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Chapter 1785: Proud Girls
Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

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  1. Offline
    Despawning
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    Extra chapter just for you guys! welldone
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  2. Offline
    Despawning
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    1807 Menace

    Tobin barked a laugh. "Your friend. Right. And I'm the Primordial Villain. He gave Lucille a wink. "Sister, maybe. What's your name, gorgeous?"

    Lucille set her teacup down on its saucer without a sound.

    "I'd suggest you remove your hand from her," she said pleasantly.

    "Or what?" And to the great misfortune of everyone who shared his blood, Tobin's hand stayed exactly where it was, and his grin came back around to Mavena. "She always this..."

    Lucille moved.

    Mavena would spend a long time afterwards trying to reconstruct the order of it.

    Her mother's hand closed over the wrist on her shoulder. Then the wrist was no longer on her shoulder, and Tobin was bent over the table, cheek pressed to the wood, arm folded up behind his back at an angle arms were not issued with.

    None of it had made any noise except the soft clink of the sugar bowl.

    "GH... AGH! LET, agh, LET GO...”

    "Shhh. You'll wake the street." Lucille wasn't holding him down so much as resting her hand on the arrangement, the way you'd keep a page from turning in a breeze.

    Her voice stayed exactly where it had been all evening, warm and light and maternal. "A woman tells you no eleven times and you barge into her home nonetheless... Isn't that a terrible crime?"

    "I didn't, AH, I didn't know, I swear I didn't know..."

    "Know what? That forcing yourself upon others is bad?" A gentle tut.

    Then the weight on his arm was gone. Tobin ran. Or tried to.

    He made it two whole steps, long enough to taste escape, before a hand closed around the back of his collar and the whole slab of him stopped mid-stride, boots still walking the air.

    Lucille turned him around, gently, almost politely, so he could see it coming.

    "Wha...”

    Her fist crossed the distance with a sound like a barrel lid slamming, wet at the center where his nose gave up its original shape, and Tobin left her grip sideways, took a table's corner on the way down, and spread himself over the floorboards. A tooth skittered away under a chair and came to rest against the wall, where it stayed.

    He was asleep before the blood reached his lip.
    Lucille looked down at him and shook the impact off her knuckles once, and when she spoke, the warmth was gone from her voice.

    "Instead of doing what I truly want, I'll hand you to Jasmine's people. They'll decide your punishment." She straightened her sleeve. "But you'll never get to even think about hurting my Mavena again."

    Silence owned the taproom.

    Behind the counter, Robert rose into view by degrees, hands braced on the wood as though the floor had tilted, and Mavena hadn't moved at all.

    They had both known, in the abstract way you know the ocean is deep, that Lucille carried a class and stats now, that she fought monsters at the villain's side.

    But the slim wrists with flour under their nails had kneaded dough, hung laundry, shooed cats off the pantry shelf, and they had just caught, folded, and switched off a man twice her weight without her breath changing, There was nowhere in either of their heads to put it.

    "Goddess above," Cela whispered beside him.

    The kitchen door chose that moment to fail entirely as a sound barrier. From behind it came a deep chuckle, followed by a thud that might have been a king's forehead meeting a shelf in the dark, followed by Iris's agitated voice hissing at Quinlan to put her down.

    Mavena noticed none of them.

    "Mom." Her voice came out small, and it hadn't been small in years. "Since when can you DO that?"

    And Lucille did the thing she had done on every visit.

    Mavena watched it happen without knowing what she was watching: her mother's shoulders rounding by a degree, her hands finding her apron even though she wasn't wearing one, her whole self folding down into something smaller and softer and easier to sit across a teacup from.

    The humble mother, reassembled between one breath and the next.

    "Oh, that was nothing, sweetheart," Lucille said, light as flour.

    "Don't do that."

    Quinlan's voice arrived from the kitchen doorway, with weight instead of volume, and every head in the room turned. The amusement was gone from his face, replaced by a fondness that had iron in it.

    "You're an almighty warrior who happens to be a loving, caring mother. Why must you hide a side of yourself?"

    "Quin.." Lucille spoke with immense worry and anxiety in her tone.

    <Can't you see? They're afraid of me now... That's why I never showed off before..>

    <They're afraid because they don't understand. You never allowed them to.>

    <You can't say that for sure!> Lucille protested.

