Malonymous

You may enjoy this chapter more with the details of Arc 2 Chapter 6 in mind, summary of the relevant points: (possible mild spoilers)

Spoiler

A certain enraged witch chased Beryl through a forest because she wanted Beryl’s dress.

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Waking up in the arms of a busty fox spirit hugging me was something I had only ever dreamed of. Waking up in the arms of a fox spirit dealing with a splitting headache, well…

“Beryl, it hurts!” Viela whimpered.

I sighed. “Hang on, how did you even get in that much pain overnight? Over… oh. Did you really get a hangover from drinking too much back in the tavern?”

The only response she managed was a wince while clutching her head. Part of me wanted to point out her recklessness, but there was no going back in time to change any of that now.

“Would it be any better if you transformed into a fox?” I tried.

“No.”

Well, it was worth a shot.

We really did need to hurry out of this bedroom anyway after… last night. Thinking about everything that happened made my head start to spin, but not as much as realizing we were both still entirely naked. Even then, somehow I was able to keep my cool in the moment more than I would have thought.

“Let’s just get dressed first, and I’ll help you find some water.”

After we finished putting our clothes back on, I gathered my stuff and opened the door. To my surprise, the first thing I noticed was the music of what sounded like a violin coming from downstairs. The string instrument played a happy, fast-paced song with the skill of what some sort of professional must be in this world.

Viela leaned against my shoulder while I helped her walk down the hallway and descend the main staircase, the sound growing louder with every step. It had been a few days since I had seen the inside of this mansion in daylight, but I could tell that the music was coming from the direction of the dining hall.

When we finally reached the massive room, the sight that met my eyes nearly gave me a splitting headache.

I instantly recognized three nearby figures around the hall’s obscenely oversized dining table. A woman wearing a drab frock with her dark hair adorned by a lace head covering stood across one side of the table—Helga. The familiar maid of this formerly noble house held up a wooden instrument to her neck, drawing a bow across its strings with astonishing finesse. Directly on the table, a gargoyle sat in front of a basket of pastries, greedily gobbling them up one by one.

A wave of nausea struck me when I turned to the final seated figure, a short girl in a flowery dress whose appearance did not match her age. The loli witch’s feet hardly reached the floor from the seat of her fancy dining chair, an open bottle of dark red liquid and a filled glass laid out before her. She sipped her wine while smiling at her musician’s private performance with her tall staff occupying an adjacent chair. I was too taken aback at the scene to move from the dining hall’s entrance for the minute it took Helga to finish playing her song.

When that moment came at last, the witch burst out into raucous applause.

“Bravo, bravo!” Vexina cheered in her shrill, high-pitched voice.

Helga bowed deeply in response.

Just when I thought we should turn around and get the hell away from whatever this was, the witch finally noticed the two of us standing in the entryway.

“We meet again!” she greeted. “Out drinking late, were we? I heard a certain pair of troublemakers caused quite a stir last night.”

“Uh, that was…”

“How I would have loved to watch the chaos in person,” she sighed. “Do invite me the next time you go out!”

Not in a million years!

“Look, we just need something for her right now,” I said, tilting my head toward the wincing fox still leaning against my shoulder.

“A common sight these days,” the witch nodded. “However, you’re in luck! I have just the thing—for the right price!” She reached down to a sack on the floor beside her, motioning for us to step closer. A second later, she pulled out a round glass bottle that looked like it was filled with beer. “Doesn’t it appear far more appetizing disguised as the real thing? But in truth, it is the solution! Yes, my perfected recipe for hangover cures really is worth every coin it costs.”

“There’s a cure?!” Viela blurted out.

I didn’t like the way the witch was wickedly grinning at the situation, but if my companion was really that desperate…

“How much gold do you carry with you?” I whispered to Viela. “Or, you know, wherever you keep it. I can tell you from experience that she is unbelievably stingy, so first we should—”

All at once, Viela went from hungrily eyeing the potion to snatching it right out of the witch’s outstretched hand. Before I could stop her, she uncorked the bottle and downed the entirety of its contents.

“Oh Beryl, I’m just going to…”

Her eyelids drooped as she swayed next to me, and within seconds she gently collapsed to the marble floor.

“Hey, what was in that thing?!” I shouted at the witch. “What happened to her?”

“Dehydration,” she muttered with a dismissive gesture. “That is a perfectly normal side effect of the cure. She’ll be right as rain when she wakes up shortly, but there is simply no substitute for getting enough water. Helga, would you be a dear and fetch her some?”

