Mia was still eying the nervous group of canine beastkin when their leader, the lizardman apparently called Rex, answered Brent’s question.

  “Why did we have him trying to sneak up on you?” Rex asked, rolling one boulder-like shoulder in a shrug. “Why else? To see whether you’d notice him. The hope was that he could eavesdrop and catch some interesting info.”

  “Why?” Brent demanded. “And what are you doing on our street? I have the agreed upon plans, you should be cleaning out the street half a kilometre east of here.”

  “That’s done already,” Rex said. “We got bored, thought to check what the big bad team the army had cleaning out the nastiest rift of the city was like.”

  So they were just … curious? Mia thought dubiously, then corrected herself. No, this wasn’t anything as tame as mere curiosity. They were here to get a feel for the competition, for their possible enemies.

  “Is that so?” Brent asked, levelling an even stare at Rex. “Lucky. I was afraid the poor sod back there was told to grab one of our mages while we weren’t looking … or to knife them.”

  “We don’t kill,” Rex said, distaste clear in his rumbling voice as he crossed his arms.

  “Right,” Brent said, sounding unconvinced and making no effort to mask it. “Glad you said that, because none of you would have walked away in one piece had you done so. Quite fortunate.”

  “You might be strong, but not that strong Brent,” Rex sneered. “None of the guys behind me are weak. While your group’s made up of women.”

  “You have some serious misunderstandings,“ Brent started with a frown. “They are mages. Do you really want to try how your scaly ass handles getting struck by a magical lightning bolt?”

  Mia stared cooly at the idiotic lizardman. Did they not have mages in whichever hole he’d crawled out of, or was he just under the misconception that his steely scales would ward off any spells thrown at him?

  Luckily for him, the only person around eager to correct his misunderstanding was Lina, who was horribly outmatched against a heavy steel tank in lizard form with her Air magic. The blonde thankfully seemed to know it too, which was why she was just quietly fuming and not stomping over to give a piece of her mind to the dumb beastkin.

  Helene could likely fry his brain with little effort, and Mia had little doubt her own Arcane Blast could break through his defences. The same went for Camie’s Blood Lances and Nikki probably had something similar of her own.

  The vampire was nowhere to be seen though, and Nikki didn’t understand what Rex was saying so she couldn’t get offended by it. Mia had no intention of translating those words either.

  I hope he gets a nasty reality check from someone far less nice than me. Mia thought, a part of her hoping the idiot would find himself offending Avery at one point. The girl’s fire punches would have him throwing up his cooked organs in short order. Too bad she loathes the army enough to not want to be a part of this push towards the south.

  “Only weaklings need magic,” Rex said, puffing himself up while his idiotic peanut gallery shouted agreements.

  “I heard lizards had brains the size of walnuts,” Mark interrupted, clicking his tongue audibly. “But I never thought that trait transfered over to whatever the fuck you are. What do you think the Skill that changes your scales to steel is? Rocket science? Does it work off of natural physics? Do you have a star shoved up your ass to transmute matter? No, dipshit, that’s magic.”

  Mia’s mouth twitched into the inkling of a smile. Mark always had a barbed tongue, but becoming a dwarf had made it a dozen times worse and also halved the length of his fuse.

  “Say that to my face, mud-man,” Rex sneered at the golem-like form Mark had on him, covering him from head to toe. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Anyway,” Brent said, raising his voice. “I think it’s time for you to get on with fucking off.”

  “No more questions?” Rex asked in amusement.

  “I asked all the ones I wanted,” Brent said dourly, glancing back at Mia. “Would you let the little shit go so we can be finally rid of them?”

  Mia shrugged in agreement, and with a ‘come hither’ motion called her familiar back before whispering to Nikki to let go of the dog-beastman.

  The ice shackles that had taken over from Mia when she dismissed her Arcane Shackles melted, covering the man in freezing cold water and leaving him shivering.

  “Fuck off, is it?” Rex mused, staring at Brent before letting his heavy gaze roam over the rest of the group.

  Mia didn’t know what he expected, but she felt only a smidge of natural fear towards him, so staring right back at him when his eyes landed on her wasn’t particularly hard. Sure, he was a big, heavy fucker who could fold her in half and make a pretzel out of her if he caught her … but she was faster and could blow his head off if he tried.

