Tamra yawned, covering her mouth with one hand, while she used the other to hold onto the coffee that she’d brought with her. Stealing the warmth that seeped through the mug, and using it to fight the morning chill.
Actually, rather than the morning it was already the afternoon, late afternoon, almost evening even.
The sun hung low in the sky, reddish, like a bloodshot eye. Billy had elected to sleep in this morning which meant that she, Tamra, had also elected to sleep in this morning.
The two boss-ladies were away on business, and like the old saying goes, when the cats were away, the mouse would play. Well, in this case it wasn’t like the cats actually cared.
One of them had actually, given a not-so-tacit thumbs up. It was more that Tamra didn’t think she was at a point where she could actively challenge them for the closest spots on the bed or on the couch.
She wasn’t sure if there was an exact pecking order to whatever their situation was, but she did get that they did have some kind of seniority and since at her core she was still the meek girl she’d always been she respected it.
At the very least for once in her life she was pretty sure that she wasn’t at the bottom. ‘That’ position, belonged to Alessa, who’d always turn to her for advice for some reason. As if Tamra actually understood anything that went on in this place.
When Edna, and Elena were around, she usually hung back. They were gone now though, off fighting god-monsters and shaking the world of business and what have you, so the bed and the boy were all hers.
Something she took full of advantage for the duration of the time they were gone. Testing the limits of her new body, supple and strong as it was.
******
Fast forwards to later in the day, when a groggy Billy awoke, and she watched him get up and do his morning errands. Balancing between making breakfast, meditating, sending and answering messages and testing a few samples from his latest creations for the Bone Tree Product line.
Quietly savoring his half dressed state, watching him pace in and out of the room. As he slowly undressed. Waiting till he was just about ready to head into the shower, because she liked to jump in.
Sometimes there were shower time activities, usually there weren’t but it was nice view either way.
The man looked smaller when he was dressed in his usual slightly oversized business casual clothing, just another average face in crowd, but when he was naked, hot water cascading over his shoulders, and the expanse of glistening gray-brown musculature below, one could see that there was nothing small about him.
******
Fast forwards again and here she was, at his side. Well not at his side exactly, Billy was off doing his thing, fighting his one man war with the entire Mages Guild. He’d located a mine where they were securing Essence stones.
These guys seemed to have gotten hold of a god-monster, one of the so-called titans. Which was why Billy hadn’t just flattened the mountain and crushed everyone inside. He needed to deal with the god-monster up close and personal.
Otherwise things would go off like a grease fire. The beast would go berserk and become a complication trampling the nearby locals and Billy was big on not bringing extra trouble to unconnected persons if he could.
It was a way of doings that she respected and one of the growing number of things she maybe, kind of, liked about him.
*****
Tamra sat on a chair that she’d either imagined into being, or pulled from the gray world inside Billy’s shadow. It was hard to tell which it was. The nothingness of that place was so pliant and stable that it could have very well been both.
On another chair sat the other girl the barrian. She and Tamra had been assigned to watch the north entrance of the mine. The southern entrance was watched by grouchy fellow with the wings. All other entrances were guarded by shades. A grand multitude of gamboling, prancing, beings of nothingness.
All of them waiting for someone either unlucky or stupid to come and try running out. With even more of the creatures wandering the tunnels within. Chasing down, and killing anyone they spotted inside.
Billy said he liked questions, apparently he wanted her to learn more about how he and the company operated, in more ways, than just than fun ways. So she’d asked Billy if this was all necessary, and if there were any innocents they were condemning to death down there, by doing things this way.
If Billy was like any of the other people that she’d worked for he should and would have told her “no”, explaining that everyone inside that mine was either part of the Seven Sons or they were bandits.
It would have been a palatable lie. She would have believed it, or she’d have at least made herself believe it, especially since the guy, had kept up a good streak of telling her the truth, about pretty much anything she asked.
Not half-trues, not technical truths, just plain honest facts. If she ever asked about anything he didn’t want to speak about he just said he didn’t want to speak about it. Often at least partially explaining why he didn’t or couldn’t speak about it, first.
Instead Billy had simply said, that a most all he could promise was that they wouldn’t be civilians.
