Montmorency turned bright red. Stare at her chest, she told herself. Don't focus on the moustache. Or where on earth she could have been keeping the moustache. She could feel a quite un-ladylike flush coming on. Oh, Kirche's exposed body was unattractive and female, but that face! That moustache! "You're not fooling anyone!" she blurted out. "Take that off! And put some clothes on!"
I still find this quite amusing.
"An insult is just a fart with words," Kirche said gnomically.
Monmon twitched her wand and muttered something, and dumped a ball of cold water on the taller girl's head. With a melodramatic scream Kirche rolled off her lounger and fell into the pool, water moving with suspicious force and momentum to somehow exactly drench the blonde.
Quite firmly, Tabitha turned tail and left the patio to degenerate into an all-out splash fight.
That is an... interesting phrase. I have probably heard it in the past, but I can't say I recall if so.
The last line about the patio didn't quite read correctly to me the first time I went through this. Maybe instead of "tail and left the patio to" use "tail, leaving the patio to"?
"I don't see much of my sisters," Guiche admitted. "One's married off, and Marie is just six. She's spoiled rotted because she came as quite a surprise. How many sisters do you have?"
Danny looked awkward. "That's a complicated question," he said moodily. "I have no idea how many bastards Dad has."
Heh. I suspect the complications are not entirely in the number of bastards.
"I suppose we could declare Tabitha and her dragon to be honorary boys for our boys' night out," Guiche decided. "After all, true manliness lives in the soul. The soul of a man lets you do things like slay demons, romance princesses and punch dragons. That is the ultimate challenge and right of men and…"
Sylphid leaned in and harrumphed. Her breath smelt of blood and her teeth just coincidentally happened to catch the light in a sinister manner.
Hah, that was my first thought as soon as the words punch dragons came out of his mouth.
"… when I talk about punching dragons, of course present company is excluded," Guiche added hastily, waving his hands in front of him. "As you are a beautiful and elegant creature, I would no more fight you than I would damage a delicate wild blossom. May I complement you on… uh, the fine sheen of your scales which glisten like the depths of the ocean and the summer sky and the sharpness of your very prominent teeth which are surely… uh, the white of the innocence of your beautiful and clean draconic and not at all evil soul."
clean draconic ; clean, draconic ; or clean and draconic?
"Father slayed the Queen of the Succubae," Danny said, nodding. He paused. "I mean, she must have come back to life again through some kind of demonic power, but he said he smote her with his mighty weapon so there must have been no way she could have survived that."
Ahh, children. You have to love the innocence right before it is dashed.
The dragon rolled to her feet enthusiastically at the mention of food. Her exhalation kicked up dust, which blew in Guiche's face.
"Why, certainly," he said, coughing. "We would not want such a beautiful creature to suffer and wither away. We will track down the bears."
...
His speech was interrupted as Tabitha took off. The wingbeats of the dragon threw up dust from the dry earth, and both Danny and Guiche were reduced to spluttering.
I kind of got the feeling they were all going together and Guiche was trying to get Sylphid to eat bears rather than humanoids, but apparently not-- either that or his plan just didn't work.
"Oh!" Irukuwa banked into a turn. "He is quite handsome by human standards. And he says that I'm pretty."
Hmm... I forgot about Sylphid having another name. Then again, it has been awhile.
"No! No, that's... that's ridiculous. Why would I marry him? Although I wouldn't mean sampling the goods, if you know what I mean."
mind sampling
Tabitha gave her dragon the blank look of someone whose education had entirely focussed on the ways to kill a man and who had got very good at tuning out Kirche.
focused
"But I'm sure we will have no problems against a dumb animal," Guiche said, before his brow crinkled. "I mean, it's not like there'll be two insane Gallian mages who are kidnapping humans so they can remove their brains and use them to make human-animal hybrids."
"Wait, what?" Danny wiped his brow off with his sleeve, and stared wide-eyed at Guiche. "They did what?"
The little random hero quests we never actually see are probably one of the best parts about these interludes.
"Yeah! We're going to cut your head off! And put it on a pike! And cut off all your limbs, drive a stake through your heart, chop your organs into mincemeat, cover them in garlic, silver and witchbane, set fire to them, and then scatter the ashes," Danny contributed. Unfortunately, Guiche was taking up all of the pool of light and left no space for him.
He could possibly use a bit of advice on proper heroing exclamations.
"'Olding moi back! Exactly! But ze bears are strong! Stronger zan men! Stronger zan elves! And… well, 'ave you ever tried to stitch an 'uman 'ead to a dragon?" There was genuine curiosity in his voice.
"No."
"Eet does not work. Trust moi on zis."
The fact that he survived either trying that or even watching it tried is fairly impressive.
"All ze treasure from ze orcs eez yours," Tabitha said. "Now can you be quiet? I am trying to read."
Irukuwa smiled a draconic smile. Now, this was the unexpected advantage of taking this position. Her mistress didn't care at all about treasure, which meant she was somehow managing to build up a nest egg despite being a self-employed freelancer straight out of education. Her parents hadn't exactly been happy with the way that she was familiaring for a hero, but the money was keeping them quiet for now even if her father grumbled. They didn't believe her when she pointed out that Tabitha was a killer who did bloody wetworks jobs for the Gallian throne which ended with entire families dead and thus could hardly be described as Good.
No, no. I certainly wouldn't qualify this Tabitha as Good.
Also, that was quite sneaky.
There wasn't a coherent response from the mad mage – merely babbling curse-words in Gallian. A red light gleamed in his eyes and he frothed at the mouth. All rationality gone, he lunged for Danny, who leapt backwards. The building lurched again. The bear-man slammed into a wall, while Danny pin—heeled at the edge of a hole in the crumbling floor.
pin-heeled? Or were you aiming for starting one word and switching to another?
"Oh yeah." Kirche rubbed the back of her neck. "Sorry. Forgot that you haven't been around them and their neverending sexual tension for literally years."
never-ending? Probably works either way
"It's not that he's bad! It's just… he mostly just makes barriers and sends his bronze ladies to go stab things. While like… you burn entire formations and…" Danny blanched. "Tabitha is scary," he said in a low voice, after looking around to make sure she wasn't anywhere nearby.
"Really?" Kirche asked, a frown on her face. "She's just not very talkative. I wouldn't call her scary. She's always very friendly and a good listener."
One can be friendly and a good listener and scary. In fact, the ones who are scary despite being friendly and a good listener are probably the worst kind of scary.
"… Kirche. She didn't pay any attention to the fact she was covered in blood."
Plus, you know, slaughtered a thousand orcs (semi) single handedly without blinking.
Overall, lots of fun as usual.
