Cherry & Lime

The seven of us, consisting of our party, the court mage and the royal couple, all arrived at the villa on the outskirts of the capital midmorning.

Sanor and Mallok hadn’t been with us the first time we visited, so they were examining their surroundings a lot more than myself or Allamyne were. It was still new for us, but I was focusing on what we were here for, and she was focusing on me.

We had only just entered the door when Incori tackled her mom in a hug. Then she hugged her dad, gave a brief one to Mirst, then looked at me for a long moment before shyly looking away.

Aww. Well, we did only meet the one time.

Forgetting her brief embarrassment, she shouted, “Come on, come on! Let’s go, already! Let’s gooooo!”

We all chuckled at her excitement, but obeyed. The way she was pulling her parents’ arms as we rushed to the lounge, it looked like she was about to rip them off.

The furniture had already been rearranged in preparation for this. She would be lying on the sofa, with me on a stool right next to her. Mirst would be right behind me on another stool, and there was seating nearby for her parents and Allamyne.

She hadn’t met Sanor and Mallok yet, and was uncomfortable with strangers being here, so they had to leave for now. There weren’t any staff in the room, either, but that was more for giving her privacy than her being uncomfortable with them.

She already knew Mirst from all the times the mage had tried to figure out a way to help. That just left Allamyne as a bit of an outlier here.

I guess Incori’s okay with her being here because she’s associated with me?

Incori fidgeted for several minutes as Mirst made sure everything was prepared and ready. The mage inserted a crystal of arcane magic into the device, and began looking over things one last time. Once her final checks were complete, the princess practically slammed herself backward onto the sofa cushions.

Mirst cast her spells again, which passed through her device, then myself, and finally into Incori. Her face scrunched up a bit at the odd sensation, but she remained still.

Unlike with Jovnor, this time, it was done in only a few minutes, and I wasn’t feeling as spent as I was then, either.

A clear purple girl opened her eyes and examined her hands in wonderment.

“It’s real…” she whispered in awe. “Ah! My voice! My voice is different!”

Being only 10, she hadn’t yet had a painfully deep voice like what I had previously had, but a difference could still be heard.

She then looked at me and I smiled at her. Realizing how different she must look now, she bolted to the mirror that had been set up.

I went to sit with my girlfriend while the new girl cried from happiness. Her parents had gotten up, and once she noticed them behind her, she wrapped herself around them as tight as she could.

The young girl was so incredibly happy, and it was clear that her parents had really wanted this for her as well.

Mirst had confirmed that everything seemed fine on a quick examination, so she let the family have their moment and began taking notes on the data she had acquired. She would get back to them once things had calmed down a bit to do a more thorough one.

“Got the data you needed?” I asked the mage.

“Hm? Oh, I think so. I’m going to need to do a bit of recalibrating and replace a few parts with superior materials, but I already had most of what I needed from that test we did a few days ago. This won’t have to be done through another person anymore.”

The royal family were all busy with each other, and Mirst was busy with her note-taking, so Allamyne and I decided to catch up with the others.

We found them sitting in the garden with tea and snacks, arguing over pastries of all things. As usual, it seemed like Mallok was seriously discussing things, while Sanor just felt like being a dick. That was just their dynamic, though.

“So how’d it go?” Mallok asked.

“Well,” I replied. “She’s quite happy.”

He nodded. “That’s good. When do we get to properly meet her?”

“Not sure,” I shrugged. “It’s a really happy moment for them, but probably at lunch.”

———

“Whoa!” I exclaimed as a girl suddenly wrapped me in a hug.

“Um, thank you. Thank you so much!” she said, looking up at me. “A-And… sorry I didn’t really greet anyone earlier…”

I smiled. “Yeah, of course. And it’s fine, we all know how important this was for you.”

Allamyne spoke up from behind me, looking at Incori and gesturing to me, “She would know better than anyone else what it was like.”