    <That's true,> Quinlan relented. ‹She's your daughter. I won't say more. Sorry for butting in.>

    The Bloodmonger bit her lip. <No, that's not what I meant... Quin...>

    Before she could say more, Mavena was out of her chair and in front of Quinlan, and the knot that had been pulling tighter all evening had slipped loose without her permission.

    "Can you tell me more about my mother?! I want to hear... From your point of view, not hers. She keeps downplaying everything..." She sent her mother a strongly disapproving look. "So annoying!"

    Quinlan observed Mavena for a moment, then turned toward his lover, waiting.

    "..." Lucille's fists clenched white at her sides.

    "No, I'm sorry. I can't." Quinlan shook his head at Mavena, gentle about it. "Those stories belong to your mother. If she wants them to stay buried, then buried they-"

    "O-okay. Okay!"

    The words burst out of Lucille before he could finish.

    For months she had folded the warrior away with the linens, dreading the day her daughter would see the monster before the mother.

    And now that the day had come, her daughter was leaning over the table and asking for more of her, asking for the exact half she'd spent every visit hiding.

    Her fists loosened, finger by finger. The hope that crept onto her face was so raw it hurt to look at.

    "Quin, please... Tell my daughter whatever you think is best."

    "Alright,” he nodded, smiling, and took Lucille's hand in his and squeezed.

    Then, he faced Mavena.

    "Your mother," he said, "is one of the most badass existences to have ever graced this world. What you saw tonight was her being polite."

    "But." His grin spread, proud and vicious. I'm afraid mere words will never do her justice."

    He raised his free hand, palm up.

    Water rose out of the air above it, spinning itself into a figure no taller than a wine bottle: a slim woman in translucent detail, long hair, a large axe in one small liquid fist. The figure rolled its shoulders exactly the way Lucille rolled hers.

    "Your mother struggled a lot to acclimate to combat, mostly because of her class's quirks. For months, she kept our healer busier than the rest of us combined."

    “…” Lucille's cheeks went pink at that, memories resurfacing of how many times Sera told her off for being a reckless battle maniac.

    "But little by little, she transformed herself. And now..." Quinlan continued, "She's menace itself.”

    Threads of magma lit around the water figure, hissing.

    Mavena completely forgot she was supposed to be angry.

    She was leaning in before she knew shed moved, elbows on the table, chin dropping into her hands, and her eyes caught the magma light and kept it.

    Wide, bright, mesmerized, the eyes of the little girl who used to beg for one more story before bed, aimed at the tiny, fearless figure standing calm in the middle of the fire.

    Her mother.

    That was her mother.
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
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      1808 The Lorien Apothecary

      Her mother.

      That was her mother.

      The threads of magma found Lucille's axe, winding up the haft and sinking into the blade until the whole edge burned molten orange, and the glow of it reached every face in the common room.

      Then the rest of the water rose.

      It came up in columns around the figure and built as it climbed: a troll five times her height with fists like boulders, a second one at its shoulder, a serpent thick as a barrel coiling around the whole arrangement, horned brutes filling the gaps, until a full warband of liquid monsters stood in silent ranks around one small woman.

      "Quin!!" Lucille's voice came out smaller than it had been all evening, an adorable little squeal, her fingers finding his sleeve. "This is too much... An entire warband of monsters against just me? It looks like bragging…”

      "No." Aurora propped her chin on her laced fingers, amber eyes gleaming. "It's perfect."

      The first troll's club came down, and the little Lucille walked into the swing rather than away from it. The blazing axe rose to meet the club, went through it, through the arm behind it, through the shoulder behind that, and half the troll burst into steam that made Cela yelp.

      She never stopped walking, The serpent struck at her back, and she split it along its whole length without turning. A horned pair rushed her from both sides and died on a single looping figure-eight of molten light. Every stroke rolled into the next, seamless, unhurried, and wherever that edge traveled, water became fog.

      Mavena had abandoned her teacup somewhere around the first troll.

      She was leaning halfway across the table with her lips parted and magma light swimming in her eyes, and every bit of carefully maintained wariness had burned off her face along with the steam.

      Her mother was amazing. The thought arrived uninvited, and she let it stay, because the little warrior on the villain's palm made looking away impossible.

      "Most fighters, even those with higher levels and centuries more training, would take a group like this apart with careful strategy," Quinlan narrated. "But your mother walks straight through the middle. And the whole time…"

      The tiny figure stood tall, axe raised, surrounded by dissolving enemies.