  His stature was intimidating, but she didn’t allow herself to show fear. Rex’s eyes kept the same bored look, but when they found themselves on Nikki, they widened.

  The ice mage looked back at him with something akin to amusement, like how one would look at a kid doing something stupid without knowing it.

  “Fine,” Rex grunted, shaking his head. “On we go then. We’ll see you around, I’m sure … someone go grab Luis.”

  Luis was the Dobermann-like beastkin, apparently, who was quickly grabbed under the shoulder by two wolf-kin men and carried away. With a final sneering look, Rex turned tail and strode off with the rest of his group following after him.

  “Well, that was … “ Mia started, trying to find a word to describe the experience.

  “Infuriating,” Lina supplied, her face still flushed like a ripe tomato with a vein bulging on her otherwise delicate neck. She was clearly still livid from the misogynistic remarks Rex had made. “I want to strangle that dumb lizard. Urgh. Why didn’t you do anything? How can you just stand by and listen to his bullshit? My magic would have been like blowing hot air at him, but you could have beaten some respect into his thick skull.”

  “I don’t know,” Mia shrugged with an uncomfortable smile. She really wasn’t all that angry about the remarks, the lizardman clearly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and his ‘opinion’ wasn’t worth a damn to her. “It was more funny than anything to me how certain he was of his superiority when I could have blown his head off with a single spell.”

  “I hate it.” Lina groaned, her fists balled up and knuckles going white before letting out a measured sigh. “I hate it so much.”

  “What?” Mia asked, a moment before grimacing at the glare her mother sent her way.

  “This … weakness,” Lina said, her voice fragile as she stared after the group of beastkin. “Being helpless. Maybe I would have felt just like you, if I was strong enough, but I might as well just be a human shaped fan to that asshole.”

  “This one was just an atrociously bad matchup for you,” Helene said soothingly, rubbing the dejected blonde’s back comfortingly. “Also, don’t forget that he would never be able to catch you. You are quick and can very nearly flutter around like a butterfly. You’d make a fool out of the lumbering oaf if he tried anything.”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, nodding and trying to be encouraging. Then she remembered her still absent girlfriend and her anxiety spiked. “By the way, has anyone seen Carmilla?”

  Her ears twitched, and she relaxed, hearing a soft heartbeat just a hundred metres away thrumming before with a rustle of fabric, the vampire stepped out of the shadow cast by a larger building.

  “That went about as well as it could have,” Helene said with a sigh, her gaze tracking the beastkin until they disappeared behind the corner. Then, seeing Mia’s questioning look, she elaborated. “They wanted to test us. I think … I’m reasonably sure the lizardman was just trying to goad one of us mages into another duel. I’m glad none of you did something you’d have come to regret later.”

  “Like me?” Brent asked with a teasing lilt to his voice.

  Helene just gave him an unimpressed glance before returning her focus to Mia and Lina, patting the two girls on the shoulder.

  Camie arrived just about then, stinking like she’d gone dumpster diving in a very literal sense and by the look on her face, she wasn’t happy about it.

  “Well, hi?” Mia said, looking her girlfriend over for any obvious signs of what exactly resulted in her current putrid odour.

  “Uhm,” Nikki spoke up. “Does she … want me to do a quick clean of her garments? I can flash-freeze her clothes and hair to banish most of the things stuck in it.”

  “She asked whether you’d like a freeze-bath,” Mia translated for Camie, who tilted her head at the ice mage before nodding. “Cool.”

  Nikki strode forward and held out her hand, which Camie deposited her own into after a moment of hesitation and that was about where Mia stopped being able to tell what the ice mage was doing.

  She could see the icy mana flowing over the vampire’s skin and swirling around, but not much else. Not that she had long to observe, as Nikki let go a few seconds later and stepped away with a somewhat satisfied look on her face.

  She sniffed the air, then smiled slightly. Saying, “better.”

  Mia had to agree after taking a cautious sniff of her own. Camie wasn’t quite back to smelling like roses, but neither did she stink like a dumpster left out to bake under the summer sun. The vampire levelled a slight glare at her, making Mia avert her eyes with a slight flush coming to her cheeks.

  “Sooooooo,” Mark ambled over, still in golem form. “How come you ended up taking a dumpster shower, Red?”

  “Had to mask my scent,” Carmilla said briskly, her pretty nose scrunching up as she glared at the dwarf.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Mia winced in sympathy, her gaze travelling down her girlfriend’s likely ruined clothes. She knew Camie loved those pants, so it must have stung to have them doused in garbage.

