Chapter 504 |
Matt could hardly contain his excitement as he followed Aunt Helen through the halls of her suite to the training room. On the way, he tapped into the room’s automated systems, discovering what it had to offer and how much punishment it could take.
Given the nine Tier gap between them it wasn’t like he was going to be going all out, but he wanted to know exactly how careful he needed to be with the room. Most of his worries were put to rest as he both saw and felt the training room.
It was rated for Tier 35’s, which was enough to let him not stress about any attacks he’d be willing to use against the older Phoenix.
Unable to hold back his curiosity, he asked, “So what made you change your mind about sparring?”
Aunt Helen gave him a side eye, as if she’d already expected him to have figured things out. “You eager chicks are now at the peak of war Tiers and can’t pester an old woman like me to delve faster. That means sparring can be fun. Also, I may have worked out a new technique and you make an excellent test subject.” After a grin to show she was teasing, she added, “I also had to get back in the groove a bit before I was willing to spar with you chicks. All of you are too good, and even an old woman like me has an ego she doesn't want bruised too badly too often.”
Instead of spoiling her surprise, Matt asked what he felt was a perfectly normal follow up. “Is there anything you do or don’t want me to do in the spar?”
Aunt Helen nodded solemnly before breaking out in a devilish grin. “Yes, but I’m not telling you. You’ll have to figure it out yourself during the fight.”
Matt chuckled as he finished getting the training room ready for them.
Aunt Helen’s steps only paused for a moment but she waved him to the far side of the room. “Fine, if you are so impatient, you can walk to the far end. I was going to be nice and do that myself.”
With a devious smile, Aunt Helen shouted, "Prepare to lose!”
Accompanying her words, the room's flames surged at him in three torrents. The wooden spoon in her hands had seen more use to assist with controlling the flames in the kitchen while cooking than it had in a rift, but that had only given her more practice with the unconventionally shaped wand.
Matt stepped forward then backwards, diagonally dodging the first and third streams of fire while letting loose with two [Gravitic Bolt]s in return. He only cast them slightly stronger than a typical Tier 26 mage should be able to manage, matching Helen.
The second stream of fire had never intended to hit him, but it was also the only one he was worried about. He started to duck, lowering his upper body and center of gravity, which correctly baited the stream of flames to sink lower.
Instead of following through with the expected action, he jumped over the flames as the [Fire Vines] hidden inside the room’s general flames reached out to grab his feet.
Landing off to the side, he laughed even as he paid her a compliment. “You weren’t lying when you said you have no problem delving at-Tier. That was a very good trap. You have good power in your spells and the reaction speed to use it.”
The flames didn’t stop moving but they didn’t charge after him recklessly.
The [Fire Vines] did, but that spell had already been exposed and it was the right call.
Matt contemplated his next steps as the spell tried to entangle him, but he made his choice as the mass of living flames loomed above him, ready to crash down. He aborted a lunge backwards before throwing himself forward, directly into the now hesitating mass of vines.
Even acting as a Tier 26 rather than a Tier 35, he could have fought his way out of the vines, but that wasn’t his goal. His left hand closed around one of the vines that didn’t look any different than the rest, even as his right severed two others with two quick pinches.
The moment he did, the rest of the spell froze. He felt the spell start to buck and loosened his grip slightly, but not enough to let it break free.
Turning, he stuck his tongue out towards the shocked Helen as he took the chance to share something he’d found fascinating. “Zack got a bit fixed on a trick he saw Sien pull off against a [Abyssal Vine] user. He then reverse engineered what she did and then we put our heads together and figured out how to apply it to most other low Tier vine spells. Shame to say it doesn’t work for any of the Tier 26 and higher versions as far as we can tell. But to make something complicated simple, all of the lower Tier vine spells are cheating in how they create so much mass without overwhelming their casters' mental faculties. They create three or so taproot vine first, and then base all the others off of them. They’re not exactly copies, but let’s call them that for simplicity's sake.”
Wiggling the vine he had in his hand, Matt winked at the still stunned Helen. “And if you know what you’re doing, it’s pretty straightforward to hijack that mechanism, especially the motion pieces, and immobilize all of the copies. It has to do with how mov—”
Matt’s words were cut off as the spell dissolved out from his control.
