Fateweaver Studies (2 year anniversary)

Author's Note: Hey y'all, it's actually been two years today since I first started posting Kingdom as it is today! To my longtime readers, thank you all for sticking with me this long. To my relatively new readers, thank you for being here. And to all of you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I hope you're having a good day and week, and enjoy the double chapter release as a celebration <3

The next morning, we decide to go through a dungeon run before Elsa comes over. We go through the murlocs dungeon, just to get some more practice at that one, and I find myself wondering whether or not Olivia would be able to use that angler shark form she mentioned in this dungeon.

Once we finish the dungeon, we change back into our casual clothes to prepare for Elsa’s arrival. At 9:30, she texts us that she’s ready with all her equipment. I exit the barrier and she texts me to come inside the Fateweaver building. Upon entering the lobby, Elsa gives me a quick hug hello and leads me up the elevators to a spare room.

The room is filled with all sorts of strange looking equipment that I’ve never seen before. Some are big and bulky machines with lots of wires and clearly arcane materials included, while some are simple and small, barely looking magical at all. Elsa assures me that all the equipment is necessary for the tests she’s going to run,

I’ve never tried to teleport big objects into my barrier before, but when I give it a shot, I find that it works out pretty well. All of the equipment makes it into the barrier in one piece, which I’m happy about. My girlfriends greet Elsa enthusiastically, and we introduce her to Paige. The terramancer is shy but gives Elsa a wave, which the Fateweaver returns, smiling.

After the greetings and small talk, Elsa gets right to work, setting up all the machines around in the snow. I ask her if she needs any help, but she declines. We all stick around to watch the process, fascinated by the machines and the ease that she seems to be able to operate them with.

It’s clear that she’s very familiar with each of them, and I find myself admiring the level of knowledge she must have with all of this. After she’s set them all up, which takes around a half hour, she takes out a notepad and pen from her jacket pockets, turns on one of the machines and begins to observe the readings, poised to write down the findings.

After a few minutes, she starts to write things down. She talks to herself quietly as she does so. “Wow, the stability level is completely unheard of…no barrier tremors whatsoever…it wouldn’t be hard to break the world record for barrier stacking here…the encompassed area is quite large too…” She mumbles, furiously taking notes.

She realises that we’re all standing around her, watching. She blushes as she looks at us. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be here. This is going to take a while, and I’m probably going to be talking to myself through most of it.” She says, giggling softly. I smile at her. “Yeah but I wanna watch. I’m interested in this.” I reply. My girlfriends chorus agreement beside me.

She grins at us. “It’s not going to be very interesting, but you’re welcome to watch if you want to.” Elsa says, looking back to the machine she’s working with. Despite her warning about it not being interesting, Elsa herself seems to find the readings coming out of every machine absolutely fascinating. Multiple times, I hear the words “Interesting!” Or “I’ve never seen that before!”

Eventually after a full hour of studying the readings of everything and going through what looks to be a quarter of her notepad, Elsa turns to us and asks us to go into a dungeon and run through it, so she can see how things change while another barrier is stacked on top. I agree, and we all put on our equipment to run through another dungeon.

We choose the centaurs dungeon and enter it, ready to use this opportunity to both help Elsa with her study of our barrier, as well as to train some of the things that Olivia taught us yesterday, about utilising our powers to the fullest and combining them together for even deadlier effects than usual.

Mia and Paige can use their sandstorm trick with this dungeon, since the ground has some sand in it, in addition to the regular grassy plain, which comes in quite handy to blinding the centaurs in their stampedes. Additionally, Paige, Mia and Skylar work together to create barriers, reinforced by all three of them, that disrupt the charges of our enemies.

Those tactics, in addition to our usual efficiency and teamwork, mean that we get through this dungeon pretty easily and without taking all that much damage for Ivy to heal. We’re getting better and better at working together, and with Olivia’s teaching, we’re well on our way to becoming a **** to be reckoned with in the abyss of Sydney.

Exiting the dungeon, we check on Elsa and see how she’s doing. She’s now finished close to half of her notepad with everything she’s written down, and she looks at us with wide eyed excitement. “Can you go back into another dungeon please? I haven’t finished yet, there’s so much to write down, everything is so different to what normally happens!” She exclaims.

