“Enough of the bowing,” Bluebell says, waving the Laftalans up. “I appreciate the respect, but this isn’t the time or place.”
As Agora and the others stand, the Matriarch’s gaze shifts from concerned to downright furious, her earlier wariness erased entirely.
“You dare to show yourself before me after what you did?”
The Laftalan’s around the room flinch at the tone the Matriarch holds, each seemingly conflicted.
“What I did?” Bluebell asks, seemingly amused. “Pray tell, what might that be?”
“You could have warned me. Could have warned us,” she seethes, indicating me and her attendants.
“I did,” Bluebell says, her tone light.
“Not enough!” the Matriarch snaps, abruptly standing to her feet and rounding fully on Bluebell.
“Not enough?” Bluebell asks tersly. “Did I not tell you to beware of the black banners? Did I not warn you of the fires that would follow? Did I not say to run east with all you hold dear?”
“You did not tell us that armies would come to erase my people. You did not mention that they would purposefully seek to eradicate us all. And worse, you did nothing!”
Bluebell’s smile remains, but her gaze turns to steel. For several long seconds, she simply stares at the Matriarch. Then, she speaks, and her voice is filled with power, ancient and vast as the Weave itself, as she lays down the law of the world.
“Would you have preferred I tell you every future I see?” she asks. “Or perhaps I should have unraveled causality itself?”
As she speaks, the room shifts. The office suddenly feels far too small.
Bluebell’s nine tails unfurl behind her, then keep unfurling. Some instinctual part of me knows they aren’t actually growing, but at the same time, that’s the only way I can describe it.
White fur fills the edges of my vision. Her tails drift through the room in slow, impossible motions, brushing against bookshelves, walls, and windows... then through them. Her presence fills the space, and the world itself seems to bend and warp to her mere existence.
“Should I have invited the Great Father’s attention upon us?” she continues, her voice low and terrible. “So that he himself might smite us all, and save us from living through the tragedy?”
The Matriarch’s ears wilt beneath Bluebell’s glare, her tail curling tightly around one leg. Even so, she refuses to look away.
After a few seconds, Bluebell continues.
“Do not presume to lecture me in your grief, child. They were my kin, too,” she finishes, her tone low and bitter.
For a moment, the Matriarch actually seems like nothing more than a little girl before Bluebell as she looks back up at her.
“Then why didn’t you come?” Emsala asks.
The question comes out broken and hurt, and I realize something in that moment. Something I should have already expected.
She suffered the same fate I did all those years ago. She, too, watched as those she loved were murdered, and had to live with the memory.
But the question she asked lingers in my mind, slowly consuming all of my thoughts.
Why didn’t she come to save us? Could she have?
I refuse to believe someone as powerful as she clearly is couldn’t have done... something.
Would my family have survived—
Bluebell interrupts my thoughts, one of her many tails slowly curling around my thigh and giving it a gentle squeeze. I try to follow where it comes from, but it’s impossible. Even so, I look up and find her watching me.
When she shifts her gaze back to the matriarch, the pressure in the room gradually eases.
Bluebell's tails recede from the edges of my vision, and the office once again feels like an office rather than something far too small to contain her.
“Who do you think held back the Emperor and his generals, Emsala?”
Her voice is quiet, but heavy with meaning.
The Matriarch’s fraying composure finally shatters.
For a moment, she just stands there, trembling. Then her face twists, grief and anger and guilt crashing together all at once.
Bluebell is there before anyone can react.
One moment she stands across the room, and the next she’s just... there. Her arms wrap around Emsala, pulling the foxkin woman into a firm embrace before she can turn away.
Then her tails sweep around them both, enclosing them in a cocoon of white fur and prismatic light.
For a time, the room simply falls silent.
Enough time passes for my thoughts to settle. To piece together the implications of her words, and that she hadn’t been responsible for the loss of my family.
Beside me, Bella guides my hand to her lap and pulls me closer. At my other side, Cari leans against my shoulder without a word.
The simple gestures do more than any words could have to ease my mind. I’m sure that they both have just as many questions as I do, but they chose to comfort instead.
I don’t know how long it takes, but eventually the cocoon parts, revealing Bluebell and Emsala.
Her eyes are red, and her ears droop slightly, but she somehow managed to reclaim the regal bearing she’d carried into the room earlier.
Not quite as perfectly, but enough that I’m instantly wary again.
The room remains silent as Emsala returns to her seat, and Bluebell takes a few steps back so she’s no longer in the center of the room.
Then she speaks.
“I apologize for the interruption,” Bluebell says to the room, her smile somehow back in place. “Shall we get back to the topic at hand?”
Her gaze once more settles on the Matriarch, who nods.
