V.

Madoka woke to the sound of something murmuring from beside her. Audrey’s voice. Thank the kind gods it wasn’t anyone else’s voice, she stirred. How did she end up in the same bed as Her Highness? She slipped out, thinking that there was really nothing to worry about, and immediately shivered. The air around Audrey was frigid. The maid glanced down at her sleeping princess. Could she really not feel anything different about herself?

Her skin was its usual tone, unlike how she got cold up in the Hall of the Frost Queen, and despite her rising and falling chest the girl seemed at ease. Audrey indeed slept like a baby. The golden chains of Knotting magic avoided Her Sleepiness as usual. The Night Operators, Madoka mused. They’re after this girl, but the maid could only shudder if they knew exactly how high the cost would be if they crossed her. The orange glow of the sunrise calmly rising through the window’s curtains pulled the maid out of her trepidations, causing her to get up and stretch. There was that quest thing she had to do with that dragon man.

A freezing cold sensation suddenly shocked her leg. Madoka seized up for a split second. For what reason? She swore she checked this whole room and outside for invading thoughts. Her senses could detect killing intent and nothing was out of the ordinary, so what is this? She felt a light tug and turned to see that Audrey’s blue eyes were looking right at her. Why was such a terrifying feeling encroaching upon her senses?

“S-Sorry,” Audrey croaked. Her voice was deep when she woke up, a strange beautiful trait of hers to Madoka’s ears. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“I-It’s nothing, Your, ah, mi— ah, Audrey,” Madoka stammered. Her nerves betrayed her futile attempt at reassuring the princess. So, she cleared her throat and avoided a purple thought shard that floated near her. She would rather know what Audrey wanted from her audibly instead of a simple thought. “Pay me no mind. What is it?”

The hand that tugged Madoka’s pant leg let go and pointed at Audrey’s bag.

“The… Storage Talisman,” Audrey spoke firmly. Was she going to entrust Madoka with such a valuable item? No, that— The girl coughed and gave her a stern look, prying her out of her self-doubting. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do, Madoka. Honestly, if you’re going to quest by yourself and loot stuff then you might as well have an infinite portal of storage.”

Audrey and Madoka sighed simultaneously, though for different reasons. The girl could read Madoka’s worried face like a book, while the maid herself could not read at all. What a drag, she could only scoff instead.

“I can’t refuse, can I?”

“No,” Audrey replied flatly.

Madoka looked at the princess with frustration and eventually resigned herself, going to fish the talisman out of Her Stubbornness’s bag. As soon as her hand felt the cold and smooth rectangular rock, a rush of images suddenly blew over her mind’s thoughts like a tidal wave. Everything inside of the storage talisman revealed themselves to her at that moment, forcing her to clench her other fist and drop it.

“You’ll get—“ Audrey fiddled with her hands and waved what she was about to say off. “Eh, I already said the feeling is overwhelming. Try to think of what you need at that moment, like if you want to put stuff inside it or take something out of it. Makes the thing react accordingly.”

“Hmm,” Madoka had never tried to open the portal herself. Only Audrey knew how to do that, but the maid knew that the princess was testing the talisman and her compatibility since it was reacting to her magic now. Open a small portal, she thought of the hexagonal shape. An odd feeling hummed in her chest while a white light illuminated her vision from behind. Madoka knew what that glow meant, though apprehension slowly crawled along her neck. Was this because the crystal inside her was truly charged?

“Wow,” Audrey spoke first. Madoka turned and saw that the hexagonal portal was not small at all, but instead as wide as the entire room’s wall.

“I said in my mind, small portal please,” Madoka sighed. Yet the entire room was practically bursting with the hexagonal glow.

“If that’s your small ‘setting’ then,” Audrey paused. Madoka commanded the portal to disappear in her head and the room became dark again. “I am scared of what a big portal could be.”

“Exactly,” Madoka snapped. “I shouldn’t hold onto this thing!”

“You’re taking it with you, dammit,” Audrey crossed her arms with great effort. “Hmph!”

