The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'
Chapter 152 - Your Name Must Actually Mean ’Beautiful Guts’... You Best Hope They Don’t Decorate The Building

Chapter 152: Chapter 152 - Your Name Must Actually Mean ’Beautiful Guts’... You Best Hope They Don’t Decorate The Building

Friendly Author Trigger Warning: Contains ’Pushed Onto A Train Rail’ Terror/Trauma/Threat (No actual death or gore... despite the title.)

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Dima had received her reassignment orders just yesterday morning. The confusion about being moved from her comfortable position as a liaison with the Coiled Serpent Guild’s main headquarters had only grown after reading through the documents multiple times.

’A Branch Manager position. In her city of all places.’

She drummed her well manicured fingers against the train window while watching the landscape blur past. The lovely early morning sun did little to improve her mood. Her superiors had been oddly evasive about the exact details of her transfer - only emphasizing the ’great opportunity’ this represented.

She couldn’t help feeling like they meant *their* opportunity and not her own.

The woman’s lip curled as she recalled the name of her ’subordinate’. Elua er Goltbred was unofficially, but might as well be, the real manager in their eyes. That precocious trainee who had waltzed in with sigil modifications to long used designs.

And who had a perfectly handsome fiancé.

Had because the girl younger than her was now married! She had heard rumors of the wedding spread by the attending Guild official. The same small girl who had caught her sigil idol’s attention and became his disciple had one-upped her yet again... in life as well as profession.

’He probably doesn’t even know my name after all this time...’

Her thoughts about missing out on becoming a disciple stuttered to a halt as the train rounded the last bend. She had been to the city a few times - it was the headquarters of the Ironclad Order after all. As a traveling liaison, lots of varied sigil work needed to be discussed from time to time with them.

Which was why the thing erected in her line of sight seemed even more ridiculous.

Rising far above the nearby buildings, like it had been sitting there for months, stood an elegant stone structure with the Guild’s serpentine emblem carved in relief - and expertly painted to make it stand out even further. The architecture was flawless for a *mere* branch. The construction materials looked expensive... for a mere branch.

Most concerningly, the placement was perfect for foot traffic and carriage goers alike. Which meant the plot of land must have been nearly as costly as the rest of the structure combined.

"Impossible. The permits alone should have taken them months. Did I miss seeing the construction starting? Was I too distracted to notice it?"

Dima found herself biting her thumbnail as she waited for the train to pull into the station. She stood up quicker than she felt was ’beautiful’ and cleared her throat nervously before exiting the vehicle in a perfectly calm and collected manner. On the outside.

Yet as she approached on foot minutes later, there was no sign at all of any recent construction. No debris, no workers, not even freshly disturbed earth around the foundation. Just a fully ready to be operational Guild branch that seemed to have materialized overnight.

"Ah, you must be Dima. I do apologize for not bothering to ask your name the first time we met. I honestly didn’t care at the time."

The voice was sweet, painfully young, and terrifyingly familiar. The last time she heard the false tones was when she was explaining in very vague ways the concept of faithfulness and what often happens to people that intentionally test it.

While waiting for the train back then, she had been ’cornered’ much, *much* too close to the tracks while the brunette kept glancing to see if the fast moving vehicle was about to arrive. It was only as the realization of unvoiced threats set in that their positioning started to feel *dire*.

’I dreamt she pushed me into it for a week.’

Those nightmares had started the very next night and the scenario played out differently each time. Sometimes she was pushed by the smiling brunette. Sometimes she stumbled on her own. Occasionally, she even jumped away in terror to avoid the small hand she was certain was reaching for her back to do something far worse than the train would.

But always... *always* those mint eyes glowed and watched as the clattering vehicle approached her on the tracks. Watched her unable to move as if pinning her down with that young and hideously ’innocent’ smile.

The worst part was just how much she had worked to convince herself afterward that she was being ridiculous. That she had been letting a child - an adult only by Guild standards! - get under her skin.

That the positioning near the tracks had been coincidental and the glances toward the approaching train merely casual observation... or that there was an infuriating potential for the heiress to have been making sure the *opposite* of her dream did not happen. That she did *not* stumble or jump in reality. That she might be pulled back quickly before it came too close.

Elua er Goltbred stood in the doorway and her ’annoyingly beautiful’ mint eyes were filled with something that might have been amusement as she watched the woman change colors faster than a squid... all due to the horrendous ’prank’ she had played back then.