“Very well then. I heard you were trying to run off with little Emi, here,” she says, gesturing to me.
I flush at the sudden use of my nickname, but decide it isn’t worth interrupting her over.
Emsala sighs. “You already know what I am here for, Matriarch.”
“Ooh? Matriarch, is it?” Bluebell hums. “I’ve not been called that in a long, long time. And I certainly didn't expect it from you, oh Grand Matriarch.”
She says it like a jab, but her eyes sparkle with mischief. Emsala clearly picks up on it, because she's smirks back at her.
“Would you preferred I address you as ‘Honored Mother’, as this lot would?” she asks, indicating Agora and the other Laftalans.
Bluebell’s grin widens.
“I don’t think they would like that very much.”
At her words, I glance toward Agora, only to find her eyes narrowed at Emsala with disapproval.
The room falls silent again after that, and remains so for several seconds before Headmaster Kophis finally groans.
“Bluebell, can you just explain to her why she can’t have Emilia and move on? I’ve enough of a headache already, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t drag this on.”
Headmistress Selenia swats him, but her wary gaze remain fixed on Bluebell.
“Wait, I was getting—” Bluebell complains, then freezes upon noticing Emsala’s curious gaze.
Then she folds her arms and pouts at him.
“You’re no fun, you know that?”
He just huffs in annoyance and waves a hand at her, as if to say ‘get on with it’.
She sighs dramatically before turning back to Emsala.
“Fine. Look, you can’t have Emilia because she’s not even a foxkin.”
Emsala just stares at her for a moment, then glances at me.
“Her tag clearly says foxkin...”
Bluebell rolls her eyes.
“Yes, yes, System this, System that. Emi, dear, please show your real race.”
Sensing that I may be saved from the nightmare of politics involved with being a simple foxkin, I quickly pull up my tag options with a thought.
Tag Options:Show/Hide LevelCurrent setting - Show Level
Tag Races:FoxkinFaefoxNoneCurrent setting - Foxkin
Tag Titles or Classes:System WakerDungeon PioneerThe FirstWeave WalkerWhat’s Death?FighterMageHealerUnknownCurrent Setting - Fighter
I hadn’t looked at it in a long time, but after looking through the options, I actually realize that I should ask about some of them.
Namely, why can I hide everything? If I hide my level, set my race to None, and Unknown for my Class option, I’ll just appear as:
UnknownLevel ?
Would it hide my level from people of a higher Tier than me? Also, why can I even do that?
After a heartbeat, I decide it’s probably because of my System Waker Title’s ability to hide my information from System notices.
Then I remember I was supposed to be doing something.
With a thought, I shift my tag to show:
Faefox FighterLevel 75
Emsala had been watching me since Bluebell asked me to change it, so she sees the exact moment it does. Her eyes widen briefly.
“How—” she starts, then pauses, turning her gaze to Bluebell.
Then back to me.
Her confusion fades then, replaced by tired resignation. For several long seconds, she doesn’t speak. She just watches me, her gaze full of something close to... longing.
When she finally breaks the silence, her voice is just barely above a whisper.
“I see,” she begins slowly. “I had hoped... no. It no longer matters.”
Something in my chest twists at the loss in her tone.
Despite everything she’d been here to do, it has become abundantly clear that she cares deeply for me. Or, at the very least, what I represent to her and the foxkin people as a whole.
I can understand her desire to shepherd our people, and I can even understand her methods, given how few of us there truly are.
She genuinely believed she had found one more of her people. One more survivor, one more door open for the future of our kind.
And now that hope is gone.
At the same time, all I feel is relief. Relief at the fact that I am free of the obligations she wished to push onto me. Free of the weight of an entire species.
Worse still, I know that—even if I were truly still foxkin—I would have resisted to the end. Even if it meant the extinction of my kin.
Maybe that says something ugly about me.
Or... maybe it just means I value the life I’ve only just begun to build more than whatever life she wanted to choose for me.
Just as I begin to spiral down that train of thought, Bella gives my hand a gentle squeeze. When I glance at her, I find her giving me a look of concern.
How did she notice that?
I give her a small smile, grateful for the distraction.
Bluebell’s voice breaks the quiet once more.
“The foxkin have no claim over my kin. She is True Fae, True Manaborn, and Sister of Mine,” she says, her voice resonating with the mana in the room.
The moment the words leave Bluebell’s mouth, Agora freezes. Her eyes go so wide I worry it might be painful, but then every Laftalan in the room drops to the ground.
They kowtow, just as they had for Bluebell, only this time every single bow is aimed at me alone.
A heartbeat later, Agora is around the couch and in plain view, forehead already pressed to the ground just like her tribesmen and women.