With that, Madoka was kicked out of the room upon the insistence of the demanding princess. She inspected the storage talisman as she walked downstairs. It was the size of her hand and portable. Normally, Audrey tucked this thing in her pack or in her belt, but if Madoka was going to fight she might lose it. Thinking of this, she noticed that the rectangle tablet had a small hole on one of its ends. Red carved lines traveled along the bottom of it in perfectly symmetrical patterns, never intersecting with one another. She did not really notice the craftsmanship behind this thing at first, only thinking it was just a smooth grey brick. Wait. She paused. Was it always a rectangular stone? If only it was slightly smaller, or at least such a size that could hang on her necklace with the Adventurer Guild tag. The storage talisman suddenly reacted to her desire, glowing white and somehow intertwining with the Knotting strands dancing along her fist.

The white light had a silhouette in the middle of its aura, shrinking to the same size of the tag. That was convenient, Madoka gawked at it in her palm. She pulled the necklace out and strapped the storage talisman on it for safe keeping. Bureau Magical Items… she recalled Artisan Guild Master Koj speaking about such classifications. The peculiar group of white magical devices that this storage talisman belonged to. The items chose who they desired to be wielded by, instead of the other way around. Such magic was an extension of the kind god’s own. Even people, she supposed, could be chosen by the kind gods.

She felt her chest after patting the necklace back beneath her cloak. If that was the case, then could she be godtouched? She really did not know how to feel about that, since no kind god has really spoken to her until recently. The crystal came from Hesonoo, an otherworldly kind god that did not actually seem like one. The energy that the crystal emitted was Golden colored like Knotting magic and reacted as such, not white and hexagonal like Bureau Magic. It attempted to kill her, but she destroyed it with the transformed Slime King’s Core. Could it really be so simple to kill a kind god? Does killing a kind god grant powers?

A cold and chilling feeling nearly overwhelmed her. Could this be the reason behind Audrey’s own growing power? To level up after slaying kind gods… Such thoughts were heretical and also extremely difficult to imagine. Was Audrey godtouched? Or was she an otherworldly kind god herself?

Before Madoka knew it, she was standing right outside the Adventurer Guild. She did not know if Eraziror was even going to show up, but she did not want to keep her senior adventurer waiting for too long. Footsteps approached her, but no hostile killing intent accompanied them so she paid no mind to the person as she leaned on the wall next to the entrance. His familiar voice reached her expecting ears next.

“Yo, Madoka,” Eraziror cheerfully said. He had his armor and weapons on him, so it was clear that they were going to embark soon. “You’re up early with that murderous deep thinking already. Not a morning person, I take it?”

He chuckled nervously. Oh, Madoka realized her intense thoughts were probably becoming apparent on the outside.

“My apologies,” she simply said. “Tending to milady was somewhat complicated today.”

“Somewhat can make you like that? Well, Madoka,” Eraziror decided to avoid the subject and gesture her to follow. “We’re skipping the Artisan Guild tour. For… Reasons. We’re going out now.”

Eena. Madoka knew he did not want to see that wounded woman today. His face looked like that when he wanted to avoid that Noble and Researcher, Arudite. She felt the same way, except her aversion to people applied to everyone and not just those two girls. Soon, they were at another gate at Gladeban’s borders. This gate strangely seemed normal and did not have some unknown monster’s enormous jaw decorating its outsides like the other gates.

Eraziror did not say much and to avoid troubling him Madoka restrained herself from getting lost in her thoughts. There were craters, but what caught her attention were stray bolts of Knotting magic racing towards small stone pillars jutting out the ground. Stone proclamations, blocking access to certain damaged paths and pointing away from Audrey’s deadly magic. It was a shame that she could not read the markings on the pillars, but Eraziror explained it for her. Something suddenly splotched on her nose. Rain. Like yesterday, except the sun has not come out yet. The dragon man’s scales twitched as looked up at the sky, annoyed.

“Damn rain,” he scoffed. His hair tussled in the wind, while hers merely got slick. Madoka noticed that her hair was getting longer. She would need to cut it short again soon. “The others should be making their way to the Mines, so normally I’d say hang back, but with this weather we’d better get going…”

“Others…?”

