"Majesty"

Not quite understanding what she had just said Sil looked up at Fanella before standing to greet her properly.

"Hello, my name is Sil and I awoke to a cold bloodline. I would shake your hand but one of my traits warned me to be careful as I might hurt someone by accident." Sil greeted her with a short bow.

Fanella shook off her initial shock from the pressure she was feeling and responded.

"I am Fanella Faescar, noble daughter of the Ice Fae bloodline. I reveal this to you because I am to be your instructor in mastering your abilities. To do so I must ask that you divulge your bloodline so we can learn best how to train you, so it is only correct that I should divulge mine."

Fanella felt that Sil must possess an S rank Ice Fairy bloodline to make her feel this amount of pressure. Her own bloodline was only the Ice Fae a noble C rank. Had she been a formal Ice Fairy (Rank B) or Ice Fairy Princess (Rank A) she might have been able to resist, but the suppression alone made her put aside any thought she had about intimidating or pranking this young girl before her.

Sil was hesitant to speak about it but he knew this was going to happen eventually. As she had spoken the formal phrase for introducing herself, Sil felt he should do the same.

"Then allow me to re-introduce myself Fanella Faescar of the Ice Fae, I am Sil of the Queen of Ice and Snow bloodline, an S rank bloodline of the Snow Maiden line. I do not know if I am noble but to my understanding snow maidens have no nobles." Sil said with a voice that exuded an arrogant authority, almost as though he felt disdain for the woman he was speaking to.

Fanella felt a chill run through her for the first time since awakening her bloodline. Sil was right that no bloodline of the Snow Maiden lineage bore noble status. Snow maidens were part of a small group of bloodlines that held no nobles and thus felt now compulsion to aid anyone. This caused them to be known as the independent or free bloodlines. She had never heard of the Queen of Ice and Snow bloodline so she would need to look into it specifically. That she hadn't heard of it meant it was especially rare.

For Sil's part he was trying to understand why the phrase had come out that way. He had intended for it to be formal, and polite, but something in him would not allow him to speak to Fanella as an equal, much less a superior.

Fanella smiled at the confused look on Sil's face. "Don't worry about the attitude young one. Your bloodline seems to look down on mine, I'll have to teach you how to control that while we work on your abilities."

"Since your abilities warn of harming others, we should test them. Have you caused any reaction when touching things?" she asked.

"Nothing I have touched shows any signs of damage, but the ability does specify living things." Sil responded.

"Then we need to see what it does, for now stay away from people."

Fanella then proceeded to explain to Sil how trait training worked. The control you held over a given trait was directly related to the skills you had trained in relation to that trait. Abilities purchased using skill points when practiced would grow in level, that experience would also feed into the trait associated with that skill. As such when Sil learned to summon clothing, it fed into his frozen domain and every time he summoned clothes it would further feed that trait. Additionally, when a trait reached a new tier, more skill points were granted to gain additional skills. Each rank up would grant one additional skill point and when all three trait reached a new level the bloodline itself would grow, granting two skill points and improving the bloodline boon. Skills from the Misc. tree were largely unpopular because they were usually weaker and did not feed into any bloodline traits.

Sil got caught up in his practice as he wanted to grow his bloodline as quickly as possible, as it was his cold aura was going to make living with his family difficult until he could control it. As much as he wanted to also practice his fighting style, doing so against a living target would be dangerous as well. Fanella told him they would be performing their future training sessions in the private training grounds outside of the village. The area had been established specifically for helping people master their inherently dangerous bloodline.

By the time Fanella had gone over as much as she could with Sil it was well past sundown. She would need to look into Sil's bloodline to know more about its capabilities to tailor a training plan for Sil as well, so she bid her student goodnight and made her way home. 

Reaching her home she decided to dig into her library to see if her books on snow maidens held any clues as to this Queen of Ice and Snow bloodline. Snow maidens, as a lineage, all shared certain traits. among those youth and beauty were the most common. The weakest E rank Snow maiden bloodline boon gifted slow aging, allowing a girl with a snow maiden bloodline to maintain her youthful appearance well into old age, and even near the end of her lifespan she would look middle aged and healthy. Other boons slowed aging even more, reduced scarring, and an A rank boon stopped physical aging all together.

"Seems that Sil has lucked into an extremely good bloodline, hopefully she won’t make too many of the village girls jealous." She commented as she flipped through her book.

Sil sat in his room summoning piles of robes onto the flood. Each time he did it made him slightly more tired, but he wanted to level his ability as quickly as possible. Feeling as though he was about to pass out, he laid back on his bed and opened his skill menu to see how much his skill had grown

[Skills]

[Skill: Creation Magic: Garment Creation 1/5 Level 0 98/100]

[Skill: Agility Style: Unarmed Fighting 1/5 Level 0 32/100]

[Skill Misc.: Skill Growth Enhancement *H 1/1]

"Looks like I'm getting close to leveling garment creation, maybe tomorrow I can make something that doesn't make me look the part of a snow maiden."

