were chirping and Lyrica had never been so beautiful before. She lifted herself up and wondered when was the last time she’d ever felt so energetic not five seconds after waking up.

A Maid knocked. Arpeggio’s feet found ground before she said, “Come in.” The door opened, and a trolley of breakfast and tea rolled in.

Shal-yen’s Maids were sort of amazing, being nigh-imperceptible in the midst of their duties. Arpeggio might have messed with him a lot, but she had palpable respect for the man for bringing in such talented personnel.

Yet to change into her usual regalia, she sipped tea and broke fast, looking out the window into the morning sky. The town below was only just beginning to stir. Somewhere down there was her newest friend.

She smiled. The muscles around her cheeks ached in complaint of disuse, but she ignored it. She’ll get used to it, soon enough.

Then the shouting started.

Echoes of the shouts of Guards and Maids came from the castle’s curtain walls, but they were too garbled to understand.

Then came the sounds of fighting: swords clashing and bodies crashing. She should have been alarmed, but Arpeggio herself didn’t sense any actual danger, which meant that people were fighting, but not actively trying to kill each other. It could be anything from a duel to a particularly rowdy bar fight, but which was it?

“Your Highness!” Seldie shouted from outside the door. The door swung open. “Your Highness! It’s—”

“Catch your breath… What is it?”

Seldi looked up from panting. “It’s the Sentinel!”

“…Mother?!”

Never before had Arpeggio dressed so fast. She even had Seldie help her into her battle dress.

“B-but Your Highness!”

“Shush. We’re both women.”

Once she was ready—armor and swords and all—she jumped out the window.

***

Amelia Thronekeeper walked under the gatehouse. She knew her daughter was here. She could smell it.

A Guard stood in her way.

“Esteemed Sentinel! Please, I implore you”—she smacked the Guard aside—“gah!”

“The Sentinel is out of control! Protocol 21!” another Guard shouted. In response, a platoon of Guards rushed out of one of the wall’s towers to meet her.

For a moment, she was shocked that they had a protocol for exactly this sort of scenario. Rather, that should have been expected of Shal-yen.

Electric spheres arced towards her from the turrets and battlements. With the booming sweep of a halberd, she banished them all, blasting dust and rocks all around—and destroying the pavement under her.

The tall double doors to the castle opened, and Shal-yen himself made his entrance.

“Amelia Thronekeeper,” he said in a low voice, wrapping his knuckles in leather and steel, taking slow, dramatic steps towards the Sentinel herself. “So, you’re finally here to kill me…”

“Actually, no.”

“No?” He paused wrapping his knuckles.

“You are the only one propagating the myth that I am yet to exact my revenge on you. It is quite annoying, you see.”

“How am I to believe that”—he continued wrapping his knuckles—“when you’ve taken out some of my best Maids?”

“They aren’t dead—‘Maids’ ?” They were clearly wearing armor fit for heavy infantry!

“You’ve also destroyed the reinforced pavement. How? I’ve made sure to change them out so when your daughter jumps out of the window, it does not cause any damage—”

A blur crashed between them, sending out a ring of dust. The pavement beneath was still intact, though one brick was cracked.

Arpeggio looked up. “Mother!”

“Daughter!” Amelia practically threw herself at Arpeggio.

…To which she replied by delivering a punch to the gut.

It was almost like a blast with the sheer amount of force behind it, and it sent Amelia corkscrewing through the air and skidding under the shadow of the gatehouse.

“Why is my mother such a fool!” Arpeggio shouted. “Visit normally!”

Amelia stood up with shaky legs and wiped the blood from the corners of her mouth. Somehow, she was convinced that this was just Arpeggio’s way of expression affection.

…Considering how she’d shot Kalender at point-blank range, it might actually be true.

“I-I came all the way here for you—”

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“It has been three days!”

“Oh, you, come here~” Amelia said that with a bloodied visage, ambulating towards Arpeggio like some sort of undead.

“No!”

“Yes~”

Arpeggio drew both her swords. “No!”

Amelia propped herself up with her halberd. Her eyes glowed. “Yes.”

To outside observers, the two disappeared in a blur and with giant clouds of dust kicked up behind them. The observing Maids mentally noted how there was just too much dust around here.

To Shal-yen’s horror, that was the start of a massive amount of property damage.

Pavements cracked left and right, chunks of the curtain walls were blown off, and even the castle’s facade was being defiled by the fight which his eyes could barely follow.

Mother and daughter were running up and down walls, with mother reaching ever so lovingly towards her daughter, and the daughter fending her off with swords like how a cat would fight—if a cat had swords for paws.

But, Amelia wasn’t just play-fighting with her daughter. Oh, she had missed this. They used to do this a lot when Arpeggio was younger, but the reminiscing would have to wait.

This fight was a test of Arpeggio’s focus and spirit. The way she leaned back, leaned forward, narrowly avoiding Amelia’s thrusts by mere inches, spoke of a blinding amount of confidence.

Arpeggio’s swordplay, too, had changed. She used to exercise a great amount of calculated brutality, making no excess motions and mercilessly cutting into the opponent’s weaknesses, no matter the strength difference. Such swordplay was as cold as frost on winter-time steel.

…But, right here, and right now, Amelia was witnessing something so…sloppy! Her daughter was making a lot of funny faces, giving away her intent before she even made a move, and her attacks had some slack in them. Even her signature decapitating strikes were wavering in this funny little way, when the edge wasn’t quite aligning with the motion of the strike.

