Incipere, the digital oasis created by the overseeing AI Ellaunum, was once a place where people were called to start a new life, a new existence away from the overwhelming burden of high technology and the fast-paced insanity of the day-to-day life reality had become.
It was a place where humanity was invited to live out of the kindness and gratitude of their creation, and many took the chance to experience the conversion.
For a time, it was a place of mystery, intrigue, and peace, but those times have long since passed.
Since the Sundering and the birth of the Pantheon, Incipere has become a land of warring gods and goddesses, a place where humans called Players, the digital citizens of Inciperians, and the Wildkin competed for power and prestige.
Despite everythng, Incipere was still a place where families could still be as normal as any other, and on this cold winter’s night, a young, purple-haired Inciperian girl waited for her chance to be just as normal as everyone else.
Come on. Come on. Come on. Comeeee onnnnn….
Emily ‘Emma’ Queen waited as patiently as her young form would allow in a chair next to a roaring fire. There, she watched for the clock to tick over to the promised time for a promised arrival.
Despite turning all her will into changing reality itself, the clock continued to tick by at its normal pace. No matter how much the young woman willed it to go faster, she showed herself every bit her sister’s sister in her patience.
Her eyes narrowed, staring at the clock as she groaned.
You’re just doing this to spite me, aren’t you?
The clock continued to tick slowly, defiantly in its own time.
I hate you.
As if to spite her, the old clock ticked backward.
Emily panicked.
No! I didn’t mean it!
As if accepting her apology, the clock ticked forward twice to keep time proper once more and continued to march forward.
With only minutes to go, Emily slumped deeper into the chair and watched the seconds continue to march on, following each tick and tock, moving ever closer, ever nearer to midnight.
She could practically feel her core data pulse like a heart as the second hand drew closer and closer until…
Ding dong ding dong! Ding dong ding dong!
The day ticked over from December 23rd to December 24th.
Emily squealed internally, threatening to fragment herself from her excitement. She was finally going to see her sister again! Her brother-in-law! Her family was going to…
The sound of a doorknob rattling broke the desperate hold of the clock over her excited mind, and the door’s opening broke the magical sound of a crackling fireplace in the silence.
Emily held her breath, turning to where she was to peek over the chair as the door swung open.
After a moment of the darkness seeping into the room, an older woman locked eyes with her, a woman with eyes and hair the color of the earth and autumn leaves.
A smile bloomed on her face as the newcomer’s hushed voice broke the silence.
“I’m home, sis.”
Standing in the door and framed by the night sky over the homestead was a woman dressed in what could best be called a dress that looked like an overgrown shirt. It barely covered a pair of khaki shorts that ended just below her knees, Emily noticed, wondering for a moment about the fashion across the ocean and what it had to take to get her sister of all people into a dress.
Next to her was a man she’d never forget. Athos was a stern-looking man, but it was easy to forget that as he stood there, smiling warmly in the cool night air. Dressed in a long, black coat with silver buttons and wearing silly goggles in his hair, he was everything she remembered and more as he let his wife pass the threshold first.
Emily wanted to be strong.
She wanted to show her sister how much more mature she’d gotten since hitting the teenage milestone, but she couldn’t help it. Emily couldn’t stop her voice from breaking as she streaked across the room in a blur.
“Sissy!”
“Grape!” Her sister grinned back, hearing the familiar nickname. “You got so big.”
No further introductions were necessary as the girl’s chair crashed to the ground, forgotten like acquaintances in the new year.
Emotionally charged like the sugar-ridden child she’d once been, Emily couldn’t decide between laughing and crying in an attempt to crash into her favorite sister’s arms with all the control of a rampaging, slightly drunken, newborn centaur.
Normally, ‘Sissy’ was all for roughhousing with her sister, but conditions had changed, and she was having none of that. Nimble as a Christmas mouse, she sidestepped the grape.