      "...she smiles. Isn't your mother far too beautiful?"
      "Q-Quinlan Elysiar!!!" Lucille's mortified squeak came, far too embarrassed.

      "She is..." Mavena whispered under her breath.

      "!!" Lucille's cheeks turned tomato red.

      The last troll collapsed into spray around her final swing. The little figure straightened amid the ruin, then snapped her axe out to one side in a single flat swish, and the water clinging to the blade left it in one clean fan of droplets, the way blood leaves steel.

      On his palm she stood alone in the thinning fog, small and bright under the inn's lamps, chest heaving, and the glow of her axe dimmed and cooled before she came apart into mist, and was gone.

      Nobody in the common room made a sound.

      "Mom."
      Lucille turned. Mavena had lowered the hand from her mouth.

      "Will you show me? Sometime." She swallowed. "The real thing. Not..." she gestured at Quinlan's empty palm, "…the puppet show."

      Lucille froze. The half of herself she had hidden away for so long, so sure her daughter would flinch from it, and Mavena was reaching for it with both hands. The dread went out of her like a held breath, and her whole face lit with something too large to hold still.

      "Any time you want.."

      Robert, at the counter, elected to begin drying the same mug again.

      Cela had both hands pressed over her heart.

      Aurora, eyes soft, turned to Quinlan. "So there's something for me to do?"

      "Right," he nodded. "Time for business."

      Quinlan rested a hand on Lucille's head. "Aurora and I have somewhere to be. Why don't you bond with your daughter without hiding yourself?"

      Lucille barely heard him, her eyes still on Mavena.
      But she replied nonetheless, whispering, "O-okay... Love you so much..."

      "Love you too. Now then, my beloved alchemist." He flicked his fingers and the [Warp Gate] appeared.

      "It's time to cook."

      The [Warp Gate] opened onto an empty, sleeping street, directly in front of the Lorien apothecary: a tall, narrow building with a freshly painted sign and light burning stubbornly in the back workroom, exactly as Aurora had predicted.

      "Cauldron hours," she confirmed fondly, and knocked on the recently built home's entrance.

      Naomi, Aurora's mom, proposed that they relocate here from Quinlan's home, saying Miri Town needed proper alchemists.

      But everyone understood that she mostly desired to give her daughter proper space to build her own life without her parents always being just around the corner.

      The door opened on Gideon Lorien, monocle already in place at midnight, sleeves rolled for work. He found Aurora in the lamplight and blinked.

      His brow furrowed with paternal bookkeeping.

      "Back already? You said you'd be helping Jasmine, then going to the inn with Lucille. Did the schedule…”

      The darkness behind her chose that moment to resolve into people, the Primordial Villain, a hooded old soldier built like a fortress, and a black-haired swordswoman radiating the desire to be elsewhere.

      "We need your help, Dad." Aurora was grinning the way she usually did over unstable compounds. "Tonight. Will you and Mom be my assistants?"

      For a moment, Gideon's monocle was in genuine danger. "Assistants? To you?" He looked her up and down as though checking her for fever.

      "Young lady, you are far too green-"

      "Stop barring the entry, Gideon." Naomi Lorien appeared behind her husband, took him by the elbow, and relocated him from the doorway.

      Her eyes went straight to Quinlan, and her smile arrived whole. "Quinlan. Thank you for always taking such good care of our daughter."

      "No thanks needed." Quinlan's answer came without a beat of hesitation. "It's my honor to protect the girl I love."

      Gideon, still mid-outrage, nodded along to that as though it were the single uncontested fact of the evening. Naomi positively beamed.

      And Aurora, who handled explosive reagents without flinching, went quietly pink between her parents.

      "Quin... Not in front of my parents..." she mumbled.

      Naomi chuckled for a long moment, then her gaze traveled past Aurora and brightened all over again. "Iris! What a pleasant surprise.
      Where did you leave your friend?"

      "..." Iris raised an eyebrow, "Friend?"

      "Ayame, that gorgeous samurai friend of yours." Naomi said it as though it explained everything. "Whenever I see you two together, get to imagine what having two daughters would've been like."

      "???" Iris was struck right in the soul with existential damage.

      Naomi turned a long, scrutinizing look on her husband. "We messed up, Gideon."

      "The shop would not have survived two," he answered with conviction.

      "Hey!" Aurora stomped.

      Meanwhile, Iris's mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her, and that slit-eyed cunt? Friends? The sentence tried to assemble itself several different ways behind her red eyes and failed every time, so she closed her mouth, turned on her heel, and started walking into the night.