Dreams were not really caused by the five senses as one slept... but making the sixth - her spirit - think of that moment enough to dream of it was simple. The tiny illusive fragment flashing images just fast enough for her subconscious mind to catch it happening allowed the potential nightmare to enter her psyche ’organically’.

The rest would be handled by her own psyche, fears, and guilt.

"Welcome to our new branch. By the way, ’Inner Beauty’ is a lovely name your parents have given you. They must have studied the ’old tongue’ to find such a well deserved meaning."

The illusionist knew that those same mental traits would probably do wonders for her kind words, as well... turning every one of them into a vicious barb that she *truly* didn’t have the capacity to ’care’ about delivering on her own.

Besides, even if she could be chilly in business or professional in work... her ideal in this life was still ultimately someone ’sweet’. It hadn’t drawn as many enemies as she expected it to when she was very young. But that hardly mattered to her anymore.

"I do so look forward to working with you, manager."

<---

Yatrel’s hands pressed against the earth in the dark as her eldest daughter carved the final sigils into position almost lazily. The ritual array sprawled across the large empty lot like a spider’s web. Each line was precise and purposeful... meant to be deployed in a certain order.

"The foundation first. Then the walls. It’s not so different from manual processes. The trick your Guild uses is making the stone meld together into what shape they want it to be. This won’t look so different."

Despite her assurance, the woman was still just a little worried.

"And you’re certain the Fellowship won’t be able to trace this?"

"Mother, that’s why we had them sign off on the permits without specifics about the methods the Coiled Serpent would use. They’ll probably assume they hired someone unknown to personally do it."

Yatrel’s lips quirked.

"Which I technically am. Doing it all."

"Exactly. Without that lovely Element of yours, we couldn’t have done this at all."

Her statement technically wasn’t true. But she wasn’t about to explain advanced essence conversion methods or posit a situation in which she stocked energy for months just to build a place in a day that workers could have done in a quarter of that time!

"You’re just... being guided by my excellent ritual."

"Yes... which is why I’m worried, dear. You’ve already shown them one ’excellent’ ritual. There are those that will make a fuss and claim you were involved."

"I know, mother. But those that are worried about something like that will stick out even more... as will my threats to publicly release the formation of mine they wanted to horde. We can still call this off."

Their mint eyes locked together... and either the older woman tamped down her concern or she realized that the girl was lying. Elua very much wanted this done that night and would have likely done her best to convince her if she wanted to stop.

The first low tremors began as essence flowed through the sigils. Stone and packing earth rose from the stockpiles around the site, carted there in secret by the Silversky workers under contract. The materials bobbed like living things until the foundations were aligned perfectly.

Hesitantly, the elementalist shifted her attention to the next ’control’ section. A hissing and fizzing sound was more than audible as the stone fused together into a gigantic slab. All the noise was ’trapped’ by another ritual surrounding the construction site that her daughter powered as she worked.

"This should have taken many hours... and far more essence users taking breaks and their own turns on the ritual. Not thirty minutes with one person."

"That’s one of the values of specializing the sigils to the ritual wielder. You’ve been greatly underutilized for years, mom. Don’t worry, though."

"...About what, dear?"

"About them overworking you. I won’t tell anyone you could do a week’s work in a few hours, if you don’t... because I don’t want to assist that work every time. The identity of the persons behind the construction is our little carefully contracted secret, right?"

The woman chuckled at the mood of her eldest. She still had some concerns and questions about all these methods - especially how her supposedly prodigious daughter came up with them - but there was no reason to distrust that face. Even if the girl did get evasive the moment she hinted at asking before.

Walls with holes for windows, two more floors, and a staircase went up next with impossible speed before the woman had to take a break. There were even slots for windows and doorways worked in with a single, well written ritual execution.

"How are you with heights, by the way? I’m getting an idea for something to surprise everyone further... do you trust any scaffolding I design?"

"Elua, dear... my back is leaning against a wall we just made together that might have fallen on me. Do you think I don’t trust you?"

The reborn cultivator felt sheepish for a brief moment before her eyes narrowed.

"That doesn’t answer my first question."

Reddish-blonde hair was brushed behind her own ear gracefully, with a haughty look on her face, as the Dame Goltbred - the duelist that terrified many women and made men uncomfortable in their martial skill - spoke firm words with *absolute* certainty.

"People belong safely with two feet on the ground. With a hundred feet of earth in every direction. Every. Direction. Cliffs are the worst thing in the world and if I ever caught you running towards one as a child... you should have hoped your father or a servant was around to save you."