Now, when they kept on saying "Lilly's daughter" this and "Lilly's daughter" that, I thought it was just some other maid's daughter that Thérèse would take care of sometimes because she needed help or something. In our mansion.
The first thing that set me off to think that, "She's not a maid's daughter," was the fact that they said this woman called Lilly was coming home from the capital.
What business does a maid have in the capital? Unless she was going for her master, none.
And of course I forgot that a maid has a master to go to the capital for and assumed immediately that the woman was not a maid.
The second thing that set me off was the fact that they said we would be going to "Lilly's mansion" while we were in the parlor. Now, I'm not sure if they called it her mansion directly, but I got the context clue that the mansion belonged to her. Through the process of elimination, I realized that this Lilly person must be a Lady. Of a house. As in, a noble.
When I woke up while making these conclusions quite dazedly in a dream, we were already on a carriage in foliage that looked nothing like what surrounded our house. Now, I may not have left our house very often, but being on the top floor and being guided through the whole thing every few days by Mother helped to establish the surroundings as I looked out with a Deviant's cheat vision. It scared me after I realized I could clearly see a bug on a tree five hundred meters passed the gates from our bedroom one morning. If I focused really hard, I could see really far. If I didn't focus, my vision was completely normal.
I decided to test that same theory out on my other senses. Touch, taste, sight, and smell were awesome. The only bad one was hearing, which spiked all of a sudden and caused me to faint on the spot from the sudden major increase of volume. Especially with Mother and her excitement around, I decided to only use that one after training in a very quiet place to get it under control.
So when we reached the top of a tall hill and looked out of the window, I recognized that we had probably been traveling for about forty miles max. There wasn't a single hill in sight of the house I knew, no matter how big or small, so we must have been a very decent distance away.
I positively flipped...inside my head that is, after making sure my barriers were up.
You don't just fall asleep for forty flipping miles and not wake up for a single bump! The whole atmosphere of the forest has changed!
We crested the hill and went downwards, but I didn't feel a single thing. I pulled back from Thérèse's shoulder and tried to look around while yawning, and she commented while looking at me dazedly, "So you're finally awake Little Fir? It took you quite a while to wake up," she yawned uncharacteristically. Maids never showed weakness, no matter how old they were. Just because your age is different from the one you changed it to doesn't mean you get to act like the old woman you are when no one who can say something is looking.
Grrrr, I wish I could talk!
"I guess babies can sleep for however long they like when they want to, huh?" She said while turning to look at the sunset. There were only six hours left in the day and one hour of sunlight. Thérèse looked further out while pushing the curtains in the empty carriage to the side and said, "Looks like we're almost there. Only a few miles left and we can rest in proper beds, Fir! Imagine that! It feels like years have passed since I last laid down, even thought it was only nine hours. All of a sudden I just felt so tired that I couldn't resist and fell asleep for a bit, sorry."
How the heck could I, only a half baby, sleep for nine hours after sleeping eleven hours an hour before that? Sleeping magic must be involved here. No doubt about it. Especially with her previous comment about not being able to resist, unless she was just lazy.
The Thérèse I knew was not just lazy.
We were crunching through the forest again, wheels churning while bumping up the carriage from rocks or slips every now and then.
Why didn't we feel the terrain's effects when we were on the hill? Why do we only feel it now? For some reason, all I had was a bad feeling.
I've learn to trust my instincts when there is a bad feeling.
I peered out the carriage to see what I could. It was too wide so I couldn't see the coachman, and even the outside color of the moving box was beyond me because of there being no reflective surfaces.
But what caught my eye was this thudding sound. On top of the carriage, there was this tump, tump tump, that kept on resounding every single bump we hit, which was a lot. So, I looked up.
And soon regretted it. There was a red hand, not bloody red but burned crisp red, knocking against the window in a space I hadn't looked before.
"AUUA!" I screamed out, biting my tongue at the same time. I was shocked because I had never seen a roasted hand before and wasn't expecting that.
"Fir?! What's wrong?" Thérèse asked, concerned.
I understand Mother falling prey to a demon's sleep spell or not noticing her baby jumping dimensions, but being S rank and unable to detect such things made no sense. Now, being a B rank and also failing to sense this type of thing made me wonder if there was something wrong with me since there were two oblivious people against one cautious one.
Did they not use [Detect] every so often to make sure everything's okay? We did have guards outside, right?