He didn’t mind letting the impromptu lesson on skill movement mechanics end as she cast a spell he wasn’t familiar with and let his concentration go with it.
The flames that were being conjured from the edges of the room started to dissolve, as did every fire in the room. The fire turned into a mist-like substance that obscured a great many of his senses in a way he wasn’t immediately familiar enough with to have a ready counter.
Thoroughly intrigued, he flicked his left hand and created a small shower of sparks, wanting to see how much the spell could affect. Even before the flames left his control, he felt the spell start to eat away at his fire, surprising him.
His initial expectation had leaned towards the spell being a unique variation of the more typical area control spells, like [Denial Of Flame], [Earth Exclusion Zone], [Wispy Whispers], and one of Aiden's favorites to run into: [Drought Zone]. More often than not, such strong but low Tier spells had glaring holes that made them easy to counter by an expert who knew what to target.
[Drought Zone] had been pretty popular for a little while after Aiden completed the path, being a water mage’s bane. But these days, its usage was close to an all-time low, thanks to Aiden’s own copy of the skill… which he’d modified to have some particularly nasty abilities when pair-cast. The fact his enemies didn’t want to pair-cast with him had never stopped him of course, or really hindered him in any way from draining all the water out of both their body and everyone else’s around them.
Matt hadn’t seen this new spell and started to get excited, wondering what base spell had been made or modified to reach this result.
He was very wrong, but realized why as he felt the spell finish gaining control.
It wasn’t a new spell at all.
That seemed obvious in retrospect, given who he was dealing with, but most new skills he ran into these days were exactly that, new. Aunt Helen’s age meant it was old and probably rare, if not cracked and therefore unique.
He wished anyone luck trying to tie his [Cracked Phantom Armor], even before he’d started merging it with [Archmage’s Presence], to the original [Phantom Armor], and suspected he might have the same situation on his hands. As the room reached a diffuse orange, with wisps of deeper red flitting around the edges of his vision, he felt the spell shudder as if a heavy switch had been triggered.
Once more, his initial expectations proved incorrect. The fire mist didn’t remanifest in a new stronger form, it blurred as it started to smother any flames it didn’t consider its own.
Wanting to test that impression, he waved a finger, using a flick to cast [Fire Bolt] at Helen. The spell hit the orange and red mist like an arrow striking water. It penetrated and moved forward, but every inch it crawled forward it grew weaker and slower until it was frozen mid-air, a thin remnant of its once majestic form.
“Is this your solution to other fire mages?”
Helen smiled, even as spells started to form around him. “Thats a pretty fair assumption. It's got flaws, but it works well enough to delve and I need it for what I’m about to do next.”
Wanting to do his part, he darted forward, aiming to put a little pressure on Helen, but his charge ended almost as fast as it began as he felt her marshal her Concept. Having never fought her before, he was eager to match her Concept for Concept.
Despite Helen’s dedication to rebuilding her Concept piece by piece, her most important Domain stage wasn’t overly powerful, and that surprised him. Oh, it was strong, Matt would never imply otherwise. In fact it hit harder than what most lower elite Tier 26’s could muster, but it wasn’t on the level that he’d initially expected, given her age.
He understood that her Concept had been broken, and so it hadn’t been growing, but he’d expected the weight of her experience to have manifested, and that would have been the most obvious way.
As they clashed, Matt found his initial impression was both right and wrong. Aunt Helen hadn’t gotten nothing from the arduous task of rebuilding her Concept.
It was one of the rare few times in his life Matt found himself on the losing end of a clash of Domains. His Concept was large, weighty, and powerful, all adjectives that dwarfed the ones he’d normally use to describe Aunt Helen’s Concept the few times he’d seen her use it.
Those were more often than not words such as gentle, comforting, and homely. While he understood that her Image of family had transformed into a representation of the Empire and those in it that she considered family, he always imagined her Concept like velvet gloves that a mother might wear in the winter. Best of all, it was the velvet down of a baby phoenix chick and the perfect warmth.
It was Aunt Helen, plain and simple.
