Despite his best attempts to tease Emily, Athos couldn’t begin to match the fury and fire that Sally Queen-Aramis brought to bare against her sister. It was such a complete one-sided fight of teasing and weedling information from her that Athos almost thought that her questions were guided by some kind of mother class skill or instinct.
Sally was relentless with the younger sister she claimed to love, and within ten minutes of their trip, she learned that there was a local boy named Myles from Oenus about her age that she’d been training with every few days. Sally also learned that the boy had strawberry blond hair, icy blue eyes, and a slightly tanned complexion. He’d come into his milestone around the same time she had, and they’d become been fast friends when they’d met in the Sea of Grass one night that neither of them should have been out during.
The whole thing sounded a little too familiar for Athos.
If that wasn’t enough, he already had his class of Hunter, favored a bow, had a birthday coming up next month, that he wanted a Boots of Sneaking to improve his stealth skill, and that Emily herself thought Hunter was a stupid class since everyone could hunt, but that she couldn’t argue with being able to track and get extra drops from each kill.
When pressed further by some unseen force, Sally’d also gotten that the two preteens didn’t actually do what Walter feared they did. Emily made a disgusted face, declared boys to still be ‘immature’ still despite her blush, and spilled the beans.
Instead of fumbling through play dates, the two had to grind their skills against grass knots at night when Walter had gone to bed.
Of course, that was after Myles got caught with Emily fighting by Myles’s father.
Despite her protests, Athos almost felt sorry for the girl. There was more to the story, and since Sally wasn’t pressing it, he didn’t either.
Almost wasn’t sorry, however.
It was a little too hard to forget the fact that Emily had ruined quite a few tender moments between the two with her games of tag. Not to mention the extra work he had to do when he couldn’t keep up with her and items began to lose durability.
But when he got right down to it, the way that Sally and Emily interacted, the way that the older and younger siblings relished the other’s presence was tender to Athos, and doubly so to Sally, who began fawning dramatically over her sister and the life she’d lead as a Hunter’s wife.
As Emily denied everything and hid her face in her hands, it made him miss his own sister. She’d be older than Emily was by now. Not counting milestone advancements, Sarah would be at least sixteen by now.
For a moment, he wished the SIFs was still connected so he could see them again, or that she’d sign up as a Player, but if he knew his mother, school was more important for her right now. Maybe when she was in her twenties?
That life was gone though, and he wiped his eyes in time to focus back on the teasing at hand in time to finally see Emily break under the stress of her sisterly assault.
“Stopppppp!” Emily whined, turning ever deeper shades of beet red by the time the third verse of ‘Emma and Myles’ was done.
Honestly, he was impressed by how explicit even Sally’s ‘appropriate’ lyrics could be. Then again, he wasn’t a woman, and he didn’t quite have the skill set for cunning his wife had. He would have never thought about using… those terms to describe what she had.
Then again, Sally was the brains of their home operation and had single-handedly saved them thousands of bytes by building nearly everything for the twin’s room, including the addition itself. God-gifted home or not, Sally Queen-Aramis would not be denied what she wanted in a home.
Praised be the crafting system on Incipere, and all that it had granted them.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
He really, really needed to remember to thank Ella again for restoring her missing class. It was probably one of the best gifts he could have asked for and had gone a long way to redeem Ella in their eyes.
Still, it was a nice walk until the sun was far enough over head to be considered on the downturn and Sally turned to him, interrupting his thoughts on the matter. “Are we far enough away yet?”
Emily looked about as confused as he expected and smiled as he couldn’t see the farm or any of the buildings over the rise.
“I think so,” he said before turning to Emily. “Don’t tell your dad...”
Her eyes lit up like the aurora and looked as if she’d been handed yet another gift.
“… or you’ll be walking home.”
“You’re no fun,” she pouted, and those eyes dimmed just a little bit, but she nodded all the same. There was fun in secrets, and she doubted this was going to be one she wanted to miss… or keep if she wanted to get Athos and Sally in trouble. They couldn’t make her walk if they were already home, after all.