Sil closed his eyes and let sleep take him, not realizing he was in for an interesting night.

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"Can you explain to me again why we're in this middle of nowhere crap town Shelk?" A young man dressed in black asked

" E'cauce rook'e, the job was to go find a prea'y gull and bring her back for the maarket. Prea'y gulls in big touns tend draw the wrong kinds of attention if'n they up n' disappea'. If'n a lass goes missin' round 'ere, naut'll be chasin' us back but the local nob'dy's."

(Translation from broken speech: Because Rookie, the job was to find a pretty girl and bring her back for the market. Pretty girls in big towns tend to draw the wrong kinds of attention)

Jesen didn't like doing this kind of work. He was from a somewhat privileged background and felt petty kidnapping was beneath him. Make no mistake he had nothing against the practice, having bought his own share of playmates in his youth he understood that those girls had to come from somewhere, Jesen just felt it was beneath him. He was a properly trained killer, and he got into this line of work to take life, not deliver it to someone else's doorstep. 

Jesen and Shelk made their way through the outskirts of town, hoping to find a catch in the less guarded sections of town. They came across a house well away from the rest of the city and watched as people went in and out. They overheard mention of a bloodline awakening and that drew their interest very quickly. A newly awakened young girl wouldn't be able to control her abilities and would be much easier to kidnap. Shelk and Jesen both possessed bloodline abilities prone to concealment, so they went so far as to watch from the window as a stern looking woman was speaking to an exceptionally pretty young girl. It didn't take either of them long to decide that this was a perfect opportunity, even more when they heard the phrase S Rank snow maiden bloodline come from the older woman mouth after she had left.

"A Snow Maiden! Shelk my friend I think we might be in for a bonus when we drop this one off" 

Shelk agreed, Snow maiden girls were always beautiful and sold for exceedingly high prices. An S rank was worth an absolute fortune.

"Tru' nuff Jes'n, we bes' be shor' we do thisn' correc'. Can't be leavin' any damage on the merchandise.

(True enough Jesen, we had best be sure we do this correctly. We cannot have any damage on the girl)

They waited until late that night then the lights in the room had gone out. They waited an additional hour to make sure the girl was into a deep sleep. Silently they broke the lock to the door and made their way through the house. They entered the young girls room and glanced at the huge pile of robes laying in the middle of the floor. Inside the room it was freezing cold, so bitter that they could see their breath. 

It was the middle of the warm season so neither of them was prepared for the cold but suffering this chill would be more then worth the payday they would get. Jesen saw the girls long pale blue hair flowing down off the bed. This girl must never have a bad hair day he thought. He and Shelk positioned themselves near her face and feet. This had to be very quick if they were going to get away clean. Gag the girl, tie her hands and feet, then make a run for it. They both had their ropes out and were ready to act as Jesen slowly reach his hand down to the girls soft white lips.

***********************************************************************************************************

Sil awoke to the feeling of a hand over his mouth and reached to grab it purely out of instinct.  Suddenly his room was filled with the sound of screaming. He could see the fingers touching his had turning pale white and starting to crack as the man they belonged to seemed unable to move. Another man was scrambling to cover his companions mouth when Sil reached over the leg of his other kidnapper.

He didn't know why these two men had targeted him but given they were holding ropes and in his room in the middle of the night he knew what they were there for. Given that they had likely alerted the house to their presence with that scream Sil wanted to stop them from running off, especially if they managed to figure out a way to run off with him. Grabbing the second man’s leg he watched as his body locked up while he pulled the frozen hand of the first man away from him and reached to grab him as well. The man jumped back and started to run, trying to run out the door his damaged hand smacked against it and a sound like shattering ice echoed as he fled. 

Sil's mother came rushing in with fire trailing her feet. Sil watch as she grabbed the man next to his bed and threw him across the room. She stood between him and his kidnapper with waves of heat emanating from her that Sil could barely feel. The man laid there moaning in pain as he tried to push himself away with his one working leg.

Sil's father can in shortly after. "Delphy is Sil ok?"

"He's here" she responded, "It looks like he was right when he told us touching him would be dangerous earlier today, this fellow can’t even move his leg after one grab."

"Hah" he said with a slight smile. He leaned down to the would-be kidnapper. "That's why we have awakenings all the way out here stranger, bloodlines can be very dangerous when they are not controlled."

Shelk looked up at the complete disaster this had been, pain radiating out around the extreme numb that was his calf. He tried to say something to the man standing over him when he suddenly felt extremely dizzy and passed out.