The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 535 - Permitting Joy & Other Feelings To Bubble Up

Chapter 535: Chapter 535 - Permitting Joy & Other Feelings To Bubble Up

"Why a musical hair stick?"

"I thought I’d give you a nice entertainment option. Of course, I’m not pressing you to leave your guild-"

"Your mother is."

With an unladylike snort, Elua er Goltbred flicked her shoulder length hair with the back of her fingers and began to stroll off. Leaving the scout to decide whether to follow or continue training with the new gear of hers. For now, she followed... as it wouldn’t take long to stroll for a bit and then return later.

"...As much as we are alike in eyes and certain behaviors, I am not her. If I really wanted you there in her Guild despite your choices, believe me, you would end up there while thinking it was your decision in the first place."

"The scary part of that is I can’t tell whether you are telling me this to manipulate me into thinking you are manipulating me or not."

"Look, if you are going to nest possibilities together with each other, I’d prefer you place more value on my direct words as being the most *probable* of them. Not generate your own idealized fears that stand counter to my voice."

The scout was nonplussed by the pout, but knew just what to do from the words she heard alone.

"Quite literally, you just handed me an item that contains your favorite substance which marks me more like a retainer of yours than a friend. While giving it an effect which would give me cover within the Clearer Skies Society’s tertiary purpose of bringing performances to the post-Descent period."

"And then you stopped listening to my voice and interrupted me before I could finish my statement. I was only intent on saying that without looking at it as a career change, you could still show it off as a trick when you want attention and not stealth. Or to bother young secretaries at the branch offices of your Sorority."

Flipping the object once in her hand, the thrum it made as she caught it was surely - to the former assassin’s limited knowledge - due to some sort of Sound ritual work. The heiress especially liked hiding features like that, she knew from watching her create the very foundation stones for the buildings in the Exclave.

"Why does that statement have venom in it?"

"With something other than thrilling tales of your travels that every single one of your kind try to impress with."

"It’s not losing the bite it has." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Sevra also eyed the gems with suspicion. While nearly *everything* could have those microsigils carved into it, as far as she was aware, the rich little lady of the Goltbreds seemed to have a special love of converting pretty stones into things with effects that the continent would pay exorbitant sums of money for in even inferior forms. Like the communication system.

Like the brooches that drove Madrigil into finding her and slinging them all there in the first place. There wasn’t even a question in her heart that they were mere simple pieces of pointed quartz - and that meant they weren’t going into her hair until she had some verbal confirmation.

"Alright, so tell me what in the world you did to these. Even if I could trace them with focus later while I Walk, that doesn’t mean I understand your crazy tangle kind of sigils."

"Crazy is rude. They are merely size efficient complexity at the cost of scale and area of effect. Hm, as to what I *did*, the primary function of it as a weapon is less... aesthetic than it’s function as a sort of pigeon-whistle-siren. At least depending on your outlook of what constitutes beauty. I for one think the solution and effect was very elegant."

Rather than letting her test it this time, which would require one of two sacrifices that she just sent away - or Madrigil, but he had liked it too much when she used him for the final test... or *herself* who was not going to let down her defenses to be paralyzed for an assassin’s curiosity, friend or not - the heiress left an illusory blueprint and diagram up in the air. The same one she used for the notes for the effect, which included an imaginary scenario of the object being thrown and the charge released.

"The copper naturally accumulates electrical energy as the friction of air moves past it when you throw it. It’s actually a really interesting phenomena that I’ll show you another neat use case for later. Certain sigils amplify and help convert and direct that charge into temporary storage. So that, when the tip of one of these transducer gems makes contact and activates the ritual..."

The display of the item striking a target showed the item not piercing, but almost getting caught in the air right next to them before launching back as a sickly flash of brightness pulsed out in a cone from the gem onto them... and through them. Passing through everything like an X-ray, except the ion channels of every nerve in the body. Causing them to hyper-polarize and not spasm, but shut tight - turning all muscles flaccid and dropping the target into a heap.

"Paralysis. Like the kind they were going to use on anyone that got in the way of kidnapping my sister. Honestly, this sort of artifact really should be placed right up there with Negavigor as a substance. Handing it to anyone that would misuse it’s ability to incapacitate Primalists and sufficiently distracted and unguarded Breachers is arguably as dangerous."

"So instead of something that kills, something that I could definitely use... to kill easier."

Blowing a raspberry at the cynical assessment, Elua dispersed her illusion by waving her hands around like she was shooing clouds of flies away. A very unnecessary step, the ’older’ woman knew. Then again, the majority of everything that the ancient reincarnator did was so far past necessary that it turned into a ridiculous affair.

"That is one way to look at it. The other is that you can secure all your targets - even food - without ever having to end their life in a single throw. How easy it is to bind them or shackle them with other methods once they drop! Unfortunately, such policing or hunting use is not something I am interested in disseminating widely to the continent at this time."

