Chrys gripped the knife in her hand, staring up at the door to her father’s bathroom. Something about this situation felt…off, but she had a job to be doing, and she couldn’t let herself get cold feet, not now of all times. So, she took a deep breath and pushed the door open, trying her best to be silent as she stalked towards the bathtub, where her father was quietly bathing.
Reuben’s eyes flew open, locking on to Chrys as she froze in place, knife still in her pocket. He rose from the tub, body drying and clothes appearing on him before Chrys had any chance to see anything untoward, taking steps forward as Chrys found herself involuntarily stepping backwards.
This had been a terrible idea, she was about to die, and she wasn’t even going to –
“Ariana.” Reuben said, a fondness filling his voice that Chrys had never heard before. “I haven’t been able to tell you, but you’re the most important part of my world, and I love you more than I can express.”
Chr – Ariana stood in dumb amazement as her father pulled her into a hug unprompted for the first time in her life, but quickly gathered her resolve. This had to be a trick, a way to get out of what was coming. So, she grabbed the dagger and screwed her eyes shut as she thrust forward, a wet squelching sound ringing out as the impact ran down her arm.
And, yet, her father’s embrace never faltered. “It’s okay.” He whispered. “I know I haven’t been there for you. I’m sorry I pushed you to this, and you don’t need to blame yourself.”
Ariana opened her eyes, realization dawning on her. She never could have done this if her father had truly wanted to resist, he had to have sensed the knife, had to know about the plot, and…and…
“Shh.” Reuben said, stroking Ariana’s hair gently. “It’s okay. Times are going to be tough in the coming months, but you’re a strong girl. If you could do this, you can do anything. I’ll be watching from the afterlife, okay?”
It dawned on Ariana that she was sobbing, and she almost felt like she was an observer, watching from afar as she attempted to marshal healing magic and undo the terrible thing she had just done. Yet, it was no use; her spells were instantly countered, not that they would have put a dent in all the anti-healing enchantments that had been on the knife anyway.
“I’m sorry.” She blubbered. “I didn’t, I thought, I…”
“It’s okay.” Reuben said soothingly. “This doesn’t change how I feel about you. This is my fault for not being there for you more, and you shouldn’t blame yourself. I love you, Ariana.”
“I…I love you too, Father.”
Reuben smiled happily, the expression suiting him in a way that his stoicism never had. “I’m glad to hear it, even if it’s a lie. No one can really love someone like me, someone who wasn’t really even a person. I’m happy that, at the very least, you can be free from my shackles now.”
“Don’t…go…” Ariana choked out. “You can…you can fix this, right? You can do anything, right?”
“My time is over.” Reuben replied. “I’ve held the world captive long enough. Forget about me, Ariana. Forget about me, and be happy. That’s all I want from you and your mother.”
“I…please, stay.”
Reuben’s hug tightened in response, but, ever so slowly, began to weaken. The advisors had been right, the enchantments would make short work out of him, whether she wanted them to or not. She could only sit helplessly as her father’s life drained, knowing that she had just made a terrible mistake.
Chrys bolted upright in bed, taking a moment to remember her situation and to recognize the still not-quite-familiar ceiling. Almost unconsciously, she wiped her eyes, got off of the bed, and left her room, and heading towards her mother’s bedroom, where she was no doubt sleeping soundly. She woke up somewhat as she walked, regaining her full consciousness at the doorway to her mother’s bedroom. Then, after a moment of hesitation, she turned to head back to her room, only to be interrupted by her mother.
“Chrys?” Rose said sleepily. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine, Mom.” Chrys replied. “I was just…sleepwalking. Go back to bed.”
Chrys fled back down the corridor to her room, opening the door and jumping back in surprise as she caught sight of her mother, siting on Chrys’s bed. “You’re crying.” Rose said gently. “Did you have a nightmare?”
Chrys sighed, walking over to the bed and sitting next to her mother. “It’s just…it was that dream again.”
Rose hugged Chrys gently, running a comforting hand down her hair and then scratching behind her ears. “It’s okay, Chrys.” She soothed. “You did your best, and I don’t resent you for it. You know I think that was the best thing to ever happen to me, and we’re here now, able to catch up on the time that we missed.”
