Saintess Summons Skeletons

“It doesn’t sound like you love her much,” Sofia said in reaction.

Jennifer turned away, taking a few steps out on the terrace, propping her sword against the handrail and leaning on it. “People grow apart. I ain’t gonna go over that, Miranda’s resting in the afterlife now,” she said while looking in the distance. Then she turned again, half-sitting on the fence, she addressed the sisters in a somewhat softer voice, “But I never knew she had kids. Not until the ceremony at least. Saria and Sofia, right? How old are ya two? I wanted to do some more diggin’ but headmaster wasn’t tellin’ much and I ain’t exactly got no time to go back to the continent lately.”

“That’s right,” Saria answered, “I’m Saria, twenty four years old, Sofia is twenty one. We were born with the name Sellar but we were disowned and unnamed, chased from the household. I was six and Sofia was three.”

Jennifer grunted at Saria’s last words. “Well shit. Doing our kids wrong must be the fuckin’ family special; sorry you had to go through that. Must not have the best feelings towards my name then.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize about. Multiple generations separate us, we are barely even related at this point. If anything, I view this as a lucky encounter, no harsh feelings toward you in particular,” Sofia said with a shrug.

“You don’ say! I’m like your grand fucking ancestor ain’t I? It’s no big deal if ye want nothing to do with with me but it’s fuckin’ shameful to think I didn’t even know you existed… Is there anyone else I need to know about? D’ya want me to go and spank the hell of yer ‘parents’ right now?”

“No one else that we know of,” Saria answered, “As far as we know, Baron Silvio Sellar, our ‘father’ died in the ebb, our mother died before we got disowned. We don’t have any other biological relatives, any cousins or such were probably wiped by the ebb too.”

“Oh… So the line moved from Skyreach to Sovuln at some point… No wonder I never knew about y’all. An’ yet you both survived, became quite strong quite fast too, if ye ain’t lying about yer age. Left the country before the tide?”

Sofia shook her head, “We both survived the tide, our luck turned around, one could say.”

“Ya did? Sounds like there be an interesting story behind all that… Ah… Well, now that yer both here, what’d ya want? Imma ask you straight up. I ain’t very in touch on the emotional side of things, usually, so whatever yer expectations are for me, just say it. Really jus’ a lucky encounter?” Jennifer asked with an awkward expression.

Saria and Sofia looked at each other, and it was Saria who spoke next, “Really just luck, yes. You’re our distant relative and we’re curious, that’s about it. We don’t want or expect you to try and be our new grandmother or anything, we don’t need your help with anything specific either, it’s just nice to know we still have some family out there that’s not hostile.”

Jennifer sighed, looking up at the stars, “That a very low bar to pass isn’it? I appreciate that you ain’t trying to force this to become something else, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted more. I’m open to helping you kids, if you even need it. I’m not good at much besides hitting things and getting hit, though. Never have been, never will.”

Sofia took two bone chairs out for her and Saria, “Want a chair too, Jennifer? The fence doesn’t look very comfortable.”

“Sure, thanks. That made of bones? I know you do some Necromancy, but curious furniture,” Jennifer commented as she sat down facing the sisters.

“It’s bone, yes. Sofia does that, but that’s not what you should be curious about now. Since we’re mostly done with the presentations, you should ask Sofia about her first trial.”

Jennifer looked at Sofia, “Trial? Oh the past thing… Did the system make ye live a scene through me? Fuckin’ archangel would do that wouldn’t he?” Jennifer laughed to herself and bending forward on her seat, she told the sisters, “Wanna hear something funny? My first trial I was made to be a teacher in Brighthall.”

“Looks like he really knew what he was doing,” Saria commented.

“A teacher of what subject?” Sofia asked.

“Wanna guess? I’ll give ye a hint, my class is [Juggernaut] and the main peculiarity of it is, I have no available mana, ever. It all goes to my passive skills. So what’d ya think the asshole archangel put me up to?”

So that’s what she meant back then when she told me she had no mana. Interesting class.

“Ritual teacher?” Saria guessed.

