Chapter 153: Chapter 152: Ascension Dinner Preparation

As Kyubi warned the little fox to be on her best behaviour, that the elven gods were not known for their love of nonsense of any kind and as a result, were far from fond of the fox spirits; Carl got a notification.

[ CARL, CAN YOU AND KLAIRE GO TO MY HOUSE PLEASE. THE DOOR’S LOCKED BUT OMEDRA HAS A KEY. TAKE HER TOO PLEASE. ]

“Hey guys, Sis wants Omedra and Klaire to come with me to her house.” Carl informed them, not aware she had disappeared when he passed out.

“Oh no! I forgot Sis, I’m so sorry. You guys go, I’ll get dinner started.” Kyubi said, a little guilty that she had forgotten about her.

[ TELL KYUBI, IT’S FINE, I’M HAPPY TO SEE HER PUTTING YOU GUYS FIRST. ]

“She said she’s happy to see you putting us first, thanks, we’ll be back soon.”

With that Carl, Klaire and Omedra headed off.

When they got outside, Carl removed the bladeless hilt from his armlet and turned it into a vehicle that could seat all three of them, which was the motorcycle with sidecar.

“Dad, why not make one of the flying vehicles that it can become?”

“I don’t know how to pilot them for one.”

“Ugh, put it away, I’ll give you guys a lift this time or we’ll take all afternoon…” As she spoke she changed into her dragon form, which had evolved with her ascension, the same general shape except her scales were now charged with the different elements.

The biggest change however caught her off-guard and she found herself panicking slightly by the additional head. “…Ahhh! Dad, what’s going on! Why do I have a second head!?”

A slight chuckle from two behind caught her attention and the two heads bumped into each other and almost tied themselves into a knot as she turned to face Tiamat and Squidge.

“You’ll get used to it. Squidge and I thought this might happen as you grew, so we are ready to help you adjust, but you should stay in human form until you do.”

As Tiamat spoke, Squidge began to grow, ready to fly them over to Sis’ house, whilst Omedra shrunk back down and patted her cheeks and body to make sure nothing else had changed.

“Oh that was weird. Nope, need time to deal with that. Thanks for giving us a ride big bro.”

“No worries, it threw me off when I got my second head, I trashed a large chunk of a base and Dad had to pay for the damage. By the third it was just kind of meh…” They all mounted Squidge when Omedra was sure nothing else had changed and then he took off, but what they hadn’t considered is how much Squidge had changed.

Where his lift-off was usually quite slow, he now achieved a couple of hundred feet of altitude with a single flap and took him by such surprise he went into freefall before he realised and managed to correct.

“Geez Squidge! You got stupid good at flying…” Carl chuckled, proud of the growth his eldest son was showing. “…Wait a minute, I heard you chuckling. Did you get the ability to talk out loud to?”

“Huh?” He really did vocalise aloud, the deep guttural voice of dragon-kin, mixed with a sound like sloshing, bubbling liquid.

“Wow, you really did Buddy, but you need to work on volume control a bit.” Squidge was clearly happy, as he flew his wings seemed to change from the webbed arms of a wyvern to those of a proper dragon with separate arms.

“Aww, my little boy’s growing up. You need to spend more time with us baby, we’re missing so much.”

“Sorry Mum…” Squidge whispered. “…I just wanted to be able to fight with Dad, but he was outgrowing me, so I needed to train separately. I still love you guys, a lot and I’ll try to be around more. It made me really happy to be able to throw that guy around, but I don’t want to get lazy and fall behind again.”

“That’s fine Baby, just don’t forget that the whole time you’re training, you’re not with us anyway.”

Squidge nodded, then returned his focus to flying, showing a level of improvement that clearly impressed his little sister as she praised how much faster and stable he had gotten.

When they arrived a short while later, Omedra hopped off and went inside, then the others followed. The layout was much cosier than the beach house, more like a log cabin, with a fireplace.

The furniture looked to be in some kind of antique style, it felt both strangely familiar and completely new and left Carl feeling dizzy.

