Chương 35: Chapter 34: An Unwelcome Lesson

Elma's internal clock roused her after a fragmented three hours of sleep. She had awakened several times during the night, unwilling to risk missing Hephryx's visit. Silk had something in mind, and Elma knew she had to stop her from acting on it. The expression Silk had worn the previous night remained etched into the back of her mind. The suns were already up. As Elma shifted upright against the heavy blankets, her gaze immediately locked onto the figure standing at the foot of her bed.

Was it a maid, or a soldier? The woman was dressed in a traditional maid's uniform, but she stood with her hands firmly clasped behind her back, heels joined perfectly, and shoulders squared in strict military posture. Her short, jet-black hair rigidly framed her face, cropped exactly at the middle of her ears. Most bizarrely, a strip of purple cloth—painted with vibrant yellow flowers—was bound tightly across her eyes, acting as a blindfold.

The conflicting visual data stalled Elma's processing for a full minute as she sat silently staring at the anomaly. Then, she felt the heavy weight radiating from the woman's frame. She was a Resonant.

"You are finally awake, young Lady," the woman said, her voice significantly deeper and more commanding than her slender frame suggested.

"Who are y—" The woman blinked out of existence. A microsecond later, she materialized directly at Elma's side, her fingers already buried in a knotted lock of Elma's golden hair. Elma hissed sharply at the sudden, painful pull. The woman's lips twisted in deep disapproval. She clicked her tongue sharply.

"When was the last time anyone actually bothered to take care of you?" she asked, addressing the tangled hair rather than Elma herself. Elma reflexively flared her Field, blasting the woman point-blank in the face with a hyper-compressed air current. The shockwave tore through the room. It ripped the lace curtains off their rods and blasted several loose objects out the open window. But it did not move the woman. When the air settled, the blindfolded maid was still standing in the exact same spot.

Not a single strand of her cropped black hair looked out of place, and her uniform lacked so much as a new wrinkle. Are her clothes woven with Tresspenine? Elma hypothesized, her eyes narrowing.

"You seem like a calm and reasonable girl," the woman stated, her voice entirely unbothered. She smoothly retrieved a pair of immaculate white gloves from her apron pocket and began pulling them on, one finger at a time.

"Are you a calm and reasonable girl?" Elma's eyes narrowed into slits. She reached out with her Field, instantly calling two highly compressed water auxiliaries to her sides. But before the constructs could even be utilised, they vanished. They were instantaneously unwoven from reality. Elma stared at the empty air. She is a Void Resonant.

"Are you... Leta's replacement?" Elma asked, her voice faltering for a second as her mind recalculated the threat level in the room. Her TRO was roughly 200, 000 Will.

"I do not know who Leta is," the woman stated. Without warning, she reached down and effortlessly hoisted Elma off the bed by the back of her collar, dangling the toddler in the air as if she weighed nothing.

"But I am here to ensure you remain presentable."

"Can we execute this task in an hour?" Elma attempted to negotiate, her small legs kicking uselessly in the air.

"I have critical... I have something to do."

"It is my first day on the estate," the blindfolded maid replied, carrying Elma out of the nursery and toward the washroom.

"We are not starting our tenure with laziness." She unceremoniously undressed Elma and dropped her into the cold, dry bathtub. This was a problem. Today, of all days.

"I demand to speak to my mother," Elma stated, glaring at the maid. How dare Christa install this dangerous variable into her daily routine without prior notification?

"You may speak to whoever you wish after you are properly cleaned," the woman replied. Without breaking her perfect posture, the maid dumped a heavy pitcher of lukewarm water directly over Elma's head. With mechanical efficiency, the maid began scrubbing Elma with a lemon-scented soap. She handled the toddler exactly like a piece of inanimate equipment. Elma endured the humiliating friction in rigid, dripping silence.

"What is your name?" Elma finally asked through the suds.

"Mira," the woman answered, her hands never stopping.

"Mira, is the guest here?"

"Guest?"

"Someone my father was waiting for."

"I do not know." Elma tightened her jaw and drew a slow, calculated breath.

"Where is my father?"

"He was in his study, along with Lady Nina." Elma let out a small sigh. If Nina was still here, it was highly probable that Hephryx had not yet arrived.

