Chương 186: AF Chapter 185 – Rest, Recovery, and Renewal on the Beach

"I remember grinding away in combat, against the like of olthoi, eaters, undead, an' lugians," mused The Mick over the fire of Kris' Floating Forge between us.

"I'd be killing sclavi an' moarsmen all day on their temple island, an' I'd bring down burning everything spawning in the Frozen Valley t' the north.

"Weren't nothing like this kind of fighting. I ain't had this kind of ache in me body an' soul ever."

"Here in youngster-ville, we call that going soft, old man," Princess Kristie instantly piped up, completely unapologetic, and even sounding much too chipper for the situation.

"Aye, but yer a Hag, Ye'd call diamonds soft when ye chip an' shatter 'em!" he immediately bantered back.

"That's true!" she agreed cheerfully.

"How about you, faithful bondmage mine?"

"You're lying through your teeth." Thumbs and forefingers in circles, I was in a Disk -chair and slowly drawing in power, pure Aurora stuff, no Reserve cycling.

"You basically threw yourself into a torture pit six times in a row and you're covering it with that Rantha grin. Then I saw you rip twenty points of Constitution down so you could refill your Matrix for me once the fighting stopped. You're in no shape for another fight right now, and the Mick could tank better than you can." The Mick looked at his Warlord, who just shrugged.

"She's got a link to me you don't have, Lord Mick. You didn't miss anything."

"I'd say you being a cheerful iron-hard Hag were all an act… except ye had the stones to get chopped up all those times, grin right through it, and then go do it again." He paused thoughtfully.

"So, ye could still feel all that shite done to you…"

"Oh, yes, I could feel everything. When your Kirlian Aura gets that fucked up, it does not feel good. And getting force-healed and regenerating repeatedly that much in such a short period of time feels like ants eating you on the inside."

"You DID notice she put down twenty pounds of reedshark steaks, right?" I asked him.

"That were only twenty pounds? Ye had all the lugians envious o' yer hollow leg!" the Mick rejoined, hefting a big tankard of lugian ale, a big hunk of their hearty bread in his other hand.

"She ate another twenty pounds of stuff touring the troops and taking something every time it was offered to her. She also drank over a gallon of stuff, and hasn't even had to take a piss yet," I informed him.

"That much healing and regenerating is not polite to a body, especially when you've gone negative that much..."

"Perhaps I'll be finding that out one day meself," the Mick just nodded, taking a mouthful of the bread and washing it down. I reached out, flicked a couple of the remaining loaves off a neighboring wagon, and held them out for Kris. She eyed me reprovingly for daring to question her stoic demeanor, then snatched them both out of my hands flicker-quick and proceeded to chow them down with a fury and vigor which would have shamed a starving moarsman. The Mick just watched her with an upraised eyebrow.

"You need to put on more weight," I chided her.

"Can't," she replied happily, swallowing the last of the second loaf in less than a minute with a flourish of her black nails.

"Rantha genes. We get to absolutely gorgeous and don't advance an inch past it. Eating more just makes us horny, or we go looking for a fight, or go run thirty miles for the hell of it."

"Oh, right. The power of nymphs and sirines in the family tree." I just rolled my eyes. Kris looked like she'd been caught at something.

"Hey, how'd you know about that?" she demanded, as the Mick looked intrigued.

"Seriously? Your Charisma to AC and Saves are called Nature's Blessing and Blessing of the Waters respectively, which are exactly what they are called for both of those races?" She scowled at me, and then her eyes wandered over to the wagon. She glanced right, left, then bounded over, scooped up half a ham and a full hand-keg of booze, then zipped on back as if she was happy about being sneaky, and not the Warlord of the place who could requisition anything she wanted from stores.

"Nymphs are actually a thing?" the Mick asked alertly.

"And sirens aren't just a sailor's tale?" he followed up equally quickly.

"They exist in worlds with stronger Fey presences. Ispar probably doesn't have enough natural magic in most places to sustain them, and so we don't get things much stronger than Wisps. Nymphs are Nature's Beauties, so beautiful that to see them unclothed will either kill a mortal or blind them. Sirines are beauties of the sea, and rivals of the nereids, who are Water's Beauties. That latter cannot be harmed by any being with a sexual interest in them, and will kill you with the pleasure of their kiss.

Sirines, not quite so deadly," I told him calmly, rather dousing some of his wilder imaginings of them. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. He looked Kris over once in appraisal, and she just gave him A Smile. His eyebrows went right for his hairline, and he looked away, coughing to cover himself.

"Something in me eye. An' me throat. An' don't ye say a word while ye're smiling like that. I can feel the Rose about ye." Kris almost did say something, then let the Night Rose drop and went from being utterly bewitching to just damn pleasant to look at.

"How do Fey beauties get into a Hag Bloodline, of all things?" he had to ask, glancing carefully at her out of the corner of his eye before sighing and turning back to face us with a shameless smile on his face.