[ RIGHT CARL, CLOSE YOUR EYES, I’M COMING OUT AND NOT SURE IF I’M GOING TO BE DRESSED. ]

Carl closed his eyes, then Sis pulled herself out. She was dressed this time, but she had seemingly aged slightly.

“Carl, open your eyes, it’s safe… I need your opinion though.”

Carl could hear discomfort in Klaire’s voice and turned to find her covering her mouth with one hand staring at a semi-familiar woman.

“Y-you’re the woman… That one that Margo had with him.”

“What? What’re you talking about bro? I’m a syste-…” Sis fell silent. “…I have a system of my own now. Carl, what’s going on, what happened?”

Carl looked at Klaire and Omedra, then suggested they took a seat while Carl explained everything. The conversation didn’t take long, her confusion seemed to be a temporary side-effect of her ascension, which began to clear as they spoke.

“Do I really look like her? Like Margo’s other wife?”

“Yeah, you really do. Younger, but very similar…” Carl nodded. “…You also look like Margo a little bit. Is there a chance that you’re their daughter?”

“I don’t think so, I remember Ishtar programming me, helping me to understand myself and my purpose.”

“Sis, they suck, let’s not take anything at face value. I said I’ll help you find her diary, we’ll find the truth about both of us if we have to wring it out of them. I’ll be your brother no matter, it doesn’t matter to me whether we’re creations, children or anything. What race is on your system?”

“It says, “construct/aspect”. I guess that means I definitely have something to do with Margo.”

“I told you it doesn’t matter, I just wanted to say that “fake” people don’t have races, so you can stop pretending like you don’t exist already. Watching my sister act like she owes me for acknowledging her is heartbreaking.”

Sis gave him a hug. “Thanks bro, I’m sorry I’ve been acting so weird. For what it’s worth, having a system of my own, rather than just managing yours helps a lot.”

“Now, did you reach five stars too?”

“No, it looks like I don’t have any capacity for earning stars, but I have “immortality” on my skill list. I guess that comes with being half-aspect.”

Carl gave her another hug, then insisted she came over for dinner that night, then he, Klaire and Squidge left and returned home.

As they stepped through the door, they were surprised to see Lillim and Faylorna helping Kyubi prepare dinner. Which they explained was common practice for an ascension banquet, which in turn was effectively a “welcome to the club” party.

Carl and Klaire started by announcing Squidge’s ability to speak, which earned him a big squeeze from his sister Levi first and then the rest of his siblings that were present. They continued with the announcement of Sis’ new appearence and Lillim naturally demanded that she be brought over immediately.

“…Grandma, leave her be for now, you can interrogate her when she’s had time to digest it. I swear if you upset her though…”

Lillim clicked her tongue. “Carl, I truly respect the fact you protect your family, but we were just talking about how that woman died from the massive accumalation of divinity in her mortal body.”

“Well, can you stop and think for a bloody second? I’ve had a pretty decent amount of divinity accumulating in my body for ages, I get it’s a different level all together, but I haven’t suffered any sort of symptoms and regardless of my origins I’m human.”

“He has a point, I was going to say the same thing when you mentioned it. It seems our long held belief was flawed at best. We’re missing a piece of that puzzle and need more information, but that is Carl and Sis’ decision to make and everyone else needs to respect that.”

“We all have a right to kn-”

“…And Carl and Sis have a right to privacy, one which in my opinion exceeds our right to know.” Bahamut interjected, surprising them all.

“Ugh, it seems only I want to know the truth behind that failure of ours.”

“Exactly how much more powerful are aspects to Elder-gods?” Carl asked, picking up on the unspoken point of interest.

“Immensely, to put it simply they are essentially unlimited and unrestricted, devoted conduits. They can even create their own elder-gods, if they are so inclined, the mad prophet you’ve heard us mention is one such creature.” Kyubi answered when Lillim hesitated to explain.

“I see… Good, that means Sis will be able to keep herself safe, I just hope she doesn’t think it means she can’t ask for help.”

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