“Yeah,” Eraziror chuckled. “Saw more Guild posts on the board last night getting taken down. We’re not the only ones having a go at the mines, you know.”

“What a relief,” Madoka commented. Perhaps that Guild Master Fate did not hate her so badly. Yet, she knew that woman did not let her go. She sensed someone following them, yet they kept their distance and did not exude any hostile intent. To avoid troubling Eraziror, she did not mention their stalker’s presence.

The forest was thickening under the shadow of hills and the towering mountains of the surrounding Petal. No monsters were around, save for small traces of wildlife. Eraziror led her up a hill and halted their advance, seemingly running out of breath.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Whew,” he sat on a rock, pulling out a meal from his pack. “I’m beat. We’ll, ah, take a rest here.”

“Beat?” Madoka pondered aloud. “It’s only been three hours.”

“Sorry, Madoka,” Eraziror faked mocked her with a bow. “Us simple adventurers have limited stamina, here in Petal 2. Besides, the Mines are an hour behind this hill. We don’t have to get over there first. It’s not a race.”

Madoka simply shrugged. Noticing that he was getting drenched in the rain, she frowned. Her senior should not be encumbered by such weather while resting, so she pulled at Knotting magic. After all, she had been silently absorbing the yellow bolts into her fist to her chest the entire time they were traveling like Audrey had taught her.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Eraziror suddenly panicked when he sensed her using magic. His eyes tracked the magic she was using.

The golden chains materialized, reacting to her arm’s movements. Soon, a large disk for an umbrella sprouted from the ground and sheltered him from the rain. Eraziror stared at her, utterly astonished.

“You are just so surprising,” he gawked, but quickly added a nod of gratitude.

“Mm,” Madoka simply responded casually. “I’m going to climb the hill a bit further and stand guard.”

She did not wait for Eraziror’s response, though he appeared to be trying to assure her nothing was around. It seemed that he did not detect the one trailing them. Madoka hoped to get a vantage point and catch whoever was following them, but the hill barely poked above the treetops. She sighed. There was no hope in catching that stranger, so she only had prayers for the kind gods that they would not be a bother to her temporary party member. Something wet lightly slapped the back of her head, making her instinctively flail. When she finally got a hold of the offending object, she was embarrassed. It was a soggy leaf, red and large. More leaves were beginning to swirl upwards from the trees like fluttering loose feather dusters. The trees hosted a variety of pretty colors. Red, green, and brown ones danced in their carefree windswept ways, while Madoka watched the hundreds of them glide through the sky.

Suddenly, she felt herself wandering up the hill while the sky began to hide the grey sky above. Her feet moved by herself and an ominous feeling chilled her through the dazzling beauty of the leaves. She tried to resist the pull, but still, her body kept walking forward. Eraziror was a little ways beneath her, but her voice did not speak! She felt like she was suffocating, unable to control herself. This was bad, Madoka screamed in her head, but Eraziror did not answer her.

He was locked in place, with everything in her vision grey besides the colorful leaves flying all around her. Madoka could only groan. Not again, she simply hoped that whoever was coming to contact her was not going to throw her into a giant and twisting black storm cloud. The leaves parted before her like a break between waves and revealed the hill top, which also had color. Her boots stepped on soft earth, eventually allowing her to stop as if whoever summoned her wanted her to behold everything ahead of her. Odd. The mountains towering above the forest off in the distance were grey as well, making the emerald colored grass seem like jade before her. No kind god seemed to be around, but as more leaves moved out of the way she noticed an odd furniture standing alone on the very top.

Madoka squinted her eyes and then approached it. It was a… commision board? The wooden frame supporting a flat board with green leaves had only one commission tacked onto it. The scroll tacked onto it blew gently in the winds, but did not break free and seemed to be waiting for her. She was instantly reminded when they first voluntarily took up a commission, only that there was nothing by her side. A profound sense of loneliness drifted through her, but there was suddenly a problem when the scroll’s rough and stiff texture reached between her fingertips.

She could not read this!