  “Welcome back,” Mia said, putting on a smile and giving a quick hug to the vampire to show her support. They could be stinky together. “Did you hear anything interesting?”

  “Nothing too interesting Brent didn’t needle out of them,” Carmilla said, sounding mellower than before. “They had been sent here to ascertain how dangerous the army’s ‘special unit’ was. They seem to think we are some super special strike force the military had put together and wanted to know how powerful we are.”

  “They just said that aloud?” Lina mused, letting out a snort.

  “Not exactly,” Camie corrected. “They were just complaining about everything and I managed to put it together piece by piece.”

  “Well, I think we did admirably well at hiding as much of our capabilities as possible,” Brent butted in. “They only know the basics of what I can do, and in turn we know what that lizardman can do. I think that’s a fair trade.”

  “That lizardman had a faint Draconic bloodline,” Camie said, shocking everyone. “He must be one of their strongest. Dragons are rare … rarer than vampires and Fae put together. Though he is just their weak, very distant cousin that every dragon would deny having any relations to. As far as I can tell.”

  “Dragons are real?” Mark asked in wonder, staring after where the lizardman disappeared behind the corner.

  “Yes,” Camie said, shrugging. “Very real, and very dangerous. They practically rule the Beast Realm.”

  “And how does that scaly sexist asshole compare to a real dragon?” Lina asked, still hung up on not seeing the lizardman beaten to a pulp.

  “He is as to a dragon what a chicken is to a T-Rex,” Carmilla said with a hint of mockery clear in her voice. “Though … “

  Mia raised an eyebrow as her girlfriend trailed off, watching the vampire lick her crimson lips. Mia’s eyes narrowed.

  “Let’s get going!” Brent called out, gently cleaning his blade off with a torn off a piece of his shirt. “We still have a kilometre to go. Unless you want to tap out now?”

  Nobody wanted to leave before completing their task, and so they kept on advancing. The wolves were weak, but they were becoming more numerous with every pack of them they killed.

  Before they finally decided to finish up for the day just when the evening sun started dipping below the horizon, Mia extracted a single core from one of the last Rust Wolves.

  Cleaning up the uneven crystal as much as she could, she shoved it into her pocket under the curious gazes of her friends.

  “You’ll see,” Mia said, shrugging. “Trying out my new spell tonight.”

  The soldiers following a few hundred metres behind them, previously busying themselves with pushing the monster carcasses off the road, came up to them when they turned around. Thankfully, they agreed to give them a drive back to whichever safe house the army chose for the night without fuss.

  Stepping into the unfamiliar living room of the apartment, Mia felt a hint of bitter resentment growing in her. She hadn’t been home for days, having to hide out in random houses like some rat because an asshole from some magical kingdom decided killing her and her friends would further whatever plans they had for the future.

  This was no way to live.

  This new spell is my first step towards changing that. Mia promised herself, her fingers reaching into her pocket and feeling out the rough edges of the monster core. She didn’t want to rely on others, besides maybe her close friends and family. The army was amicable now, but she knew that was just Zeigler’s personal influence. I can’t rely on just them.

  Mia waited until everyone was ready to go to sleep before she called them back into the living room.

  “I’m going to put an Alert Ward in this room,” she said, putting the monster core down on the kitchen table with a clang. “It should alert everyone if anything with a mana signature steps into this room. Well, anything, or anyone who doesn’t imbue some of their own mana into this crystal before I activate the Ward.”

  “Alert everyone how?” Brent asked.

  “This version should make a loud cracking sound,” Mia said. “Also, one other thing: Do not, under any circumstance, try to absorb some of the mana inside the core.”

  “Why?” Lina asked the question everyone wanted to know, by the looks on their faces.

  “Because it’s still fucky from having some broken, monster mana, miasma … whatever, you know what I mean.” Mia spoke with all the seriousness she could manage, remembering the warning in both the Runic Lexicon and some of her books. “We would need to do something called ‘purification’ to it before absorbing the mana inside. Which I have no idea how to do. So just push mana in, but don’t allow any to flow back into you.”

  “Out of curiosity,” Helene asked. “What would happen if we did absorb some?”