I nodded in agreement, “Yeah. When I transformed, I cried a lot, too. Had I known it was going to happen, I don’t think I could’ve focused on anything else at all.”

I was definitely crying from happiness back then, but also out of fear of losing my friends. And being made of slime was super concerning at the time, too.

With everyone gathered for lunch, there were now eight of us sitting around the table. Incori was clinging to her dad, who had ensured that he wouldn’t have to leave until tomorrow morning. Days off were quite rare for a king, apparently. Especially when he’s doing nearly all of the ruling by himself.

The princess was feeling really excited about her future for the first time in her life. Her parents hadn’t told her that we might end up traveling with her, as they didn’t want any pressure on us from her.

They wanted our decision to be as unbiased as possible, to ensure that we weren’t just taking her because we felt like we were obligated to do so or something. So that all meant she didn’t really know anything about when she could leave, other than, “within the next two months”.

To be honest, I kind of do feel like we should be the ones to take her. I guess we’ll know for sure by the end of the week whether or not we, as a group, want to go through with this.

Though they hadn’t specified what their alternative plans were should we decline their request, it seemed clear that they did have some things in the works. It was just that, so long as we actually wanted to take care of her, they considered us her best option.

———

“I take it you’ve made your decision?” Shora asked.

“Yes,” I responded resolutely. “We’ll take her.”

The queen gave a relieved smile. “Good! She’s already mentioned that she’ll miss all of you when you’re gone, but I still need to make sure this is what she wants as well.”

It’s been a week since we arrived at the villa for the second time. After her father and Mirst left the following morning, she then spent a great deal of time with us.

A lot of it was because we were new faces and those were rare for her, but she always went out of her way to sit next to me whenever she could. We compared our experiences a bit, but mostly, we just told her about our lives as questers.

While she did find the questing stuff interesting, she was much more fascinated by all the various places we’d seen. What the people were like, what foods they ate, what kind of wildlife was in the area, etc.

I wonder how much we influenced her decision? Well, the whole point of us staying here was for us to get to know each other, and that’s just what our lives are like, so it’s not like we could’ve said anything else, really.

It was only a half hour later that I was suddenly tackle-hugged by a princess.

Sanor smirked. “So I guess that means you’re coming with?”

“Yes!” she yelled back at him.

The following month thereafter was spent getting combat training from people with much more experience than we had. While Sanor and Mallok’s skills were polished a little further, Allamyne and I had the most improvement.

Her, because she learned a few new spells, and me, because I better learned how to incorporate my slime abilities.

Incori was learning the spear as her main weapon, and she was able to use her arcane slime through a specially-made groove that made her moves deadlier.

Arcane magic is a bit like lightning, but it can also disrupt mana. She’ll be pretty damn fearsome in the future. She can fire off slime pellets and use a tendril like I can, but unlike me, her slime is deadly to deal with.

Also unlike me, she has horns and a tail she can incorporate into her movements. Tieflings have their own forms of combat that incorporate those things, so she’s going to be relying on Allamyne during times when she doesn’t have someone else to train her.

Because it was only a month of training, she would have to continue developing her skills outside the villa. Fortunately, a common quest is to train people in combat, provided you’re actually capable of teaching it. Nearly every Questing Guild has a training field just behind it. This means we’ll be able to find someone to teach her.

The only little hangup we had was that Ellecor was trying to go all out on armor, weapons and supplies for us. We had to remind him several times that walking around like that would just make us targets. In the end, we ended up with high-end gear that had been designed to look like what any common quester might have.

Incori then spent one last day with her parents. They were sad to be separated, but all of them were happy that she could finally see the world.

We took a carriage into an area where we could discreetly get off. It was nearly impossible to contain Incori as we traveled back to the city, but we managed.

The carriage came to a stop, and we stepped off. From now on, we were on our own. Unless you count a meddling king and queen who want to constantly throw money at us and check in all the time.