But what if they were taken out as well? What if it's one of them on the roof? However, we should have many guards, not just one. This roof can't hold that many guards. Possibly. An attacker is up there? It's foolish for just one man to attack though, so it's unlikely. The thing that made the most sense was if our carriage got hijacked while we were put under sleeping magic, so we didn't notice it.
I looked out again to see the hand, but this time there wasn't just one, but two. And they were both left hands, burned and missing a few fingers.
"Hmm, Fir. I feel like I just realized something...did it always take this long to reach Lilly's house? I remember that there was this one small mountain right next to it, but I'm not sure if I saw it or not in top of the landmark hill," the maid who lost my respect shifted me to her other shoulder in the two person carriage while in thought.
I get that you like talking. Lots of people around me love to talk. What I don't understand is how they all love to talk to me like I can answer. I bet they would be so dang surprised if I actually did.
Oh this side, while I looked out the window, I saw blood drops at the very top. The right hands on this side were bloody, dripping just past the window so that we wouldn't notice.
Okay, either these people were incredibly sneaky or incredibly dumb. For one thing, when you tie someone up, you make it so that they aren't visible. Another thing, you make it so people don't suspect a thing. Those are both true in this case, yet false as well since if I bothered to look even a little I could easily see the remains of their crime.
After contemplating and chewing on this for a while, I immediately thought that we are probably not being "escorted" anymore, but rather "guarded" so that we don't suspect a thing. Guarded is being use in the wrong sense, guys outside; your purpose to keep people out, not keep them in here.
I felt really bad about the guards. They were collateral damage, sure, but they were also people who had their lives taken away from them too easily. Who'd been assigned to escort us? Harley? Brownie? Blondie?
Or was it Ian? His brother, Ethan? Chance? Marty?
Just thinking about who was banging around on our roof top so helplessly made my insides twist and I felt like crying. Only now did I think about their identities, only now did I realize we had dead men on the roof.
I shivered at the thought. My body in the other world was probably as cold and beaten up as theirs. I should be afraid of fire because of the blast, but I wasn't. However, I had been curious all this time because I felt no aversion to lighting or tending a flame. My own mother was a fire user. Why did I, someone killed by it, not fear it? For one thing because I didn't acknowledge my death yet, and another because...it was always my light in the dark. Even if it was what trapped me there.
What to do now? There were at least three dead men on the roof, a hostage driver or enemy one, and enemies guarding us. At this rate we may never make it home if they led us somewhere we could never come back from. Per say, a second death.
Ugh, where are my magic books?! I could really use some! Teach me a spell or two and I'd get revenge by turning all they are into ashes!
Should I make Thérèse notice and do something about it? Will she be able to do something about it?
What will we do first? Act like everything is normal and ask to stop the carriage? Fake a bathroom break and run away? Fight?
When in doubt...uh, what do you do again?
In a moment of panic and growing pressure, I did something I never thought I would do again.
I screamed and threw a tantrum. Like a p*ss*d off baby.
"UWAHHHHHHHHHHHH, AHHHHHH!" I cried out as loud as I could, stirring up unease in Thérèse while trying and failing to force out some tears. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, so I dug my little nails into my arm. That just made me scream harder though.
"Again?!" She exclaimed.
The first time wasn't on purpose in the coffin, so it's not again, thank you very much.
She pulled me away from her as I started squirming like a distressed infant. She started patting my back as I fake and real cried, mystified as too why I burst out into tears all of a sudden.
"Miss? What's wrong in there Miss?!" A rough voice came from outside.
"I don't know! The young lady just started crying all of a sudden!"
"Please get her under control! We don't want to attract any monsters or beasts around here!"
Something struck Thérèse as odd, I noticed when her fave contorted. This part of the forest, being this close to Lilly's manor, should be clear of any dangerous beasts and any monsters in general. Especially after traveling this far for so long. We should've cleared our of the dangerous parts already.
While I was freaking put, she used that to her advantage and called out to the coachman, "Can you please pull over? I think the young miss is irritated from the constant traveling."
Silence from the coachman. Nothing was heard but the rustling of leaves against the carriage's...cargo on top, and the axel grinding.
"Sir?" Thérèse called out, her gaze sharpening as she pulled me closer. Her right hand slid along her thigh to pull up her dress, revealing multiple knives without sheaves.
I let out the shock of seeing that by making my wailing even louder, if that was possible.
"Sir!" She called put, affirming her suspicions.
The carriage stopped.
All of this seemed oddly familiar until it clicked in my head.
!!!
Takuya explained this before! This is a scene in the game! One of the starting scenes that introduced the de Libellule family!
"My Love" starts!