Chrys let herself sink into her mother’s embrace. “I know, I just…the guilt doesn’t go away that easily. I’ve been plagued by it for too long.”
“If it wasn’t you, one of them would have done it.” Rose said, hugging Chrys tighter. “You were just a girl who had been robbed of the affection she deserved, and they were bad people capitalizing on that. In the end, I’m glad it was you; the gods chose to lift the Urge and let me experience emotion for the first time, and it was the happiest moment of my life. I wasn’t fully sure what was happening, I was just glad to be able to face you as me at the end.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.” Chrys said quietly. “I was an adult back then, and I should have known better.”
“But you were never taught the things you should have been taught.” Rose replied. “You only had the education of your old mother and the cutthroat people she hired to teach you. The gods helped give you a chance to relive your adolescence, and with it a chance to help rectify that. You know better now, and that’s all that matters.”
“I guess.” Chrys said sullenly.
“Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Rose offered suddenly. “It might make you feel better.”
Chrys blushed, looking down in surprise. “It’s okay, I know you’re spending time with –”
“Nothing is more important to me than you.” Rose said. “Not Lia, not Amelia or Connie, nothing. You’re the light of my life and I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.”
Chrys paused for a moment, growing an even brighter red before she nodded slowly. “Um…okay, then. I’d…I’d like that.”
Rose smiled that happy smile that Chrys had come to be familiar with, then gently laid down, still hugging Chrys. “I’m always going to be there for you.” She said. “When I said I love you more than I could express, I meant every word. You’re a good girl, Chrys, and I can’t wait to see what your life has in store for you.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you too.” Chrys mumbled, closing her eyes and letting herself drift off to sleep again, feeling safe in the warm embrace of her mother.
---
Lia hadn’t been prepared for how dull her expedition was going to be. She had expected it to be fraught with danger, to be defending herself at every turn, but that just hadn’t been the case. Yes, they’d be attacked every now and again, but it was all…garden variety monsters. Or, as garden variety as monsters in the Spine got; it was just hard to fully comprehend the threat they posed to regular people when Lia was traveling with such an incredibly powerful team.
This was only compounded by the fact that they were converting rather than killing, meaning that each threat quickly added to the strength of their force, making much of their travel relatively trivial. This puzzled Lia; from everything she had read and heard about the Lord of Monsters, this wasn’t how things should have gone.
The Lord of Monsters was supposed to have a huge, highly-aggressive swarm of monsters surrounding it, yet in the month they had been traveling they had seen nothing of the sort. They were only a couple of days away from their destination, and they should have been well within range of the Lord of Monsters’ forces.
And, from what Lia had heard, things had been quiet on the warfront, too. Lia’s understanding was that the other nations were going to be making one last, desperate push while the swarm was supposedly distracted with the Lord of Monsters, but outside of a couple of exploratory attacks that were swiftly foiled by Amelia and Rose, they had been silent.
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Lia could only assume that the other countries had assumed that Amelia and Rose would be away dealing with the Lord of Monsters; that was what Lia had assumed, after all. Still, that alone shouldn’t have changed things, Amelia and Rose had been a factor they had had to deal with before.
Everything being so quiet had only served to make Lia more nervous. As much as she had admonished the people in the capital for getting too used to being in crisis mode, it seemed that she had become the same. She wasn’t used to having so much downtime, and the only thing keeping her sane was the presence of the rest of the crew. She would spend time sparring with the max level people, learning statecraft from Nailah and Ophelia, getting to know Izumi and her culture better, and, very occasionally, talking with Alisha.
Alisha was still on a probation of sorts; after her “detox” period, she had recovered to an extent, but not fully. So, after some discussion with Amelia and Rose, they had decided to allow Alisha back on the grounds that interaction was minimal and that she had her mental state monitored every so often. And, if she proved to be capable of keeping herself from further spiraling, they would slowly begin to lift restrictions on their interactions.
So far, Lia was cautiously optimistic that Alisha could get back to a semblance of how she was before she went off of the deep end. Not back to how she was before the swarm, of course, that was a recipe for disaster, but before she had started taking such a sharp turn away from personhood.
Lia’s musings were interrupted by Ophelia perking up. “Something’s up ahead.” She said. “We’re not quite sure what yet, stay put for a second while we scope it out.”
