Volume 3 Chapter 5 – Arsenal of Faith (Part 2/2)
567 5 19
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

"Ummm... Pascal?"

It was late that night when Kaede knocked at her master's door.

Pascal was still wearing his undershirt when he opened the thick mahogany door to his bedroom.

Kaede averted her gaze and looked down. It had been hard enough just to work up the nerves to knock on his door. To look him in the eyes as she asked the humiliating question would be outright impossible.

Yet as the snowy-haired girl with flushed-red cheeks was still trying to build up enough courage, Pascal took her hand and pulled her inside.

"Good timing Kaede. I need to show you something."

He led her over to a dresser by the corner. Sitting on top of the intricately-carved table was an item she would never expect most men to own: a rosewood jewelry box, complete with gold trim and an enchanted turquoise on its lid.

"Why do you have a jewelry box?" The familiar raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"I am a gem magic user, remember?" Pascal reminded her with a cheery smile, as though he was about to show her one of his heirloom treasures. "For us, gemstones are not just decorations of beauty but valuable tools for sorcery."

Kaede remembered how he had explained it back at the academy: that due to the reduced mana diffusion from birefringence and the improved mana compaction in crystal lattice structures, well-cut high-quality gemstones were considered some of the best mana storage devices in Hyperion. Gem magic users learned infusion techniques that compacted mana into gemstones in the most efficient way possible, which allowed them to create either powerful magic items or retrieve it later for high-powered spellcasting.

Pascal opened the box's lid to reveal dozens of glittering gemstones filed neatly in rows. In the center of the box was an oval, intense-green diamond of at least a hundred carats, which could easily be worth tens of millions had it been auctioned on Earth. A mysterious radiance also seemed to emanate from the diamond itself -- sparkles of turquoise light which flowed across its perfect luster from the highly compressed mana inside.

Kaede felt as though her eyes had been glued to the sheer brilliance of the intense mana concentration. The cascading light of her master's magic seemed to call out to her through its very glow, and she had grown so bewitched that her thoughts blanked out as she did nothing but stare at its radiance.

A minute passed in silence before Pascal realized something was odd. He closed the jewelry box's lid, which instantly snapped his familiar out of her daze.

"I know girls are always entranced by beauty. But you seem to have forgotten yourself completely."

"It's not the gems, it's the mana," Kaede rubbed her eyes. "There must be some kind of resonance effect since I'm your familiar."

Pascal's thoughtful expression revealed that he hadn't considered such an effect, but he wasn't surprised by it either.

"Besides, I'm not exactly a girl." His familiar scowled.

"Yet you are so cute as one!" He remarked happily, which almost prompted Kaede to punch him.

"Anyways!" She rushed to switch the topic. "You mentioned the other day that you were pressed on funds. Are you considering selling this?"

Pascal pursed his lips as he opened the lid again.

"There is something like a third of my life's mana in there," his eyes glazed with sentiment as he looked upon the gemstones like priceless artifacts. "Just that diamond alone probably contains enough magical power to destroy a small town if I poured a cascading explosive spell into it. Of course I cannot sell these!"

Now that he brought it up, Kaede did remember the many hours Pascal spent infusing one gemstone or another back at the academy. She had always thought he was creating more magical items, like the turquoise casting ring she wore which could replicate several basic spells.

"Has anyone ever accused you of having an obsession with shiny rocks?"

"Do not remind me about it," Pascal grunted in displeasure. "There was one time when Sylv thought I was ignoring her as I finished my daily infusion process. She threatened to make an engagement ring out of that diamond, enchanted so only she could take it off my finger."

"Pfffttt!"

Kaede barely kept herself from breaking into laughter as the image of Pascal forced to wear an oversized diamond every day passed through her thoughts. Her glee was so obvious that she ended up attracting a glare from Pascal.

"Oh do not worry, you have yours coming," he spoke ominously as his fingers reached inside the box.

They returned seconds later. His fingertips carefully held onto two drop earrings: each an array of five tiny rose-quartz arranged around a diamond like flower petals, with three thin strands of white gold dangling one more gemstone each.

Their sight brought an instant end to Kaede's amusement.

"You're kidding me!"

"Not at all." It was now Pascal's turn to smirk. "I spent a good number of hours enchanting these over the last few days, so I expect you to wear them. They bring out the color in your eyes too."

"You want me to punch holes in my ears?" She cast back an outraged glare.

The mere thought of marking her skin offended Kaede. She held nothing but disdain towards most tattoos back on Earth. She had forgiven Pascal for the runes on her arms thanks to their utility. However the thought of punching holes in her earlobes was...

Kaede thought back to the cute earrings worn by girls back on Earth. He had always liked it when others wore it, so why is it different now?

Am I being a hypocrite? The dreadful thought gnawed at her.

"I began work on these to allow you to receive Farspeak communication spells." Pascal explained. "They will also attempt to automatically translate Brython and Gaidhlig, languages which I lack proficiency in but are two of the four official languages of Rhin-Lotharingie. Both of these offer you important options for communications."

Kaede sighed before she pouted. Why do you always have a good reason?