  “Magical indigestion,” Mia said. “Most likely. But I remember energy channel atrophy and just straight up having your entire mana pool destabilising is also in the cards, though very rare. They do make mana potions out of this stuff after all, but in its current state, it's only good for powering artifice and some spells that can latch onto it as an outside mana source.”

  “Sounds nasty,” Mark said, eying the small crystal like it could grow teeth and bite him at any moment. “You sure this is safe?”

  “It is,” Mia said, nodding. “If you aren’t a moron. Just don’t pull any mana in, and if you do, just spit it back out before it reaches your mana pool.”

  “Question,” Brent said, raising a hand like a dutiful student. “I don’t have mana, just Ki. What then?”

  “Oh.” That stumped Mia, she reached for her backpack which hid her most important books. “A moment I … forgot about that.”

  Mia browsed through her books, finding nothing about how to make the Alert Ward include Ki users in the Lexicon. Unfortunately, it seemed whoever wrote her books originally before the System plagiarised them, had little care for making Ki inclusive spells and it hardly ever came up.

  Or maybe not, as the one thing she finally found gave her a simple, but conclusive answer. Ki was lifeforce, in a way, and spells as basic as the ones Mia was playing with had absolutely zero hope to do anything worthwhile with it.

  The two were just not compatible enough and required much more complex spells involving the usage of elements like Blood, Life, Darkness, Death or something else that had more of a connection with the strange energy Ki originated from.

  “Seems like a bust,” Mia said sourly, snapping her book shut as she looked up at Brent with some hesitance. “Could you … uhm, stay in your room for the night? I can’t exclude you from the sensing field it seems.”

  “I suppose it’s a worthwhile trade for having a reliable alarm system,” Brent said with an easygoing smile. “Just don’t sleep in too much then so I can come out to get breakfast in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Mia said, nodding. “I can do that. Everyone’s ready?”

  Receiving nods in return, Mia cast her newest spell without much fuss. Alert Ward had two versions of its spell circle included in the Lexicon: one that she was about to cast, and another in which her own mana pool would have taken the monster core’s spot as the energy source of the spell.

  The second version was a bit too restrictive for her tastes, not allowing for her to exclude anyone and also sapping her own damned mana to power itself. It was just a downright bad spell. Its only use would have come from being mobile and allowing her to get an early warning if anything breached its perimeters while out and about.

  That might be useful for someone who didn’t have friends to watch her back, supernatural hearing or Spirit Sense. Luckily, Mia had all three.

  The spell wrapped around the core she held in her hand, covering it in a thin pink glow as Mia felt a thin thread of mana still connecting her to the spell. The moment she snapped that, the spell would go fully active.

  “Okay, put some tiny smidge of mana into the crystal now please,” Mia said. “Carefully.”

  One after the other, her team members touched their fingers to the crystal and pushed some mana into it and Mia saw the spell straining to keep hold of it by the time the last of them finished up. Still, it held.

  “Okay, done,” Mia said, looking up apologetically at Brent. “Sorry, but uhm, could you leave now? I’m about to turn it on.”

  “Sure,” the man said, giving a small wave to the group. “Goodnight.”

  Once he was gone and the door to his room closed behind him, Mia waited a few more seconds before snapping the mana thread. The pink light sank into the crystal, then a heartbeat later a barely perceptible film of mana expanded out of it and wrapped around the insides of the room like a bubble.

  “Done,” Mia said, giving a relieved sigh. “Should be good now. With my Familiar keeping watch, it should be pretty challenging to sneak up on us.”

  “Didn’t you say your Familiar was as dumb as a rock?” Lina mused, eying the pink cat draped over the backrest of a sofa like she wanted to pet it, but wasn’t willing to risk loosing a hand.

  “I guess it depends on the elemental,” Mia said, staring at her azure-eyed Familiar. It was like looking into a mirror. “This one has been surprisingly good at actually doing what I order it to do without misunderstanding or just fucking it up, so I’ve been keeping it topped off with mana for as long as possible.”

  “Huh,” Lina rubbed her chin thoughtfully, tilting her head before shrugging. A yawn slipped through her lips then, and she looked back at the group through half-lidded eyes. “I’m going to get some shuteye. We’ll be needing all the rest we can get if we’re marching further south tomorrow. Goodnight!”

  Everyone slowly wandered off, leaving behind only Camie and Mia, who caught the uncertain look the vampiress was sending her for the last ten minutes, and decided to stay.

