Chapter 84: A royal discussion

Felix Sythias’ POV (continued):

Tiki thought my question over for a moment. “I need to practice my enchanting, but you’re welcome to keep me company.”

I nodded in agreement. “Sounds good. Is here fine?” I said, gesturing around us. “Or do you want to go somewhere else?”

We were currently in a small field of long grass, but there was an impression for us to sit in near the middle—I had rolled around when we got here and had flattened the grass. The place was well lit, but there weren’t really any surfaces to work on.

“No, I need a table, or a flat rock. There’s probably one close-by though.”

And sure enough, there was. We found it after only a few minutes of walking around. It was part of an unoccupied camping spot, but that was fine by us. While Tiki set up her stuff, I glanced at the firepit before shaking my head. It was warm enough already, we didn’t need a campfire.

The picnic-bench was sadly in the shade, so I couldn’t doze in the sun, so instead I laid down beside the table and grabbed a book from my saddle-bag. Sure, I could’ve done some training as well, but right now I wanted to relax. I’d do some flight training later. Or maybe I’d try and progress with my spikes. I’d decide later.

Tiki and I occasionally chatted while I read and she worked on her… whatever she was making until finally, half an hour later, I finished my book. It was the vigilante book Alex and I had been reading together, and it was alright. I still had mixed opinions on the main character, but considerably less so than when Alex and I discussed it a little while ago.

Putting my book away, I wondered what to do. The rest of my books were back at our tarp, and I didn’t feel like training yet. I glanced over at Tiki again, then stood up to see what she was doing.

“So, what are you doing now?” I asked.

She briefly looked up from the thin metal plate she was carving into, then back down at the plate. On the plate was a series of identical symbols—a circle with another circle on its right edge, and a bunch of squiggles in the middle. I recognized it from some of the simpler enchantments I’d seen around campus. She pointed to one.

“I’m practicing my touch-sense rune. It’ll activate a script if someone touches the plate. I need it for some of my traps.”

“Oh, so that’s why there’s so many,” I said. It was like with my spikes. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. I looked at the plate again. “A whole plate just for practicing? Wouldn’t it be better to just draw them on paper and save the plate for later? I imagine you don’t have too many of these with you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t, but drawing on paper isn’t the same. It’s similar, and definitely a good way to get the basics right. But if I want to carve detailed and precise runes, I need to build up my muscle memory with actual carvings. Besides, I can re-use the plates. Here, watch.”

She took her pen—no-carving-tool—and flipped it around. She injected some mana into the device and the blunt end lit up. I could almost feel the heat radiating from it from where I stood. She carefully ran it over one of her earlier attempts at the sense-touch runes, and it disappeared like it was never there, a mixture of magic and melting turning the plate to its original flat state.

“Huh, that’s neat,” I said. “I didn’t know you could do that. Though, to be fair, I never really looked into enchanting before.”

“It is neat. It’s also incredibly expensive. Honestly, even if you had looked into enchanting, it might only have been a vague reference. Experts don’t need it, since they have enough money to buy new plates, enough Attributes to lug them around, and have better ways to fix mistakes—like Skills—while inexperienced enchanters, like me, won’t have the money for it. The only reason I have one is that my parents gifted it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”

I blinked. “Right, I keep forgetting you’re a princess. You really don’t act like one, you know.”

She chuckled. “That’s good. I try my best to seem like any other person. I never really cared for that princess business. Not since…” She sighed. “...nevermind.”

I put a talon on her shoulder and she looked up at me. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but know that I won’t judge you if you do.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I think you know most of it already, or have guessed it. I just don’t like to talk about it.”

“That’s fine,” I told her, putting my talon back on the ground. I then craned my neck around her, and took a closer look at the plates and even gave them a sniff. It smelt of metal and fire mana. “So, what kind of traps are you going to make?”

She grabbed one of my horns and playfully pushed my head away from the plate and began talking while she erased her practice runes, telling me what she was going to make, then drawing it out and explaining what each part did as she did so.

After a while of watching her work and learning more about enchanting than I ever thought I would, she ran out of things to tell me. So I asked about what was up with the nobles. She sighed at that, but explained.

“They’re not happy with how Alfred and I aren’t getting along. They think they’ll need to choose a side while they’re here at the Academy—which they’re right about. If not by themselves, their parents will tell them to. None of the nobles here like that as they didn’t think politics was going to be a part of their stay. Most are here to escape the politics after all. Those who didn’t went to our own Academies. So anyway, now they're pushing me to make up with Alfred so they won’t have to do politics again—which, ironically, is still politics”

I frowned. “That’s not nice. Why don’t you just ignore them, then? I thought you said you didn’t want anything to do with being a princess anyway?”

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“I don’t, but the alternative is seeing my brother on the throne—well, unless he’s disqualified for some reason, in which case my younger brother would get it. I don’t want to risk that not happening, however,” she said. “So, now I’m stuck having to play nice with the nobles. Because I won’t be making up with Alfred, so they’re gonna have to pick a side, and I want them to pick mine.”

“Do you at least like some of them?” I asked. If she at least liked some of them, then it wouldn’t be all bad. She could make some new friends, maybe. That thought hurt a little, as a small part of me whispered that it would mean I wasn’t good enough, but I pushed the feeling down. Of course I wasn’t enough, no one ever was. How could one person possibly meet all of someone’s needs? There was a reason people often had so many friends, after all.

Besides, I wanted to see Tiki happy, and if making new friends made her happier… then it was good enough for me, too.

Tiki nodded her head. “Maybe one or two. The rest are more like Alfred than I would like. Very spoiled.”

“Says the person holding a pen worth a small house,” I said, then realized what I’d said, and quickly added,”But I get what you mean.”