I jolt upright, nearly shaking Cari off my shoulder as I jump in surprise.
“Wha—what are you doing? Get up, Agora! Everyone!”
The moment they stand, I find their gazes wandering between Bluebell and me, each and every one of them filled with a level of reverence that sends shivers straight into my tail.
I glare at Bluebell, certain that this is somehow her fault.
She just smiles at me.
I narrow my eyes further.
Emsala watches the exchange quietly for a long moment. Then she clears her throat, her gaze flicking briefly toward the Laftalans before returning to me.
“I see.”
She takes a slow breath, closing her eyes for a moment to collect herself.
When she opens them again, the grief is gone. Instead, there’s just relief. A hint of that same joy she wore openly upon entering the room.
“For what it’s worth, I am glad you survived Emilia.”
I give her a tiny nod, trying to fight the sigh of relief that wants to escape me.
“I do not know why you chose to bear the clan name, but I will not hold you to any obligations for it. You are family should you wish it, but...”
She trails off for a moment then, looking conflicted.
“The clan is in a precarious position, as you now know,” she continues. “I’m afraid we may not be able to offer much assistance at all, even if you were to join us.”
With that, she begins to stand.
“Wait,” I blurt before I can think better of it.
Emsala pauses.
Across the room, Headmaster Kophis closes his eyes. A heartbeat later, his forehead meets the surface of his desk, the soft thunk somehow carrying more despair than any words ever could.
Ignoring him entirely, I instead look toward Agora and the other Laftalans.
“Why are they with you?” I ask. “What do the Laftalan tribes have to do with the foxkin?”
For a moment, Emsala looks perplexed. As if me not knowing the answer is what’s strange here.
Bluebell giggles, the sound bright and musical, immediately drawing every eye in the room.
“Oh, that's easy,” she says. “They're family.”
I open my mouth to object, but my mind stutters.
Wait, what?
Thankfully, Bluebell continues.
“Laftala and I had children,” she says breezily.
My brain fails entirely, but I manage to contain my reaction to a simple eye twitch.
“You what?”
Bluebell blinks.
“We had children,” she says simply. “Their children had children. Then those children had children. Then several thousand years happened.”
She rolls her hand vaguely, then stops with a palm open, gesturing toward Agora.
“The result is the Laftalan tribes.”
I stare at her for a moment. Then I look at Agora. Then back at Bluebell. Then back at Agora.
“Nope,” I decide.
A strangled sound escapes Agora as she seems to deflate.
Bluebell laughs.
“Laftala was human,” she explains. “Well, mostly. One of the early humans. Quite the hunk, too...”
Her eyes seem to glaze over for a moment.
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again when nobody in the room seems interested in helping me. Then she seems to return to the moment, her cheeks slightly flushed.
She can blush?!
For some reason, that alone makes me believe her words more than anything else, regardless of how unbelievable it all is.
“The point,” Bluebell continues, “is that the Laftalans have always remembered where they came from. They honor Laftala's admiration of strength, and my lineage. The beastkin races themselves are distant descendants of old fae bloodlines, so they have long considered foxkin and their cousins worthy of respect.”
Agora straightens slightly.
“It is our duty to aid those of the old blood whenever possible.”
Oh... so she was so respectful because I was beastkin? And because of this whole ‘admiration of strength’ thing... she even tried to call me strong, back then.
Looking back, it makes a little more sense. I was so put-off by her strange deference, but knowing the history behind it makes the whole thing feel a lot less strange.
I mean, it’s still off-putting and I’d much rather nobody bow to me again ever... but still.
Emsala nods. “They were the first to answer when we began searching for survivors.”
A shadow passes over her expression.
“Without them, many of our people would never have been found. Many more would never have survived.”
The room falls quiet again, and I’m left to stare at Agora and Bluebell in utter shock. Bella had been squeezing my hand much harder than strictly necessary since Bluebell revealed the Laftalan’s origins, but her expression remained as composed as ever.
Still, it was obvious that she was just as stunned as me.
Cari, like me, just gawks. Openly and without a hint of decorum.
Eventually, Emsala rises once more.
“This time, I truly should be going.”
The her entourage begins to shift as well, preparing to move with her.
Then Bluebell clears her throat.
“Actually...”
Everyone immediately freezes.
When Bluebell's gaze settles on Agora, the tall woman goes rigid. Through a clearly monumental effort of will, she straightens her shoulders.
“What is it, Honored Mother?” she asks.
Bluebell smiles.
“I have a job for you.”
Authors note:
I did it.
Ok, my brain hurts now. Goodnight lol
Edit:Ran into a weird error, so I re-uploaded the chapter. Sorry for any confusion.