*Munch* *Munch* *Munch*
"Lady S-" A human with blonde hair opened her mouth only for deathly cold fingers to shut her mouth close causing her teeth to clack against each other.
The particular student who wished for the silence to continue was kneeling on top of Sofia's waist in such a way that it reminded the Junker of her horse riding lessons. In truth, she hadn't expected the secluded Firmusian to have learned how to ride a horse not to mention doing it enough to develop such smooth-looking muscle memory. Yet no matter how much the northern noble might have impressed Sofia, she would have preferred for the girl to not mount her with such shamelessness. It didn't help that the girl only wore an oversized shirt and her bare thighs were pressed against her sides, burning them with the intense cold.
On the Court. If someone sees this... how would I even explain this?
The Junker felt blood drain from her brain causing her to develop intense migraine as she tried to wrap her head around the situation.
"You're getting hotter?" The ancient in the skin of a cute girl outstretched her left hand, touching the human on her forehead.
One would have expected the cause of Sofia's headache to at least sound a little apologetic but that didn't happen. Rather than showing concern for the poor woman she had pinned to the couch, the mage sounded excited.
"Ohhh." The blonde woman let out a relieved sigh as cold radiated into her sizzling head.
The simultaneously overheating and freezing enchantress tried to stand up but the high noble leveraged her superior position to push Sofia back into the soft cushion. Alas, she gave up on escaping and watched her jailor eat the small pastries she had brought for her.
"Lady Siri, may I speak?" She spoke after waiting for the girl to finish eating.
"Yes." The secret undead stared unblinkly at Sofia from above with her head tilted to one side.
"Have you finished what Mister Amroch had asked for?"
"Who?"
"Sandwich, have you finished what he had asked for." Sofia felt her noble spirit shrink a tiny bit from embarrassment after saying such a childish thing.
"I asked Iris for materials yesterday." The high noble replied, she must have started to get bored as without warning Sofia's wheat-coloured hair was being played with.
"I see..." The frontier woman watched as the pale maiden began to start to braid a single strand of hair at the side of her face. "Would you like to attend a tea party tomorrow? I received a letter this morning and they asked me to pass on the invitation. From what I could gather there would be no Oriri students attending and those who had agreed to it are children of Barons." Sofia gave the bored Firmusian a military-like report, feeling compelled to do so as a pair of glowing eyes rested on her.
"Is there going to be deliciousness?"
"Yes."
The girl let out an approving purr as she adorably wobbled her head back and forward looking as if she could tilt over at any moment. One couldn't be blamed for wanting to spoil the cryomancer, scratching her behind the ears to invoke the preciously angelic sounds the cold kitten made. Yet Sofia could not stop but to see a white serpent coiled around her waist.
The Junker was feeling like a character in one of those stories where the main character was being fooled by a devil yet continued to play in its infernal play. The feline doll was an oddball yet not a clown and occasionally a glint of inhuman light sent shivers down Sofia's spine. Those moments when the mysterious Blackworm dropped her guard and stared at the people around her with indifferent disgust or manipulated them effortlessly fitted perfectly with Sofia's image of a conniving city noble wearing whatever mask it took to grow in power. Alas, Sofia went against her frontier heritage as there was something enchanting in the way Lady Siri acted with only her in the picture.
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The feeling that the girl had a plan for everything filled Sofia's flat chest to its brim. And that was probably the reason why she shared the invitation with the Blackworm. Since their training session, many eyes have stared into Siri's back. From the rumours going around, she had managed to break her wand and eliminate a squad all by herself. It was truly pathetic how some nobles would find any excuse to blame for their defeat anywhere else except themselves.
Letters had been piling up in front of Sofia's door since that time. Evidently, her position as the attendant for the Firmusian had led the other nobles to think that she could serve as a middleman who could take the reputation hit as the messenger of a particularly egregious letter. She planned to not deliver any letters meant for the Blackworm residence but that would lead some braver nobles to go directly to the source of power. And seeing how gentle the girl was with any breach of protocols all other carions would quickly flock to her side. As another brilliant idea, the greenhorn shadow eminence figured that giving the metropolitan what they wanted would be a far better idea as that would lead them to continue sending letters to her rather than Lady Siri. Outside of that, Sofia couldn't deny that she would enjoy watching the faces of the chatty nobles sour into fake smiles as the dangerously innocent-looking girl played with them. A genuine feeling of progress overcame Junker as she felt the beginning of a noble clique which would take over the foreign body of Oriripol's Academy by storm. With this Sofia could leverage as much help for her family as she could without needing to feed on the blood of the caged songbird.
