Chapter 436: Chapter 436 - All Kinds Of Invasions Of Home & Hearth
Suspended among false stars with her sister-in-law in illusion... but standing on the stairwell in reality, Qatrand gil Yecine felt the sensation of an unknown spiritual presence crossing the cocoon of tendrils she had lanced through the mansion as early warning detectors. Someone who hadn’t been caught in the initial activation was now in the house.
Without hesitating, she reached for the mint-colored sphere that had been orbiting her. The moment her fingers closed around it again, information flooded through her head. Confirmation to exit the illusion, questions on whether to bring others out with her. However, she could only think of two that ’deserved’ it at this moment specifically.
A jarring shift in her perspective returned and she looked to her side to see Corde still frozen in place. The woman had been on her way to help, but now that things had turned out like this... Qat really didn’t want to deal with her or how she might freak out. Turning further to Yatrel, who was coming to her senses behind them at the base of the steps, her low voice spoke succinctly.
"That was something of a trap left behind by El. Call for Ondua, please, he should also be coming out of it."
Trusting the duelist to process that, she leapt up the stairs and pulled herself rapidly down the corridor with her Gravity assisted movement technique. Her blade was free and raised up when she saw the nursery door stood ajar. But through it came the sound of a slightly familiar voice speaking in frustrated tones as the Shadow Whisker scout bound the arms of the lead Saltfire infiltrator.
"...hopping through the window of a house I don’t own like some common burglar. Besides, what the heck happened that the place would be under siege when I got here?"
The heavy blade tip lowered to the ground, but the young swordswoman did not sheath it. Even as Sevra looked up from where she was disarming the man to see the blonde teenager filling the doorway. Pigeon blue eyes that she recognized immediately made her sigh in relief. She wasn’t sure if the Yecine’s spiritual sense would work while in the ritual or not.
’I just got here, I didn’t want to have to handle all of this... there is even so much food downstairs. Real food, from here. Not the stuff I *had* to eat in that place.’
"Sev- ...Are you crying?"
"No!"
"...It’s alright if you are. However, while I’m almost certain it’s you - even though I don’t know why or how you are here - I’d really prefer if you step away from the crib."
"A-alright. I suppose that’s fair, but I was told that you were told how the ritual worked? If I wanted to do anything to her, I’d already be trapped with the others."
While that was what her scheming wife explained, it didn’t exactly lower her vigilance to hear someone else say it. Any belief that she had been told by El was easily overcome by suspicion of why. Because as far as she knew, this woman was still on bad terms with the heiress... and also was one of the three swept away by the realmshard trap.
"Even still. I’m not the only one that will be in this room in a few moments, and it would be better if you did not look like an enemy target."
Holding up her hands and backing away, Sevra sat down and relaxed in a chair that the nursemaid usually rested in. Of course, the poor mortal woman was instead locked in the illusion like the others, slumped over a dresser where she had been gathering a blanket for herself.
She had not felt nearly as ’eased’ by the lines that ’wicked’ were being dealt with. For she was sure her unrequited attraction to the Dame Goltbred surely fell into that category! The ritual itself had mercifully kept her self-psychological questions contained to a normal amount of spiraling, existential angst.
Of course, no one there but the Avatar of this particular ritual would ever know of that... and luckily it was not designed to *keep* such information that was not related to the current activation sequence.
After checking on Onya, the younger cultivator turned and stood waiting. Running footsteps in the hall announced the Goltbred parents. The scout picked that timing to reach into the leather satchel and withdraw what she was supposed to deliver first. Carefully bound, the material etched with sigils that made the surface of it shimmer slightly.
"Qatrand. I do have a delivery for you from Elua."
It had been given a similar Gaseous barrier treatment as the ancient cultivator had come up with for herself. The hyperdense fluid layer protecting it... but making it quite a chore to even hold onto. A latticed spiritual barrier did somehow provide a little ’tackiness’ if you knew the trick, but was still quite low on the coefficient of friction.
But she’d seen an example item dunked in water, set on a low amount of fire, and chucked with a lot of strength at a wall without any damage. The little artisan also molded copper into lengths of wire, wrapped it into a simple power coil around a chunk of worked quartz with sigils carved all over it, and connected to what she called a ’spark gap discharge probe’ - a stick looking thing with two copper prongs a distance apart.
