Chương 54: Day Fifty-Four

Dear Diary, So yesterday before Lunch Doc Roberts showed me how to do my very own Reinforced Special Education Mana Shaping Bubble. Apparently he taught me an 'inverted' version that surrounds me, rather than the 'normal' version that surrounds something or someone I'm targeting. I'll have to get Loki to teach me how to make a regular 'non-inverted' one, I guess. Just target something else. It should work fine. Your Doc Roberts is just a very conservative sort when it comes to magical experimentation.

While that wasn't the impression I'd gotten, I figured I might as well take Loki's word for it. He'd spent Glory to get me a nice outfit to waltz through creepy papa's party, I figured he wouldn't deliberately give me outright bad advice. At any rate, after lunch we spent the afternoon with Saffron practicing her Stabilize.

I mean, I took a few turns to see how fast I could do it, with Saffron timing me, but with no way to actually get a Skill, I figured we ought to spend our time doing something fun, or barring that something at least moderately productive. Of course, by the end of the day Saffron had another notch in Mana Shaping and got Stabilize down as a Skill. So. Much. Envy. Anyway, as Saffron and I walked back to my room after dinner, I put an arm around her. She tensed, then leaned into me.

It felt kinda nice being all lovey dovey and sort of protective and shit. After a second, I thought of something and, before I forgot about it or it could spoil my vibe, I asked, "you're getting enough sleep, right?" She just snorted.

"Diaz, I've got a six month old kid. I don't ever get enough sleep, period." That killed my happy vibe pretty quick.

"You really ought to get some rest. I can last through a night or two. I even sleep through most of the nightmares on days we're in the Practice Yard." She shook her head, jabbing me in the side with her elbow as she did.

"You big goof. I'll let you know if you're shorting me on sleep more than I can handle." She stopped, forcing me to stop, and turned toward me, pulling me around as she did, wrapping her arms around my waist.

"It means a lot to me that you'd offer, given how badly your nightmares have fucked you up on nights you face them alone." I leaned down for a kiss, and she didn't hesitate or play coy. She'd already started blushing a little before my eyes closed and our lips met, but that just added to her cuteness. When she broke away, I scooped her up in my arms. She definitely rated a princess carry. Hijinks ensued when we got back to my room. Very hijinks. Much orgasm. Wow.

As we lay there afterward, spent and sweaty, I proved my idiocy by saying, "I'm not in any way complaining, but you seem a little voracious tonight?" She just chuckled as she scooped our clothes into a single pile for the laundry. Not like they'd mistake her stuff for mine or vice versa.

"Yeah, well, it'll help both of us sleep, and we've got to get up and moving in the morning. You don't want to be late for breakfast or class, and Isnomi's over tomorrow."

"My lover is frighteningly, perhaps even fiendishly well prepared and plannish," I said with the back of one hand on my forehead, miming a fainting pose. She outright laughed at that, then more or less tackled me onto the bed.

"Muah ha ha ha! Once more to make sure you sleep through the night!" So, like, despite her best efforts, I woke up screaming once, and whimpering once after that, but she barely had to wake up to soothe me back to sleep. Freaky Mom powers activate, I guess. At any rate, we got up, got to breakfast on time, crammed ourselves full of protein and spices, then went our separate ways with nary a single public display of affection.

At one point when Loki worked with me on the Celtic words for 'Hooked On Brain Brands Worked For Me!', he murmured, "you do realize that after snatching you away from her after she discarded you, then parading you across Olympus during Heracles' annual celebration, your paramour's Patron is less than pleased with me, yes?"

"Oh, em, gee! That's it! After I've got this down, I need to learn how to write 'Saffron is Best Paramour'." I counted it as a minor victory when he sighed and said, "of course you do." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. I managed a legible 'Hooked On Brain Brands Worked For Me!' by Lunch. Before I made it to the Dining Hall, Saffron intercepted me.

"Come with me."

"Never going to turn that down, but don't you have something to do right now?" She just sighed and yoinked me down the hall toward the Girl's dorm. We wound up at the Infirmary, where Grandma Aetos had Saffron's little crotch goblin all bundled up and looking cute as a button. I cooed at her. She fussed at me. What can I say? I don't like kids all that much, but it might be because the really little ones always give me shit. Frequently literally.

"We're gonna walk Grandma home, and then we're going to the Aquarium." Some part inside of me panicked, but I couldn't very well refuse. Sister Siobhan said I needed to go, and it wouldn't hurt to find out more about where Saffron grew up, and no amount of 'I'm afraid' would get me out of this. Or so I thought, but Saffron just laid one hand gently against my cheek and said, "we don't have to if you're not ready." Of course I had only one possible response to that.