Currently, the only word Matt could use to describe Helen’s Concept was velvet covered steel. Even his Concept bent and twisted when it came into contact with hers, losing out in their raw metaphysical battle.
Jumping back to dodge the first onslaught of spells, Matt laughed as he changed tactics and came at her obliquely, using his Concept’s size to try and pressure her that way. However, once again, it felt like trying to compress steel with his bare hands. Or how that would have gone when he was a low Tier. His pressure landed and weighed down on Helen, but it couldn’t slow her down, let alone paralyze her, like it could those who refused to retract their Concept in the face of his.
When she struck out in retaliation, he gained a better understanding as he easily shrugged off the attack.
“You have perfect control over your Concept, don't you?”
Helen didn’t let up on the offense, even as she smiled, as flames started to gather around a pendant of a bird's claw she hadn’t been wearing earlier.
Armor composed of the strange living flames started to form around her, but he could feel she was using the pendant to replace the fire that should normally be taken to form the armor. She spoke through her split concentration, but he could tell she was reaching her limits and didn’t press. “I didn’t expect you to catch on so quickly, most people take a little longer to land on the truth an— Ugh! Have a few false starts. But yes, I know everysingle fragment of my Concept. It doesn’t make my Concept stronger or more powerful, but it gives me control. Or it did after some practice.”
The last was added after she nearly fumbled the flow of flames going into the armor.
Matt stepped forward, getting right next to Helen to inspect the flows of strange dispersed flames that were forming a familiar solidified armor.
Helen redirected the spells to target his new location but he used that as a reason to inspect other portions of the armor as it formed.
“Ah, it’s [Hardlight Armor], very nice.”
That startled Helen and she nearly fumbled the spell, so he poked her in the ribs to remind her that they were still in a fight. If he was correct, that was seriously impressive, but he didn’t press her for more information during the fight. That Tier 0 skill was… finicky at the best of times.
Rah would be endlessly smug when he found out someone else had found another use for the loathsome spell.
His question only earned him a new wave of spells, but no physical reaction, telling him even more. Backing off, he caught a modified [Fire Dart] with his indestructible left hand to get a better sense for this new kind of fire.
It wasn’t exactly hotter than a normal Tier 26 spell cast from a dedicated fire mage, but the flame had its own unique properties that he took his time feeling out. It burned mana about half as well as it did normal material, which was an interesting alteration, but its true advantage was that it refused to go out.
He’d encountered enough fire mages that he wasn’t too shocked by either development, but he was impressed. Both were fairly standard goals fire mages strove for, but he could learn a lot by seeing how she compared to people like the Republic Pinnacle elite Lilian Sinclar. Her fire aspect let her bypass the physical and burn the spirit directly, but she was far from alone in branching out. Even Mara could directly attack a person's healing cooldown if she needed to bypass more traditional defences.
The four most popular level 1 mana aspects — earth, wind, water, and fire— may have been common, but that meant there was a lot more collective wisdom to pull and extrapolate from.
Matt’s first [Dispelling Edge], intended to cut the spell forms holding the fire together, did nothing. The spell-enchanted edge of his finger only made the flame warble, as if he’d run his finger through any normal flame. Even his mana draining Folded Reflection power struggled to get a firm enough hold on the spell to dispel it outright, which raised his appreciation of the move up several notches.
A handful of water made through [Create Water] and held in place through a bit of a gravity nudge also had no appreciable effect, ratcheting his expectations of the spell once more. For most people and creatures, the special flame spells would burn until they ran out of mana, where it would happily burn their flesh. Helen hadn’t seemed to figure out how to make the spells feed on the mana they burned, but the dual avenue of attack was exactly what he’d been hoping to see.
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It both prevented her from getting into a disadvantageous situation against another fire mage, and gave her a decent amount of protection against water mages.
Freezing the water, he checked the flame’s capabilities against ice and found the spell started to weaken dramatically. A thought dispelled the ice, letting the flame return to burning his hand.
A weakness to ice wasn’t ideal, but he assumed she had that taken care of in some other way. Ice was at least a lot rarer than water. Though, most dedicated water mages kept a few ice spells on hand at a minimum, even if they weren't particularly skilled in their use. That problem would rarely exist in relation to rift monsters.
