I had just enough mana after all the digging and soil-shifting to smooth out a campsite for us once we all had exited the ruins. The gummy worms were a hit for my girls, and I knew that the next treat I had in store for them would go over well when I broke out the peach rings.
I did make sure that the girls were careful not to get anything stuck in their teeth, since I had no idea how dental care worked in this world. A few quick words to Jane had the mouse kin girl checking her teeth carefully, while I ‘assisted’ the other three in ensuring their teeth and mouths were clean before bed.
Which is how I ended up with Kassandra wrapped entirely around me, rather than her normal sprawl of coils around the group as a whole. Shayla and Rieka each cuddled a side, while Jane slept curled up against my head for warmth like usual. It was a little stifling, but my girls were just too cute, so I couldn’t really find it in myself to complain about their closeness.
Plus, the little squeaky snores from Jane were just too adorable.
Once I managed to extract myself from my girls and get the fire going, the four of them piled sleepily out of the tent to enjoy a warm breakfast to get going. I’d made sure to brew up Kassandra’s favorite morning tea so my cuddly little dwarf lamia could wake up how she liked, which got me a lingering kiss and a snuggle as I portioned out the scrambled eggs and sausages I’d cooked in the cast iron pan for everyone.
“Thank you, Liam,” Kassandra purred as she leaned tiredly into my side, blinking through the steam rising from the tin mug.
The morning air so close to the river was cool, but thankfully it wasn’t outright cold at the moment, so Kassandra was just cuddly rather than wrapping me intently to steal all the body heat.
I need to see what the range of the seasons is like here, I thought to myself, pausing to gently finger-comb through Kassandra’s fluffy tresses, getting a happy groan from the short redhead. There might be something I can bring from back home that will help keep Kass warmer through their winters. I want my girls to be as happy as can be. That ten-pound weight limit to Dimensional Pocket is really constraining.
I got more murmurs of thanks and good-morning kisses from my lovers. Even my shy moth girl gave me a brief kiss while her antennae cupped my face softly, though I could feel the heat rising off her face from the blush.
Eating quickly, I passed Kassandra off to Rieka for snuggle-duty while the cold-blooded lamia slowly powered on in the sun and warmth of the campfire. That done, I got the tent and bedding packed up. We didn’t want to leave it outside the ruins, just in case someone else happened by, and we did have a few days to inspect these ruins as well, so might end up camping inside if they went as deep into the plains as the ones under the mountains had.
When everyone was done and ready to go, I used Manipulate Element to have the soil consume the ashes of the fire and snuff it out, before leading the way back into the ruins.
Another quick scramble through the low tunnel had everyone inside before I used the power again to seal us in.
“So, what is the plan then?” I asked Rieka as the girls got themselves organized.
Shayla had conjured another of her spheres of light and stuck it to the ceiling above us, brilliantly illuminating the first ‘study’ room that we had found. She was now working on sending more into the hallway to illuminate ahead of us.
Kassandra and Jane had their notebooks out and were carefully documenting what they saw, with Jane writing while Kassandra roughly sketched the dimensions of the room out.
My princess, however, was standing right beside me looking thoughtful as she glanced about the room.
“If it wasn’t for the potentially unstable ceiling in here, I would have had us camp inside the ruins last night,” the wolfish princess muttered, her tail working back and forth slowly. “If the ceiling were to fall in, would your magic be enough to shield us?”
Rieka’s question was asked in a low tone, and I considered her words. It was immediately obvious that she was keeping her voice low to not panic the others, so I responded in kind.
“I think that I would be able to at least keep us safe, but we need to stick close together. I’ve got a lot of practice with it, but I’m not fast. What’d likely happen is that I’d have to use Shape-Shifting to block the initial rockfall, and then burrow out with Manipulate Element.”
“And you can get through all this stone? Wait, what am I doing asking that. I know you can. I watched you mold your way through solid rock before.” Rieka punctuated her statement with a gentle smack to her face with one hand while her ears flopped back in self-annoyance.
Pulling the hand away from her face, I lightly pressed a kiss to my princess’ forehead. This sent a faint blush racing over Rieka’s features, so I kissed both flushed cheeks lightly, alternating until Rieka began to laugh and smacked me on the chest instead.
“Stop it, Liam!” she protested.
“Only if you stop blaming yourself for forgetting something,” I insisted. “No beating up my princess just because you are annoyed.”
“Fine, I won’t beat your princess up,” Rieka said, doing her best to remain annoyed, but notably failing.