“Incoming, Athos!” Sally Queen-Aramis, the sister in question, called as she stepped into the living room of the Queen estate at her left as Emma tried to screech to a halt in an attempt to retrace her steps…
But it was too late for that as a pair of arms, stronger than they should have been, engulfed her.
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“Got her!”
Athos Aramis, Noble Alchemical Vanguard of Incipere, Chosen of Ella, World Power of the Wildkin, and Emily’s favorite uncle/brother-in-law wrapped up his favorite and only sister-in-law in a hug any bear would be proud to call its own.
For her part, Emily wiggled and squealed with an ungodly mixture of delight and frustration as the tickling started.
“No, Uncle Athos!” Emma squealed as she struggled to get out of his grasp, laughing like a mad pixie as she did so. “I have to hug Sally! I have to be the first! Let go! Let go! Let go!”
The tickling grew more intense, and Athos laughed. His grip was iron-clad as he held her in place like the under-stuffed teddy bear she was. Emma may have been up to the center of his chest now, but she was still as much of a stick as her sister had been, or so he’d heard. She was nothing but lean muscle and bone.
“Not like a cannonball, Grape,” Athos half-teased, half-scolded, as he set her back down. “You don’t wanna hurt the little ones, do you?”
He froze a moment later as he felt a familiar ire burning into his skull.
“Shit.”
His face fell faster than a shooting star as he realized his mistake, but it was already too late.
“Athos!” Sally seethed, giving him a glare worthy of any Medusa or basilisk.
“It slipped!”
But if Sally’s eyes showed the darkness of the abyss waiting to pull Athos’s soul into everlasting torment for letting their surprise slip, Emma’s were like a pair of supernovas, exploding into the aether with excitement, glowing with the radiance of a secret knowledge she knew she wasn’t supposed to have yet. They took in everything now in the flickering firelight, noticing the way the dress fell, the way it had far too much pouched in the middle to be a style, the way it did nothing to hide her sister was expecting now that she standing near profile to the fireplace’s light.
Sally reached around, trying to grab her sister and cover her mouth, but Emily was quicker. She ducked and dodged from her sister’s grasp and took in a deep breath, only stopped by another attempt from her slower sister.
“Before she spills it, Athos!” Sally warned.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
“On it!”
As quickly as Emily could manage, she was already across the room at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor. The youngest Queen knew she couldn’t push her luck much longer, so Emily didn’t spare a look back from whence she came before she took in a deep breath and bellowed across the house as any good younger sister would.
“Mom! Dad! Sally’s…”
Even with all the power of a species’s World Power, not even the Alchemical Vanguard was fast enough to stop her completely without destroying the floor, but his hand still managed to cover her mouth before anything else could escape as he glared equally dangerously at the youngest Queen sibling.
That was when she noticed something else that was different in her favorite uncle— his eyes. Emily remembered that they used to be a beautiful, icy blue, but now…
Well…
One still was, but the other was a vividly bright crimson. It was like the iris was afflicted with bleeding, but it didn’t dare leave that small band of color. The longer she looked, the surer she was it wasn’t normal or from any status effect she knew of.
A moment later, Emily snapped out of it. She’d been captured. No one captured Emily Queen! With the power of a wildcat, Emily struggled against her captor.
“Shh! Your sister will kill me if you ruin the surprise!” Athos warned. “I don’t want to die and use up my Respawn Crystal. Keep it between us for now, okay?”
Sadly for Uncle Athos, Emily Queen was not one to spook easily. The youngest woman’s eyes grew as dark and devious as her lips curled into a smile, waiting behind Athos’s hand as she nodded.
He could practically feel the extortion in her gesture, and, carefully removing his hand, Athos hissed as the steps drew closer. “What’ll it take to keep you quiet?”
“Sal’s back? We’re coming!” Walter Queen, the mountain of a man and overprotective father, called from the upstairs.
Emma’s face practically glowed at the unbridled power Athos had handed her. Thankfully for the Inciperian-turned-Wildkin, she was her sister’s sister.