      "Where are you going?" Quinlan called after her.
      "Far."

      "Come on…"

      "No."

      While the bickering unspooled behind them, Naomi's attention settled on the last guest, the hooded soldier who had stood in perfect, disciplined silence through all of it. "And who might you be, mister?"

      Alexios remained silent, hood and the night's dark covering his face.

      "You know him, Mom..." Aurora whispered, already feeling conflicted and worried.

      "Do I, now.” Naomi mused and began sorting aloud. "You can't be Blackjack. You're far too composed. A soldier from the Vraven Kingdom? No... too much spine. Hmm..."

      Beside her, Gideon had gone very still. He leaned in for a second, much longer look, and the name came out flat and certain.

      "Alexios Valorian."

      Naomi's smile closed like a shop shutter, The King of Vraven, on her doorstep. The same crown that had dragged the two of them from their homes in Braedon, branded them bandit financiers, and buried them in a cell so deep that their own daughter couldn't learn whether they were still breathing.

      "…Why are you here?" The warmth was gone from her voice, all of it. "This land isn't part of your wretched nation."

      Alexios held her stare in silence.

      Technically it was, as Quinlan's cities were in the northern part of Greenvale. Close to Ravenshade and the other two nations, just deep in the forests, far enough from everything to not be found.

      However, instead of arguing, he inclined his head to her and to Gideon both, unhurried and deep. "I apologize for bothering you this late at night." He turned back toward the dark. "Thank you for being kind to Felicity."

      Alexios did not apologize for capturing them, for he felt fully justified in that. They committed a crime by hiring thugs to invade his outpost.

      But that mattered little now.

      "Mom." Aurora caught her mother's hand. "I know, and I'm sorry for bringing him here, but..."

      "But?" Naomi's eyes were narrowed into slits.

      "Tonight, in your workroom, we might make alchemical history. The kind that gets cited for centuries. And he's needed for it."

      Naomi held her daughter's gaze a beat longer, then her shoulders dropped and she stepped out of the doorway.

      "Inside, all of you, before the street wakes up."

      …

      The workroom smelled of a hundred herbs and one long argument with entropy. Copper stills lined one wall, cauldrons in three sizes sat over banked burners, and Naomi took up station at the center bench, tying her apron strings tight.

      "Well then." Her eyes, keen and pleased despite everything, found Quinlan. "History, was it? Talk."

      Quinlan stepped into the lamplight. "I need a brew that has never been brewed. The recipe doesn't exist, and it might not be possible at all. I just have a hunch."
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  3. Offline
    Despawning
    + 2 ⋅ 0 -
    1805 Dropping In

    Alexios stood in the thawing basement, watching the primordial who had just confiscated his own miracle pill, and waited for the words 'let me try something else' to grow an explanation.

    They didn't.

    "Try what?" the king demanded. "Try what, exactly?"

    "Why don't you trust me for once, old friend?"

    Alexios couldn't help but blink. Did this creature truly utter those words just now?

    Whatever he was about to say, Quinlan was no longer listening. His gaze had already gone somewhere past the mansion, past the night itself, and a faint crimson sheen rolled across his eyes while he hummed to himself.

    Through [Overlord's Eyes], a cozy little scene arrived from far away: a warm common room, a teacup in a familiar, delicate hand, and two women laughing at whatever story his alchemist was telling.

    "Perfect. They're still at it."

    Quinlan flicked two fingers, and a [Warp Gate] unfolded.

    "Iris. Would you accompany me for a short trip? Been a while since we spent time together."

    "..'m guarding the corpse." Iris grunted, arms crossed.

    Quinlan tilted his head toward the gate. "Come. You'll enjoy this."

    "I won't."

    "Please?"
    “…" She shoved off the pillar, muttering something about clingy bastards and their field trips.

    The gate soon swallowed them all.

    …

    The common room of the inn was down to its last lamp and its best company. Aurora had both hands in the air; sculpting the climax of some story, and Lucille was laughing into her knuckles beside her.

    A young woman with brown hair nursed a lukewarm teacup, pretending, poorly, not to smile.

    Behind the counter, a broad man with a tired, honest face dried the day's last mugs while a round-cheeked woman stacked them beside him.

    The air behind the two laughing women warped.

    Neither the Essenceweaver nor the Bloodmonger sensed a thing.