“Good, because I’m obligated as her protector to punish anyone who does attack her, no matter who they are or who might be watching.” The last part I said in a husky tone, leaning closer to lock eyes with Rieka while cupping her cheeks in both my large hands.
The blush that had been fading from Rieka’s cheeks flared abruptly once more, but she nodded in understanding, biting her lower lip shyly.
“Good girl,” I murmured before wrapping my arms around Rieka and pulling her into a hug that squished the blonde to my chest. The simple statement got Rieka’s tail whipping back and forth furiously while she snuggled into me, hands gently gripping the front of my shirt for several seconds.
The other girls didn’t say anything, just letting me and Rieka have our moment while we kept our eyes open. After a minute or two of the hugs, I released Rieka and repeated my question.
“So, what's the plan then?”
“You’ll lead the way, Liam,” Rieka said, far more confidently this time. “We will follow about ten feet back. I want to scout out this floor first to ensure we know the layout. The map we followed directed us here, but we don’t know that this is the ‘Ice Field Research Facility’ after all. Confirming the facility is our priority.”
“Okay,” I said with a nod, glancing at the other three to check on them, getting nods from them as well.
“Shayla, how much do those lights cost you? If we can keep the area illuminated for a while, then it’ll make the search easier to do.” Rieka asked, turning her attention to the moth-winged woman.
Shayla fiddled with her spell rod, depressing the stud to open the long latch on the side so she could check the charged coins inside.
“About an iron coin worth each. I’ve got enough of them on hand to put up quite a few, but it’ll limit how much I can do in a fight. By the way, Liam?” I glanced towards Shayla to find my winged artist blushing furiously. “That lens you gave me, it… well, it melted the other day. I was experimenting with it and apparently the material it was constructed of wasn’t intended to handle that kind of heat.”
“Oh, that’s my fault,” I waved off her apology. “I should have known that there would be some bleed-off heat when you use it to focus light like that. It was just something I wanted to show you to see if it would help. I’ll see if I can find something better when I go back. A high-quality lens would need to handle the heat better, so I just need to source one of those.”
Shayla relaxed with a sigh at that assurance, her antennae perking back up from their previous slump.
“If it limits your fighting ability too much, can you spread out the lights? We aren’t trying to block out shadow creatures this time, just wanting to make sure we don’t have something sneak up on us.”
“There is the option of using shifted eyes too. Let me know if you want to change your loaned shift, okay?” I interjected. All four of my girls gave an uncomfortable shiver but nodded in acknowledgement.
While they had all tried the boosted senses to one level or another the previous day, it had apparently creeped all of them out to have their eyesight affected like that.
What does that say about me? I thought while flexing Shape-Shifting and allowing the power to alter my eyesight. The colors washed out of the world slightly as I took on the adaptations of an owl’s eyes. Without focusing on the specifics, I knew the power would take care of the mechanics. This doesn’t bother me and I don’t even hesitate to trust in the power to do the right thing.
Studying the room and the hall, I rolled my head on my neck before I banished my clothes into my Dimensional Pocket. Jane squeaked in surprise and there was a whirl of movement to one side as she turned away, but I still felt the weight of four sets of eyes, so I knew the little mouse kin was watching as I stripped nude. Ignoring it with the ease of practice, I flexed Shape-Shifting further than I had before.
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Both my arms grew longer, doubling in length and adding several more joints and dense, chitinous armor until both had finished transforming into a pair of scorpion-tails with massive, barbed blades on the end. Coiling them close to my side and then stretching upwards, I had almost ten feet of reach on each side.
Focusing on the next step, I felt my lower body elongate and consume the larger portion of my six hundred pounds of mass available. Within a handful of seconds, my lower half was that of a lithe hunting cat, though rather than furred all over, hard plates guarded the joints and shoulders as my lower half shifted into that of a crag-hunter, like the one we’d fought so many months ago.
I’d experimented with this one a few times at home, so when my genitals vanished during the shift, I didn’t panic as I knew they were relocating, not waving farewell.
That’d been a weird moment when I was back home, I thought while waiting for the shift to settle into place. While it only took a second or two to do, it felt like half a minute as my body twisted and bent.
When the shift finally settled into place, I paced side to side for a moment, flexing my forepaws against the stone to express the large claws and let my balance resettle.
The shift had also adjusted my height, bringing me down closer to Rieka’s level, so Shayla actually was the tallest of our group now. The girls were muttering to each other at the moment in wonder, but I was still focusing on acclimating to the form.