“Ah, I forgot about that,” a voice suddenly spoke up next to her. Madoka unleashed a punch directly at the source, stopping inches away from the stranger’s face. Leaves that were suspended in the air gushed away like a bunch of falling books from a shelf. That skull face… She could read that in her memories at least.

“C-Ceghinort,” she stammered. The skeleton adjusted his coat and seemingly smiled at her. The kind god at least managed to patch himself up since the last time they met.

“Heh, I survived your punch this time!” Ceghinort cheered and gave her a salute. “I call that an improvement.”

“What do you want from me,” Madoka growled. The skull, while not having any features that could express emotion, seemed to be looking at her with incredulity before pulling out a stick and tapping the commission on the board with it.

“That, of course,” Ceghinort declared. “I need you to get rid of a, ahhh, slight problem.”

Instead of arguing with a god dressed up as a so-called “living Halloween decoration,” Madoka crossed her arms and scrutinized the stupid puppet. The jaw parted from his skull agape, but instantly reattached to his head. Ceghinort threw the stick off the side of the hill and rifled through his worn out coat for something. Something glowed in his hand when he fished it out. Was that…?

“This shall be your reward if you help me,” he said smugly. The violet sphere, made of the same magic like the one that once trapped Audrey…! Before she could punch him, she realized that instead of her worse idea and imagination of a miniature Audrey being trapped in there, the ominous crimson and purple glow of a thought-shard spun inside of it. “Yes, from Her Highness’s twisted mind. A weapon from her world.”

As if the thought-shard needle could hear them, it spun more violently and released deadly magic against its cage. Ceghinort juggled the orb in his hand, pretending to almost drop it, but quickly deposited back under his coat after a threatening stance from Madoka. He sighed and then plucked the scroll off of the board to wave it in her face.

“A… weapon?” Madoka suppressed the alien feeling forcing goosebumps up her arms. She shivered, then tore the scroll from his bony fingers. “Well, what is it?”

“Yes, a god-like weapon, by today’s standards I guess,” Ceghinort seemed to glance around their surroundings with disdain. “Ah, the problem, well, it’s not going to be a problem for you, is it? The target lives inside the Gladeban Mines and is a Castle Threat Level.”

As Madoka contemplated what a Castle Threat Level was, the symbols on the scroll in her hands suddenly formed a drawing. A four legged beast, shadowed by a strange black smudge, appeared on the page. This seemed to be like the World Bear Roōon. She felt complicated and a memory jolt of pain from its lightning made her senses tingle. Ceghinort laughed.

“I trust you can kill it with ease,” the kind god pointed at her chest. “With Hesonoo backing you and the suite of magic powers you now possess, the Crystal Lizard will be no challenge to you. Slay it, Madoka, and the memory shall be yours to keep. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like it’s beyond a dragon.”

Beyond a dragon, huh. Madoka sighed. Danger was ahead, surely he was just vastly overestimating her? The skeleton raised his hand to shake on it. It was too late for her to turn back now. She extended her arm again, growing taller than even oddly placed Adventurer Guild commission board and gripped Ceghinort’s bony hand until it cracked.

“I shall contact you when the beast is slain, then,” the kind god spoke to her. For a moment during her vision’s sudden swirling feeling, she could have sworn that Ceghinort’s skull face grinned at her.

The swirl of greys and colorful leaves began to fade from her eyes as the skeleton lost his form. She was going to be taken out of wherever the kind god placed her in. The commission scroll fluttered away too like scattered ash as the rough wind picked up its weight in noise. A weapon from Audrey’s world, Madoka shuddered at the thought. Could it be that she was secretly excited for such a device? Would Her Highness simply divulge the information if she asked her for it? Why did Ceghinort know about such a thing and furthermore, why was he willing to hand it over to her?

She hit her head with her fist in frustration. Eraziror’s boot steps were making themselves up the hill to reach her, so she stopped thinking about what that kind god was up to. Instead, she wondered if she should inform him that a deadly Castle Threat Leveled monster was holed up in the mines? She had assumed the man would be a drag since he was weak and liked to talk a lot. Madoka was the opposite, of course. Such small chatter was over her own nature as a servant anyway, since she never understood what was so important about the weather or whatever over a cup of tea.

