Milla returned her gaze from the clouds to the mage's face, giving the question some thought before  picking an answer that wasn't true but meant less imposition on her part, and she didn't want to take any more things from such a welcoming girl: “No.”

“Ah, good, good,” Alana said cheerfully, producing rather a lot of bacon—had she slaughtered a pig on the way here or something?—and a frying pan from her pack. The first went into the second and a tongue of flame sprouted from the mage's hand to actually do the cooking. After a few minutes of sizzling, the contents of the pan was tipped onto a plate, and she dug in.

“You'll ruin your figure, you know...” Milla said, concerned that the other girl would go from 'delightfully squidgy' to 'worryingly heavy'. She wasn't really sure what it took to get humans fat any more, it had been so long since she had to worry about that.

A frosty silence descended before a flame engulfed the brunette's hand, dangerously close to the vampire's face, “Are you calling me a pig?”

“No, you're eating a pig...”

In reflection, she really did deserve the punch she got from that.

After Alana had finished her breakfast and packed away, she dragged the still mildly disoriented vampire to her feet, glad that she was properly dressed now, and set off into the forest. After that... horrible, unforgivable insult earlier, she wasn't really in a talkative mood, even to question what that dagger was. From the faint golden sheen on it, it was certainly an artefact of some description... but given the rarity of artefact weaponry, she wasn't sure if it was a level to match the vampire herself. Not that a level five artefact weapon couldn't trump any completely mortal blade...

So caught up was she in pondering the power of the little dagger that she didn't notice when the vampire started telling her she was going the wrong way, the thick accent and lisp blending into the wind without the slightest bit of difficulty. It inevitably came down to the much shorter girl (not only was Milla small, Alanna was unusually tall) poking her in the side to get her attention.

“What?” she snapped, glaring at the girl.

“You're going the wrong way... if you keep heading this way, you'll miss the festival...” the vampire mumbled, only the other girl's wealth of experience with demons enabling her to make the slightest bit of sense. How did she ever get anywhere when nobody could understand her?

“Oh... um... right! I was just going this way to avoid a bandit camp,” Alana bluffed, turning and heading in the right direction after working out where in the sky the sun was. She was glad for the height difference; it made it a lot easier to keep the vampire from seeing her blush.

Right, a few hours' walking, and they should be able to arrive in town with plenty of time to set up for the festival...


“I thought you said we came this way to avoid bandits?”

“They moved around, okay!”

“I guess...”

The two girls were currently in a sticky situation. Specifically, they'd run into a bunch of elven bandits, who were now arguing over whether honey or syrup was a more appropriate marinade for a human girl and some sort of porcelain doll. Fortunately, they hadn't gotten close enough to making a decision to do any more than tie the pair of them up and set up a spit.

“So, since you're such a high level, got any idea how we can get out of this?” the mage asked, not worrying about the elves understanding them. Elven bandits tended to be the most xenophobic; most others had learned to stop kidnapping random travellers for dinner and stick to the other races' serious criminals as a form of somewhat surreal execution. They were also the most likely to think of other races as nothing more than somewhat advanced cattle.

“Not really... I'll try and stall them until night-time, I guess...” the vampire said, thinking about how her abilities would be restored with nightfall. Starting with the thief ability to get out of any binds, no matter how strong or well tied they are, “Umm... I think once they decide on what they're going to cook us in, they'll cut our clothes off...”

“... You can understand them?”

“Yeah... why?”

“If you can understand them, why didn't you do anything when we heard those voices in the trees earlier?” the mage asked, understandably irritated by the knowledge that they could have dodged being placed on some bandits' menu for the evening.

“Well... 'cause they were speaking in code. I learned the language from more settled elves, so I didn't know their hunting code...”

Unable to think of anything to say to that, Alana hung there quietly, watching as the elves' argument wound down. At this rate, they'd be cooked well before nightfall... they were doomed. Absolutely, unavoidably, doomed. They were going to be slathered with some sticky substance and then roasted alive.

“Oh, don't worry, elves take their food preparation extremely seriously. First they hang the meal out to air, which involves taking off any clothing, and whilst that's going on they prepare the marinade. It takes an hour or two for the airing to be done, then they cover their dinner in the prepared marinade. They don't even begin cooking until that's had time to set in, you just need to be as difficult as possible when they try and cook you. We only need to delay them a little,” Milla said quietly, the information a bit hard to take in with her accent and speech impediment—so much so that Alana asked for her to repeat it again, slower.

