The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 512 - A Scent Of Mischief, Fierce Threat, And Utter Sincerity
Atop the graffiti covered basalt arch on the cliffside, a tired brunette sat down on a little seat she had crafted and brought up there many months ago. Designed somewhat like a single-person, basket hammock of plant fibers and wood framing - held up in the air by extruded steel pipes that had been clad in copper - and anchored to the stone with *excessively inefficient* Adhesion mimicking discs that would allow her to unstick and modify its exact location whenever she wanted. She swung her feet dangling from the cradle with eyes closed, needing this break from the last... long period of activity.
From days of hopping from fix-this to fix-that, the ancient cultivator had only added to her general exhaustion by diving back into being a triage-minded healer. The three new visitors had been left in what could generously be called a medical room, but was actually intended to be more of a quarantine zone. The boys were handled first, stuffed into the same sort of iron sand ’bed’ as she had placed out on the training grounds.
Layered containment barriers were then activated, one designed to limit the essence available and the other designed to function like the inverse of the one she had placed down to protect the spiritual cultivation spot down below the arch. So that they would not panic and try to get out of the field of natural healing stimulation that was more than likely going to make them feel like their lungs were being eaten by ants from the inside out.
Which was honestly the simplest of the concerns, to the spiritualist.
"Osmotic shock due to an Initial cultivator’s essence field, untrained to handle rejection of pressure two magnitudes above planetary nominal. They won’t be able to go outside for a little while, without assistance. Qat is going to be disappointed when she learns~"
Chuckling while rubbing at her closed eyes, the brunette knew it wasn’t true. If there had been permanent damage and not just a temporary, frayed overload of the field... the matter may have been different. Even then, she expected her ’fortress’ would have taken the blame all on herself. For sending them at all without having a solid grasp of what was going on.
Elua absolutely did not want Qatrand blaming herself - not for trusting that the reincarnator had a better handle on everything... and wouldn’t have turned such an important place into a deathtrap in the months since her father was here. Most of all, seeing the half-blood kin of her husband-wife collapsing had slightly, ever so slightly overlapped with a deep fear that the heiress held.
’It could have been Qat. It could have been *worse* - and been Qat. It could have been something that I haven’t taught her to deal with, right when she was breaking character and coming to see me...’
While it was easy enough to believe her grasp on her spouse’s disposition - especially after the swordswoman had not arrived *right away* with that testing letter about the manacles - was as Ironclad as the cultivator’s Guild affiliation...
"I could be nursing her back to health right now. Pouring all my energy into fixing the cruelest of fates. Instead, I get to just despair up here all on my own."
Willfully ignoring that the reason she moved all the way up this way was because Rezzue er Yecine seemed to be poised to follow and talk - and that she was betting on the woman not trying to scale the ropes once made for Sevra to scale with so that she could have her moment of angst... Elua sighed loud and deep. Shortly after, she rolled out of the nice, mechanically floating seat to hop once, twice, and dive off of the arch with an Aerial Impulse pointed groundward.
About the same time, a gasp and short shriek was let out by the woman who clearly had not climbed a rope in her life. Her hand had slipped after only twenty-five feet of upward mobility. The fact that it was close to happening had been extremely telegraphed to the illusionist, whose spirit was monitoring the cloistered wife’s stubborn ascent. In the slowed time of ’doom’, the red-haired woman saw a blur of silver, felt her clothes being tugged around the waist... and then the sharp reversal of direction and speed.
One longer shriek came through a set of teeth clenched around a soft hand. The sky dancing Ogre Fairy had stuffed her fleshy thenar eminence - the base of her thumb - right into the woman’s mouth so she didn’t bite her own tongue as they rocketed back up into the sky.
"Your eyes are closed. How are you going to see the view of where you are stuck at that way?"
Confidence in the situation mixed with her feminine voice right as they stalled, well over the height of the Basalt arch. From this height, they could see to all the edges of the Exclave. Yellow-green eyes peeked carefully at the horizon, the landscape of hills and valleys making up the significantly sized ’estate’. Before widening and trying to pull her teeth away from the hand to speak, when looking at the dark hole of a cobalt lake below.
One that was clearly starting to get slightly larger as each second passed!
"E-Elua. Thank you for- but... that is..."
Asking for a soft, safe landing and utter care to the fact that they were falling... toward the person who was essentially holding you up only by your waistband roughly gripped at your lower back while in midair? Rezzue’s stilted but growing conviction in herself failed her. Mostly, this was because the ancient cultivator had, in her short bit of rest alone, managed to silence her own pheromones temporarily.