They were traders, mercenaries and miners. Most of them were just there to do their jobs but they were also all part of this.
They all knew too much about what was here, having been bespelled into keeping the secrets that were in this place, and could be dangerous if left alone.
Thus here she was, standing at the mouth of a cave, waiting to strike down any unfortunate that came running out, having mixed feelings, but only because she kind of felt bad for not having mixed feelings.
In a broad sense one could justify it by saying it was their own fault for working for/with the Seven Sons Council, or that they knew what they’d signed up for, working at classified op like this one, but that felt like it was kind of a cop-out.
A voice in her head kept saying that if she was going to kill people, than she should accept the reasoning would likely never be ‘good’.
“Hey there’s another one.” said Tamra.
“Uh...su-, sure.” said Alessa. Hopping down from her perch and then running to the mouth of the cave.
The girl’s arm seemed to bubble and become misshapen, then suddenly it was a club, a metal mace filled with cruel looking, spikes. That was her power, a power born from a minor ability to shapeshift, that was accompanied by an ability to turn her blood into various materials.
As a power it was middling, in both level and nature, but now it was quickly becoming something impressive.
The way Billy taught was such that Tamra had a sense that even if she, Tamra hadn’t been changed, her ability to make people see things if they tried to touch her, would have been similarly transformed into something formidable.
Becoming something more than just a way to ward off the odd vagrant and overly ‘friendly’ co-worker.
Tamra watched Alessa run inside the cave, she heard a scream, but it wasn’t Alessa’s scream, so she didn’t feel the need to get off of her rock. Alessa came back covered in a fair amount of ‘non’-transforming blood, most likely belonging to the other person.
For such a shrinking violet, the girl was startlingly calm when it came to killing. It was like it came natural. Maybe it was a barbarian thing. Or maybe not. Either way, Tamra found herself feeling just a bit envious.
She figured it must be nice not to have to overthink such things.
Her turn came when a broad shouldered man with a pick came running out, he tried to beg, and when the begging didn’t work he made threats.
Tamra stood in the dark, trying to focus on everything that wasn’t him. Humming as she tried to get in the right mindset. She ‘dreamt’ up a small flock of flying serpents.
They weren’t slitherers, rather they looked like miniature versions of the massive serpent that a certain Master William wore when ever he needed to fight larger opponents.
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As soon as they popped into existence the serpentine figments immediately went after the man, swarming him before he could try and fight or flee. Leaving only a small pool of blood and some scraps of cloth.
She looked at what she’d done, fairly sure that the sense of satisfaction she’d gotten from seeing her creations kill so efficiently was probably not on the right side of the proverbial scale of right and wrong.
Discovering that she didn’t quite care all that much. She didn't actually care about whether she was a good person or not. She just didn't want to feel like she was a bad one.
Tamra returned to her perch, slightly light-headed. The costs for dreaming things into being were still too prohibitively high for her. Especially when it came to things that were alive.
She decided that her next kill would just be done with ordinary magic. Either that or she’d just call up some real shades, though Billy prefered she fight by herself, for the sake of her training.
She tried not to think about whether the man she’d just killed, had had a family or someone who was waiting for him at home. It was startlingly easy. She was pretty certain she’d be fine so long as no kids popped up.
She wasn’t sure when it happened, or how, but somehow she found that, the things that had so deeply disturbed her when she was younger, didn’t bother her as much now.
She wondered if her time in the birdcage had ‘rattled’ her more than she’d thought. Or if it was just that her time as a raider had indelibly marked her, warping her moral compass.
Maybe all that was just a big freudian excuse and she’d just always been that cold blooded.
Maybe it was time and typical Mondian maturity, making her numb to the loss of lives. Or maybe it was just a difference in the one who was asking her to do these things?
*****
One troublesome part of having all of one’s physical abilities rise with one’s aether cultivation was having to get used to the changes. By the second realm one could hear for miles and miles.
Which meant that if Tamra simply sat there, she had to listen to the sounds of pain and death and fear, that was happening in the mine below. It didn’t bother her, but the sound was grating for her nerves. Causing her mood to dip.