A thought caused tiny spines like a spider had on their feet to express from the pads of my paws, which gave me a great deal more grip on the stone suddenly. Another push of the power shifted my left arm away from the coiled tail into a broad plate of chitin claw to act as a shield instead of a weapon for now. It would be easy enough to call the tail back if I needed to.
Lastly, I used every ounce of remaining mass to pack on more muscle across my whole body, which would allow me to fight without losing my balance easily. That had been the entire point of assuming the quadrupedal form.
Kassandra’s exuberant greetings had been a fixture ever since I’d started being summoned by the girls, and so I had learned how to best handle them without being knocked over. But having two legs limited how I could brace, hence why I’d gone with four for now.
So if anything big and nasty tries to charge me again, I can meet and block that charge a lot better to keep it away from my girls, I thought grimly before turning my attention back to my charges.
All four girls were staring at me in wonder. Rieka’s eyes darted all over my body, though she lingered on my bare chest. Kassandra looked like she wanted to pounce on me right now, the light in her eyes shining that she definitely wanted to see if she could ride me. Shayla looked like she was committing my bizarre war-form to memory so she could draw it.
But Jane, being closest to the ground, was blushing furiously while she looked away from my hindquarters.
I guess she got a front-row seat to what happened to my twig and berries, I thought with a smirk, shaking my head. I really have no modesty anymore, do I?
To test that thought, I imagined how I would have reacted if it had been Queen Gemma who witnessed it, or even Lady Valda. The cringe I felt in my chest confirmed that I was not, in fact, that shameless yet. Thankfully.
Good to know. Was worried for a second there.
“All right, ladies,” I said to draw their attention back to the task at hand. “Let’s get to scouting around. Make sure to keep an eye up towards the ceiling as well as on the walls that we pass by, never know if something might try to hide in a shadow.”
“You just be safe, okay?” Rieka said, tearing her eyes away from my bare chest and blinking up at me, concern suddenly showing in those icy orbs.
“You and the other’s safety comes first, princess. My job is to guard your bodies.” I gave her a wink and a waggle of my eyebrows, which made the blonde snort before she smacked me on one feline ass-cheek.
“Get going, you great flirt. We can’t stand around all day while Kassandra drools.”
“Not drooling!” protested the dwarf lamia, though I did note she checked her lip to be entirely sure.
<><><>
The halls of the large manor were just as dark and quiet as I had remembered from the previous night, until Shayla started sticking her light orbs on every surface. It took a bit to explain to her that I didn’t need them in front of me, as it would ruin my night vision, but she was quick to understand and adjust.
Moving ahead of the girls like I was, I continually swept the hallway with my eyes and ears, holding my shield-claw ready to block my chest or intercept something sent towards them if there was an attack launched from the darkness. The cool of the underground made my skin prickle, and I adjusted the mass allotment to give myself a short, dense coat of fur over my chest to keep that chill at bay. It also would give me a target for the Shape-Shifting (Elemental Alignment) if I needed to harden it into armor.
The dark halls remained silent and unmoving. Dirt and dust accumulated thick on the floor showed no signs of passage, and the ruins of a past life lay scattered around on the floors.
Nothing had been spared the march of time, though the deeper into the building we went, the more intact pieces we found. Though intact was a bit generous of a way to describe the shattered wood, twisted metal, and scarred stone that had once been chairs, tables, statues, and all the other pieces and decorations of a life.
“The more I’m seeing of this, the more it feels like an ancestral manor house,” Kassandra murmured from behind me as we checked another room to find what looked like the ancient remains of a bed slowly dry-rotting away in the darkness. Only the sheer thickness of the wood allowed anything to remain, and from a glance, I knew it would fall to dust if I were to touch it.
“It does feel that way. All these rooms along the first floor, mostly meeting or study halls. It reminds me of Rue House back on campus,” Jane replied and I glanced back to check on the girls.
They all stuck close to the center of the long hallway we’d been following. Two would remain in the hall to keep watch while we checked each room, while two went with me and covered me from the door. Right now it was Kassandra and Jane on the door, while Rieka and Shayla covered the hallway.
“So a school building?” Kassandra asked the mouse kin and Jane nodded.
“It’s the only reason I can think of as to why we keep finding bedrooms on the first floor. Bedrooms and lecture or study halls. Can you imagine a mansion that doesn’t have a ballroom or entertaining spaces? We haven’t found anything like that?” Jane replied, her tail flicking through the air nervously above her head.
“Possible, but one of those ‘study halls’ we found might have been a ballroom,” I countered, checking the room one last time for anything that might have been hidden out of sight, like papers that might have survived the march of time.