Ice monsters were both rare, to Aster’s irritation, and obvious.
Wanting to test another hunch, Matt grabbed the flame with his Domain and squeezed. He felt a large portion of the dispersed flames start to quiver and more pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.
That narrowed the possible sources of the spell down to two.
Helen’s armor finished forming and she called out, “Thanks for waiting!”, making Matt facepalm as he ducked the attack that came at him from behind.
He both understood she’d wanted to catch him off guard and that she was genuinely grateful, but that only made it worse. Still, he couldn’t be rude.
“You’re welcome, but normally such thanks are exchanged after the fight.”
Helen huffed at him, the expression coming through clear as day despite the full suit of armor that obscured her from sight. His spiritual perception was more than strong enough to see through it, but even if he hadn’t, her tone said it all. “Your concentration isn’t the one being taxed here. I’m trying to show off!”
“It's very impressive. Both your Concept and the fire, which I have a lot of questions about when we are done. If we were at the same Tier, you would wipe the floor with me.” Assuming he was holding back a similar degree, anyway. But he kept that to himself.
“You were laying it on a bit thick there at the end, but I do appreciate the sentiment. However, the armor isn’t the last thing I want to show you. This is!”
Matt felt Helen bring her Intent to bear, but he didn’t move to interfere. He’d long known that her newest Domain stage was no different from any other Tier 25’s, having seen her use it intermittently. One wrong move and he was afraid that he’d hurt her Intent. From her concentration, he could tell that she was doing something that she’d only just begun to master, and so held himself back.
His quiet chants turned into a whoop of joy as he saw the results of her success.
The flame he’d accepted from her quavered in his chest in a sympathetic response, even as the strange fire spread through the room finally started to recondense. At first, he thought they were forming into another layer of armor, but he realized his mistake as he saw his own visage standing across from him.
He didn’t recognize the other three, but that was because they were all identical copies of her already identical bodyguards.
With the power of her Intent, and if he wasn’t wrong, a little help from the pendant, the flames had been given physical form and were able to engage him in melee while Helen blasted him from afar.
It was interesting to fight a fire version of himself, but the copy was limited in the skill it could express, indicating it was pulling from what Aunt Helen understood, rather than having access to all of his own swordsmanship. In fact, all three newly formed fighters were on a similar ability level regarding melee combat, though they didn’t seem to have any access to spells.
After he’d understood that, the moment his copy went in for a strike, he punched it hard enough to disperse it. That caused all of the other fire constructs to quiver as their shared material came under immense force, but he’d calculated his power well, and the other two bodies fell apart as they went in for an attack.
Matt stepped forward, explaining as he did so. “Linking elements has a lot of advantages in terms of resilience and redundancy. But like a weapon with only a durability enchantment, after a point, breaking one thing brings everything linked to it down alongside it. ”
He could clearly see the mirth in her eyes, but Aunt Helen had started smacking her spoon on her hand like she was going to smack him as he continued to talk.
“So, what are those flames? It's either cracked or Talent-made, and from the pendant I’m guessing the latter, or you wouldn’t need assistance to have gotten the fire to work with [Hardlight Armour].” When he finally got within twacking range, he got popped on the arm, but he continued all the same. “A pendant that a particular raven might have put together?”
Those final words earned him an eye roll, but her stance shifted to neutral as she let out a small but dramatic sigh. “You win, child. Do you think this might be why I didn’t want to spar, or ascension forbid, train with you all? I felt helpless the entire fight.”
Matt jerked back theatrically, as if he didn’t understand that she was both speaking the truth and had wanted him to do exactly what he’d done during their fight.
He proffered an elbow even as he cast [Cleanse] on both of them. That done, he turned them to the door while he set the room’s automated systems to clean and prepare itself for the next time it was used.
“I’m very impressed with your Concept and Intent. Is that last ability about reflecting the family you already see around you from your Concept back into reality?”