Demon or angel, destruction or safety... there was no instinctive feeling for the other woman to rely on, without realizing it. Leaving only the facts to struggle through. Leaving only a set of glowing mint eyes that held neither particular malice or affection toward the person they looked at.
Essentially, while hiding away her teasing Intent, she gave to this woman a pheromone equivalent feeling of immense apathy. The kind that she had blasted the male Yecine elders with, once upon a time. And of course, the two boys recovering below - like this still damaged person should be!
"I can only assume that you absolutely had to see it all from above. Why else would you be trying to climb when your chest must still hurt? So, how was it?"
Their speed downward increased, though not drastically, as a light but steady, and recently named Impulse technique was used once more. Technically, as an essence Breacher... she would eventually have been able to Levitate through a technique that more or less used an oscillating Adhesion on the very surroundings. For the most part that just meant simple floating that was rarely fast or mentally efficient - though it did allow a cultivator to focus their meditation in nifty looking ways, while still acting as an ambient essence scrubber.
"Ground! Ground! STONE! AH-"
But there was no reason for an Element user already capable of ’flight’ through targeted propulsions to limit themselves to that method! Slowing down quickly during the woman’s pleading exclamations, Elua flipped and tossed Rezzue into the basket seat she had been resting in earlier. Letting the woman have a sense of safety and also a horrendous, continued floating feeling all at once.
Still reigning in the fully ’mischievous’ Intent from rocking into the untrained spirit sense of those in the area, the caps she placed on the personal pheromones she’d withheld burst free, sending an amplified playful-dominance wafting out of the sebaceous glands... and instead of being upset about that, she simply laughed. At the way the woman’s arms swayed around, trying to ineffectually slow the back and forth of the hammock.
And at the idea that she ever should have held herself back - for what was hiding what only a Pheromone Physique user could sense even good for? Normal cultivators, just like normal humans, barely had any feel for biochemical signals. While they really should train to recognize them, in her opinion, thanks to the potential existence of people like the red-haired woman - sitting there, shaking and hugging herself while sending out alarm-sensitive-submit signals...
"I don’t like pranks all that much... can you... can you take it a little easy on me, please?"
"Do you know me well enough to assess when I am taking it hard on you?"
The heiress still brushed back her own hair with a smile, feeling refreshed after months of only having Madrigil around. A dense - or possibly trollish - man who she could not tease so much as directly bully. It was a shame to her that he probably would not be going off on his own this time, like he did so often when visitors were about. For the lecturing ancient had plans.
Plans to offload certain tasks to him.
’Learning from teaching those inferior than you... in order to better understand how to chain and leash together inferior mental fragments of his Astralism... I wonder if that sounds believable enough to trick him into taking a lesson plan from me and being the one using his less valuable time to teach?’
"Qatrand told me to tell you to ’be good’... or else she would refuse to hug you for three days upon your return."
A warning chemical was produced by both young women. Though one was unintentional, just meant for expressing that Qat had seemed sincere... while the other was a good bit different. Deep and full of millennia of seriousness that made the person seated lock her muscles, stuck between fight and flight.
"Don’t toy with me, cousin-in-law. You will tell her I have been on my best behavior when you return. Whether or not I have been."
Stalking over and holding her arms around either side of the basket to lean over and keep it from rocking, mint locked with pear as the heiress’s lips... quivered. Very, very sufficiently admonished by the threat that her beloved made sure to arm this woman with! 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
"Meanwhile, I will strive to accommodate your every request. You hold great power over a being that can teach you more than you perhaps ever wanted to know about so much. Like your yet to be achieved Element’s manipulation. And of course your Physique... though I am very loath to do so. And thanks to some recent experience with this very one, even that Astralism of yours."
All of that intensity eased down as Elua sat on her knees in front of the chair. Right in front of where the woman’s limp legs dangled. Folding her hands over her own lap due to knowing when she was beaten - and who was in charge. Judging when she had to take a step back to scheme better while fulfilling some other role was something she had learned within the first century or two.
"Use this card very, very wisely. As once I achieve my welcome home hug, all bets are off."
"How do you do that?"
"...Do what?"
Clearing her throat, blushing and looking side to side while trying to sit up, the Pheromone cultivator put off another cocktail of signals that El really didn’t want to read too much into. Though she imagined if she had been reading the biochemical instead of trusting in the spiritual innocence of Zyris er Talcres, when she was talking about Corde hez Iralev years ago, it would be rather similar feeling.
"S-swap from being so fierce to so charming while making me feel bad? I... I want to be able to do that too. I want to be strong and also lovely while making my husband ashamed!"
Blinking, skittering back just a few inches, Elua er Goltbred was more certain than ever that her Qat had it out for her for sending this person here.