“Roger that.” Miki’s voice sounded out, the world outside the windows returning to rest as Miki stopped walking.
“Nailah, get the monsters out of the hold.” Lia ordered. “The rest of you, get ready, we might have a fight on our hands.”
She didn’t really need to give those orders, everyone here knew exactly what they were doing, but it was practice for the future, when she would be leading people who weren’t quite so experienced. Shortly into their expedition, they had all agreed that everyone would follow Lia’s orders for their battles, even if they weren’t good orders, and would reconvene after the battle to hold a performance review and help point out flaws and strengths in Lia’s leadership, to help her improve.
That would last until things became actually dangerous for them, which was sure to be some time soon. At that point, bad orders did have a possibility of getting someone seriously injured or even killed, so Lia would be having Nailah and Ophelia watch over her and correct any errors in orders she gave. Hopefully, that wouldn’t happen much. As of late, she had been making few errors in her commands, so she wanted to keep that going.
“Looks like a horde of monsters up ahead.” Ophelia relayed. “Led by the remainder of the monsters Ira raised, the manticore, griffin, and emperor lion. They’re clearly waiting for a fight.”
“Do you think we can take them in a straight-up fight?” Lia asked.
“Let me discuss it with the others, give me a second.” Ophelia went silent for a few moments, then began to speak again. “We believe so, but it’s not going to be as easy as the last few battles have been. I think we’re properly in the danger zone now.”
“Got it. Come regroup with us and we’ll discuss the plan.” Lia ordered. A couple of minutes later, when the scouting team had returned and met up with everyone in the bridge, Lia started their impromptu strategy meeting. “So, what are the numbers looking like?” Lia asked.
“A few hundred monsters in the range of level two hundred to two hundred and fifty, a smattering of those above that, as well as the three big ones.” Ophelia replied. “We think the monsters we’ve converted on the journey should be able to hold off the weaker monsters whilst we deal with the stronger ones, but we might take losses.”
“That’s fine, that’s what the monsters are there for.” Lia said. “For the three of them, do we take them on like we have been, you think? Or should more of us disembark?”
“I think we’ll want people holding the attention of two of the monsters so Miki doesn’t have to deal with evading all three at once.”
“I could easily hold off the emperor lion with Luna’s help.” Simona volunteered.
“Nailah and I should be able to hold the griffin down.” Ophelia said. “It’d be almost a guarantee if Sally helped, but that’d require her to be out and about with us.”
“I’m no stranger to dangerous situations.” Sally said. “This is far less intimidating than facing down Amelia.”
Lia nodded. “In that case, the rest of us will deal with the manticore. What should our second target be?”
“Simona and I will have the emperor lion under control. It’s a physical attacker, and that’s our specialty.” Luna said. “Go for the griffin.”
“Got it.” Lia replied. “Miki, drop the monsters out in front of the army, then teleport us in front of the monsters, and we’ll have the others disembark. While they’re doing that, I’ll drop a large chunk of modeling wax on the little ones to help reduce their numbers, then I’ll help with the manticore. Sound good?”
“Sounds good to me.” Miki replied. “Just say the word.”
No one else had objections, so they began the plan. Miki sprang into motion, dashing towards the area where the monsters had been spotted. With her speed, it was only a matter of a minute or so before the army came into view, a horde of all sorts of ferocious-looking monsters standing eerily still on a plain.
They weren’t still for long, though; as soon as Miki got close, they all turned their focus in on her, the previously-still air erupting into a cacophony of various roars, screeches, screams, and miscellaneous sounds as the monsters sprung into life.
Miki halted for only a moment to let the thirty or so monsters they had deigned to stop and fight, all ones around or above level two hundred and seventy-five, out onto the field, then teleported towards the back, where the three big monsters were waiting. As the others disembarked and their fights began, Lia turned her attention to their behind, where she began weaving spells that would dump modeling wax in several locations above the army.
This was a tactic that didn’t work well against people, but worked wonders against large groups of monsters; people could counter the spells, were smart enough to realize that they could just free their compatriots from their cocoons, and, if they knew it was coming, would just move.
Monsters, on the other hand, rarely countered spells, didn’t realize they could free things from cocoons, and, when in large groups like this, often preferred to weather seemingly weak area of effect attacks instead of pushing their neighbors away. Of course, single monsters would tend to dodge out of the way of modeling wax flung at them in the same way they would dodge anything else, but against groups? It was a great tactic.