I giggle at her enthusiasm, and take stock of how tired we are, and how much of our mana is spent. We all agree that we can do another one immediately without resting, so we go back into a dungeon, choosing the angels this time for more practice against flying enemies.

This time, Paige doesn’t have much to do, since the environment of the barrier isn’t made of dirt or rock, it’s made of a magical concrete like substance that our resident terramancer can’t really do much about manipulating. Thanks to our tests yesterday, we know that she can create earth to use, but this is much more mana intensive.

Instead, Paige mostly stays focused on grabbing and pulling down the angels when they get too close to the ground, using her surprisingly high strength stat to achieve this. Skylar and Mia are the real MVPs in this dungeon, with Mia being able to fly, and Skylar’s constructs big and powerful enough to compensate for the fact that we don’t have Paige available.

Once we finish the dungeon, it’s a little after midday. Mia suggests that we take a break for lunch, and Elsa reluctantly agrees. It’s pretty clear that she wants to keep studying the readings from her machines, and theorising about what’s happening, but she also recognises that she needs to eat.

Over lunch, I spend my time mainly talking with Ivy and Mia. Paige and Elsa sit next to each other and are engaged in a conversation of their own, with Skylar listening to them and occasionally adding something in. The goth girl and the fateweaver are talking quietly, but with smiles on their faces.

I can pick up snippets of their conversation if I listen hard enough. Elsa speaks really quietly, but from hearing Paige, I can infer the rest. “…t-they were from my friends! I don’t see them often, but they’re all really talented…” “…eah I c-could do that! Who did the rose on your shoulder? I-it’s really well done!”

I smile to myself. It seems they’re bonding over tattoos and art in general. With Paige being obsessed with tattoos and tattoo culture, and Elsa being an avid painter, it’s a no brainer they’d get to talking. Especially with the two of them being fairly quiet and gentle people.

Paige has told us about her friends in the tattoo place she goes to occasionally. She says they’re the only people besides us that she really trust and feel comfortable around. I’d like to meet them one day. She’s tried to convince me to get a snowflake tattoo on my upper arm, and I’m honestly not too opposed to the idea. I do want to wait a bit though.

After lunch, the dishes are quickly done and Elsa goes back to obsessively studying our home barrier. She asks us to run through more dungeons, and to go through two more different ones so she can check to confirm if some of her readings change depending on the dungeon we’re in.

We agree, and the dwarves and elves dungeons are quickly settled on as the two we choose to run through. Neither one of them is particularly noteworthy apart from our new strategies in combining our powers, and how Elsa reacts once we come out of the dungeons. She’s just as fascinated as the morning, and it’s adorable to watch her work.

After our two dungeons, she says she has enough data from them and that she doesn’t need us to go through any more. Elsa spends a further half an hour studying, tinkering, observing and noting things down, before she finally closes her notepad. She looks like she’s just about fully used it up, which makes me smile.

She sighs and smiles at us tiredly. “Thank you for letting me do this. I’ll have to get back now and look through everything with everybody I work with. I wish I could spend more time with you all though.” Elsa says, in her enchantingly soft and gentle voice. “It’s okay hun, we get it! We can hang out properly another time!” Mia answers for us.

Elsa’s smile widens adorably, before she starts to shut down all the equipment and pack things away. As she does this, Paige starts to talk to her quietly. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I don’t need to. Paige’s blushing face says everything I need to know: that she’s crushing on Elsa. And if Elsa’s smile is anything to go by, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s reciprocated.

The two of them hug, and Paige walks back to us while Elsa looks at me expectantly. I see Ivy give Paige a wink, the goth girl blushing even deeper. “Ready to go?” I ask the small Fateweaver. She nods in reply. “Want a hug?” I ask, and she nods again, smiling at me. I give her a quick hug before getting ready to activate the spell.

My girlfriends wave to Elsa, and she waves back, clearly a little disappointed to go but also relieved to be finished with her work for the moment. I can imagine that watching machines pump out a bunch of measurements must get tiring after a while, no matter how much you enjoy it.

I activate the spell and bring us both back to the room in the Fateweaver barrier, along with all her equipment. “Thanks again Gemma. You and your girlfriends are really lovely people.” She says softly, looking up at me and smiling. “You’re welcome. You’re pretty lovely yourself, you know.” I say. Elsa chuckles in response. “See you round.” I say, smiling back at her. She waves as I exit the Fateweaver building, and reenter my Kingdom.