Void Rift (rp) - Intermission

"You don't have to if you don't want to, Crystal," Abigail says empathetically, "Sorry for trying to force my own will upon you. I know how it feels, and I don't want you to feel it too."

"I'll have them make you a walking masterpiece!" I say happily.

Shadow Stephanie pulls me aside, "Are you sure we can afford all the people and resources for this? The amount of melding paint we need for someone her size is running far into the mage." She whispers.

"Unless you want Ihra's host to stomp us or eat us or something, or even decimate the city and palace, I'd do what she wants." I whisper back.

"Don't let her strongarm you, Aj. You can say no to her." Shadow Stephanie whispers, annoyed.

"She's like a seven year old, though. Besides, what has she done against us?" I whisper.

"Oh jeez, I don't know, hmm, oh yeah! Fucking killed Stephanie!" Shadow Stephanie whispers, annoyed.

"You know that was in the past, and you should not be holding that against her!" I whisper.

 

He makes it to the tundra without a hitch, it seems.

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"Oh, shut up! Cost isn't an issue! I gifted you both seven times your kingdom's worth! Plus, I have more!" She giggles. "I want to be able to have the best, so I make sure to always have enough stuff."

 

Shadow Stephanie seems rather embarassed.

"We'll see to it you're given the finest paints for your armour, and I'll change the crystal's colour personally while it is being done." I say, speaking up.

 

"Thanks! And Shadow Stephanie, I thought you forgave me? I don't like being lied to my face..." She mumbles, rolling a human sized gold coin her way.
"Decondense that. Should be equal to your treasury, last time I checked." She says, forgetting her annoyance a few seconds prior.

 

"It's... okay."
Crystal pauses, a bit uncomfortable.
"What, uh... what happened to you? If you're okay talking about it."

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Content, I start walking to the training room, taking my time.

 

"Do you like sugar?" Shadow Stephanie asks, trying to change the subject.

"What do you even eat, actually," I ask, "Mountains?"

Abigail sighs, "I used to be really good friends with this Earth guardian called Nathan. We used to hang out together, sometimes with Katie, othertimes not. He used to take me to pubs and sneak me drinks, even though I'm not of the legal drinking age. One of the times we were out visiting our usual pub, he said he wanted to take things further. I guess he thought I was giving off hints I wanted to be his girlfriend or something? He said he was ok with it at the time, but he spiked my drink with a love potion, and..." She pauses for a bit, taking a moment to gather herself.

"A-After he spiked my drink, h-he, well...he took me u-up to the p-pubs b-bedrooms, a-and...h-he..." Abigail pauses again, the subject clearly hard for her to talk about, "...H-He raped me."

 

Linoa seems to be rushing back with Rineth.

"I want sugar!" She says, blissfully distracted.
"And I eat... souls, I think?" Xlentia responds to you, distracted. "I dunno. I don't really need to eat."

 

"Edgy." I say.

Shadow Stephanie summons a bag of sugar about two thirds her size, flying it up to Xlentia's level.

"Here's your sugar!" Shadow Stephanie says, looking ready to throw the bag of sugar.

 

Xlentia opens her mouth expectantly.

 

Shadow Stephanie leans back before hurling the bag into Xlentia's mouth, the force flipping Shadow Stephanie and causing her to lose her balance in the air.

 

The sugar keeps Xlentia occupied for about ten minutes.

 

Shadow Stephanie rights herself in the air before flying back down to the ground.

"Huh. Seems we've found a new distraction." I say.

"You'd think with a bag that small against a dragon that big it'd be like a single granule to her." Shadow Stephanie says, surprised.

"What if we just gave her a bunch of sugar and see what happens?" I ask, excited.

"You want to give a giant goddess a bunch of sugar to see what will happen, which will probably just be hyperactivity?" Shadow Stephanie asks flatly.

I summon a bag of sugar thrice my size in response.

"Where did you even get that?" Shadow Stephanie asks.

"Kitchens." I say.

"Really? I only found that smaller bag in there." Shadow Stephanie says.

"I guess they burn through sugar differently at different times." I say, trying to hold up the giant bag of sugar but getting crushed by it as it falls on me.

 

"Thanks, Stephanie!" Xlentia says, before noticing the giant bag and looking like a kid in a candy shop.
"Emerald has to figure out how to mint mage coins. They're prettier AND more valuable than gold!" She says happily, sniffing the bag after looking around for where you went.

 

"They're sort of made out of mage crystals hexed with a unique hex that makes them both identifiable as currency and impossible to recreate. Very few people know the actual hex, though." Shadow Stephanie says, not really paying much attention to the situation.

The bag smells as sweet as the label 'SUGAR' on it describes.

 

"Maybe we'll just stick with stabilized paradoxium coins, then." Xlentia says, biting into the bag and rearing her head so the sugar falls into her mouth.

 

Some of the sugar falls out of a small cut on the other side of the bag, and a confused Shadow ends up falling into Xlentia's mouth with the sugar.

Shadow Stephanie glances upward, before facepalming, "God dammit..." She mutters, sighing.

 

Xlentia uses spells to pick the shadow out, stopping when she's about a third of the way through the bag as she stops and lets it sit in her mouth.

 

"This is extremely weird..." I say from Xlentia's mouth, confused.

"Why did you try to go through the bag!?" Shadow Stephanie asks.

"I wanted some sugar too, ok?" I say, taking my opportunity to look around Xlentia's mouth.

 

Her tongue seems to be shifting slightly, dissolving the sugar slowly as the sweet liquid rolls down her throat. Other than that, there's just a lump of sugar in a dragon mouth with a forked tongue and teeth that easily could just bite through a mountain. Or just about anything.

 

Crystal just hugs Abigail, a bit unsure of what to say.

"Hey!"
I say, loud enough for them to hear.