Chapter 768: Announcements To The Girls Of Blessed Land [I / Bonus - ]

Chapter 768: Announcements To The Girls Of Blessed Land [I / Bonus Chapter]

"Why?" Silas asked, his voice dropping into a playful murmur. "You feeling stressed too, Talira? Want me to help you calm down like that?"

Talira froze.

Her breath caught, her pupils went wide, and her brain helpfully handed her a picture of herself sprawled across that exact same desk with his big calloused hands right between her knees.

...The heat that slammed through her chest was so intense she was briefly worried she’d breathe fire on his bookshelf as her wings went into a frantic blur.

FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!

"N-no!" Talira squeaked, shaking her head so hard her messy red hair whipped around her face. "I mean... that’s... I didn’t come up here for that! I came for something else!"

She gripped the hem of her tunic and shifted from one boot to the other, her tail curling around her ankles.

A very loud part of her wanted to say yes, and every dragon instinct she had was yelling at her to tackle him onto the rug but the strange heavy feeling in her core reminded her why she’d climbed all those stairs.

She took a deep breath then another one, because the first one hadn’t helped at all.

Talira looked up at him, and some of the fire in her red eyes flickered with real hesitation.

"Lord Silas..." she started, her voice losing its usual loud bluster as she stepped further into the room. "I came to ask you about something weird. There’s... new stuff happening with my body. It’s been making me feel really strange for the past two days, and I don’t know what it is."

The words came out smaller than she meant them to and she hated that, however, Silas’s relaxed posture changed at once.

The teasing smirk disappeared.

His dark blue eyes sharpened, and the gold ring around his pupils flared with real concern as he pushed off the desk and stepped toward her.

"What’s wrong, Talira?" he asked gently. "Are you hurt? Did something happen out on patrol...?"

Talira blinked, watching the worry spread across his face.

A guilty little pang tugged at her chest, and she wondered what he’d actually do if he found out she was sick.

Would he ban her from the front lines? Lock her in a room and make her drink bitter herbal broth all day while everyone else went out on raids? Would he start looking at her like she was fragile?

’No,’ Talira thought stubbornly, puffing out her chest. ’It’s just a small sickness... That’s all...’

Master still owed her spars.

If she told him she was feeling weird, he’d definitely postpone them until she got better, and she refused to let some stupid little fever steal her chance to fight him.

She’d been waiting so long for those spars... She’d been practicing her dives every single morning, and she’d even come up with a new move where she folded her wings at the very last second, It mostly worked too.

Besides, she was a dragon!

Sickness barely meant anything to dragons, especially when it wasn’t serious, like this one... It just made her feel weird, made her skin feel too tight and made her dream about Silas almost every single night.

There was nothing more to it than that, She’d just burn it off. Talira squared her shoulders, threw her chin up and abandoned the topic completely.

"Never mind that!" Talira barked, crossing her arms with a fierce pout. "It’s nothing! What really matters is that you still owe me our spars, Lord Silas! You promised you’d test my new dive attacks, and then you ran off to Central City, and then you went off to Aki’s... You’ve been putting it off forever!"

Silas looked at her for a second.

He didn’t miss the clumsy change of subject, but seeing the bright stubborn fire back in her eyes, he let out a chuckle.

’I see.’

Silas made a quiet note to keep an eye on her anyway.

He walked over to the pouting dragon girl and gently patted the top of her messy red hair.

PAT! PAT!

Talira’s wings drooped instantly, and a tiny purr rumbled out of her throat before she caught herself and glared up at him in total betrayal of her own body.

"Alright, alright," Silas laughed, ruffling her hair. "I haven’t forgotten, Talira. I’ll settle up with you and give you a proper spar later today. Promise..."

Talira was already bouncing on her toes with the weird feeling in her chest completely forgotten, at least for now.

He stepped back and nodded toward the open hallway.

"For now, go round up everybody in the territory," Silas said. "Tell them to gather in front of the Keep. I’m announcing who’s moving in."

...

A soft winter breeze carried a steady flurry of snow down from the gray peaks, dusting the stone railings and the slate roofs of the Keep in a clean white veil.

Solenne stood on the raised terrace overlooking the courtyard with her hands tucked into the wide sleeves of her artificer robe.

Behind her, nine fluffy silver tails swished through the cold air in lazy matching arcs, the thick fur crackling now and then with stray sparks left over from her morning tinkering in the workshop.

Her eyes drifted across the crowd filling the open space between the Keep’s front steps and the outer wall.

Leather vests, wool cloaks, armor, weapon hilts and a lot of excited faces.

’This is a lot of people...’ Solenne thought, her pointed fox ears perking up under her silver bangs.

From the Foundry, Blessed Land didn’t look like much. It was still young... There was the Keep, the forges down in the gorge, the barracks and the training grounds by the outer wall, and not a lot else.

There were no sprawling districts and no grand merchant streets either so anyone looking at it from the outside would expect a few dozen people wandering around, tops.

Yet standing here in the morning snow, it was impossible to miss.

There were easily over a hundred women packed shoulder to shoulder, about a hundred and fifty in fact, their breath rising into the pale sky in thick white puffs.

The chatter bounced off the stone walls like the buzz of a very crowded beehive, one that had heard a rumor about the beekeeper.

Some of them had come straight from the forges with soot still on their cheeks.

Some had come from the watchtowers with their bows still strung... A handful of the women had obviously been asleep ten minutes ago, judging by the hair, and one of them was still holding a pillow.

Down beside Solenne’s hip, a short and very solid figure was leaning into her side.

Thora still had her scorched leather smithing apron on, and both of her soot-stained hands were wrapped around the fluffiest part of one of Solenne’s tails.