“I would probably describe it a touch differently but yes, that is the general idea. As for the flames, ah, you are also right there. An old phoenix friend, long since ascended, made the skill for me with her Talent. It was similar to Liz’s in some ways, but hers was a Tier 25. I’ll never forget the look on Trisha’s face when she pushed the first copy of the skill into a skill shard and the whole thing fell apart in front of everyone. She was so embarrassed and I felt bad about that, but it was funny. I think she learned an important lesson about planning surprises that have a chance to fail.”
Despite her harsh words, Aunt Helen’s wide smile split her face. “She made a new copy after that, but she ejected that one privately. It’s fairly simple as skills go, being a modified then Talent altered [Area Fire Subjugation]. I don’t think any of them drop any more unless there is a really old rift I don’t know about, but the spell itself tries to gain control over the fire around the caster. Elemental mages used to use such spells when delving same aspect rifts, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why these spells fell out of favor.”
She didn’t, but he only nodded not wanting to interrupt. “Thanks to Trisha’s unique flames eating other flames, and having few elemental weaknesses themselves, I can avoid other mages gaining control over the flames and therefore my own spells. It was, as you no doubt guessed, JR who sent the pendant and premodified skill when I learned about the elemental variations of [Hardlight Armor] and what they could do, and started looking into it. As for the final trick of summoning my family? I got the idea from you, which is why I wanted to show it off. I truly am never alone any more. Thank you for that.”
Matt stopped and turned, stopping Aunt Helen in her tracks as he put a hand over his heart.
“That’s too kind. I truly am a ray of sunshine.” His words, or possibly the light he emitted, earned him another light slap on the arm by the hand he was escorting her with, but he returned the soft squeeze she snuck in as she continued.
“Don’t be churlish. But your assumption is correct. It's not a Meld, but I took your advice and tried to draw my family in closer. By bringing them in close enough, so close it felt like we all merged, I found I could send them out into any fire I have a connection with. As you say, I’m not exactly summoning the true people, but I like to think it's a very useful trick. Doubly so when made out of Phantom Fire. Trisha may have been an airhead even for a bird, but her flames were impressive, as you saw.”
Matt didn’t let himself get distracted on the new information, instead letting Aunt Helen have her moment and chance to show off.
They were back in the kitchen by the time she talked about one of her old friends.
When she got back around to her Concept, Matt couldn’t help but interject. “Now that you aren’t hiding what you can do, can we play? I mean do serious and good Domain testing?”
The lilt at the end of his sentence turned the statement into question, but the response was Aunt Helen bringing her Concept to bear. Once more, Matt was struck by the solidity of her Concept. His mind instinctively wanted to add a qualifier to that statement such as strongest at Tier, but the only one that he felt was fitting were more descriptive adjectives like ‘formidable’.
He wasn’t sure if anyone he knew could match her Concept for Concept. He wasn’t even sure how Aiden would fare in a straight clash between Concepts.
What shocked him the most was that the second they were no longer in combat, Aunt Helen’s Concept felt perfectly normal to him. It was family and home, because that was what she’d made and remade it into.
Rebuilt piece by piece after her family's deaths, Aunt Helen’s Concept was solid.
With a little hindsight, Matt felt her exceptional level of control made sense. What he found interesting was how that solidity manifested. He couldn’t identify any of that control while they putzed around the kitchen, which only added to his awe.
Neither of them exactly needed their Domains to cook, not for an informal family dinner, which left their Concepts free to clash as they worked.
Matt found himself losing a surprising amount of the time, which was novel and fun in its own right. Aunt Helen had what he’d call ultimate control. What she didn’t have was strength. If he wanted to win, he simply had to do the Domain equivalent of lifting Aunt Helen off the ground to disable her.
All of her control didn’t matter without any place to leverage it.
Cutting off another’s Domain wasn’t as easy as lifting a fighter’s feet off the ground in reality, but that was where Aunt Helen’s second shortcoming bit her. Her Concept wasn’t stronger than most, which limited what she could do. In fact, it wasn’t even stronger than Matt’s had been at the same Tier, though he understood he was comparing his strength to her weaknesses, which wasn’t exactly fair. That meant that while he couldn’t simply crush her with the weight, strength, and size of his Domain, she found it hard to struggle free if he did manage to envelope her.