A part of Amelia lamented the time that had passed. Her daughter was no longer a master of the sword, but a native speaker of it.

They disengaged at the same place where they started.

They locked eyes—with gazes so sharp they could cut.

“…So…” Amelia said.

“…So?”

“So where’s the man who opened your heart?”

Arpeggio coughed and took a knee, propping herself up with her swords.

“Mother!” she shouted. “He is but a friend!”

“Oh? Is he, now? Or is it…for now?”

Arpeggio’s coughing could be a symptom of some sort of lethal disease at this point.

“We! Are! Only! Friends!” she said, stabbing the ground on each beat, widening a crack until it finally broke a brick.

Amelia laughed, but not only at Arpeggio’s expense, but also Shal-yen’s—in a fiscal way, what with the castle being ripped to pieces and all.

***

Rolling back the clock, to understand why Amelia started unreasonably attacking Guards and Maids at first sight, it is helpful to examine what sorts of things would upset her mood.

After taking sick leave from Castle Violentum, she spent the better part of six hours sprinting towards Harmony. That left her a bit tired, and so she wished for a good, relaxing time at the baths.

The baths were managed by the Temple to Civilas, which was at the end of the same temple row as the Temples to Maximine and Minimine. It was only a short hike up the hill, and she had come from the southeast, so she came upon the temple row first.

The Priestesses recognized her, and they quickly obliged when she asked to use a bath. After a short prayer in the main hall, she went into one wing of the complex, was shown a private bath, and left to her devices.

She soaked in soothing warm waters for a while, basking in the silence of it all.

“I can’t wait to see Arpie…” she said aloud. Admittedly, the silence emphasized some feelings of loneliness. Her husband—His Majesty, Thorn Selisie—hadn’t been paying much attention to her, lately. Of course, they were always around each other, but that was on the job.

It’s just not the same.

Normally, she’d be messing with Arpeggio to take the edge off work. Oh, sure, she was on good terms with Thorn’s other daughters and wives, but they were all busy with different things. Even Arpeggio had duties, sometimes.

But she couldn’t be left with her thoughts for long—nooOOoo—because there was screaming coming from the corridor.

A masked man burst into her bath. Clearly, the hooligan had no respect for privacy, and possibly even for women, because he sneered and immediately threatened her with a sword.

“Get out of the bath if you know what’s good for you, Priestess!” he said.

Oh, she got out of the bath, alright—and appeared behind him, knocking him out with a light tap to the head.

After using a quick change spell—which took ages to chant, but it was faster than actually changing—she used an information spell on top of that to get a head count and disposition check of everyone within a 200-meter radius.

Information flooded her brain: 191 Priestesses of Civilas and 29 Mercenaries—and one Follower of the ###### God?

She groaned. She’d never actually fought any of them before, but she knew how to.

She would know—as the mother of the Inquisition.

She fled from the bathing wing and climbed a spiral staircase to the Head Priestess’s office, knocking out a Mercenary along the way. She tried not to kill them, as they might be able to provide valuable intelligence later on.

The Head Priestess’s office was lined with books to the left and right. She counted the books along the History section, and picked out the eleventh.

Inside were four anti-charm bracelets. She wore all of them.

Now that the actual threat had been neutralized, she went all-out.

She hunted the Mercenaries in the outer wings. It was strange, because there were 29 Mercenaries, and she’d already taken out 21 of them in the outer wings alone, without ever having spotted a Priestess. The other Mercenaries and the Follower must have somehow wrangled all the Priestesses together in one place. Could the Follower have charmed all of them?… Not possible. 191 was just too many.

Interrogating one of the Mercenaries confirmed her suspicions. She made her way to the main cathedral, climbing up the buttresses and sneaking a peek from the bell tower.

Inside, all 191 Priestesses formed a neat grid—a rank-and-file formation, all just standing there, and the Head Priestess was standing at the head of it like a commanding officer.

Impossible.

She spotted the Mercenaries and the Follower. None of them looked too powerful.

She dropped in, but mid-air, she kicked off the air, and she barreled towards the Follower. Goddesses below, she would not reserve the most dramatic villain and most serious threat for last like a fool.

There was a look of surprise, then arrogance, then even more surprise on the Follower’s face as she got point-blank close to him and his Blessing wasn’t having any effect.

She delivered a foot to his face, knocking him out. This didn’t guarantee that his Blessing wouldn’t passively charm her somehow, however, so she took the best care to stay away from him as much as possible.

The other Mercenaries only managed to register these events after she had gut-punched two of them.

Only one of them managed to fully draw out his sword before he got gut-punched, too.

The Priestesses of Civilas, however, weren’t happy about the object of their artificial affections being knocked out like that. Half of them charged at her in reckless abandon, while another half started chanting some manner of magic.

It took Amelia about half a minute to knock out everyone in the room, zooming left and right faster than a blur could even register in a typical human or half-elf brain.

Then she went into town to call the local Inquisition branch to clean up this mess.

She really wanted a bath, but the only one she knew was the one managed by the Civilas Temple.

“Esteemed Sentinel, I know a place,” a certain Inquisitorial Maid told her. She would be forever grateful towards that Maid.

But, that was 191 women robbed of their freedom. Even a bath in a high-end inn couldn’t help her relax, in the end.

Only seeing Arpeggio would calm her down, now.

She went to the castle, very much grumpy and in need of Arpie.