“That a good guess but not quite, it was a wildcastin’ teacher, of all things! Wasn’t easy to get through, let me tell ya,” Jennifer revealed while laughing by herself, “I even got ta meet her later, we’re good friends; she’s retired now.”

“Sounds interesting, I wouldn’t mind meeting her,” Sofia said, “And to answer your question, no I wasn’t you, but I did meet you during my trial. I was Aurelia.”

Jennifer stopped laughing. “That can’t have been good… You met me as Aurelia? Princess Aurelia Grandcourt? That Aurelia? The fuck was the archangel thinking?” she cursed. “Poor lass died, she was not even an adult…”

“It was… Not fun. But yes, my trial spanned the whole month from her condemnation to the eclipse.”

“To the Eclipse?!” Jen almost shouted from her seat.

“You heard me,” Sofia confirmed.

“Well fuck me, I really want to hear that now.”

“And I want to know how it really went. I snooped around the ruins of the old capital and I also met Orvod sometime later but he refused to expand much on the subject. And that period of history was conveniently missing from history books.”

“Ya met bald man? Haven’t heard of him in a while. But sure, I’ll tell ya all you want to know.

You tell me about yer trial and I give you the historically accurate version, as witnessed by mah own two eyes. As fer history books, it’s normal ye didn’t find any, Armand, I mean, the new king after the eclipse, he wasn’t the kind ta dwell on the past you know. He wanted to rebuild the kingdom first.”

Sofia turned to see how the party was going, it still looked very lively inside, then she turned back and got comfortable in her bone chair. She also glanced at Pareth who had taken some distance, and was busy looking at the stars by himself. “This might take a while,” she started.

“The party looks like it’ll last a while,” Saria said in response.

“Worst case we’ll finish at my home,” Jennifer said, unconcerned, “tell me all about that trial, I’m curious about Aurelia’s perspective too.”

Sofia cleared her throat. “The trial began as I woke up on the ground, in the throne room. Aurelia was accused of some crap and sentenced to Death, meanwhile Jevvin and Ellen were looking over like carrion birds scouting a piece of rotten meat.”

“Sounds like ‘em. Ellen wasn’t so bad, from what I’ve heard; jus’ as naive as Aurelia. Jevvin threw her to the dogs as soon as he had the chance. Supposedly the King never really wanted to get Aurelia killed, he just used the opportunity to lock her in a safe place away from Jevvin until things calmed down,“ Jennifer explained.

“It wasn’t too fun being locked up. I really couldn’t do anything, stuck in Aurelia’s body at level one,” Sofia continued.

“Heh, you’d only have to stay locked up for three weeks until we came with Armand. At least it’s a relatively safe place, Jevvin couldn’t break through the barrier even after the coup,” Jennifer commented.

“Three weeks…” Saria mumbled, turning to Sofia she asked, “Didn’t you say they rescued you after eight days?”

“Eight days?” Jennifer repeated, “doesn’t add up.”

“I- I might have riled up Armand Skyreach a bit when he came to visit Aurelia…” Sofia admitted.

“Ah, ay, could see how that’d work. The real Aurelia was much too shy to ever do anything like that. She wasn’t mute but t’was almost like she was.”

“Speaking of which… Can you tell me what happened to Fox? He was really nice,” Sofia asked, prompting another sigh from Jennifer.

“Dead. Not in the Eclipse, mind ye. He left our group after we got paid for rescuing the princess, got married with a human lass, had kids, died in his farm after about sixty years of good life. I used to visit his kids every so often but eventually they died too…”

Oh…

“Sorry that I brought that up…” Sofia apologized.

“It is what it is. No need to apologize. If you live long you’ll outlive plenty of people you like too, it’s just part of the deal…” Jennifer rebuked, “So we rescued Aurelia early… That’s bound to be messy, took a great deal o’ preparation to make a clean escape. We had ta pierce through the barrier from beneath an’ all. Worked great though, by the time Jevvin noticed anything, Aurelia had changed identity and was comfortably hiding in Armand’s residence in the capital.”

“What about the key to the royal treasury?” Sofia asked.

“I’ll tell ye about that but I want to hear about that early escape first.”

“Sure… Sit comfortably, the story about to get wild.”