“We should get moving,” Eraziror told her. Madoka gave a nod, then silently followed him.

The two traveled down into the tree layer of the hill when something made her wrist tingle. She glanced at it, realizing that the Serpent Blade was glowing a green aura. The ground began to shake a little, with some mud slipping downhill and roots beginning to rattle. This was bad and Eraziror knew it too. He waved frantically at her while at the same time a cold, yet worried voice hissed at her in her head.

“Sister, why are you hunting on the surface?

The ground shakes from the Sky magic.”

“Get over here and get your head down,” he ushered her over. “Shit’s going to fall down here!”

Not even a second passed before the ground started to rumble. An earthquake? Suddenly a large splash of mud and uprooted tree logs started to collapse in on her. Madoka skidded to a halt, thanks to her Knotting magic stopping her leg’s movement. Landslides and quakes, Madoka gritted her teeth, was that because there was that voice nearby?

“Get over here!” Eraziror shouted.

“Shut up,” she growled in annoyance and shoved him behind her.

A large tree tumbled down straight towards them, followed by soaking mud and rain, in a thundering rampage. Before a branch could stab into her or the dragon man cowering behind her, she had already swung her axe in a flash. The halves slammed into other falling trees, rushing downward like a raging river of clutter. Madoka tugged at her chest and pulled the barrier up.

“Sister, are you okay?” The voice seemed like it had a connection to her Serpent Blade. Was it simply another one? Madoka watched the trees bounce uselessly off her shield, but groaned when the mud and water covered her as she secured Eraziror.

“I’m fine,” she simply said in her mind.

She had no idea if the Black Serpent nearby would hear her or leave her alone, but she somehow could sense it slithering away. Before she could wonder where it went, the landslide ceased its chaos and the forest went still again. Madoka oriented herself and found her bearings, finding that they were now amidst the wreckage of uprooted trees that they passed under nearby piled up at the bottom and blocked the pathway headed to the Gladeban Mines. Aside from that inconvenience, all that was left standing on this side of the hill was her and Eraziror unharmed even though they slid downhill a bit further.

“Ceghinort’s blood,” he coughed.

“You good?” Madoka checked him, hovering over him as if he was a child. He sputtered and stepped back, oddly flustered by the maid’s closeness. She cocked her head at him. It seemed like he was fine. Her clothes, on the other hand, were completely dirty and ruined. Still, she checked on him again.

“I’m fine,” he protested, scooting away from her. “I can see a little bit too much of you, though.”

Why was his face red? The mud and water stained her cloak, but a branch or something must have torn it to shreds revealing her body to him. She did not feel ashamed, since they were Commoners, but as the rain grew worse she suddenly felt glad that Audrey allowed her to hang onto the Storage Talisman. One by one, she took off her clothes in front of the portal unperturbed by Eraziror’s gawking.

“What is it?” Madoka asked him, flinching as the images of miscellaneous items filled her mind when she reached in the portal.

“I-I did not stare at anything, I swear!” He acted like he was caught, immediately telling her that he was indeed looking at her body. He nearly fell off the stool she made for him out of Knotting magic when she turned to face him. “It’s just that your body is just…”

“When we were escaping our House,” Madoka mused with a half lie. She took a look at her body and noticed that it was indeed covered in scars and burn marks. How could anyone admire this body of hers? “I was pinned beneath a flaming beam.”

“Really,” Eraziror’s reddened face turned bitter. “Should have known you have truly gone through things tougher than most.”

“Tough times don’t last, only tough people do,” she quoted a thought-shard she caught drifting from Audrey this morning. “I’m a tough and terrible servant, like you said.”

He stared blankly at her failed attempt at humor by repeating his words. Madoka shrugged and pulled up her new cloak on, ready to go. She extended a hand to him.

“Audrey, of course, pulled me out of that wreck. I troubled her even in such a terrible situation,” she said. It was not a lie, only half of one, she guessed. Eraziror’s cold hand gripped hers and she helped him up.

“You are just full of surprises, huh?” He stopped at the pile of trees blocking the base of the hills. “Now, what should we do to continue onward?”