Was this her plan... Maybe being turned into her vassal isn't such a bad idea?
Sofia asked herself as the cat-like girl stopped messing around and was staring at her intently.
While the human was intoxicating her mind with delusions of Kia's grandeur. The undead necromancer had spaced out focusing on the small delicate thing only she could see. True to her promise to her favourite, she was examining the soul of the human with a warm ember buried deep inside the silky matter comprising their souls.
When tugging on Sofia's soul, it began to resemble wet strands of slightly green material going through a loom or maybe harp strings covered by viscous slime, she couldn't decide. Her fingers carefully filled each string one by one trying to find the source of the fuel of the little warm ember which mimicked Iris.
Humans' souls were strange things, which shared few things among themselves. The one she was examining was latched on like a vine around the body but when she tried to pull it out in a deadly fit of curiosity, the soul revealed it was fused to the body alongside its spine leaving much of its body to simply fill its flesh vessel with the rest of its over-inflated soul mass.
Perhaps this is why they are so varied.
The ancient thought as she recalled the results of her previous experiments. The soul's structure mattered in the way it could experience the word. A completely fused soul tended to have a grounded look on their life before resting, embodying the values of the culture it grew up in. Unlike the Cyclops or any of their thrall races she dealt with where the soul could always fill the body, the System didn't spread out the mana evenly among humans and the fussy humans, causing these strange oddities about not only the soul's structure but its size.
"You don't have it?" Kia muttered as her fingers touched the back of Sofia's neck.
"Huhhhh?" For some unknown reason, the human was slumped to the side drooling saliva from the side of her mouth. "You said something, Siri?" The vacant space in Sofia's green eyes disappeared as she blinked repeatedly trying to cast away the fog.
"Iris has a blemish here." The ancient vocalised her thoughts while the Junker watched her perplexed.
The creator of the risen knitted the soft skin as she focused on the space without any void, envious of what her throne didn't have. In the beginning, she hadn't seen a tiny fault in Iris's soul but in the same show of negligence as not replacing Iris's eyes, Kia felt angry at herself for not troubleshooting her creation before venturing into the wide blue world.
To fix it Kia reckoned she would need a soul closely resembling that of Iris. In her kingdom, the necromancer would have crafted a dummy soul and used that but until Iris levels up many times over, she wouldn't have enough mana to achieve it. Fortunately for the Overtyrant, there were natural processes that could give her sufficient soul to patch the thumb-size gash on the back of the risen's neck.
"How do you make young?" The undead asked her experiment. She knew that a pair of the opposing sex had to be placed in a room and fed until a young one came out but outside of this general statement she found when reading about creating new batteries her knowledge about the procreation rituals of the Living severely lacked.
"Siri!" A very much panicked Sofia jumped upwards, throwing off the petite undead like a vigorous wild horse. "Why would you ask such a question, now?!" The undead being shouted at shrunk into the white fabric of Iris's shirt. "Wait, wait, wait. Don't cry I was spooked a little bit by the way you had asked the question." Sofia kneeled down beside Kia trying to comfort the adorably pure girl. "I didn't know you had such a subject in mind and I'm not the right person to ask-"
"Is that because you are not female?"
"Siri!" The mage stared at the human who had crossed her arms in front of her trying to hide something on her chest which only confused the undead further as there was nothing there. "I'm a woman, why would you even think otherwise? You're really a... Are you sure your title doesn't say Stressmancer or Nerve Dancer?" Sofia closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. "Why are you checking that!"
The very confused undead kitten stayed on the ground never learning why Sofia appeared like she did when Iris flashed her teeth at her. Eventually, the human with nothing on her chest picked up the curled-up ancient and sat her on the soft cushion before glancing at the sun.
"As I said Lady Siri I'm not the best person to ask a question regarding children. You are of the age so I think that the best place to start would be your maid, Iris. She will know better than me were to start off this conversation."
Kia's eyes went wild like a deer caught in a torchlight, filled with shock powerful enough to run through her whole body like a lightning strike. Her pupils dilated rapidly, swallowing the colour of her irises until only a thin ring of hue remained.
"I can't." She eventually whispered but found herself alone in the living room, a warm radiance gently caressing her cheek from just beyond the door.