"I have not eaten anything," Elma stated, feeling a sharp emptiness expanding in her small stomach.

"You will eat after we are finished." Elma sat in rigid patience until the aggressive scrubbing was finally over. Mira dressed her in a new, strangely tight silken dress. The stiff fabric clung closely to her frame, pressing Elma's sun pendant uncomfortably hard against her sternum. Yet, despite the rough handling, Elma felt a begrudging rush of physical relief wash over her. The last time her hygiene had been properly maintained was the day of the celebration of the victory at the Red Shore.

She ate a plate of breakfast at the vanity while Mira brushed her hair in complete silence. Leta used to hum or tell some stories while she worked; this woman operated like a machine executing one objective at a time. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. An hour had passed since Elma woke, and the meticulous brushing was finally complete.

"We are done now," Elma declared, moving to stand.

"Done?" Mira tilted her head slightly. She reached down and unclasped a bag on the floor, pulling out several thick, heavy books detailing the proper etiquette and behavior of a noble lady.

"What is that?"

"Our first lesson will be on how to ask questions properly."

What is this nonsense? Elma thought, her patience immediately evaporating.

"Can we delay this one?" Elma asked, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet.

"No—" Elma bolted for the door. Before she could even clear the rug, the blindfolded woman teleported in front of her. Suddenly, a crushing heaviness slammed into Elma's body. She collapsed hard onto her back, the floor beneath her pulling at her with the unyielding force of a massive magnet. Her limbs felt like they were cast in lead. She couldn't get up.

"Stay," Mira commanded, the word delivered with the cold authority one might use on a disobedient dog. Lying pinned against the floor, Elma's senses flared. She could feel it—a slight dent in the space beneath her. It was the source of the suction. She couldn't do anything about it using Flow. The only countermeasure available was sheer strength or Internal Reinforcement, neither of which her current infantile body possessed. Mira knelt smoothly beside her, her white gloves resting on her knees.

"Are you ready to behave?"

"Never!" Elma yelled, her small voice strained under the pull. Curtains Down. Mira's grip on the spatial dent slipped. A note of mild surprise coloring her face. The dent rebounded violently. The sudden kinetic snap hurled them both upward toward the ceiling. Before gravity could claim her, Elma summoned a blast of wind directly in front of her, using the recoil to launch herself backward and straight out the open nursery window.

She wove four water auxiliaries, bracing them quickly against the ground to arrest her fall before she could build lethal momentum. She shot one tendril toward a towering pine tree, pulling herself through the air. She landed gracefully on a thick branch and spun around. Mira had already vaulted from the window. The blindfolded maid was running vertically down the stone wall of the manor, seamlessly transitioning to a horizontal sprint the moment her boots hit the grass.

Elma grunted as she wove one hundred water drills. With a sharp, sweeping gesture, she launched the entire swarm at Mira simultaneously. Mira kept flickering through the barrage, teleporting rapidly from side to side in short, staccato jumps to effortlessly weave through the incoming projectiles. Elma raised her hand. She wove a single, massive water drill with the combined mass and density of the previous hundred. Oceanic Drill.

The colossal construct began spinning violently above Elma, the friction of its rotation generating a wave of hot air that instantly ruined her freshly brushed hair. She blasted it downward. The massive drill met Mira just as she cleared the first wave. A deafening explosion of steam erupted on impact, violently spreading a thick, blinding fog across the grounds. Taking advantage of the cover, Elma fled, using her four water auxiliaries like mechanical spider legs for faster locomotion.

She burst through the fog, only to find a five-man patrol of Alloys standing on the grass, watching the destruction with useless detachment. Her green eyes widened.

"I am being assassinated again!" Elma shouted.

"Kill her! Do something!" The guards didn't even reach for their weapons.

"Isn't that Mira," one of them said with a shrug.

"Apologies, young lady, but we cannot intervene. Lady Christa's orders." That woman, Elma hissed internally as she spun back around. She couldn't outrun this woman, but she could end her. She needed to stop holding back and send a definitive message. The maid surely wouldn't be bold enough to actually attempt to kill the heir, which meant Elma could safely abandon defense and focus purely on maximum offensive output. Elma faced the billowing steam, aggressively weaving dozens of new water drills.

Her four auxiliaries extended, growing longer and lifting her higher into the air until she towered over the fog. The drills spun rapidly in a lethal halo around her.