  “What’s up?” Mia asked, making an effort to not be too touchy feely. Her love language was physical touch, but with Camie having flown off the handle not too long ago, she wanted to show she could restrain herself. She even made an effort to sit on the sofa all prim and proper, like she’d seen Nikki do.

  “Do you want to uh,” Camie, looked towards the two still open bedroom doors. Somehow, the soldiers had found a safe-house with the exact amount of separate bedrooms as there were people in Mia’s group. Even Nikki got a room of her own inside the apartment. “Sleep together?”

  Mia’s mind almost went down the gutter before she felt her common sense kicking in. Still with a faint blush on her face, which was matched by the vampiress, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Like cuddles and stuff? You know just … sleep sleep and not- “

  “Yes!” Camie said a bit too quickly, her own blush growing worse before it died off with a suddenness that made Mia suspect there was some magical body-control behind it. Especially since Camie still looked embarrassed. “You know I can’t-”

  “I do,” Mia said, beaming up at her girlfriend as she hopped up from her seat. “Cuddles are just fine. No worries. I’d happy to sleep with you Camie. Come on!”

  Grabbing the vampire by the wrist, Mia practically dragged her off to her room, enjoying the redhead’s embarrassment all the way. She also noted another thing. This had been the first time Carmilla had initiated anything romantic between them instead of just going along with something Mia did.

  Mia took in the happy smile on the red-head’s face and thought it almost had a child-like innocence to it … that thought took a moment to actually sink in, but when it did, it hit her like a ton of bricks and had her freezing in place.

  “Mia?” Carmilla looked back, her smile turning a bit dejected and vulnerable.

  Mia stared, swallowing, as the realization sank in. Carmilla was not just acting like a child sometimes, she was exactly like one. She never had a proper childhood, never learned social skills, and never had proper friends.

  Mia had known all that, but only as Carmilla now looked back at her like a little kid who didn’t know why their mother was disappointed in them did the implications of it fully sink in. Was it the supernatural intelligence, the otherworldly knowledge or just the very much adult body that kept Mia from seeing it before?

  Who am I kidding? She thought. I was just so damned absorbed in finally getting a girlfriend that I didn’t even really pay attention to her. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuuccccckkk. Am I grooming a vampire?

  The thought was so horrifying to Mia she looked at Carmilla with horror, seeing her face fall from merely dejected to outright panic at whatever emotions she could read on Mia’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” Carmilla asked, bounding over and looking Mia up and down before leaning close and staring into her eyes. The pair of crimson eyes looked into Mia’s own, intense, worried, angry, vulnerable, and panicking, all swimming around in those twin pools of blood. “Talk to me. What’s wrong? What did- Did I do something wrong again?”

  The way her voice cracked at the end made Mia feel horrible, like she was the worst person to ever exist. The poor girl was so starved for love, probably of any kind, that the mere thought of disappointing Mia, who had fed that hunger for affection, had her in a panic. It only made Mia’s sense of guilt spike further, spearing through the clouds to head above and beyond.

  Looking up at Carmilla, she put on the best smile she could. She still saw the woman, but she also saw the child hidden inside. It was something that once she’d noticed it, she was unable to unsee it.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Camie,” Mia said soothingly. “Nothing at all, I just … realised something.”

  “What?” Camie asked insistently, though the way anxiety drained out of her was hard to miss.

  “I- uh,” Mia tried to put it into words, not really knowing how to really do so, or if she really should be doing it. Would Camie even take it well if Mia practically called her emotionally stunted? “I think it’d be best to grab Mom for this. I need to talk to her, and … I need you to promise me you won't listen in on what we talk about, okay? I just realised there is something I should really be helping you with, but I don’t know how. Mom should be able to help, but I’m afraid you knowing about it could hurt you in the long run. Okay?”

  “Okay?” Carmilla said, now confused and a little peevish. Likely not enjoying the idea of something that had to do with her being hidden, but she nodded eventually. “Okay … I promise I won’t listen in?”

  “Thank you,” Mia said, smiling as a new onset of guilt gnawed at her. She’d just used Carmilla’s need for approval again. She told herself it was for the girl’s own good, but she still felt horrible. Most of all, she felt horrible it took her so long to take her head out of the gutters and realise the reality that was right in front of her face. “Thank you, Camie.”

  Click Here to check it Out!