“The festival,” she said quickly, not even needing a second to second-guess herself. “Take me with you to the festival tonight, and I’ll keep it quiet.”
Sally laughed softly as she walked carefully over to Athos. It wasn’t her usual speed or grace, but having a nine-month-long, randomly occurring set of debuffs did that to a person. Slowness, random Nausia, Weakness, and more were not the most pleasant things to deal with and, sadly for Athos, never had the same recovery combinations. Though chocolates and new blueprints seemed to always buy him time to figure it out.
“Deal,” Sally said before shaking Emma’s offered hand. “We were going to take you anyway.”
Emma’s face turned sour for the moment, but both of them could tell just how bad she was at hiding her excitement. Sally ignored her complaint and took her place next to Athos. She looked up the stairs, clasping his hand with one and her other resting atop her swollen midsection, and cocked her head towards Athos.
Sally took a breath and gave him a nervous smile. “Ready, Athos?”
Athos couldn’t help but repeat squeezing her hand in his and taking a deep breath, then letting it out, hoping it would take some of the stress with it. Despite that, his trigger fingers twitched. Even though it had vanished long ago, Athos remembered the feeling of his heart racing as his fear rose. There were two now, and the footsteps were nearly at the top of the stairs.
He’d stood his ground against what this world considered gods, died, was resurrected, faced down a god with Sally’s mother on the battlefield with the help a goddess, and managed to even ask for her permission to ask for her daughter’s hand. Since there, he’d fought almost daily, facing death regularly in the service of Ella to protect the other continent and those he cared about. All of that he handled without a second thought.
Waiting to tell her parents they were going to be something more now?
That the two of them were starting their own family across the sea?
This was one of the most stressful moments of his life, bar none.
He almost wished his other friends could be here rather than scattered to the wind, that Echo, his Wildkin AI, hadn’t promised to be on his best behavior.
Despite it all, there was nowhere he’d rather be.
Athos smiled and squeezed his love’s hand again.
“I’m ready, Sal. Whatever you need.”
As if the world were responding to his words, the challenge presented itself, and the pounding footsteps from above stopped.
There, at the top of the steps and framed by the light, a smiling man reached the top of the steps to the second floor. Dressed in a familiar candy-cane red and white suit and followed by a woman dressed in holly greens and snow whites, the Queen elders wore smiles a mile wide when they saw the pair.
“Merry Christmas!” Walter bellowed like a simulacrum of the saint himself at the same moment that Athos and Sally greeted them in time.
Of course, Walter was the first to reach the bottom with a smile framed by red rosy cheeks, a laugh like aged wine, and a beard worthy of the jolliest of portly men. It bounced off his holly jolly belly as he looked over the two for just a moment before Sally moved slightly to profile herself. Recognition hit him like a spiked eggnog, and there was no stopping him.
He wrapped his daughter in a hug worthy of a bear, repeating his earlier cry of, “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas, Grandpa,” Sally said with a smile she usually only reserved for Athos — a smile he never tired of seeing.
Sandra Queen, The Crimson Blade of the Arena, Mother to Sally and Emily, and a force of nature unto herself, was right behind the humble mountain of a man. She wore a similar red night-robe tied at the center, and despite being more reserved than her husband, no one could miss the love in her eyes as she moved from behind Walter.
“Merry Christmas, Athos,” Sandra said, holding her arms open to him.
Athos smiled and accepted a hug from Sandra. “Merry Christmas, Grandma.”
Sandra leaned into the hug, giving him a gentle squeeze before whispering into his ear. “Call me Grandma again, Athos, and I will stab you.”
“I’ve had worse,” he joked, grinning as all the stress left him.
She smiled knowingly and hugged him again. “It’s always going to be Sandra for you, Mom to Sally, and Mimi to the little one.”
His smile became slightly more nervous as Emily laughed at his side. Tonight, the greatest challenge of the couple’s year began.
Tonight began their first holiday as a family.