"Come on, don't be like that. I'm doing this for the life we'll have later, aren't I?"
"You don't want to end your days stuck somewhere awful either."
"Versus somewhere awful, you'd rather spend a lifetime getting hunted?"
"If people are actually chasing us, isn't that something to celebrate?"
"Otherwise, imagine how boring it'd be."
Still bantering, the pair returned to the Astrea estate. The house was quiet. No sign of anyone.
A word with Madam Carol confirmed what they'd guessed. Felt was deep in another meeting with yet another set of visitors.
Felt was riding a wave. Every day brought more people through the door than she could keep track of, and by now she was practically begging for a second body to split the load.
It was evening before she finally pried herself loose.
"By the look of you, I'd say this isn't wrapping up in a few days."
Gojo watched her from across the dining table, where she was shoveling food into her mouth with the feral focus of someone who'd forgotten lunch existed.
"It's not as dramatic as you're making it out to be."
"The people showing up aren't idiots. Apart from one or two, everyone coming through right now is a scout."
"They drop a modest amount in as a feeler. See how the wind blows."
"If you want them all in on the hand, or want to lure out the real money behind them, you need an event big enough to tip the whole scale."
"Today I finally got through every last name that had submitted a request to visit."
"Which means I can take the trip with Subaru now."
"Speaking of, that Roswaal guy had better ante up properly this round."
"He hasn't even bothered showing his face. That's getting ridiculous."
As her first sponsor, her patience with the man was thin.
On paper he'd said all the right things. In practice he was a closed fist. Barely anything concrete had materialized from his end.
And on top of that, thanks to Subaru, they were obligated to help Emilia as a freebie.
Every time she turned it over in her head, it felt like she was being shortchanged. Roswaal should be doubling his support, if anything.
"If you want, sit this one out. Stay in the capital. Betty and I can take Subaru."
She kept chewing. He didn't sound particularly invested either way.
"Not a chance."
"This isn't lining up challenge fees at a coin a head."
"A guy like Roswaal, if you don't squeeze properly, he walks away having paid nothing."
"I have to be there in person. Maximum extraction!"
"Mankul is a count too, and he threw down five hundred Holy Gold Coins without a blink."
"And Roswaal?"
"The Mathers line is old as dirt and ranks near the top of the wealth charts in all of Lugunica."
"I am going to fleece that man properly this time!"
She pitched it with the conviction of a preacher.
Days of working the noble merchants had given her a feel for how these conversations went.
Roswaal could be worked. She'd make sure of it.
"All right. If that's settled, come along. Your end's already wrapped up anyway."
"When do we move out?"
"Tomorrow. Early out, early back."
"That fast?"
"It's fine. Time is money!"
"Where are you picking up all these sayings?"
"People evolve. Don't underestimate me!"
Her chin lifted, smug as anything.
The next morning.
True to her word, Reinhard set out early for the Roswaal estate to let Emilia's group know the timing for the return trip.
By mid-morning.
Everyone had converged at the Astrea courtyard.
"We keep picking up more passengers. One Dragon Carriage can barely hold us at this rate."
Gojo stood in the yard, looking over the assembled crowd with a wry note in his voice.
Emilia and Rem. Then himself, Betty, Subaru, Felt, Reinhard, and Meili.
Eight people. The trip to Roswaal's domain was getting split across two Dragon Carriages.
"Better than all of us crammed into one."
"And there's definitely someone here who'd rather not share a carriage with us."
Felt climbed into the lead carriage Reinhard had readied, then tossed the jab over her shoulder with a grin.
Subaru's face colored. She hadn't named him, but the target was unmistakable.
"Ahem. I mean, it's not like I..."
"Want to swap with Reinhard?"
"I'll pass. Reinhard's your knight. His job is to protect you, wherever you go."
The kid delivered it with his best attempt at seriousness. Which Reinhard, rare for him, promptly undercut.
"With Gojo around, I don't think Lady Felt's safety is in any doubt."
"No, no, really, it's fine..."
Watching Subaru squirm, the rest of them broke into laughter.
Even Emilia covered her mouth to hide a small laugh.
Subaru ended up in Emilia's carriage, naturally, and the remaining slot over there went to Reinhard.
That carriage was going to be wall-to-wall lovey-dovey conversation.
This side had more to discuss.
The whole scheme of banking money and vanishing wasn't something they could air in front of Reinhard.
Teams sorted, the two Dragon Carriages rolled out and began their slow journey toward the edge of the capital.
They hadn't been on the road long.
A small bird fluttered up and pecked at the carriage window.
"Oh. Looks like Big Sister Elsa wants me."
Meili watched the bird, then cracked the window and let it hop inside.
"Elsa?"
The name brought the previous loop rushing back to him. Roswaal's arrangement to send her to the mansion for a hit.
Was this about that?
The bird perched on the sill. Meili untied a small slip of paper from its leg, read it, and her expression went odd.
"Big Brother, looks like you've got a problem."
"A problem?"
"If it's just about Roswaal, I wouldn't call that a problem."
He propped his chin on his hand, unruffled.
"Not only Roswaal. There's someone else too."
"Someone else?"
That pulled his attention.
Meili handed him the slip. He scanned it once, and his mouth flattened.
Beyond Roswaal's instructions to Elsa, the note carried a second piece of information.