The dry delivery did little to hide the fact that she’d thought about *that* very seriously. She’d considered the mundane dangers of every part of her gifts alongside the beneficial applications. Despite the whim at which it looked like she handed things over sometimes - and despite the cultivator-technological excess to which she went in this little hidden pocket of space - letting the continent she was reborn into be essentially as it was... while smoothing the edges out when it felt necessary, was the path she’d chosen to take.

"You spent a long time on these. Thank you."

"Time is the one resource I’ve had an abundance of yet has grown ever shorter in some ways as the date approaches."

"You mean you’re feeling restless again."

"Yes. But I know I will probably be off in my own little Qat-focused world again once I return, so I’ve tried to show affection to the others I care for. Until my beloved forces me to be satisfied and take a break."

Stopping in her tracks, the scout made a face and shook her head.

"I’m not sure I needed to hear that phrasing. Or see that smile."

"Don’t be crass. Or imagine things I’d prefer you didn’t."

"Don’t smile like you are imagining things, then."

"Leave my fantasies out of this and give me that. If you are going back to practice, I want you to do so with your hair properly up. Oh, and while you didn’t ask - this one won’t really work on my constructs. No instant wins for you."

As Sevra kneeled and let her dark hair be handled by the reincarnator, the part of her that had *eventually* been satisfied by being called ’friend’ - from someone who she once thought was potentially her and the world’s ultimate nemesis - allowed a soft smile to spread on her face.

’Not actually sure we get along, but I suppose I wouldn’t let someone else but family do this.’

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

The lakeshore opposite the cliff face was one of the nicer spots in the entire Exclave to the eyes of one disciple. Not just because her wedding was held here or because it held the most water in a concentrated location that didn’t require one to spelunk. Something about the quarter mile climb in one direction - the hard but straight up path - and the slowly sloping and meandering route in the other direction... had spoken to her like it was a choice in philosophy.

It also looked quite lovely in this little world’s ’sunset’... the details of which had been explained to her once, but Nohre found she much preferred the mysteries of anatomy and organic chemistry to that of the cosmos itself. Even if they occasionally had analogues and similarities. Though that didn’t mean she *wasn’t* enamored with various manipulable expressions of the physics of their existence.

"Alright, so maybe a faster sweep."

Wires made of a very special Silver weaved and looped in inch-sized cross sections at the head of the staff, within the three foot wide hoop at the top. Their expansion and contraction were controlled by a sliding brass bead near the head of the white, pearlescent in the right light wood pole. A substance which itself was formed by injecting Silicon Tetrafluoride vapors in between the vacuumed out fibers.

Reacting with the moisture left behind, it formed tiny silicate crystals throughout the length - and left the staff feeling like polished bone with some of the flexibility of wood, but the hard, rot resistance of a petrified material. Of course, it also required the ancient cultivator to finally gain the right level of control over what was normally a mundane substance in the air, in order to flush out the acid produced in the process before it harmed the fibers.

Simply because she was too stubborn to ask for help while making the gift for her first friend in this new life, if it meant accomplishing *two goals* at once. The fact that it now meant she could dry clean almost anything with Carbon Dioxide brought to a supercritical state, even harder to move than her densest gases, meant almost as much to her as the confused green eyes and smile of the once orphaned Water cultivator.

Nohre had been given no real instructions beyond the cloth-wrapped bundle. Inside she’d found the tool now in her hands and a few other items. Three giant gourd shaped flasks made of sintered jadeite, polished to satin green on the outside and a glassy texture inside where the liquids were contained by ground joint stoppers made of the pearlescent wood.

And also a set of recipe cards linked by a smaller ring of the same wood material - and written in a hand she knew as well as her own. It was these cards that she had to decipher and figure out what to do with the object. The flask with the circle was referenced as Structure fluid and described the optimal process by which Rezzue and Elua had formed the special soap, glycerin, and mica dust solution.

Then in the next cards described the quick mix methods for someone NOT an Acid cultivator isolating the perfect fatty acids, if she ran out of it in the field. It was only words and details in a few lines that allowed the wide-eyed little water deer to finally realize the intent was to make... bubbles. By loading the reservoir of the staff with the proper liquid, which she had sensed immediately already had the strange composition of water filling the ring.

"Yes!"

The faster swipe through the air worked to release a foamy comet trail of hundreds of floating, slightly opaque ’pearls’ that the air eventually found and pushed apart. Witnessed by the gift giver, who floated calmly on her back in the water as the other woman giggled like a young girl while using her Element manipulation to try and combine, separate, or extrude the foam structures under her will.

’Lovely. I think it was the right choice. She doesn’t need a weapon of mine.’

Because she was a healer like her Master once was, that jaded individual knew quite well that the person *playing* before her eyes needed reminders like this. That life is more than battling the inevitability of death through medicine and Mend. Joy could be found and spread in simple things... and the smiles of children - and even some adults - would extend the braided haired woman’s ability to man the ramparts of that profession.