“Possible, but then we’d have found kitchens,” Kassandra countered, obviously seeing Jane’s idea as valid. I couldn’t refute that and just nodded to my dwarf lamia before gesturing them back out into the hallway.
As we continued along the hall, the remains that we found started taking on a nicer appearance. Precious metals started appearing amongst the rusted remains of the iron fixtures, while ancient and cracked gold leaf clung to some of the walls in faded mosaics and tattered motifs.
Ahead, the hall turned sharply to the right, but there were several larger piles of ancient and tarnished metal leaning against the wall. We had been wary of approaching them initially, until Rieka correctly identified them as suits of armor that had collapsed at some point in the past, now being nothing more than rusty steel sitting in a pile.
So we moved past them, ignoring the ancient shards of metal on their low pedestals since there was no threat there.
The hall continued another thirty feet down before opening into another large hallway like we had come in through. This one was the room in the best condition of the rest of the building, with a few tables actually still standing on all four legs and fixtures still hanging on to the stone walls by a handful of iron nails.
I half expected Jane to go racing into the room, intent on inspecting everything that she could get her little hands on. But as I led the way into the room, there was not a peep from the girls behind me, so I glanced back to check on them.
Kassandra and Rieka were at the front of the group, with Shayla right behind them, all three focused forward. I caught sight of the tip of Jane’s tail poking above Kassandra’s head, twitching slowly.
“Jane?” I called over the girls heads, glancing back to scan the room to ensure there were no threats present that I had missed.
“Yeah? Sorry, there was just something odd…” Jane bounded around the other girls, scampering up to my hindquarters and waiting there.
I firmly stuffed down the urge to wonder why she paused in that particular spot, given her earlier embarrassment. When I had confirmed there were no threats in the room, I focused back on the little mouse girl.
“What was odd, Jane? I was just surprised to not have you beating on my back to check out the room is all.” I gestured to the intact desks and Jane immediately perked up, but she then hesitated and glanced back over her shoulder towards the other girls.
No, towards the armor? I thought, stretching on my paws to surge higher and look past the girls.
“Those suits of armor, they felt odd to me,” Jane muttered, glancing back up at me with her large sparkling eyes. “We’ve seen statues, but no suits of armor in here. Also, I haven’t seen a single set of stairs yet, going up or down.”
I nodded slowly once, giving the thought a moment to percolate in my head. It was possible that the stairs to the upper levels had been part of the building that collapsed, but having them only be at one of the wings was ridiculous. Also, I hadn’t sensed anything to clue me into the presence of stairs there.
“Let’s check the room to make sure everything is safe, then we can double back, okay?”
Jane nodded quickly and scampered to the back of the group, her tail bouncing happily.
A quick scan of the room confirmed that, while the desks were intact, there were no papers or documents in the room either, so we all crowded back into the hall to return to the ruined pieces of armor.
As soon as we got back to the section of wall, Jane immediately started poking the wall while the other girls stood watch a short way’s back. I moved to stand behind her, keeping an eye out as Jane tucked a finger into a crack between blocks and wiggled it.
“I know I felt a breeze here,” Jane muttered, her puffy tail flicking and smacking me in the face lightly. The mouse kin woman didn’t even notice it, she was so focused on her digging at the wall.
While Jane fiddled with the bricks, I sent a pulse of Manipulate Element through the stone, sensing for anything hidden from sight.
The energy pulse surged out, and then abruptly rebounded from the wall, as if the ripple of energy had bounded off of an iron bar.
“Got it!” Jane crowed happily, kneeling in front of the door and tugging at a piece of molding in the base of the statue that protruded with a click. But before the smaller mouse kin woman could react, a slot in the wall between the bricks hissed and a curved blade lashed out in an arc that would have taken her in the neck from her squatting pose.
Faster than she could react, but not faster than I could.
My shield-claw slammed into place on Jane’s other side, and the ancient metal impacted the chitin with a sharp ping before shearing off to go flying into the wall with a loud clatter.
“What the—” Jane began to murmur, but it trailed off in a shriek of surprise as I used the claw to scoop her away from the wall, just in case something else happened. But the trap that she triggered just whirred quietly to a stop and the echoes of breaking metal faded away.
“Are you okay?” I asked Jane, looking down to where I had the small woman pinned to my chest with the large armored claw that was leaking blood from where the blade had impacted but not cut through my shifted hand.
Jane didn’t respond verbally, she didn’t even look up at me. Instead, she was looking between the blood oozing from my injury, and the broken, curved steel blade that would have taken her head off in a single stroke.
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