    One heartbeat the space at their backs held nothing but lamplight, and the next it held a primordial, and two arms landed on two shoulders at once.

    "Evening, ladies."

    Aurora's yelp nearly took her out of her chair.

    Lucille's came out as half a shriek and half his name, and then both women were on their feet and rounding on him.

    "Quin! You sneak~!" Lucille giggled.

    "Why did you not give us a heads up..? Use your abilities..." Aurora huffed.

    Whatever else they had for him died in transit. He gathered them in by the waist, one to each arm, pulled them flush against him, and kissed Lucille first, long enough that her fists gave up on his chest, then Aurora, long enough that she forgot she'd been mid-lecture.

    When he finally let them breathe, neither made any move to leave his arms, and Aurora's glare had all the fury of a lit candle.

    "Baby, you never visit, and now, tonight, of all the..." Lucille accused, glowing.

    "Got some business with Aurora," Quinlan smirked.

    "Oh, so it was all just a coincidence again..." It was the caramel-haired beauty's turn to pout with deadly efficiency.

    The rest of the common room, meanwhile, was losing its mind.

    A mug hit the floorboards.

    Cela had backed into the shelves with both hands pressed over her mouth, working her way up to a proper scream that never arrived, because her eyes finished before her lungs could start.

    She knew that face. Half the continent knew it, but she had seen it with her own two eyes, once, a lifetime and one relocation ago.

    Robert made no sound at all.

    The innkeeper stood exactly where recognition had found him, white as morning bread, towel dangling forgotten from one hand. The wolf was back, and this time it hadn't even used the door.

    "Breathe, Cela," Mavena was already up and moving, planting herself in front of the round-cheeked woman and catching both her hands.

    "It's fine. That's..." A pause worth a whole biography. "...He's not an enemy"

    "I know who he is,” Cela whispered, without blinking once.

    Behind them, the warped air delivered its afterthoughts: a black-haired swordswoman who stepped out with her arms already crossed, and an old soldier in a travel hood who emerged with all the dignity a man can salvage while climbing out of a hole in the world into a village taproom.

    Cela made a very small sound and sat down on a crate, just as Quinlan loosened his hold on his two women, and his attention traveled to the counter.

    "Robert." His voice was warm. "It's been a long time. How have you been?"

    Then his eyes traveled to the woman he didn't know by sight, and grinned. "I see fortune hasn't been terrible to you..."

    For a long moment the innkeeper didn't answer, because somewhere in his head a vow was dying.

    He'd sworn it to himself in a shabby lounge what felt like a lifetime ago but was less than a year ago: whatever woman fate granted him next would never, ever stand in the same room as this man.

    He'd built the vow a new town, a new inn, a new life. And the man had stepped out of the air itself, ten feet from her, without using a door for the vow to guard.

    Robert set down the towel, came around the counter on legs that had opinions about it, and placed himself between the primordial and his wife's crate. Terrified, bloodless, and standing there anyway, he surrendered to etiquette.

    "...Cela. My wife." A pause, then, through gravel: "Cela, this is..."

    "Lord Quinlan," she breathed.

    Robert's introduction died in his mouth.

    His wife had come off her crate, smoothing her apron with both hands, cheeks glowing, and the words left her in one unstoppable ribbon. "I was there. At the Square, at the old stronghold, the day you took it from the Wraithclaws. My boy was on my shoulders, he saw you walking on the sky before I did, I didn't believe him until I looked up myself, and you had the... the head, on your saber, and..."

    She caught herself mid-babble, curtsied to the lord, wobbled, and finished faintly: "I'm grateful for everything"

    The taproom took a respectful moment to honor that sentence.

    "Ah, the Wraithclaws. That brings back memories..." Quinlan inclined his head to Cela with perfect courtesy, as though she had delivered a proper court address. "Best audience a conqueror ever could ask for. I hope you'll find the life you hoped for in Miri Town."

    Cela's smile turned brilliant. "I have. Life... it's never been better, my lord."

    Beside her, Robert produced a sound that wanted very badly to be a growl and arrived as something closer to a hiccup. Of all the women in all the towns on the continent, he had married the one who told the story of the Square speech at every third dinner.

    Then, mid-glow, reality caught up with her.

    Cela's eyes traveled back up to the lord, and widened. Then they traveled to the woman tucked under his arm, the overly pretty, sweet-smiling visitor who had sat in this taproom a hundred evenings with tea and gossip and pastry crumbs, and they widened a great deal further.