Not that doing so was easy. Her control let her use what she had with perfect precision, which gave her advantages anywhere he gave her an inch of wiggle room. She attacked with exactly the amount of power she wanted, and never a drop more or less. That gave her an unexpected longevity, but most of her opponents would never make it that far in a fight if she was serious. She only needed one good surprise hit to gain an advantage, and in most fights, that was all she’d need to finish it.
Aunt Helen’s perfect control also made it really hard to actually block her attacks. Like a steel fist in a world of tissue paper, weaker defences simply couldn’t stop Aunt Helen once she got going. The only resource most people would have was to fully block her attack from the outset or dodge the blow.
As they leaned on the counter and snacked on the pepper and cucumber salads he’d made, she finally waved a hand, ending their current testing. “Enough. I’m tired of talking about me. Let's move on to you. What about your guild stuff?”
She waited for his response as she speared a rogue tomato that had been hiding in the oil at the bottom of the shared bowl, but clarified when he shrugged in a silent request for more elaboration. “Not the scandal. I saw enough of that I have a good understanding of what happened. No, I thought Cameron was supposed to take over more than a few years ago?”
Matt sighed hard enough he felt the floor rattle slightly. “A few years ago isn’t exactly taking a firm stance, nor was it only a few years ago, more like three thousand. But yes, yes she was. She’s nervous and I understand that, which is why I’ve been working with her and sending her to all the training things she can ask for.”
“So what’s the problem? From both perspectives?”
“Hers is that she doesn't feel ready, and is worried she will mess up. My problem is that she won’t take over. Elliot is… not someone I want to continue working with. He’s not a bad person, just someone I can’t see myself trusting long term with the guild. It feels like every angle he’s coming at things isn’t the way I want them done, even if they are more efficient and technically better from a high level perspective a lot of the time. Yes, selling bespoke rifts has proven to be the right call, but I—. I don’t love it and I know that’s not entirely fair either. I just can’t help it.”
Aunt Helen’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as she replied, “Then move on. You can’t delay for her sake forever. Even if Aster asks you to help her friend, you can’t hamper your goals for someone else.”
Matt rubbed his eyes before pinching his nose hard enough to hurt.
Letting his many convoluted and jumbled emotions shine through, he met her gaze. “Not yet. And I will mention that Aster was the first one to suggest I find a different replacement. Maybe it's purely a sunk cost fallacy but I’m giving her another chance.”
He could see Aunt Helen opening her mouth to try and persuade him, but he knew she out of everyone he knew had a very real chance of doing exactly that. Instead of letting her work her magic he blurted out his reasoning.
“This is as much about her as it is about me, which is to say I know this isn’t logical, but I… I need to do it this way. At least a little more. Cameron’s issue is that she’s worried that she’d going to fuck something up, ruin the guild in some way. And in her defence she has made mistakes in basically all of her training and test beds, because yes, she is young and inexperienced and only getting this position because of our connection. But I don’t care about those flaws. I’d rather have someone I trust at the helm who makes mistakes I can help clean up than have someone there who I don’t fully trust. And besides, they have all been honest mistakes or traps set for the purpose of teaching her first hand about weird situations. I understand she’s going to fuck up. Kees did, Elliot has, she will.”
After he took a moment to work through and affirm his thoughts, he let his thoughts flow without as much planning. “I’ve decided to give her until the royal birth, then I’ll start looking for a different replacement or some other method. But for my own sake, I need to fulfill my promise to have her back. I said I would at the start of this and I will fulfill that. I know it may seem like she’s not living up to her end of the agreement, but I also empathize that the reason she isn't stepping into the position is because she’s worried about ruining everything that’s been established. She’s afraid to do a bad job, she’s not trying to avoid it. That difference matters. At least to me. I want to, need to, fulfill my promise about having her back. I can’t be the one to pull the rug out from under her like that while she’s still trying so hard. I just… won’t.”
Aunt Helen didn't reply instantly, instead letting their soup conversation consist of idle chatter about the food. It wasn’t until they were swapping courses that she circled back around.
