Sworded Affair

[Potted Hydra: Satiated.]

The status remained remarkably light of description, even as Emma crept closer to the pair. Saint was the first to notice; turning her head to look Emma\'s way before taking a leap that would lead to a certain collision. The feisty cat jumped anyway, forcing Emma to activate Ephemera and let the flying feline pass harmlessly through her. Noah took a bit longer to notice, his attention focused on wringing the last drops of blood out of the dying animal.

[Poor situational awareness. It only takes one assassin capable of bypassing a mana shield, and he\'s a dead man.]

Emma couldn\'t disagree, not when she\'d come within six feet of Noah undetected; admittedly, her footsteps were unusually quiet given her lack of weight, but excuses were useless when things went wrong. Some remedial training was needed, so Emma did the sensible thing and raised her hand.

[Fox (Level 0) released.]

Noah yelped, jumping to his feet as he felt a weight on his neck and teeth on his ear, dropping both knife and swine in the process. He was unharmed as far as Emma could tell; a thin, translucent blue barrier prevented the Fox from taking a chunk out of him, but that didn\'t make the situation comfortable in the least. Being larger and bulkier than Saint, it eventually took Noah both hands to remove the fox, pulling it free with a tight grip on its stomach. Still holding it aloft in front of him, Noah stared at it for a moment in surprise and disbelief before finally noticing Emma\'s presence.

"Was that really necessary?" Noah complained, bending back down to set the fox on the floor.

It bolted, making a beeline down the street in hope of escaping.

[Fox (Level 1) stored.]

All for nothing in the end, as Emma caught it with Eden\'s Echo before it managed more than a handful of steps; and the fox did not have the power to stretch those out as Saint did.

"Poor situational awareness," Emma retorted, echoing Edith\'s words as she absently noted the level up, the first of many that set a common garden animal on a path beyond mortality. "Better a fox than a paranoid old man with a rifle."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Sounds like there\'s a story there," Noah quipped, though he didn\'t deny the truth in her words as he put the knife and piglet back in his bag. "I suppose I did get a bit too involved; I could\'ve let Saint handle everything, but truth be told I was too curious about this ritual to sit on the sidelines."

"So it was a ritual, not just an overenthusiastic feeding." Emma hummed, recalling a similar dance she\'d seen in her trials.

[A blood bag would\'ve been enough if it was just watering the plant. There is power in live sacrifice; more where the sacrifice consents, admittedly, but still plenty of magic even without that component.]

"The timing was too good to pass up, what with the shipment of sows that came in today," Noah explained. "Far too many animals to raise them all to adulthood, with population levels being what it is today. A lot of families will be cooking suckling pigs today, not just us."

"First time for everything," Emma laughed. "Is this another dish from your foreign adventures?"

"Real popular in the American South, and also South America," Noah confirmed.

"You\'d better save some for me."

Emma spun around, looking for the unfamiliar female voice behind her, that definitely wasn\'t a distorted version of her own. She didn\'t see anyone though, not even a hint of another person either in their own yard or anywhere else on the same street.

"What\'s wrong?" Noah, meanwhile, was looking on with growing concern, his own eyes starting to roam.

"I demand the best cuts of meat."

There it was again, still coming from everyone and nowhere to Emma\'s frustration.

"You didn\'t hear that voice just now?" She asked, receiving a shake of the head from Noah.

"No, just Saint meowing away, if that counts?"

Saint?

Emma\'s eyes refocused on the cat, who had seemingly tired of jumping around the garden and was presently rolling in the grass, eating some of it too judging by the tips of grass nearby. Emma continued to stare unerringly, waiting until the latter came to a halt.

"Yes?" Saint finally spoke, breaking the silence once she knew the jig was up. "I was told you could understand me now?"

How she managed that exactly, Emma wasn\'t sure, since there was no sign of her mouth moving and the soft whisper came directly from behind her ears this time; Emma could only presume some form of ventriloquism ability at play.

[Babble Fish+ has encountered unknown language.

Beginning system integration.

…

System integration complete.

Language: Smug cat added to repository.]

"Yes, I can understand you," Emma confirmed, before grinning and turning back to Noah. "False alarm Dad, I can understand Saint now thanks to a skill upgrade. She just said she doesn\'t want any of the pork from dinner tonight."

"You traitor!" Saint hissed, her brief lethargy ending abruptly as she lunged for Emma\'s head, claws out.

—

"We have a problem."

Those were some of the last words Elizabeth wanted to hear, especially when they came from Paradox, Earth\'s resident expert of space-time disruptions.

"All inbound and outbound teleportation to the mainland have fallen silent again. There\'s no clear indication of why this is the case, after three weeks of mostly smooth operations after the network was brought back online. Precognition remains dead to me, as it has been ever since the terminus. I\'ll be departing tonight to investigate; keep an ear out in Oxford while I\'m gone."

"Do you believe anyone here to be responsible?" Elizabeth frowned, trying and failing to remember anyone with that kind of ability.

"No, but Anathema\'s descendants are very good at getting into trouble. There\'s always a chance they stumble into the plot, knowingly or otherwise."