Penelope, at Addie's command, came with us today to start weapons training. She’s never been trained to fight before, so she was pretty excited when we introduced her to Keldon this morning. Not even a little bit nervous, which was what we had been expecting.
Right now, Keldon is instructing Penelope in her new weapon. She picked it out herself from the collection of training gear that they keep in the corner there. Not even a moment's hesitation when she walked up and took it off a hook on the wall.
Like she's been born to it. A natural affinity. The whip is like a living thing in her hand. The tip cracking at supersonic speed, orbiting her like some deadly electron cloud.
Terrifying! And yet oddly exciting....
"Still want to get her into a closet?" Nix asks me.
"Nope. Not even a little bit."
/Operations Order #1, Ghosts in the Hallways/, Recorded by Sakura Tsubaki
- 8-8:45 am, All Family members will have breakfast in the main hall.
- At 8:00 am, Tara and Jane will move to the new area and do an initial cleaning of the main room and the bedrooms we will occupy.
- At 9:00 am, all Family members will move to their old rooms and pack their things. All belongings must be on the baggage carts by 9:45 am.
- At 10:00 am, Tara and Jane will return to the old area and prepare to move the baggage.
- At 10:15 am, Saki will enter the new area and set the wards as planned. Rio will accompany her as her assistant and guard.
- At 10:30 am, Kari and Addie will run interference for the move by taking a position in the main servants' hallway between the branch hallway and the kitchens. Any servants who come down that hallway will be engaged in conversation, Mesmerized to forget seeing them, and rerouted.
- At 10:35 am, Tara and Jane will move the baggage carts into the servants' hallways and make their way to the new area. Nix will move with them and distract anyone who questions them.
- Once the move is complete, Rio will return to the hallway to signal end-of-operations to Kari and Addie.
I wipe the sweat off my face and put the mop away. I've never seen so much grit and grime in my life. Dust bunnies are nice but they only do dust. Jane and I have been wiping, sweeping and scrubbing frantically for almost two hours but we’re finally done. It will take several more cleanings before we’ll really be happy, but the rough cleaning is finished.
Jane finishes her final task with a huge sigh.
"Auntie, what will we do?" I ask her.
"I don't know. After working for these five people, I can't imagine going back to being just a regular maid."
"But can we believe in them?"
"I think that's the wrong question. But right now we need to get going or we'll fall behind."
We walk out the door and hustle down the hallway.
I remember reading once that a particle beam will follow the ionization path left behind by a laser. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it was, I’ve been using the same principle with magical fire support.
I’m not smart enough to know if this concept existed before we arrived here on Emulgren. What I mean is, did I discover this or did I magically create it somehow? Whatever. It works.
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We’re outside in a training area again. What we’re planning is too big for a normal training hall. Three groups of archers stand behind me. One group is fire-aligned. One group is water-aligned. The final group is lightning-aligned.
I give the ready command and the fire group charges their arrows. I shout fire and they let fly at a group of targets below. When the arrows reach the top of their arc, I give a hand signal to the fire mages. Fireballs fly, each of them locking onto the flight path of an arrow and following it down to the target.
We repeat the exercise twice more. Once with water and once with lightning. It works perfectly each time. Now for the real test.
I nock five arrows onto my string. I position myself and raise my bow, drawing the feathers back to my ear. Time for me to use my expanded elemental abilities. I focus my mind and imbue the top arrow with lightning. I leave an arrow as a buffer and imbue the middle arrow with fire. Another spacer and the bottom arrow is imbued with water.
I focus on the targets, mentally commanding each arrow to travel a different path. I let fly and watch them spread out perfectly. A final hand signal and every mage looses a spell at the same time. They’re all mixed up at first but quickly sort themselves out and follow the arrow appropriate to type.
An indescribable noise follows as they all hit and detonate in their own way at the same time. When the dust, mist, and ashes settle, there is nothing left in the target zone.
Magic is incredible. Magic is crazy. Magic is … magical.
There I said it. Are you happy?
Saki is the second most beautiful woman I know. She’s like a Princess, every motion controlled and precise yet also flowing and graceful. This is just an observation. I consider her a good friend and a stalwart comrade. I can trust her.
I’m enjoying the operation so far. Addie is an obsessive planner and this operation, while small, is like a rehearsal for greater things to come. We all know exactly what to do and when to do it. We even did a couple of small-scale practice runs. Saki, however, is a level above the rest of us.
She comes armed with several enchantments she created the day before. It takes her just a few moments to set each ward. She activates the wards on the doors and that step is done.
Stepping into the back hallway, she casts a spell using sign language and the area around the door dims and takes on a slightly haunted look. I’m truly amazed! What kind of books is she reading that teach her how to make something feel slightly haunted? I mean, not scary haunted, not spooky haunted, but precisely slightly haunted.
I hang a yellow handkerchief from a sconce at the end of the hallway to signal the others that the wards are ready. Then we retreat back inside.
What a colossal bore! After all of the hype and preparation. Nobody even walked down the hallway in our direction. Nobody even showed up, period.
Tara and Jane move past us into the new area. Rio comes out a few minutes later and collects his yellow handkerchief. Addie and I join the others.
Operation complete! Victory pose!
Spiders are tough to fold. Good ones, anyway. Making two of them took me almost an hour. I'm going to try something I've never achieved success with before.
I take one of them over to the front door and bring it to life. I mean, imbue it with my Spirit energy. It turns in circles, trying to get its bearings.
Now for the new thing. I make it smaller. Up to this point I have only made small figures grow bigger with Spirit energy. I'm not sure how it works, but I've always imagined that my folded figure is like a core inside the Spirit creature.
That may be somewhat true, but not precisely true. Using my Spirit energy in almost the same way, I find I am able to make the three inch origami spider shrink down to less than half an inch. Clearly, the original paper figure must have shrunk somehow, as well.
At my direction, the spider walks through the crack under the door and begins exploring the front hallway. It will eventually find a hidden spot to spin a web. That little guy is our new watch-spider.
Taking the other paper spider, I go to repeat the process at the back door.
We gather for dinner in our new home. "All right everybody," I call out. "Good job today. Perfectly executed. A toast: To the best team of not-Heroes on Emulgren, The Accursed!"
""Cheers!""
We were drinking tea, of course. Of all of us, only Kari has tried alcohol so far and she claims that she’ll never try it again. I'll believe it when I see it.
"Now we need to give this place a name. Any suggestions?"
"Ghost Quarters." "Ghost Hall." "Phantasmal Bolthole!" "The Haunted, no wait, The Haunting!"
In the end, after much debate and more than a little bit of bullying, counter-bullying, and over-acting, we decide on The Haunting. I guess that makes us all ghosts. Well, not me. I'm a vampire.
A bad-ass vampire.