Hanging With Paige

Skylar says she’ll rejoin us for the afternoon training, since she managed to establish a bond with Dave. Throughout most of lunch, he was pacing around the table, trying to convince us with a happy expression and wagging tail, to throw him a piece of food. Skylar relented a couple of times, which he seemed extremely pleased with.

Before we go back to training, Ivy and I check on our cats again. Sol and Luna are clearly warming up to us, but it’s a slow process of gaining their trust. According to all the research we’ve done, kittens at this age require food available at all times, so throughout the day so far, we’ve been refilling their food bowls every time we get back from a dungeon.

This time we also decide to give them a few treats. I hold out a treat to Luna, who takes interest in it, but doesn’t move to get it from me, instead sitting a meter or so from me. I throw it gently towards her, the small treat landing on the ground in front of her. She jumps at the small impact near her. Luna sniffs the treat for a few seconds, then she eats it. She looks up at me and meows softly.

I smile at her, and gently toss another one towards her. Ivy follows my lead: rather than trying to get them to come to us with treats, we respect their space and feed them from a distance. As I understand it, bonding with a cat is a process of showing that you’re a trustworthy person and that you respect their space. They’re much more likely to like you if you do, rather than if you treat them like dogs, who are incredibly friendly and open to everyone by comparison.

Ivy and I are happy to do that for as long as they want. We’ll let them come to us, not the other way around. Until that time, we both just appreciate having such adorable creatures to admire and get cute aggression over. We take out our cute aggression on each other, cuddling each other tightly while we feed our kittens.

Sol meows loudly as we stand up to put the treats away and go to training. Ivy turns back to her, giggling. “That’s enough for now honey.” She says. Sol lets out a second, slightly disappointed meow, seeming to understand the gentle healer. Sol turns to Luna and they start to play fight together.

After Skylar, Ivy and I are all done checking on our pets and fawning over how cute they are, we get back to dungeon running. Once again deciding to save the new enemies for tomorrow, once Paige is a little more experienced in these dungeons, we branch out and show her the elves and dwarves dungeons.

We keep up all the same strategies as before, controlling the battlefield as best we can to make sure that Paige can get experience without getting overwhelmed. When it comes time to face the elven army boss, Paige supports Mia in her job of taking out the archers, which works pretty well.

Mia is already extremely effective on her own, but working together with Paige helps increase that even more. Paige also intermittently destabilises the catapults, which she’s incredibly effective at due to her earth elemental abilities. It takes a huge load off of Skylar who would otherwise be struggling a bit in her role at these higher levels.

Neither Skylar nor Paige would be able to handle this dungeon on their own, that much is clear. The power gap between the two of them and Ivy, Mia and I is growing. I hope there’s a solution to this problem sometime in future. For now, working together allows us to minimise any disadvantages with each of us supporting the others.

By this point, my polycule is pretty good at coordinating attacks and working together. We’ve figured out the broad strokes of things like battlefield communication and setting each other up for attacks on bosses, but it can always use improvement. Every dungeon cleared, every boss faced is a little refinement to something.

Paige is rapidly learning how to coordinate with the four of us. While we fight like a well oiled machine at this point, it takes some adjusting for her to learn how to work with us, and for us to work with her. Slowly, we’re learning how to bond with her closer, understanding how she thinks and acts during a fight, and how to best use that to win.

The dwarves dungeon is a little different. It’s a confined space, which is a disadvantage to both Mia and Paige. Mia can’t take advantage of her skill at flight, while Paige has to be careful how she uses her powers. Given that we’re in a mine made entirely of rock and earth, the terramancer has the capacity to potentially bury us alive.

No such thing happens during the fight luckily, as she mostly focuses on doing her best to immobilise the dwarven enemies. Especially in the case of the dwarven constructs, this isn’t particularly difficult for her; they’re even less focused on speed than the rats were.

Despite the ease of catching them in her traps, their strength allows them to break free easily, usually within a second or two. Every little bit helps though and she keeps at it. Working together, we tear through the dwarven dungeon, making quick work of the constructs. The dungeon still takes us a while and the fights are challenging, but not so challenging that it ever looks like any of us is in danger.

With two dungeons cleared, Ivy and I have both levelled up once to level 53. We spend my points on endurance and Ivy’s points on strength, like usual. Paige lets us know that she feels a bit tired and asks if we can call it for the day, which we agree to. There’s an argument to be made for pushing ourselves, but self care is a much better idea.

We can’t fight Mathias if we aren’t in prime condition after all, and getting burnt out from training would be a really bad situation.

Instead, we spend the rest of the afternoon recovering and bonding with Paige on a more personal level. We put on a youtube video and just spend the time talking, not much paying attention to the video. The background noise is a nice soundtrack to get to know the gothic terramancer to, and get more comfortable with her.

Eventually, after a few youtube videos and a decent while talking, Mia remembers something. “Hey Paige, do you know about Mathias?” She asks. Paige turns to Mia confused. “Uh, no?” “Oh crap, we need to fill you in about that!” The aeromancer exclaims. We pause the game and turn to face her, with Paige being especially interested in what she means.

“Okay, so you know how we’re trying to make Sydney a safe place from all the gangs?” Mia asks the terramancer, who nods. “Mathias Vaughn is the most powerful guy around here and we wanna take over Sydney from him. He could put laws in place, come out and say that his guild runs things around here, but he doesn’t. He hides and manipulates things in secret instead.”

“I only know he exists because my family has a deal with him directly. We do some things for him and in exchange, we get protection from every gang around here. I have no idea how Mathias can do that for us, but he does. Whatever the reason that he does what he does, he’s the person we need to fight if we want to make things better, if you follow.” Mia explains.

Paige nods slowly. “Okay, I get that…why is this just coming up now?” She asks and the aeromancer giggles. “ADHD. It just crossed my mind, so I said it.” The goth girl nods again. “Well thank you. I’ll happily fight with you against him. Although, on the topic of random thoughts: that’s a really pretty tattoo.” She says, pointing to the mark of love on Mia’s wrist.

She laughs in response. “It’s not a tattoo hun, it’s a part of Gemma’s powers.” Paige looks around at Skylar, Ivy and I, and we raise our wrists for her to see. I take over the explanation. “It’s a piece of magic that binds us all together. It gives everybody who has it, a skill that makes affection and intimacy feel better.” I say, smiling happily.

The terramancer flushes at my words. “That’s so cute…I kinda want that…” She mumbles and trails off, looking down and twirling her hair in between her fingers. “What was that?” I ask, smirking at her. She looks up and responds quickly. “Nothing. I-it’s really pretty is all.” She stutters slightly, her blush intensifying.

The afternoon continues with more Mario Kart, small talk, banter and bonding with Paige. She’s getting more used to being around us, and is much less flustered than before to speak. I somehow don’t get the impression that she would be any more difficult to fluster though, a theory that’s proven correct the moment that Mia makes a slightly teasing joke which sends Paige hiding behind her hands, giggling and blushing.

Eventually, as much as she seems to enjoy being with us and as much as we enjoy having her here, she does have to go home. She does still have obligations to go to school and a job, unlike the four of us. We say our goodbyes, with Paige getting (once more) adorably blushy at the hugs we give her. After the gothic terramancer is gone, Mia and Ivy start working on dinner.