The voltage created was enough to visibly char a stick of wood left between them on use. But it merely bent *around* the metal rod coated in her pressurized sulfur hexafluoride insulator. Even if the teen insisted it was not a ’perfect’ invincibility, the qualities it *could* protect against were amazing enough.
"She wrote out everything you need to know about her plans, her timeline, and why she’s chosen to stay where she is while sending me back first."
With the Goltbred parents watching in the doorway, the blonde sheathed her blade while stepping over to accept the item with hands that couldn’t help but tremble. After months of a sort of uncertainty, of hoping her wife was safe because of what the Fox Avatar sent, but having no real confirmation... she was a bit overwhelmed.
’It’s radiating her intent. Her love. There is no way this is fake. And there is no way that this woman tricked her out of it...’
"Thank you."
"Aren’t you the person who attacked my eldest at her wedding and got off lucky?"
Yatrel glared with her mint eyes, in a way that made the scout immediately think of an upset heiress, as the woman stepped over to stroke her youngest daughter’s hair. The girl seemed to be just asleep still, not as creepily still as the others had been.
"I... there were reasons. But Elua and I, we’ve talked through them. So-"
"Qatrand also once suggested that *you* were at least partly the reason she was stuck wherever it is in the first place..."
Feeling like things had somehow rapidly turned to Sevra herself being ’under siege’, as the mother continued to build her frustrations into a sharp intent... the scout was grateful that the father placed a calming hand on Yatrel’s shoulder. Reddish-blonde hair shifted as she turned her face to look at him.
"Dear-"
He was quieted and doubled over by a sudden punch to the solar plexus that frightened the former assassin. She’d seen someone from her family use that exact technique before, for incapacitating innocent witnesses. It made her sure she was about to be killed!
"I didn’t know what the artifact was, okay! Besides it was really Madrigil that-"
"Is he here with you, too?"
"Ah? No, he stayed behind like... like your daughter intended to. For another... four years..."
Every word she spoke felt like it was another shovelful of dirt, digging her own grave. She had been coached a lot - A LOT - on how to handle everything with ’Qat’. Which conversations to have, what things to stress and reassure with. But besides some generic advice and statements that any child might send home... she had not been prepared for the fierce mother.
And was losing her conversational footing too rapidly to counter.
’Damn it... Elua...’
Wheezing to a stand, Ondua wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist. He had seen it coming, just barely. But it didn’t make it hurt any less!
"Dear. You’re making her cry."
"I know. It’s payback. Don’t pretend you didn’t cry when you first heard our girl was missing. If this woman can understand even a little what we went through, then-"
"I do! Don’t assume you’re the ONLY people a loved one ever went missing from! At least you had Qatrand to tell you things were okay, I had NO ONE that knew ANYTHING!"
Having surged to her feet with her raw emotions, the dusty cloaked cultivator calmed her breathing while reaching for and clutching the little tracker she’d been given. Closing her eyes, with just a little insertion of spiritual energy it tugged in a direction of Elder Thelassi... to the North. Knowing she was making a mess of her arrival, even though she had been trusted, all of the energy left her body and she slumped back into the nursery’s chair.
"She’s planning to stay until she’s eighteen and what she calls ’properly grown’. I think she also called it Prime? Anyway, she’s building something stupidly incredible for both of you in the meantime. Turning the whole Astral Exclave into a private city-estate that makes this very lovely place look like a run down cottage."
Her foot scuffed the expensive carpet as she said all of this with her ’I give up’ attitude, before chuckling. Having caught a glimpse of one of the twitching kidnappers out of the corner of her eye she couldn’t help but smirk.
"I guess your home is kind of infested with vermin right now. My apologies for losing my cool. Should have let you deal with that first. Any idea who they even are? I have more rope to tie them up if you need. Or a few needles if you trust me to paralyze them without permanent harm...?"
"...The rope will be fine, thank you."
Qat’s low voice answered the babbler, still a little shaky herself. Too many highs and lows had happened. Because while she was aware of what her chosen, marriage given parents had been up to just now with their conversation with the scout...
’Those letters were very beautiful. It’s a shame they don’t have physical form... even if she ’infected’ me and I can see them any time I want. I still might have to pen them myself, just to stuff a copy in my treasure chests...’