Chapter 1618: 1617: Well... Huh |
"Mama! Mama! Look! Look at this!"
Running back towards me with a large rock in her hands, Camilla had a wide grin on her face that made me raise a brow as she offered me the rock like it was a treasure, her eyes brimming with pride and joy as she skidded to a halt in front of me.
"You..! Stupid Camilla! That was MY rock! Mama!"
And of course right behind her was Nicoletta, who immediately shoulder checked her sister and stopped in front of me as well, ignoring the glowering eldest pup and pointing back the way she came as she added "There were more cool rocks over there, Mama! Come look!"
"Why..?"
That single question made them both freeze, with Camilla no longer reaching to swat the back of Nicoletta’s head while Nicoletta wasn’t trying to pull me forwards; both of them seemed to be stunned by the question, and all that did was make me raise a brow.
"Mama!"
Another pup rushed on over, and just like her eldest sister Astra offered me a rock, but where Camilla’s had been large but otherwise plain, the one the pinkish eyed girl offered me was heart shaped.
"Look! It’s like that symbol you showed me! Heart~!"
It was a rock.
"Oh! That was the rock that we used to split the other ones open! Mama, the rocks all had these pretty silver and gold flakes in them! Come look!"
Astra placed the heart shaped rock in my hand and then began to pull me towards where she had come from, with Camilla and Nicoletta murmuring something to themselves even as they trotted behind me.
It wasn’t terribly far off of the trail, and after we reached a small outcropping I could see a mound of stones piled up loosely in the middle, with a circle of other stones keeping it from rolling away whilst more were just scattered about.
Some were cracked apart like Astra had said, and I could already see the flakes of metal inside that made me rather curious about the rest, so without thinking I looked towards the direction of my mate and waved her over.
She had both Samara and Zariah with her as well as Gabrielle, splitting the litter with me and making this outing far more enjoyable since I could relax just ever so slightly... until they rushed at me with rocks.
"Hm? Oh, rocks. Cool!"
Her immediate enthusiasm made both Camilla and Nicoletta grin, while Astra plucked one of the split ones up and offered it to her, saying "Mommy, look! Isn’t this... metal? What kind of metal? It’s really pretty!" and beaming up at Anput as she waited for an answer.
Before she could take the rock and answer their burning questions, Anput stiffened and spun around, her eyes honed on the clouds above as she searched for... something; I caught it a moment later myself, and immediately we were encased in a dome of clear ice before I gathered the pups all up around me.
From nearby Leone looked up at the sky before she swung an arm lazily, sending a flurry of fireballs up into the air and blowing the clouds apart; hidden within them were dozens of golden beaked birds that immediately let out a cacophony of caws as they began to dive towards us.
Their lustrous beaks began to dull as they were encased in a thin sheath of rock, while their golden tipped feathers folded around their bodies as they tried to reach us as quickly as they could; the various fireballs that Leone sent out tore apart a large amount of the birds, but for the remaining ones...
Anput stomped on the ground and sent a large pillar of stone rushing upwards to meet them, while I just let my ice travel along said pillar before shattering off of it whenever they got nearby, showering them in splinters of ice that sliced through their metallic feathers easily.
Listening to their corpses smacking against the ground one after another, I grimaced slightly and turned to look at all of my pups, wondering what their reactions were going to be after seeing something like this for the first time.
I don’t know why I was so surprised to see that the only one who was scared was Zariah, and soon enough I rationalized that the reason behind this was thanks to their constant need to fight one another.
They were accustomed to the blood since they were always trying to hurt one another - not severely, but they had long since reached a point where blood was drawn once or twice during their spars - while the corpses just seemed to be... intriguing to them.
"Wow... they have pretty feathers..."
Astra was the one who murmured that, while Camilla let out a gleeful shout when her Mommy formed a spear and swung it at the remaining birds, slicing them in two with a single swing and displaying a sort of prowess that captivated our oldest pup.
"Again Mommy! Do that again!"
Seeing that my pups - save for Zariah, who seemed to be terrified of everything - were all more intrigued by this than scared while Gabrielle just watched impassively confused me quite a bit, and for a brief moment I was actually rather worried.
This wasn’t the ’right’ reaction to all of this, yet at the same time when I saw Anput grinning as she used her Earth Magic to send one of the corpses into the air before swinging her spear I realized that it made a lot of sense...
Their personalities would mostly be their own, but when I recalled what Mom had said a long time ago it really did make sense; with potent mana like our own mixing together to create these pups, their personalities would resemble our own just a bit... and it seemed like letting them be at one another’s throats constantly was allowing the fragments of ’us’ inside of them to grow a bit larger...