She’d buried her fingers deep into the silver fur and was hugging the tail to her chest like a pillow to keep her knuckles warm.

"Stop tugging on that one, Thora," Solenne murmured, though she didn’t pull it away. "You’re getting forge grease in my winter coat, and it takes a whole bottle of solvent to get soot out..."

"Ah, pipe down, you overgrown squirrel," Thora grumbled, squeezing the tail a little more fondly. "These things hold heat better than a triple-quenched blast furnace... You ought to be charging by the hour to lean on you in this weather."

Solenne decided not to mention that Thora had, in fact, never once paid.

She also decided not to mention that Thora had been holding on to the same tail for twenty minutes, and that her knuckles had stopped being cold about nineteen minutes ago...

’What a perverted woman.’

The dwarf shifted from one iron-toed boot to the other with her sharp eyes flicking toward the Keep’s front doors.

"Lord Silas called everyone out here about a promise he made a while ago," Thora said, her gruff voice dropping into one more quieter and more serious as she gave the tail another small tug. "That night in the barracks, before he went off to get Rika out of the ice, he told the whole lot of them whoever mined the most would get a room in the Keep... Everyone thought he’d forget about it with Central City and all that business at Aki’s place, but the man actually remembered. I just hope he makes the right choice..."

Solenne glanced down at her. Thora wasn’t looking at the doors anymore... she was looking at something else, and her grip on the tail had gone tight again.

Solenne followed her gaze toward the far end of the terrace.

Not far away, standing quietly beside a carved stone pillar with her hands folded over her belt, was Rowenna.

Snow was catching in her violet-black hair, and the Grand Runemaster’s blue eyes shone with quiet hope as she watched the flakes settle on the stairs with a small smile on her lips.

Thora had been lobbying for her behind the scenes for a while, very loudly and very badly, to anyone who’d stand still long enough.

Before Solenne could tease the dwarf about favoritism, the heavy doors of the Keep groaned open.

CREAK!

The noise in the courtyard died so fast it was like someone had blown out a candle.

Silas stepped out onto the landing.

He was still in his loose black robes with the dark gray fur around the shoulders with the hem brushing his tall leather boots.

The mountain wind tousled his dark hair, and his dark blue eyes looked bright and thoroughly refreshed, as if he hadn’t just been walked in on in his office twenty minutes earlier.

Silas stepped up to the edge of the stone landing, looked out over the crowded courtyard and let a warm lopsided smile spread across his face.

The effect was instant and devastating.

Across the front two rows, a wave of soft breathy gasps rippled through the cold air.

Two archers from the western bluffs went bright pink and grabbed each other’s cloaks.

A freckled girl near the middle let out a squeak, and her knees wobbled so badly that the spearwoman beside her had to catch her by the elbow before she slid face first into the slush.

"Goodness," Solenne giggled behind her sleeve, her tails fanning out in amusement. "He hasn’t even opened his mouth, and half the front line looks ready to surrender..."

"Menace," Thora muttered, though the knot in her chest loosened a little at the sight of him. "What a walking menace and he knows exactly what that crooked grin does to them, too."

Solenne, who was very used to this by now, just sighed fondly while Thora was too busy staring at Rowenna to notice any of it.

Off to one side, on a raised wooden platform with a clear view of the stairs and the crowd, Blessed Land’s Heroes stood together.

Silas turned toward them and raised a hand in an easy wave.

"Morning, girls," he called out.

Eluned lit up at once, her emerald eyes shining with pure joy.

Standing tall in her emerald gown with living ivy rustling along the hem, the Goddess of the World Tree threw both arms into the air and let out a cheer that rang across the courtyard like bells.

"Good morning, Hubby!" Eluned sang, practically bouncing in her slippers.

Beside her, Morwenna stood with her arms crossed, her weathered coat thrown over an unlaced linen shirt.

Her stormy gray eyes slid toward the goddess in an exasperated glare, and she clicked her tongue.

TCH!

"Keep it down, Elu," Morwenna muttered, shifting her weight against her cutlass. "The man walked down a flight of stairs... He didn’t conquer an ocean, you’re cheering like a barmaid at a harbor festival."

"I’m cheering because my husband is magnificent, you foul-tempered sea hag," Eluned replied with a sweet sugary smile, without lowering her arms even an inch.

A few steps behind them, Lupina’s wolf ears shot straight up through her silver hair, and her amber eyes followed Silas’s every move as she waved at him with both hands like she was trying to flag down a ship.

Beside her, Aurelia El Mimonte, the Saintess of the Argent Flame, offered a graceful little bow, her golden-amber eyes warm with quiet devotion.

And next to them stood Morrighan.

The horned demon stood as still as a carved statue, her dark leather armor tight over her powerful frame and her molten gold eyes fixed calmly on Silas’s face.

Her expression didn’t change by even a fraction of an inch... It stayed cold and completely unreadable.

Behind her calves, her spade-shaped tail started wagging so fast it blurred.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

Lupina, standing right next to it, had to lean out of the way to avoid getting smacked.

Morrighan’s face, meanwhile, remained the face of a woman attending a funeral.

Silas chuckled at the sight of the tail and shook his head, then stepped up to the stone railing to address everyone.

He rested his forearms on the cold stone and looked down into the sea of eager faces.

"First off, thank you all for braving the cold and showing up so fast," Silas began, his deep voice carrying across the courtyard. "I know it’s freezing, and I know I’ve been away a lot these past couple of weeks. Between Central City and the trips over to the human world and Aki’s, I haven’t been around nearly as much as I should’ve been, so I’m sorry for leaving you all to hold down the fort..."