    "W-w-w-wait." Her finger rose, trembling, and aimed past Quinlan.

    "Who... who are you?"

    Lucille's smile turned apologetic. She stayed exactly where she was, on the arm of the most dangerous being alive, and gave a tiny, guilty shrug.

    "Lucille," she said gently. "It was always Lucille. Quinlan Elysiar's lover."

    Cela sat back down on her crate without checking whether it was still there.

    Mavena's mother. The quiet beauty from 'somewhere far, a wanderer' who complimented the stew and helped fold napkins when the evenings ran long. She had folded NAPKINS.

    Cela never pried, despite some things not adding up. But...

    Her head turned, very slowly, toward her husband. Robert studied the ceiling.

    The alias had been Lucille's idea from the very first visit.

    If Miri Town ever learned that its innkeeper's family stood one old marriage away from the Primordial Villain, the mundane life Robert and Mavena wanted would be over by sunrise: the inn a pilgrimage site, Mavena a celebrity, every regular replaced by gawkers.

    So the Bloodmonger came as nobody, in a plain dress and a plainer name, and let her family stay ordinary. It was also why, tonight, Quinlan had stepped out of thin air inside the inn rather than let a single soul watch him walk its streets to their door.

    Cela's gaze dragged, with visible dread, to the platinum-haired guest. "…You?”
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
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      1806 Finally Meeting Again

      "Aurora. His other lover.” A beat, and a playtul giance sid toward Quinlan. "Well. One of many."

      "Many,” Cela repeated faintly.

      "You should have seen us at the Square, you know-" Aurora went on, warming to the subject with scientific enjoyment.

      "Yeah, yeah!" Lucille giggled, eyes shining.

      "Huh?" Cela gasped.

      Aurora had a sly smirk as she explained, "We walked in right behind him. Ten masks, perfectly synchronized. We were very proud of that walk"

      Cela's eyes went wide like saucers, searching the most vivid memory of her life and finding, at its very edges, a smear of masked figures she had never once looked at directly.

      The procession had held eleven people, and her memory had kept exactly one.

      "I may have been looking elsewhere,” she admitted to her apron.

      Lucille and Aurora traded a look of deep, sisterly understanding. "We understand," they said in unison.

      Robert, meanwhile, was busy sizing up Quinlan with immense worry evident on his face, still standing between the villain and his wife.

      "Don't worry, my friend" Quinlan showed him an open palm. "My hands are already full"

      Lucille, on his arm, beamed up at him in a way that made the statement a criminal understatement.

      Quinlan crossed to the counter and offered Robert his hand. "You look good, Robert. This new life seems to suit you."

      Robert stared at the offered hand like a summons from the tax office.

      Then he took it, and shook it, firm and brief, one honest grip between the man who had lost Lucille and the monster who had taken her, and if his knuckles were white through the whole exchange, nobody present was rude enough to mention it.

      By the wall, Alexios Valorian stood watching with interest as the anomaly he kept hunting all across the continent was currently shaking hands with an innkeeper. One more page of tonight's running ledger quietly rewrote itself.

      "Mavena."

      Quinlan turned last to the young woman still standing guard over Cela's crate, and the room's temperature changed in a way that had nothing to do with frost.

      Up close, the brown hair had her mother's caramel in it, and the green in her eyes was hers outright, but the look in them belonged to nobody but her. A knot sat on her face: wariness wound around anger wound around a hurt that had been waiting months for somewhere to go.

      The man she remembered had been huge and frightening and human. He had filled the doorway of their shabby inn in Braedon, back when she was young enough to listen at doors and cry at what she heard. This one felt as if he filled the doorway of the world.

      Stories had reached Miri Town the way they reached everywhere, each one taller than the last, kingdoms and monsters and armies of the dead, and every story wore the face that was currently smiling at her like a favorite uncle. The Primordial Villain, her mother's man, the man who had walked into her family and taken half of it away.

      "You've grown into a wonderful young woman," he said.

      "That happens, I guess...” Her voice came out steadier than she'd feared and sharper than she'd planned. "It's been some time."

      "It has, I owed you a visit a lot sooner. I'm sorry I took so long," Quinlan bowed his head, looking truly apologetic about his lack of visits.

      "...” Mavena kept eyeing him, tense. Then finally she exhaled. "Why are you apologizing? You're not my dad. I liked how you never visited. Why do it now?"