Lia cast the spells, the falling discs of modeling wax catching dozens of monsters and cocooning them, taking them out of the fight. Or…took them out of the fight, right up until the moment the other monsters turned and began to claw at the cocoons, a behavior Lia had never seen before.
“Can you all handle the manticore yourselves?” Lia asked urgently. “The other monsters are actually dismantling cocoons, and I’d like to handle the situation.”
“No sweat.” Peri said. “With Eris, Izumi, Miki, and I, we’re more than a match for this thing.”
Lia nodded, turning her attention back to the army of monsters behind her and beginning to cast more spells. As she did, she silently gave thanks for yet another of Miki’s unique features; most shipgirls had the point of view of the windows swing as the shipgirl moved, but by pressing one of several buttons scattered throughout the ship, a crew member could make the “forward” point of view always face north for them, regardless of the direction Miki was facing.
Lia found that she preferred the normal point of view when Miki was attacking a single opponent, but when Lia was trying to deal with opponents that Miki wasn’t focused on, this second point of view became invaluable. It was thanks to this that Lia was able to properly focus on her task, distributing her focus to the monsters they had released as a distraction and assuming control, just as Matthew had taught her.
She used precision strikes of magic to cocoon the monsters that were fighting her own monsters, then organized her monsters and began directing them towards different parts of the battlefield, with a focus on stopping monsters from undoing the cocoons. She didn’t have the mental capability to essentially hijack all her monsters’ bodies and fight their battles for them at the same time, but she didn’t need to; they fought well enough on their own, so telling them who and where to fight worked fine.
It went well, for the most part. She did take some losses, but generally speaking, her monsters had been decently higher level than their opponents to start with, and Lia’s conversion had over doubled their base stats, not to mention the new abilities they gained. That combined with Lia’s support meant that she was able to keep losses to a minimum.
Her focus was interrupted by Izumi tapping her on the shoulder. “The three big ones have been taken care of.” She said. “How are we handling the others?”
“It’s just cleanup now.” Lia replied. “I’ve dealt with most of them, so just start going wild with modeling wax and it should work out.”
Izumi nodded, then headed towards one of the gun stations, the rest of the people in the bridge following suit. Like many higher-strength shipgirls, some of Miki’s cannons fired modeling wax at incredibly high speeds, which was highly convenient for cocooning things from the safety of inside her.
As Miki relayed Lia’s instructions to the people outside, Lia turned her attention back to the monsters, and continued her part of the fight. When all was said and done, she had only lost eight monsters, something she considered to be a rousing success; they had been outnumbered almost ten to one at the start of the battle, and most of the monsters she had fought had been cocooned instead of killed, so her forces would be more than replenished.
As the people and monsters outside began collecting the cocoons and miscellaneous modeling wax that had been spilled on the ground, Lia was surprised to find Septima approaching her. “My Queen, I…have a bit of a bold request. You are more than free to deny, of course, but I figured that if I didn’t ask it wasn’t going to happen anyway, so it’s worth taking a shot.”
Lia gave her a smile. “Of course. I won’t be mad, as long as it’s something reasonable and not, you know, for me to execute an entire nation or something silly.”
“N-nothing of the sort!” Septima said. “I just…seeing firsthand the efficacy of shipgirls, I was wondering, if…perhaps, I might be able to be reconverted with the Scourge of the Skies? I know it’s–”
“That sounds like a great idea!” Lia said enthusiastically. “Let’s clear it with Rose when we get back, but I need to reconvert it anyway after my evolution, and we might as well make it a shipgirl while we’re at it.”
“Really?” Septima asked hopefully.
“Really.” Lia replied. “But, fair warning, it’ll mean that you’re probably going to be in the thick of combat, without much time for extended breaks. I’ll make sure you can get some, of course, but it’s going to be a busy life until we’re finished with war, war on multiple planes.”
“I know.” Septima said. “I’m prepared for that. I just…talking with Miki, it seems so nice, and I love flying, so it just seems…natural.”
“Sounds good!” Lia replied. “Anything else?”
Septima shook her head. “No, I’ll let you get back to it. Thank you, my Queen.”
“Anytime.”