"Show yourself!" Elma commanded. The air directly above her warped. A massive silhouette—a giant figure exponentially larger than Elma and her extended auxiliaries combined—materialized over her head. It descended, pressing Elma into the grass with a terrifyingly insulting gentleness. Her auxiliaries were immediately unwoven. As Elma hit the dirt, she felt the colossal mass rapidly deflate and condense, shrinking inward until it was just a normal-sized thumb pressing firmly against her sternum. She...

she had become a giant? How? Elma struggled to stand up, but she couldn't move a single muscle. Mira was still kneeling over her, effortlessly pinning her to the earth with her right thumb.

"How did you do that?" Elma gasped, her mind reeling.

"By increasing the space I occupy," Mira answered calmly.

"What?" To demonstrate, Mira seamlessly expanded. Her thumb instantly swelled to the size of Elma's entire chest. Then, she rapidly compressed, shrinking down until she was a miniature, toddler-sized adult, before smoothly snapping back to her standard proportions.

"Many Void Resonants are capable of this technique," Mira added, as if discussing the weather. She looked down at the mud currently staining Elma's new silken dress and let out another sharp click of her tongue.

"Look at what you have done. Now I must clean you all over again." She let out a short sigh.

"Shall we return? Or do you still have more tantrums left in you?"

"Let me go," Elma spat, straining uselessly against the monster pinning her down. This was a nightmare. This woman had to be dealt with. Hephryx. I cannot miss him, Elma thought frantically. This could be the only window she would ever get to meet him again. She needed to gather every piece of info he would share regarding her assassination. She needed backup. Where was Jorm when she was actually needed?

"Do you surrender?" Mira asked calmly, her thumb pressing harder. Elma stopped fighting and closed her eyes. There had to be an alternative she could execute. Maybe there was another lever she could pull besides the Mutual Negation one. Anything. A new trick. Underground. That noise. She could still hear the deep thrumming of the ley veins vibrating beneath the soil. She opened her green eyes. Sable had used them to teleport her. Come on, she called them.

She felt the rhythm of the green veins shift in answer to her call. They threaded unimaginably deep beneath the earth, stretching farther than her senses could fully grasp, just as they had when she stood before the Shepherd within the Void. Come on, she called again. The pulse grew stronger. She felt the vast currents begin converging toward her, drawn inexorably to her presence. A sharp, triumphant smile spread across her face as she looked up at the blindfolded maid. Mira tilted her head in confusion.

The emerald veins met Elma's emerald lattice. Before Mira could react, Elma vanished in a blinding flash of green light. Mira stood up, her flawless posture finally broken as she looked in utter confusion to her left, then her right.

"What?" Elma reappeared in the center of the library, collapsing to the floor and gasping for air.

"When did you show up?" Arem asked, looking up from his reading table with a mild, irritated frown. Ignoring the librarian, Elma immediately wove a sphere of water, inducing micro currents to remove the mud and dirt patches from her silken dress. She followed it rapidly with a burst of warm, circulating air currents until the fabric and her hair were completely dry. It wasn't perfect, but it was presentable enough. Elma straightened her dress her mind still stuck on Mira. The maid couldn't teleport long distances.

Mira was strictly limited by the reach and radius of her Field. That gave Elma a head start. Elma bolted from the library, sprinting down the corridors toward Valerius's study before that deranged maid could track her down. She rounded the final corner, only to slide to a sudden halt. Silk was standing in the corridor, facing away from Elma. Her blade was fully drawn. Beside her, Lucien was frantically yelling something, waving his hands in a panic. Silk was preparing to kill.

Elma hurried forward, stepping up beside the silver-clad guard to face the threat. Standing before them, dressed in a long, black feather coat, was their creator. He wore a fake, wide grin, his hands raised in a mocking gesture of surrender. Elma's breathing instantly grew heavy. It wasn't possible. He wasn't a Resonant, was he? Then why could Elma's senses detect five different, overlapping Fields swirling around his body?

"D-68, I didn't think you'd grown to hate me this much," Hephryx sighed, his fake smile remaining perfectly in place.

"But unless you are somehow currently possessing divine protection..." His voice suddenly dropped, stripping away all the theatrical warmth.

"... I would advise you to lower that weapon."