Thus to distract herself, she stepped outside her comfort area and tried her hand at a little small talk.
“So...Alessa do you have any a siblings?” said Tamra.
“Mhm? Er, y-, yeah. A brother and a sister, both younger. And then there are a couple dozen half-siblings by my dad.”
Tamra whistled.
“A big family, huh? Sounds nice.”
“Um...How about y-, you?” said Alessa.
Tamra sat there, feeling a little awkward as she answered. She’d maybe had siblings, or at least cousins.
She genuinely couldn’t remember anymore, the place had been big and communal so, the kids there were like everyone’s kids. The parents were everyone’s parents.
Whatever the case was, they naturally weren’t in the picture in the more. But it felt awkward to say aloud so she just looked to side.
Frowning. She realized the girl wasn’t picking up her signal and she, Tamra had been quiet for so long things were starting to get awkward, so eventually she had to speak.
“Er...sorry. It’s pretty much just me now.” said Tamra.
Alessa visibly paled likely thinking that she’d stepped on a sore spot. Tamra did her best at making one of Edna’s trademarked fake-smiles.
“Don’t worry about it...this is Monde after all. I’m sure you’ve a got a few parentless kids in village too.” said Tamra.
Her words getting a hesitant nod from Alessa, since that was pretty much the case for two thirds of the village’s youths.
******
Out from the cave came another figure, both girls tensed with Alessa getting ready to deal with the issue if it was another group of miners trying to escape. Instead it was the familiar figure of their teacher and employer.
The young faced man, walked out from under the darkness, covered in blood and some kind of oil.
He was dragging something that looked like a giant rabbit with a million eyes of crystal on its ears, in one hand, and the corpse of a battered old man in the other.
“Yo, Angelo!” said Billy. Calling out.
His words had barely escaped him before there was an explosion of feathers and another figure standing at his side. Dressed in blue, and armed with a long gray blade.
Billy handed the rabbit over to the man.
“Could you see that this gets to our friends in the Ministry of Public Order?”
Angelo just grunted and then he was gone, shooting up into the air, flying on six pairs of great white wings.
“Hey, Boss, what about the other body?” said Tamra.
Billy blinked and then he looked down at his hand and chuckled, a sight that was always a little unsettling because his face generally didn’t change to match the act. He released the white knuckled grip that he’d had on the old man’s crushed wind-pipe and the body fell as a heap.
“Kind of forgot about that….Didn’t intend to bring ‘him’ up here.”
Tamra watched how the sunlight streamed through the holes that had been bored through Billy’s torso and made so guesses about how that last fight had gone.
For a man who always nagged about not overdoing things, he never seemed to follow his own advice.
Tamra just nodded, casting a spell, that would reduce the old sorcerer’s body to salt and ash, because Billy kind of looked like he was tad too tired to do it himself.
“Thanks.” he said smiling, in that way he smiled, though his expression barely changed. Making her feel warm and shivery all over.
She didn’t know why she felt the way she felt and wasn’t exactly sure what it was she was feeling either. Then again, She wasn’t sure about a lot of things when it came to the man in front of her. Or about life in general.
Were her feelings based on the connection that they held or the way that he’d treated her both now and in the past? Was she in love? In lust? Or was this just her trying to stay in good stead with her powerful new patron till she got things figured out?
Or maybe she was just in love with the idea of having something in her life seem to work out for once? Maybe she was in love with idea of ‘not’ being a cosmic chew toy.
She wasn’t sure about any of it, but she’d be alive, for as long as ‘he’ was alive, so she was sure she’d have time to figure all that out.
Even if there ended up being no real definitive answer, there was a strange part of her that felt it’d be satisfying all the same.
Things thus far had been pretty good, and if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit, the guy had a way of getting one’s expectations up.
She stepped in close to him, leaning into him a little, not minding the ichor and oil that coated his clothes. Then they all teleported back to the house.
The mountain crumbled into rubble after they left. The great heap of broken stones sinking into a thousand mile pit of churning flame and, angry nothingness. The pit being birthed by a timed spell that Billy had cast just a few minutes before his entrance of the mine.
A last bit of psychological warfare that Billy had decided would be useful after all the real fighting was done.