"Why wouldn't I be ready for you to take me home to meet the parents?" She winced a little, but took Isnomi from Grandma and led us both out of the Infirmary, then the Academy. The door guards took down our itinerary of 'Grandma's, then Aquarium' in stride. The walk was strangely peaceful and pleasant. We stuck to the major roads, first the High Artificer's road, then a soft left at City Hall took us directly to the base of the bridge.

'High Artificer Franklin Bridge', no less. With the higher arch, the view from the top had to be seen to be believed. The center pillars had to be at least twice as tall as the top of the bridge, and even had rungs for climbing, but Saffron told me we didn't have time to make the climb anything like safely. She promised to come back to the bridge with me next Friday, so I gave in with a minimum of bitching.

When we got to Grandma's place, which was a rowhouse barely a mile from the foot of the bridge, Saffron gave me what amounted to the 'tour'. Two stories, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a front room, none of them bigger than my cell in the dorm. No parents. When I asked, Saffron just shook her head, and I didn't press. I knew that particular pain better than I wanted to, and wasn't about to push her if she wasn't ready to share. We left Isnomi with Grandma and headed for the Aquarium.

We made it there with plenty of daylight left, and our uniforms not only got us in for free, they let me get to the quays and jetties that separated the Aquarium's exhibits. I walked around until I spotted something not entirely unlike a bloody smear across the jetty, stripped down to my panties, handed a vicariously embarrassed Saffron my uniform, and dove in. She was so embarrassed she didn't even comment on the dagger with the Academy crest on the hilt I shoved between my teeth.

I swam almost straight down, hoping I'd be able to get to the bottom before I ran out of air. I managed it, although by the time I hit bottom colors faded; my crimson silk panties dark, with wireframes flickering around the edges. I righted myself and looked around. Sandy soil made up most of the bottom, with a few medium sized boulders, the type that were too small to threaten ships and too big to be easy to bring up. I took a couple bounding steps forward and then I saw it.

Something with square edges, surrounded by lumps that weren't rock by any stretch of the imagination. With a destination in mind, I swam over and found exactly what I didn't want to. A chest. One big enough to fit a sub-compact car or touring motorcycle comfortably. Its sides made of six inch thick wood, its hinges made of some blackened metal, it sent visceral fear through my gut. The chains, each link nearly a foot long and made of metal at least two inches around, didn't help my burgeoning terror at all.

Fear rapidly transmuted to blind rage, and I kicked the chest, water resistance the only thing saving me from breaking my toe. Blinded by rage, I focused on extending a single burning wire of Mana from my finger and slashed at the chest. I forced my Mana blade through the recalcitrant wood until a chunk from one corner fell off into the sand. The rest collapsed, decaying in moments from a solid chest to a mound of dirt on the riverbed. I turned to the chains, trying to pick one up and slice it apart.

Even with the buoyancy from the water, I barely budged it. I dropped to my knees and sliced at it like that. Not since I first practiced Mana Shaping in my room had I hit anything approaching the resistance I felt from the metal. I screamed my rage and frustration in a cascade of bubbles, shoved Mana blades from all four fingers on my right hand, then brought them down and forced them through the refractory metal. The chain resisted, soaking up my Mana.

I shoved Mana into it in a raw cascade unlike anything I'd done since I learned how to concentrate it. With a echoing clang, the metal gave way, leaving three chunky discs of metal in the center of an oddly shaped pile of rust. Right about then I realized that I'd just screamed out all of my air. I grabbed up the coin shaped discs and the chunk of wood, then launched myself surfaceward, angling for the quay.

Saffron met me about halfway up, and I fended off her attempt to grab me by the arms, handed her the chunk of wood, and started climbing the rock of the jetty as fast as I could force my arms and legs to move. My vision narrowed, darkness creeping in from the edges. By the time my head broke the surface, I saw nothing but static. Saffron helped me up onto the top of the jetty, and we just lay there panting.

"Tabitha Diaz, while I understand that coming to terms with your," she dropped her voice to a whisper, "death and rebirth," and then continued normally, "is important, and I will support you to the best of my ability as you do so, in the future please refrain from attempting to solve your nightmare problem via suicide." I could barely spare the breath to pant out, "no promises." I've been beaten with a lot of things before, but never with a sopping wet shirt sleeve. Guess I can cross that one off my bucket list.