"Primogenitor probably ate them for one reason or another?" I hazarded, and Kris just shrugged.

"Passed on through the Silver Queen, probably during rejection of her Hag Curse. Just one more way to tweak the Curse, I imagine. You didn't look quite so fetching before your time, Kris, right?"

"No," Princess Kristie admitted easily.

"I looked quite square-faced, with a particularly flat jaw, muddy brown eyes, and protruding ears, actually." She bent her just-barely pointed ears out a good inch for emphasis, and rode her expressive lips down to artificially widen her heart-point jawline.

"Generally speaking, Ranthas don't look like anything they did before their Curse tries to take them, just like true Hags don't look like the girls they were born as when it's time for their Curse to rise up and take them. Mom said I wasn't all that far off from how she once looked, actually, and neither of my sisters were beauties growing up. Rather ferociously plain, really."

"Hags look like horrible harridans based on the sins they committed in their previous life, and Ranthas look like sexy murder witches," I supplied to the Mick helpfully. Kris beamed, and pointed at me.

"She knows!" she stage-whispered to the Mick. He nodded sagely.

"Aye, so she does. I shall have t' be satisfied with being at the peak o' human physical ability an' whatnot, I guess." He gave us his own beaming white smile, assuring us that he kept his partners in bed totally satisfied, too.

"Should've asked Oswald if those things still existed, and worked," I voiced upon reflection about the things responsible for that. The Mick considered that point about the Temples, then shrugged.

"If I make it t' Valence V's, I'll be able to pop over there and see. Sure'n the younger generation could use the ability t' remake themselves. What do you think the odds are? Kris answered that one.

"You described the place as a Temple Dungeon, which using this big stony head gained you entrance to after offering the right herb, right?" News to me.

"Oh, it was a Dungeon. Huh."

"Why that look... oh." He harrumphed.

"Why do I suddenly have the feeling all them layers came out inside or next t' that damn Guardian…"

"And it exploded, or the Dungeon collapsed," Kris nodded.

"After all, they just got done watching people go to extreme perfection to specialize. Having to make do with what you were born with gives them so much more variety to look at."

"Aren't Ranthas pretty skewed on that scale?" I had to ask.

"Even given how much you can raise your Stat line."

"Yeah, if we were point buy design, we'd be pretty up there," she agreed shamelessly.

"But that's the joy of Hagdom. All our physicals get set to Rantha defaults regardless of what we were, so we only have to worry about the mental side when we're younger."

"Cheats!" I pointed at her, looking to the Mick.

"She gets to cheat!"

"Where be I just takin' advantage o' two crazy systems o' magic t' get Stats and fun stuff from both. A poor normal fool am I," he bemoaned in flagrant self-pity.

"It still takes a ridiculous amount of Karma to raise this damn Racial Class!" Kris sniffed petulantly.

"As opposed to normal folks who can't get those kind of Stats and innate powers at all without jumping through a LOT more unhealthy hoops?" I promptly shot her down archly.

"Aye, no matter how much Karma ye gain, ye've still got something t' do with it," the Mick agreed.

"Being able t' just BUY all my magical power-ups instead of scrambling after gear an' loot drops an' beggin' an' tradin' and questin'…" He rolled his dark eyes theatrically.

"Technically, you always had a place to put the extra Karma, too. The Isparian system just wouldn't allow it," Kris pointed out.

"I think once you break Twenty, you're going to get some pleasant surprises on both sides of the equation."

"Aye, hopin' t' see that, pop me a few dozen Levels an' go look some undead shites who think they are all that in the eye..."

"Just don't do it alone," Kris warned him.

"Melees do it best in a right mob," he agreed lazily, nodding at that.

"Speaking o' mobs, anything special on the agenda fer the morrow?"

"Nothing we didn't already plan for," Kris answered after a pause to truly consider the question.

"It helped that it was a prime grinding location in the past, and you paramounts knew the area so well. It will be a right pain to kill everything in the correct order, but we should be able to get it done, even if there's another thousand Shaded spread throughout the area to stop us. If they aren't in a mob, they don't have a chance against a proper army doing things the right way."

"There be something t' say about the soldier way versus the proper adventurer way," the Mick acknowledged with a pained expression.

"Oh, but me ancestors would turn in their graves t' hear their favored son spoutin' such heresies!"

"To be fair, your ancestors' idea of big picture thinking is the frame is too large and the painting needs to be cut out of it when they are raiding so they can carry it home as loot more easily," I reminded him. He guffawed at me, and Kris shook her head.

"Aye, an' ye've so the right o' it. We'll make an honorary scofflaw o' ye yet, fair Lady Magos!"

"I can't wait for the moment, Lord Mick," I answered dryly, which only made him laugh the more at the completely apparent lie.