"Furthermore," he continued. "The healer who attended to you after the battle said you received considerable hearing damage that had to be healed. Your ears are too keen to not be protected. I enchanted these to protect your eardrums from sound bursts and air pressure shocks. As a plus, their filtering should also help you hear what you focus on more clearly while ignoring the noise."

Pascal was certainly right in that her eardrums needed protection. Her familiar-boosted senses had been useful on multiple occasions, so she certainly wouldn't want to wear enchanted earmuffs or something that would suppress it. And ear clips always held a chance of falling off.

But still...

"Couldn't you have at least picked something simple?" Kaede frowned at the earrings that looked like gem flowers with hanging petals.

Pascal beamed with mischievousness once more as he added:

"If you are going to wear something most of the time, might as well make it beautiful--"

This time as Kaede's irritation spiked she really did punch him in the gut. However between her exhaustion from the long day and her decision to hold back at the last second, her fist struck with almost zero strength.

Pascal raised an eyebrow as he touched where her fist had landed.

"That was adorable."

"Don't make me reenact our first morning," Kaede growled back. Though thanks to her wispy voice, even that must have sounded cute as Pascal lit a wide grin.

"Have Marina show you how to put those on tomorrow morning before we leave. Ask Lady Mari to help with the piercing. Sylv always praised her embroidery for being extremely precise."

The familiar was still fuming when Pascal placed the earrings inside a small velvet box and placed it into her hands.

"By the way, what did you need me for?" He asked at last.

Kaede had almost forgotten thanks to all his distractions. Yet now, as the thought of exactly what she had come here to ask ran through her head once more, her eyes glanced down in embarrassment as a fiery crimson blazed across her cheeks.

The problem was that Kaede hadn't been able to get a single good night's sleep for the past three days. Every night she would be woken up by those horrible, returning nightmares. Even the few hours of sleep she did manage seemed ineffective. And every morning she would wake up with a throbbing headache and an exhausted body that left her drained of energy.

The only exceptions were when she took a nap on Perceval's tofu familiar, or that night when Pascal had slept in her bed.

Considering they were departing Nordkreuz for Rhin-Lotharingie tomorrow, Kaede figured she really couldn't afford another restless night. Yet, after trying everything else and failing, the only way she could think of to achieve this was...

"Let me sleep in your bed tonight." She asked in a voice that was barely a whisper.

"Uhhh... sorry?" Pascal looked puzzled. "I could not hear that."

Kaede could feel her shoulders quaking while her entire face seemed like it was on fire. She shut her eyes and almost cried out in her wispy voice:

"Please let me sleep in your bed tonight!"

A moment passed in the silence that ensued, followed by another, and another. By the time a fearful Kaede opened her eyes to look up, she found Pascal's jaw hanging open as his swollen, turquoise orbs gawked back down at her.

"I mean... I am not really against it, but..." Pascal fell into a rare moment of being lost for words.

Ever since coming to Hyperion, Kaede had demanded her own bed. She had fussed about it so much back at the academy that she even annoyed Pascal on several occasions. Yet now that she had the leisure of having her own private bedroom, she was requesting to sleep in his once more.

It was clearly beyond his comprehension, which left Kaede with no choice but to try to explain it.

"I c-can't sleep!" She almost yelled, feeling so humiliated that she wanted to cry.

"Ever since the battle, I've been having trouble sleeping. Even when the herbal tea helps me fall asleep early, I still have nightmares and wake up in the middle of the night and then I can't fall asleep until it's almost morning!" A torrent of words began to rush out of her mouth. "It's slowly driving me mad and I don't even know why only that I slept fine that night when you were in my bed and... and..."

With a sympathetic sigh, Pascal stepped up and wrapped both of his arms around the Samaran girl's thin shoulders. He hugged her tightly against his firm chest until she felt like she was almost being squeezed.

"It is all right. You can sleep here..."

Pascal then pulled away just enough to make eye contact. He stroked her long, silky hair as he wore a gentle smile that looked halfway between adoration and helplessness.

"Sylv is not going to like this." He warned. "But I think she can understand. And I hope she will agree to look the other way. But even then she is not going to approve and you had best be prepared."

Kaede bit down on her lip as she nodded.

She knew there would be consequences. It was a shame to rock the relationship so soon after the Princess began to warm up to her. But she couldn't think of any other way. After all, she could hardly spend every day half-asleep and every afternoon trying to nap once they have embarked on campaign. With an average of three to four hours of sleep per night, it would not take long before she collapsed from mental if not physical exhaustion.

"Sorry," she apologized to him in advance.

Another sigh emerged from Pascal as the atmosphere fell into uncomfortable silence. Then, an odd chuckle from him broke the lull:

"Forget Sylv, are you trying to kill me with temptation?"

Kaede almost yelped as Pascal's quick tug pulled her to sit down on the bed. For a second her eyes snapped up in fear. But the turquoise gaze that shone back at her was still soft and caring.

"Stop worrying so much. You know I would never do anything to you without your consent."

He always did have the oddest way of trying to cheer others up.

Kaede knew most men had standards and expectations. She knew that she wasn't being fair to Pascal. Yet at the same time, the alternative seemed unfathomable to her.

The Samaran girl could only take comfort in his words as she leaned in against his side. Meanwhile her wispy voice offered but one word in response:

"Sorry."

19