Chapter 1778: The Most Infuriating Creature In Existence |
Quinlan reached down and offered her his hand with the warmest, most open expression she’d ever seen on him, his entire face so friendly that the Primordial Villain could have passed for a priest handing out blessings. "No. Of course not."
Elisabeth’s eyes lit up. She took his hand, let him pull her to her feet, and the relief that passed through her was the first real exhale she’d managed all day.
"After all," Quinlan continued, the extreme friendliness not shifting a single hair, "my opinion of your order has been rock bottom since long before I met you."
Elisabeth’s grip froze.
"Hah?"
Her head tilted, her smile went sharp and dangerous, and golden light crackled through their joined hands hot enough that the air around their fingers shimmered.
Her voice was terrifyingly sweet. "Oh, is that so?"
Quinlan placed his free hand on top of her head and ruffled her hair with infuriating gentleness. "I’m glad we made up." He patted her head once more. "I really didn’t want to have to enslave Felicity’s sister too."
Behind them, Morgana’s entire body went rigid.
Her neck strained sideways, veins bulging, jaw locked so tight her teeth could have cracked, because every fiber of the Queen of Vraven wanted to turn and incinerate the man who had just casually referenced enslaving her.
But Jasmine’s earlier order hung over her like a leash, and Morgana’s head refused to complete the turn no matter how hard she willed it.
She stood there, trembling with fury, neck twisted at an angle that would have concerned a physician, glaring at empty air three degrees to the left of Quinlan’s face.
Meanwhile...
"Villain..."
The light blazed white.
Elisabeth’s grip would have ground a lesser man’s bones to powder, and her voice came out with a murderous calm that was worse than all of her screaming combined. "Remove. Your hand. From my head."
"Sure."
Quinlan removed his hand from her head and immediately, wind erupted beneath Elisabeth’s feet and the Arch Priestess shot into the winter sky.
Her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as she rocketed upward with her robes streaming behind her, and for a breathless moment she was nothing but a shrinking speck against the clouds.
Then she reached the peak of her ascent and began freefalling.
Her eyes burned with fury instead of fear, glaring down at the intolerable man.
Her hands were brought into prayer again, but the contents of this sermon were vastly different.
"O Goddess, your faithful servant calls upon your endless benevolence. I have devoted my life to your light. I have weathered heresy and hunted sinners without rest."
Her clasped hands tightened. "I beseech you, grant me strength. Strength that prevents me from wrapping my fingers around that infuriating man’s throat and squeezing with otherworldly joy, for my patience has been spent in its entirety and my hands are dangerously available."
Quinlan didn’t give her time to descend to the ground. Wind surged beneath the rooftop and the rest of the group rose with him as he shot forward across the city, carrying his guests in a current of compressed air.
Elisabeth was caught by the gust and fell in behind them, the expression on her face promising that the Primordial Villain would not live a long life.
"Sister!" Felicity drifted close in the airstream, beaming so brightly the sun felt redundant. "I’m proud of you! You apologized for your unruly behavior. That was really mature of you!"
Elisabeth’s teeth clenched so hard her molars creaked. "Uttering those words in my moment of weakness is the biggest regret..." she ground out, every word dragged from her at knifepoint, "...of my life."
"Bleh!"
She stuck her tongue out at Quinlan’s back with all the mocking spite her battered dignity could scrape together.
"Hehe! So cute!"
Felicity burst into merry giggles, floated closer, and placed her hand on top of Elisabeth’s head, patting it with the exact same rhythm Quinlan had used.
"There, there..."
Elisabeth’s face scrunched into a pout so fierce it could have ended many hearts.
Far below and several blocks behind, Arch Priestess Velara stood alone on the rooftop where he’d left her and watched Quinlan’s rapidly receding back shrink into the winter sky.
"You motherfu-" She caught herself, pressed her lips shut, and exhaled through her nose. "You terrible spawn of the devil, you did not just leave me on a rooftop. Far from the Cathedral where I’m powerless. You simply wouldn’t dare."
He would, and he did.
Velara reached into her pocket ring and pulled out the bolt of linen she’d purchased at the fabric stall.
She studied it for a moment then folded it into a neat square and pressed it to her face with both hands.
"MMMMRRRGGHH!!" She followed that up by screaming into it so hard her back arched.
She stomped her feet, threw punches at the Primordial Villain’s distant silhouette, and kept going until her throat gave out. "Mmfgh... mmrrph...!!"
Then she pulled the linen away, smoothed her robes, tucked a loose strand behind her ear, and became the Arch Priestess of the Goddess once more.
She walked to the edge and lowered herself over it, and hundreds of years of reading scripture instead of climbing things made themselves violently apparent.
"Hyah?!"
Her fingers white-knuckled on the stone lip, her feet kicked at open air, and her robes snagged on a protruding nail and yanked taut, leaving the Arch Priestess suspended like laundry someone had forgotten to collect.
"N-no..."
That was when gentle stairs of compressed earth began rising from the ground below, one step at a time, forming a clean staircase that ran up the side of the building and connected to the rooftop she had just climbed off of.
Velara watched them materialize from her dangling position, wide-eyed.
If she had waited ten more seconds, she could have walked down like a dignified servant of the Goddess. Instead, she was dangling from the rooftop.
The pocket ring was called upon again. The Cloth rematerialized. Delicate lips parted. The cloth entered again.
"MMMMRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
...
The wind carried them south.
Quinlan flew at the front with Jasmine against his side while the guests trailed in the current behind them.
Elisabeth was still glaring at his back, Felicity was patting her sister’s head between giggles, and the elves were quietly drying their tears.
Then a shape rose on the horizon, and every conversation died.
A new settlement’s silhouette cut against the sky.
Then, as they descended toward the treeline, they spotted the first of its residents.
Children were playing in a forest clearing outside the walls.
A beastkin girl with dog ears, an elven girl with long pointed ears, a dwarven boy barely up to their waists, and two human children, all tangled together in some game that involved a lot of screaming and no discernible rules.
"This is!" Myrasyn’s eyes went wide beneath her hood, the words dying before she could finish them. Isveth’s hands flew to her mouth.
"Impossible..." Alexios whispered.
Quinlan and Jasmine exchanged a glance, eyes dancing, as they spoke in perfect sync:
"Dearest guests... We welcome you to our first settlement, named after the wonderful primordial Mearie, Miri Town."
...
It was time to show their guests just what was truly possible when the races weren’t trying to kill each other on sight.
And then, it would be time to finally unearth what the Fujimori elders kept secret, Alexios had big decisions to make, and Quinlan...
It would finally be time for him to truly do as primordials do.