Athos smiled and opened his inventory, something he never took for granted again as he scrolled through the options and spoke at the same time to fill Emily in.
“Sally designed this specifically for your dad,” he explained as he scrolled through what looked like hundreds of items, more than any Inciperian should be able to carry by Emily’s reckoning. “When she’s perfected it, she’s going to try to sell the plans to a crafter’s guild to secure a steady income that doesn’t include monster hunting.”
Athos’s eyes lit up as he found what he wanted, clicked the icon, and a huge cart appeared, but that was nothing compared to Emily.
“What the Frag?”
The frame was glimmering metal, the wheels were rubber lined steel with all sorts of springs and things he couldn’t even recognize and a wheel up front connecting it all in the coach. In there was a long bench seat of plush blue material that looked like they’d plucked clouds out of the sky and dyed them. It sat lower than she’d expected too. The item was like nothing Emily’d ever seen before. It was like her dad’s cart with the monitors, but there was no place to hook up the animals. Instead, the front of the wagon went out a bit further, and she could see an array of crystals and some sort of liquid sitting in a clear container that fed further in. It reminded her of the auto thresher she’d seen on one of the other farms…
Suddenly, it all came together for her as Athos helped Sally into the driver’s seat.
“You build a motorized wagon!”
Sally smirked, patting the plush, empty seat on her left while Athos climbed into the right. “Athos gave me the idea to tear down something we saw back in the Wild Lands so we could put it all together like this, but yes. I built a motorized cart. Athos calls it a car, but that’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” he defended as he adjusted himself in the plush blue seating. “It’s what they’re called.”
She shot him down with a hiss of air and turned a metal key on the steering column. “You can keep saying that, but the name’s stupid, and I’m not calling my baby a car.”
“We’re not calling one Athos either,” he shot back, smirking just as proudly.
“Say it all you like. That doesn’t make it true.”
Emily snickered before patting her sister’s shoulder, eager to get things started as her words began meshing together. “Come on, Sis! How fast can it go?! Can it jump?! I wanna get to town already!”
Sally smiled as the engine roared to life. As it did, the entire cart hummed softly, and a pair of pedals rose from the metal below the seats. Sally grinned as a field of magical defense descended over the opening and enclosed the entire group in a cabin of steel and force.
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes if we hit Wild Ones,” Sally began before a wicked grin curled her lips. “Ten minutes, tops, if we have clear sailing and you don’t mind a little lost integrity from a few hard impacts.”
Athos’s face fell as he had flashbacks to the last time one of the Queen family decided a shortcut was in order and froze. “Sally.”
She turned to him and smiled like a cat would eying it’s prey. “Oh, come on, Athos. I’m not my dad.”
His eyes went wide as she purposefully showed her teeth in that evil smile. He knew that look, but he still had to try. “No, you’re worse and can’t take as much punishment as you used to.”
Sally looked hurt, her face falling almost instantly. Athos fell for it hook, line, and sinker as he tried to apologize, but it was all for naught.
A smile returned quickly though as she mocked him by putting her hand over her head and rolling her eyes back decidedly more than was necessary.
“You wound me, Athos.”
Immediately, she put her foot down on the accelerator and slammed the ill-prepared sibling and husband back into the plush seating as she cried out with delight.
“It’s a good thing I have a higher armor rating than your words can hit for!”
“Sally!”
“Sis!”
“I’ll be careful!” Sally hollered again as they picked up speed and jumped over a rise, sailing across the crest of the Sea of Grass’s lush dunes before landing in another. “I know what I’m doing, so hold onto your asses!”
Athos had already been doing so, as his experience had taught him well the dangers of driving with a Queen behind the wheel.
Emily was a quick learner after her head collided the first time with the shielded ceiling above them, knocking five percent off her integrity.
“I said hold on!”