      "Ouch. You definitely inherited your mother's bite," Quinlan chuckled while Lucille pinched his skin. He then pulled out the chair across from Mavena's, uninvited, and sat. "So. How's Miri Town treating you?"

      Mavena returned to her seat slowly, because she was a grown adult who would not throw a hissy fit.

      "Fine. Good." She turned the teacup once on its saucer. "The inn does twice what the old one did, especially now that you've allowed some people from New Whisperfield to visit. The roads are safe. Everyone's fed." She hated how much it sounded like praise. "Your governor… she's very effective."

      "She's a treasure, isn't she."

      "Mm."

      "Friends?"

      "Some."

      "A boyfriend?"

      The teacup clicked against the saucer.

      "That's none of your business."

      "Ooh, there is one?" Lucille had drifted in behind Quinlan's shoulder, hands clasped, glowing like a lantern. "Sweetheart, you never said! Who? Is it the fletcher's boy? Tell me it's not the fletcher's boy."

      "Mother."

      "Because you can do so much better than..."

      "Mother...!!! Not in front of this scumb- your boyfriend, husband, or whatever."

      Quinlan laughed, low and genuinely delighted. He reached across the table and ruffled Mavena's hair before she could duck, one big warm hand mussing it as if she were still six years old.

      "I'm not twelve!" She batted it off and dragged her hair back into order, face burning. The hand had been warm, easy, utterly unafraid of her anger. Some traitorous corner of her had catalogued it as kind. That was the worst part.

      She looked at her mother instead, looking for the ally that word was supposed to summon, and found Lucille draped against the monster's back, chin resting on his shoulder, wearing a smile that belonged on a girl half her age.

      Her mother. The quiet woman who had folded linens and stirred stew and gone grey around the edges in a shabby Braedon taproom for Mavena's entire childhood, boring the way bread is boring, safe the way bread is safe. Hanging off the arm of the most dangerous thing on two legs and giggling.

      Mavena's knot pulled tighter, and she was still deciding whether it was fury or grief or seasickness when Quinlan's head tilted a fraction, the way a hound's does at a sound the room hasn't heard yet.

      His grin arrived before his explanation, which was to say, no explanation arrived at all.

      "Everyone. Let's hide." He rose, soundless for a man his size, eyes bright with holiday.

      "What?" said four people at once.

      "Footsteps are approaching.” He was already herding, one arm scooping Iris out of the chair she'd just sat down in, earning himself some almighty frowns, the other waving the king of Vraven toward the kitchen doorway like a stagehand clearing a set. Aurora giggled and followed after, while Cela and Robert hid behind the counter.

      The room emptied of its monsters in four seconds flat, and mother and daughter were left blinking at each other across the table.

      Then the door banged open without a knock.

      The young man who filled it was built like a hay wagon and confident the way only eight beers can make a man. His shirt was good quality and worn open one button too far, and his eyes found Mavena with smug delight, as if his trap had already sprung.

      "Knew the light'd be on." He let the door swing shut behind him and came on in, uninvited, past the sign that said closed. "Saw your dad head up hours ago. Come on, Mavena. One drink. You keep saying no and I keep not believing you, so one of us has to be wrong, eh?"

      "Get out, Tobin." Mavena didn't stand. "We're closed, you're drunk, and I've said no eleven times. The number doesn't reset at midnight."

      "Aw, don't be like that." He reached the table. His hand dropped onto her shoulder, big and warm and entitled, and squeezed. "You're the prettiest thing in this town and you know it. Girl like you, it's time..."

      He noticed Lucille.

      The change in him was instant and gross. He straightened, chest out, grin widening to include the second woman at the table, the slim caramel-haired beauty with the teacup, and his eyes did a slow, frank tour of her that would have earned him an instant death sentence if Quinlan wasn't in a good mood.

      "Well now." He looked between them, delighted with his own luck.

      "Who's your friend? You've been holding out on me." A wet chuckle. "You know what, forget the drink. I'm a generous man. I'll take you both dancing, how's that? Plenty of me to go around."

      "That, Mavena said, flat and resigned, already watching the cart roll toward the cliff, "is my... friend."

      Tobin barked a laugh. "Your friend. Right. And I'm the Primordial Villain." He gave Lucille a wink. "Sister, maybe. What's your name, gorgeous?"
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  4. Offline
    MrMicrophone292
    + 0 ⋅ 0 -
    My liege has not appear yet
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
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      Wait no more hokage
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