Sworded Affair

Emma, knowing there was unlikely to be any once she arrived at Stonehenge, followed Edith's advice and took a week off to rest and recharge. No combat, and barely any crafting: only making batches of ordinary candles, as that was what was most in demand. Ironically, the residents of Oxford had become very good at dealing with any threats her more potent candles might have helped with, whereas lighting was still something scarce, particularly as deliveries of supplies had tapered off in recent weeks. That was hopefully only temporary, and now that the worst of the fighting for both Oxford and the Empire as a whole had ended, Emma expected scavenger patrols and aid packages alike to resume: but until then, candles for everyone.

In the end, it was this requirement that made Emma finally decide to take Everlasting as her Level 10 trait. While she was happy to take a lazy week off, making Candles in bulk, that wasn't something she wanted to repeat regularly, and having the Candles become permanent would greatly alleviate the demands on her time. Sure, there would still be attrition due to inevitable accidents, but it would be only a small fraction at a time, rather than the previous, wholesale consumption. Besides, Eternal Wind on its own could play a similar role to what Fireside Chat could do, and now she'd have it forever. Wax and Wane had never been a serious contender, as it was just another way to protect herself, and Emma already had plenty of those by now.

"Dinner's ready!"

Emma set aside the final batch of candles she was making, placing it on the coffee table for collection later.

[Portable Crafting Bench stored.]

Eden's Echo made cleaning up the work of seconds, as the signs of her work were stored, and the unusable detritus swiftly dumped in the bin, before Emma headed towards the dining room. Downstairs, she heard footsteps from the basement annex, something Elizabeth had mandated after a few of Noah's more volatile experiments, and now the site of his workshop, buried beneath thick concrete and explosion-resistant wards. Elizabeth was already seated when Emma arrived, so Emma took the next chair over and peeked over her shoulder.

Elizabeth was poring over an old, leatherbound map, written in what Babble Fish informed her was Norman French. It was a map of England, seemingly an overlay of magical locations atop the mortal cities that the apocalypse had destroyed. She caught sight of the Sherwood Gallery, where the family had gone shopping, Scholomance, and the transit hub beneath Blenheim Palace, but curiously, those were the only locations that made sense to her, the rest being a confusing mess of badly drawn squiggly lines.

[It's a variant on the Geas of Secrecy, adapted for the written word. All locations are visible, but their importance is obscured unless you've visited and have a first-hand impression of the place. None of those places are strictly secret, or else the map wouldn't show them at all, but having this layer of abstraction helps stop the more annoying kinds of magic that can be cast with a location alone. The ones that teleport garbage in from the nearest landfill, or try to spy on people in their bedrooms.]

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"That happens?" Emma raised an eyebrow; it wasn't an issue for her, not with Rorschach's Blot to ward off the ill-intentioned, but it was still concerning. "I would have thought the few thousand Practitioners in England had better things to do with their time."

[You'd think so, but no. The practitioners of the Empire: they can invent fancy titles, clothe themselves in gold and gemstones, and raise mighty palaces for themselves, but beneath all of that, they are little different from the neighbourhood housewives who spend their days gossiping about who's having an affair. At the end of the day, just having magic doesn't change human nature, not substantially, anyway. The ingrained habits of generations are hard to overcome.]

Noah was the last to arrive, the faint scents of soot and smoke lingering upon his clothes.

"Still trying to add Balefire to your grenades?" Elizabeth asked wryly, looking up as her map vanished to parts unknown.

"The enchantment required is more volatile than I first expected," Noah admitted as he took a seat opposite his wife. "Condensing the flames into a hand sized projectile is hard, keeping it stable is even harder, but I'm getting close, I know it. It'll be a great help, to give even the normal men a chance at taking out the bigger demons, as long as their throwing arm is accurate. There's still not that many magicals, so anything that takes a load off their shoulders will be a big advantage."

"I still say you'd be better served enchanting yourself a bigger mana pool," Elizabeth retorted. "A thrown projectile will never have the same degree of fine control as flames conjured directly. You'd know this if you'd read the tome of Pyromancy you borrowed two weeks ago…"

They were arguing, but neither sounded particularly heated, more like they were rehashing an old argument, one that had reared its head many a time already. It didn't last long, anyway, as Saint came into the room, the Hydra trailing behind her and half a dozen dishes hovering overhead, kept aloft by wispy white clouds under the cat's command.

"Dinner is served!"

Everybody took turns cooking at Noah's Arc, except for the Hydra, whose innate poison made it inadvisable, and to the surprise of all, Saint had quickly become the best chef of them all.

"How did you even do this?" Emma asked, as plates came down one at a time, revealing fine cuts of steak seared medium-rare, fat rolls of salmon and tuna sashimi, a leafy corn salad and loaves of garlic bread. It was definitely heavy on the cat's favourite foods, but then, that was the prerogative of the one cooking.

"I'm naturally talented, didn't you know?" Saint quipped, explaining nothing as she hopped onto the remaining chair, before pulling the Hydra up to join her, using a spontaneously summoned root.

They were small enough to share a chair, even now, but Emma didn't think it would last for long, not with how quickly the Hydra was growing. There was little to be said as they all dug in. While they were all going to Stonehenge as a family, their different duties would quickly see them pulled apart in the crowd, so this was likely going to be the final family dinner in a while. Not a bad way to end a week off, all things considered.