She blinked, then looked down at the carving-tool still in her hand. “Alright, fair. I guess entitled would’ve been a better description. We both got expensive stuff growing up, and often got most of what we wanted. Unlike them, though, I know I’m not entitled to any of it. At least, I do know now, anyway,” she said. ”Also, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say.”

“Yeah, sorry. I regretted it the moment I said it.”

She nodded her head. “It’s fine. I’d rather you tell me than not if I’m being hypocritical or say something stupid. Just say it more gently next time, okay?”

I nodded. “I can do that.”

“Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “it means I’ll have to spend some more time with the nobles. Would you two mind if I walked with them tomorrow when we go down into the caves? Some of them are in our group, and if I don’t, Alfred surely will.”

I thought about that for a moment. Not to make my choice—I’d already made it—but to think what Alex would think. He’d probably be a little sad she wouldn’t be with us, but ultimately would understand and not mind. Plus, it would mean some more time for just ourselves, and that was always nice.

Besides, it wasn’t like we could tell her what to do. We were her friends, not her parents.

“That’s fine,” I said.

She nodded, then went back to focusing on her work. I watched for a little while longer before finally mustering up the willpower to do my own training. So I found a patch of rocky ground nearby and started making stone spikes. With each attempt, I tweaked the image I used for the magic slightly. It was mostly educated guesses and points I knew I could actually improve on. It was magic, so there was very little trial and error involved—there was a good reason most spell researchers referred to trial and error as trial and horror, after all. When playing with magic, one had to be careful.

By the time we left, I managed to make my spikes a little more accurate and less likely to stab my friends instead of a monster. I also made them a little bit stronger for the same cost, effectively making them sharper, as the tip was less likely to chip or break, something it had done before.

We made our way over to the central firepit for our dinner chores. There we met back up with Alex who looked tired but happy. We went over to Scott to get our task assigned. Tonight we were supposed to help with cleaning and preparing the meat. That was good, since that was something I could actually fully help with. At least, I could prepare the meat for my own meal, but that was fine. I ate a lot after all.

We made our way to the river, where a few groups were already busy. It was clear that some people had done this many times before, and that others had not. Butchering a monster wasn’t a clean or pretty task. It was bloody and gory, and didn’t smell too great, either. Well, not to humans and most sapient species. I personally didn’t mind the smell of raw meat and dead monsters too much. It smelled almost nice.

The people who reacted the worst were the students wearing the fanciest armor. The various nobles and rich commoners. There was a lot of dry-heaving. It didn’t surprise me much, honestly. What did surprise me a bit was that some of the students having the easiest time were also some of these rich folk. They probably went on hunting trips regularly. Good for them. It was fun. I hoped Alex would be comfortable enough with fighting to someday go on one with me and actually enjoy it. Though if that never happened, that was okay, too. Maybe Tiki would like to join me sometime instead.

We joined the student by the river, and I made quick work of my deer-analogue. Having sharp claws had its benefits. I had much better control over how I cut and how deep than those who used knives. My cuts were a lot less clean, though, as my claws didn’t have a sharp edge like a knife did, nor were they as thin as one.

The other downside was that I needed to use my talons to move around, so even though I was next to a river, I’d likely made the meat dirty.

Luckily only I would be eating it, and the dirt was very minimal.

After I was done, I went to help my friends. Tiki had clearly done this before, though, and didn’t need any help. Alex also clearly had some experience. He was too sure, and too unbothered by the gore not to. But he was also unsure on what to do, bringing the knife in several times, hesitating before finally cutting. He’d made a few mistakes but nothing that wasn’t salvageable.

When I asked about it, he told me he used to help his father from time to time, but he usually brought back snakes and other reptiles, not mammals. So, on top of it having been a while, it was very different from what he was used to. But that was fine. I liked teaching Alex, anyway.

Under my guidance, he too made quick work of his deer. Since we were all done, we handed the meat over to the cooks and went to clean up. It had gotten messy. We quickly washed up in the river—upstream so we wouldn’t get caught in the blood—though sadly there were other students around, so Alex and I didn’t get a chance to make out. And from the looks Alex gave me, he was also disappointed.

Once we were clean, we got out and I used my magic to dry us off. Tiki went to her fellow nobles to talk them up, leaving Alex and me alone again. We wandered around the forest for a little while, eventually sitting down in a field of moss. It was incredibly soft, almost like a bed. We laid there for a while, cuddling and making out. Alex let me rub at his back again, which was incredibly nice. It was a lot of fun to be able to make him squirm like that with just my talon.

All too soon it was time for dinner. Alex put his shirt back on and we went back to the central firepit. We grabbed our meals and sat down near Tiki. She introduced us to her noble ‘friends’. I was polite the entire evening, though some of them really rubbed the wrong way. Especially the one who had just straight up ignored us until her cup was empty and she told Alex to refill it. She’d just handed him the cup, told him what to do, then turned back to Tiki. She hadn’t even looked back to see if he was actually doing it. By the time she realized she hadn’t had her refill yet, Alex and I had already bidded the group a good night and left.

We went back to our camping spot and read together for the rest of the evening while I tried giving Alex a back massage. It wasn’t too successful, though. Still, he appreciated the effort.

Eventually Tiki joined us too, looking exhausted. She apologized for how the noble woman had treated Alex and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Then she plopped down on her sleeping mat. Soon, she was fast asleep. Alex and I were a bit too nervous about the next day to sleep quite yet, though. We were both excited for the next floor and we stayed up for quite a while chatting and speculating about it.

Finally, we decided to turn in. Like the previous few days, Alex climbed into my arms. We talked about tomorrow for just a little longer, but it didn’t take long before I dozed off.