The maid nodded before silently departing the room.

“Now then,” Vexina went on, grinning at me a little wider. “That will be fifty gold.”

“Wait, slow down. What did you just say?”

The witch’s rosy cheeks got a little rosier after she took another casual sip of wine. “She is the fox spirit you summoned recently, no? It is common etiquette for summoners to be responsible for what their summons do. And she just consumed one of my finest products—the best of its kind in the world, at that! On second thought, make that seventy-five gold; there has been a costly shortage of ingredients lately while demand hasn’t changed a bit. You know how it is.”

No, this isn’t happening! Of all things, I am not getting extorted by an evil drunk loli!

“You can’t be serious,” I shot back. “Didn’t you just take over this whole mansion and all its wealth? You probably already looted the place yesterday!”

She stroked her chin. “You’re right. I suppose this is my property now, and you spent the night in a better room than you would find in any inn. Including a fee for your refuge here and a touch of cleaning, let’s round up to a nice hundred gold.”

“Wh-What?” I stammered. “That’s…! Why would you even need to worry about cleaning anything?!”

Her face twitched like she wanted to make an indecent joke, but the witch decided against it.

“You don’t have to pay me back all at once, mind you. However, it would be… unwise to make me wait too long, for reasons you cannot unlearn.”

I took a deep breath before collecting myself. “Yeah, no. I am not falling for whatever you’re trying to pull here. As soon as Viela gets up, we are leaving.”

An icy shiver ran down my spine at the way her sharp green eyes lit up with sadistic glee. “Did you know? Divination magic is truly remarkable,” she grinned, producing a dirty scrap of torn off fabric. “All you need is a small part, and the right spell will always allow you to locate the greater whole. Observe.”

The witch pointed across the table. Hanging on the opposite wall in a giant frame was a lifelike painting of a dress that had seen better days. Actually, it wasn’t a painting; closer inspection revealed it was in fact a real dress that looked oddly familiar, horribly dirtied and torn, just like… the one I had been…

No. Oh, no.

“It pains my heart to think that someone could have sold off such a beautiful work of art,” the witch continued with an exaggerated sob. “I call this piece, ‘Flight of the Villainess.’ It really evokes strong emotions in the viewer, doesn’t it?”

This fucking WITCH!

“You know what? After everything I went through with the previous owner to get you here, I should own at least half of this damn place!” I shouted. “Hell, I basically got rid of the noble myself; by all rights this mansion and everything in it is mine, and you are the one who owes me!”

The witch set down her wine glass with a bone-chilling frown. A million adrenaline-fueled thoughts raced through my head when she reached for her staff. I found myself shifting the bag on my shoulders, ready to whip out my dagger at a moment’s notice.

The gargoyle took notice of my movement. The creature stood upright on the table, flexing its stony claws in my direction. Could my dagger make a scratch on that thing?

Actually, what the hell was even happening here?

The tension in the room had grown so thick, it felt as though none of us were breathing. I threw a glance down at Viela, but she was still sound asleep. I knew that if things escalated to combat like they had the last time this witch lost it, I would be outnumbered and seriously outmatched here… even if she was drunk.

As bad as this scenario had turned out, the thought occurred to me that she didn’t know about my dagger and what its enchantment could do. The witch gripped her staff tighter while I stared at her as if she were trying to figure out the ace up my sleeve.

By all reasoning, the only sensible choice was to teleport out of here with Viela as soon as possible. But then again, the two of us might desperately need the wealth this place had to offer for survival in the coming days, more than this wicked loli at any rate. And Vexina was almost literally out of her element inside this mansion—as long as her offensive specialty was just earth magic. If this crazy, enraged witch was going to come after us anyway…

Suddenly, something about her expression changed. Her narrowed eyes softened with glee as she erupted with squeaky laughter, and the whole room breathed again.

“You would really choose to fight this time!” she sputtured between hysterical cackling. “Yes, with that reaction, you’ll do. I think you’ll do just fine!”

I finally let my shoulders relax. “You… You were just testing me all along?”

“As if I would actually make you pay for any of that now!” She struggled to wipe a tear from her eye before calming down enough to continue. “You want your fair share of the spoils here, no? I have a proposition for you that will benefit us both. Please, why don’t you make yourself at home and we can have a nice little chat!”

With a quick wave of her hand, the chair next to her magically pulled away from the table and offered its seat to me. She glanced up at me expectantly, grinning.

Ugh. Maybe I should have taken my chances with combat after all…