Elsa and Meili's Mother, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, had caught the scent of something off. She was planning to pay them a visit.
"Another Sin Archbishop. What is it with these people turning up everywhere we go?"
He shook his head, exasperation bleeding through.
Not fear. It was just that no sane person volunteered to deal with the mentally unwell.
"A Sin Archbishop still wouldn't have the nerve to make a scene inside the capital, would she?"
"Besides, the capital is huge. Tracking Elsa down here isn't a casual task."
He tossed it off with a shrug.
In a world without even basic modern technology, finding one specific person among several hundred thousand was needle-in-haystack work.
"It doesn't matter."
"I don't know how, but Mother always finds us."
Meili kept her voice low, watching his face.
"Always finds you."
That landed differently.
Reinhard and he were both out of the capital now. The knight order was what remained.
Based on the Sin Archbishops he'd personally handled, if one of them decided to leave, the knight order couldn't stop them.
Which meant.
Leaving Elsa parked in the capital wasn't tenable anymore.
The original plan had Elsa drawing a fee for doing nothing. With the Sin Archbishop of Lust on the move, that needed revision.
Coerced or not, Elsa was on his payroll and had kept her end up. Abandoning her to Lust wasn't on the table.
Whether Elsa could match the woman wasn't even a question worth raising.
If she could, she wouldn't have been working under her and calling her Mother.
"Send word to Elsa. Tell her to follow behind us and join the trip."
"Roswaal wants her at the mansion anyway, doesn't he?"
He ran through it, then looked at Meili.
Reinhard being present was going to make things awkward around a wanted criminal like Elsa.
But awkward was a manageable problem.
Better than facing the Sin Archbishop of Lust on her own.
"About your Mother. Do you know what she can actually do?"
He swung his gaze back to Meili.
Until now, Sin Archbishops had felt like a distant, almost abstract problem, and he'd never bothered asking. These weren't people he was losing sleep over.
Now.
After tangling with a handful of them, he'd decided a little advance briefing couldn't hurt.
A bit of mental preparation, at least.
"I don't fully understand Mother's power, but she once turned Meili into a group of frogs."
"A group of frogs?"
Felt, who'd been half-listening, turned her head with a genuinely puzzled look.
"I think I might've misheard. Not one frog. A group of them?"
"Your grammar seems to be malfunctioning."
Betty nodded along, as if to confirm the diagnosis with a scholar's gravity.
"No. A group."
Meili held their skepticism with a steady, serious face.
"You haven't felt anything like it. My consciousness stayed whole, but my body was a group of frogs."
A small shudder ran through her as she said it, like something in the memory had reached up and grabbed her.
"You can feel every inch of your body. Feel each frog. You can even move them..."
The carriage fell quiet while they exchanged glances.
None of them could picture it.
A body that becomes a scattered clutch of controllable frogs, while the mind remains a single unified thing.
"Betty. Any magic that can pull that off?"
"None."
"No known magic reaches that level."
She didn't hesitate.
"The idea of turning into a squirming pile of wet frogs is nauseating all by itself."
Felt rubbed her own arm, her face pinched.
"Anything beyond that? Any other abilities?"
"Yes."
"Mother can change herself into other forms too. Elsa says she once became a Black Dragon."
Black Dragon?
He still hadn't crossed paths with this so-called Mother.
But his interest picked up a few notches.
In Lugunica, the Divine Dragon was treated almost as an object of faith.
Running into someone who could take a dragon's shape, that raised questions worth asking.
"So your Mother's Authority centers on altering bodies. Both others' and her own."
"Another weird one."
He stroked his chin, thoughtful.
"Question is whether the transformation carries matching abilities along with it. Dragon's breath, say."
"I don't know about that. When I was a frog, I could stick my tongue out a long way, I guess."
Meili pressed her lips together and offered it almost apologetically.
"That's a genuinely bleak memory. No wonder you all fall in line under her."
Felt said it with real sympathy. In Meili's place, she wasn't sure she'd have managed either.
"Frogs... honestly, that's not the worst. Mother's favorite is turning people into large flies..."
The word flies dropped into the carriage and silence swallowed it.
Frogs had already crossed into queasy territory. Nobody had anticipated an upgrade path.
Picturing what a fly looked like up close, then picturing a sane human being mapped onto that shape, with their consciousness fully intact, was the kind of thought that sat uneasy.
And that was before considering what it did to the person's family and friends.
"Now that is a sick sense of humor."
"I keep saying these Sin Archbishops are certifiable, and I keep being right."
Gojo's mouth pulled into a thin, irritable line.
"Once transformed into a fly, does the behavioral logic carry over too?"
Betty chose that moment to chime in, adopting the pose of a researcher.
"I don't know. When I was a frog, I don't think I actually ate any bugs..."
Meili's expression twitched in a way that made Gojo hurry to cut Betty off before she could push further.
A few more questions along that line and the girl was going to carry the scars to her grave.
"Let's not go too deep into this."
"If she tries to come for us, we handle her. Same as Regulus."
"Pure transformation is easier to deal with than whatever Regulus had going on."
On that front, his confidence was intact.
"If you ever get turned into a swarm of flies, I hope you don't ask Betty to rescue you."
She offered it with a flat sniff.
"Flies. Drop the flies. Please."
...
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