“I get it and you are a good friend, but stick firm to that deadline. Being tough is its own form of support, just like having someone to back you up. It's also okay to reevaluate a former plan and chart a new flight plan when the winds change.” Clapping, she forcefully changed the subject. “So, you mentioned children. Have you and Liz finally settled on whether or not you will be joining the others?”
Matt winced, causing Aunt Helen to sit up straighter. She slumped back down when she registered his smirk and accompanying words.
“Nope! We are still undecided. We’ll make a choice when the upcoming war is over. That means two to three hundred years to think it over at the very least. Plenty of time to change our minds.”
In reality, they were firmly on the birth side, but they’d been aiming for a more natural conception, and so hadn’t used any of the numerous fertility aids or replacements sent by Mara and Leon to all of the siblings. He and Liz had been more than a bit worried Mara and Leon had caught onto their plans, but no, the duo were simply doing what they did during every noble generation and paving the way for potential grandchildren.
However, until then they’d agreed to keep their cards close to their chests, so he had to lie to Aunt Helen along with everyone else.
Aunt Helen either didn’t believe him or saw through him as her grin turned wicked, and she patted him on the arm just as she walked around him to go into the kitchen to pull out the glazed ham leg. “Sure thing, dear. Do remember to take the classes for first time immortal parents. I’ve heard excellent things.”
Her tone was smug enough that Allie would have run into it like a wall, but his attention was exactly what she wanted as she entered the kitchen as she added, “I did help get that particular program started, after all.”
Matt returned her grin with one of his own. If she wanted to tease, he was more than willing to join her.
“Maybe you should be joining us? A pendant and premodified skill from JR? Hmmm? Is there something there you want to share?”
Aunt Helen didn’t even try to deflect. “JR is… well, I don’t quite expect you to get it, but he's a bird. I appreciate that. I may wear a human shape most of the time, for most of my life at this point, but at my heart, I'm still a phoenix flying around with my flock, my family. Human shape is simply easier to be in with my newer, larger, family, but it's not exactly how I see my true self. JR is similar in that respect, we are both birds in a human world.”
“So, are you actually interested in him? Romantically speaking?” That question earned him a side eye he didn’t even try to parse, so he continued without undue delay. “You always deflected using your Concept as a very justifiable reason. But now that it's fixed, I’m excited for you.”
“And your personal opinion of JR isn’t fueling that question, young man?”
Matt snorted, “Oh, it definitely is. I think you can do a lot better than JR. He's a big, dumb, feathery irritant who frankly sucks at aftermarket service. But if he makes you happy, I will be happy for you.”
It was clear she didn’t believe a word he said, though her grin threatened to slip and give away the game. “Or are you just hoping that if I Tier up fast enough that you’ll take me gallivanting around the upper Realms and show me all of the nice new birds I can find there? Hmmm?”
Matt leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of her feathered head, careful not to shift his center of gravity too far, lest he flip the chair and ruin the moment. “Bullseye in one and I won’t even pretend to deny it. I know you said he’d be able to hop between Realms and that was a tentative plan, but that’s why I want you to advance faster! Think of all the adventures we could go on in the higher Realms together? It would be a ton of fun! Before I get too distracted, let’s gossip about the armor though. I was very impressed. [Hardlight Armor] is notoriously difficult to make elemental variations of, let alone ones that are combat stable like that. Unless you were manually holding it together that whole time. But in that case, kudos! Because that’s hard enough that I won’t even bother. It's considered a support spell for a reason.” Grinning to show he was joking, he leaned in, “I know because Rah screwed all of us after Luna figured out how good of a training aid it can be. Mara and Leon still have it out for him, but I can’t say I blame them. They did make great distractions though. Should I apologize for that? Ehh they enjoyed her personal tutelage, I’m sure.”
As Aunt Helen chortled, Matt tapped into the [Hardlight Armor] he’d made and practiced with under Luna’s claws. The light around them condensed and formed detailed gauntlets before exploding into motes of light that flowed into vambraces. “What longevity mods did he use? Or did he use some other method to bypass the need to manually hold the spell projection together?”
“Matthew I don’t know. Why don’t you ask JR?”
“He blocked me and you know it!”