It wasn't very reassuring. How would they be able to delay a large group of elves long enough that they could avoid being roasted alive? It was an utterly preposterous situation. But... there was no point in giving up now, especially because one particularly hungry-looking elf was approaching with a pair of knives.

Though the two girls struggled, they weren't really able to delay him (her? With elves, you could never tell) by more than a minute, as he quickly and efficiently sliced through their clothing, leaving the two of them hanging in the air completely naked. Although Alana was uncomfortable with this, squirming and constantly trying to cover herself, her bone-white partner was quite content to just hang there and wait for the next opportunity to take a delaying action.

As predicted, it came several hours later, when the sun was visibly beginning to set, and the elves approached with some brushes and buckets full of honey. Rather spicy smelling honey but, nevertheless, still honey. Tired as she was from her constant squirming, Alana wasn't able to offer much resistance, but Milla proved extremely difficult to cover thoroughly, wasting at least quarter of an hour making them miss the same spot on her rear time and time again.

Eventually, though, they got that, too, leaving them to hang for a few minutes whilst they finished setting up the fire.

“We're doomed,” Alana announced, realising that the clearing was still quite well lit, “They're going to roast us, and there's no time to wait for nightfall.”

Only then did she realise that the ropes around herself had loosened considerably, and it wasn't until a second later that she noticed that the shadow of the trees had completely covered their little spot in darkness... which was enough to give the vampire her skills back. A second later and a golden blur sliced through the ropes and bodily carried the large girl off into the darkness, hopping up to the trees and not stopping for several entire miles.

When they did come to a halt, Alana finally got chance to look at her body—and the body of the vampire girl. Completely covered in honey that, for some reason, had staunchly refused to be removed by the speed of their escape. And that was it: just honey, nothing else aside from the vampire girl's dagger. Not a stitch of clothing or food.

“If you could rescue me so easily, why the hell couldn't you get some clothing or anything?” the mage demanded, reflexively covering herself. How dare the vampire be so... unashamed of standing around like this!

“All that stuff was in sunlight. I'd just get caught again,” Milla said, eyes downcast, “Sorry. Thought it was more important that we get away than risk waiting longer for clothing.”

“And what about making sure they don't follow us? This honey must be dripping through the whole damn forest!” the mage complained, frowning at the smaller girl.

“Isn't. Doesn't fall off,” was the brusque reply, “Needs to be... washed off.”

Something abut the vampire's tone worried Alana, especially when she stepped closer... and closer... and definitely when she found the vampire's body wrapped around her own, tongue lapping at her neck. It was alarmingly rough-textured. She'd have thought that it would be... well, smoother. Why so rough? The answer: to clean dirt and grime away from any skin before biting. Vampires didn't want their prey to get infected and die, it was too suspicious.

“Sorry I lied earlier... do need to eat, too... but I definitely need to drink...” the vampire apologised, right before she bit down. It wasn't the harsh, terrifyingly painful tearing she expected. Just two sharp points of pain... and then a chilling, numbing effect that seemed to slowly spread. That was what it seemed like, since she feel to her knees halfway through Milla's 'meal'.

Though the vampire didn't take much, being a light eater and on the small side, the anaesthesia was more than enough to make it hard for Alana to walk, instead being half carried to a nearby stream and left to wash herself.

“I'm... sorry about my lack of control... I'll make it up to you, promise,” the white-haired girl said, still completely drenched in the honey before she rushed off again. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes before she returned, hands and arms soaked in blood as well as the sweetener, and carrying the mage's pack—complete with her change of clothes—on one finger. Not saying anything to the fire mage, who was by now back to normal but unsure how to really talk with the other girl, she dove into the water and worked on cleaning herself off.

Several long minutes later, the fire mage was dressed and consciously keeping her eyes off of the nude vampire. Nude aside from a belt that, wide as it was, didn't do quite enough to actually hide anything. Path of the scholar, path of the scholar... though she couldn't really feel annoyed at a girl that had both freed her from man-eating elves and gone back to get her stuff for mere nudity. Well, so long as she didn't press the point. She was, however, annoyed at being used for food. And for being lied to:

“If you need to eat, tell me. I'm a mid-levelled mage; there's no need to worry about a little expenditure! And warn me before you do... that...” Alana said, trailing off. Somehow—probably the same way she got out of the ropes—this vampire had gotten rid of her brand. Yet she was still around, “... why are you even sticking with me?”

“Umm... I'll tell you later... don't want to miss the festival,” Milla said, rapidly changing the subject and rushing down the road, “If we don't start now, we won't be there in time.”

“... get back here! Idiot!”