The next time I opened my eyes, I was trapped in darkness. I could hear muffled sounds coming from all around me. They slowly grew clearer as I waited in an empty world. I couldn't really tell exactly how much time elapsed, but it felt like a veritable eternity.

The locals spoke a surprisingly simple language. Engineered by Flitzegarde from the ground up, it was nowhere near as messy as the English that served as the system's backbone.

When the haze finally cleared, I realised that the darkness was a function of my form. Or rather, the form that I was watching over.

The child that had inherited our daughter's soul was only about half developed. She was not in a womb, but a large egg about three quarters the size of the bipedal rabbits that wandered the surrounding castle.

The egg itself was placed atop a counter where it could get plenty of sun. I eventually realised that I could detach and examine the world as I wished. And that was precisely why I noticed that something was off. She wasn't actually a she. It wasn't possible to tell from the fetus' development at the time. She was still far too young for any sexual organs to form, but a quick look at her genetic sequence confirmed that the child would certainly be male.

My first thought was not to make any corrections. The point was for nature to run its course, but Flux had very specifically stated that I was to watch over our daughter. There was a chance that she'd simply messed up and left me to clean up after her again.

I wasn't really sure if I'd be able, but a quick check confirmed that, while I didn't have as much system access as I did back when I was a celestial, Flux had restored at least some of my permissions.

So, with nothing else to do, I got to work and made the necessary corrections.

___

Even with Leutgar's speed reduced, the crowd struggled to follow the battle. The observers stared dumbfounded at the thoroughly vaporized arena. The elf was quite literally the only thing left, lying alone in a pool of blood at the center of a massive crater well over a hundred meters deep. Three seconds later, the terraformer, which had been overloaded by his magic, erupted into a second massive explosion that finished the battle's sole survivor. The supposedly unbreakable barrier around the ring was the only thing that kept the crowd from certain death.

The replay started as soon as Ragnar worked his ultimate and willed the combatants back into existence. The terraformer was not quite as lucky, but having anticipated a possible breakage, the organisers had another twelve of them at the ready.

The crowd watched the decelerated duel with their eyes alight, eager to uncover the fighters' secrets. Even the VIPs were transfixed; the only difference between them and the commoners was that they ignored the analysts and readily chatted among themselves. The booth's conversation-isolating function provided them with the luxury to ramble on and on without causing any form of disturbance.

It was an all-around boring activity that had held exactly none of Claire's interest. Petting the fox in her lap, she soon dozed off in her armour. Though she could have easily exited her body and explored some place or other, the snoose decided to speed up time instead. Accelerating only her own perception and accidentally overshooting the battle's conclusion, she woke up a little after it was over.

Sylvia was still curled up in her lap, but everyone else had left. It'd been about an hour since they rose from their seats and headed back to the castle. Claire gave her back a stretch before deciding to do the same. She teleported straight into the entrance hall, ignored the shocked servants, and started wandering down the hall. The shaking stirred roused Sylvia from her slumber. The fox blinked, yawned, and shivered before leaping up onto her usual seat.

"Your armour's cold," she complained.

"I don't see how sitting on my head is going to make much of a difference."

"I only have to feel it with my paws from up here."

"You probably wouldn't have to feel it at all if you floated or walked along."

"Don't wanna."

"Of course not."

Claire walked through the convoluted halls with a smile and made her way to the room. Creaking open the door, she found a complete mess of a scene. Lana was drinking straight from a barrel, Krail was vomiting out his lungs, and Jules was chanting a priestly-sounding mantra while Chloe was sprawled on the couch, teary eyed and face half-buried in Arciel's lap. The queen was the only one who seemed even the slightest bit normal. She greeted Claire with an awkward smile whilst sipping from a cup of tea.

"What the heck is going on?" asked Sylvia, with a blink.

"Drinking contest," said Lana. "I won."

"I can't win at anything!" bawled Chloe.

"We'resofuckedwe'resofuckedwe'resofucked," said Jules.

Ignoring Boris, who was chewing on an empty barrel, Claire looked at the only person who'd remained perfectly sober.

"I elected not to participate. It was clearly a losing battle."

"Right." Claire scruffed Sylvia, who had slowly started sneaking her way towards a half-empty cup, and pulled her back into her arms. "Bad fox."

"What the heck! I just wanted a sip!"

"A sip of vekratt is enough to make you go wild."

"Oh, come on! Me going wild isn't even that bad."

"Yes it is," said Claire.

"I concur. There is a reason we forbade you from drinking, following the incident."

"Which incident?" Sylvia blinked. Thrice.

"The one that you were too drunk to remember," said Claire.

"It shouldn't count if I don't remember."

"I do believe that is precisely when it matters most," said Arciel.

"Exactly," said Claire.

"No fair. You can't just gang up on me like that!"

"We can, and we did." Claire pinched the fox's cheeks. "Now let's go."

"Go? Go where?"

"I'm not sure yet," said Claire. "Rubia wants to do landscape painting today. But she hasn't decided on a place."

"Oh! That sounds fun!" She looked at the rest of the party. "Is anyone else coming?"

"I would like to, if possible," said Arciel. "I believe I could use a brief reprieve from… all this."

"Sure," said Sylvia. "Rubia's a real sweetie pie, so she probably won't mind."

"She'd be happy to have you," said Claire.

"Don't go," whined Chloe. The maid tightened her grip on Arciel's stomach. "Don't leave me. I swear I'm not useless. I was just unlucky! He was just unfair! No one told me he was a caster!"

"Relax, Chloe. I haven't any intention of abandoning you. You may accompany us if you so wish."

"I don't wanna go."

"Then you shall have no choice but to remain behind."

"Stay with me."

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"I am afraid that I shall be leaving regardless of your wishes," said Arciel. "I have comforted you for long enough. It is time to put an end to this childish tantrum."

"I don't wanna."

"I understand." Arciel sighed. "Claire, if you could."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Claire extended a talon towards the maid's face, but she released her mistress and sat up before it could reach her. "Don't you think getting her involved is kind of extreme?"

"Perhaps, but the intervention has readily served its purpose." Flashing a smile, Arciel stood up from her seat, walked over to the door, and raised her wand. "Shall we extend Rubia a formal invitation? Or would you rather we simply barged in?"

"I was planning to kidnap her," said Claire.

"Consider it done." Lightly waving her wand, Arciel opened a portal in the ceiling and another somewhere else in the castle. One beat later, Rubia tumbled straight through, but stopped before she hit the ground. She looked around for a second, blinking curiously, before lightly waving at the others with her lips a bashful smile.

"Good afternoon, Rubia," said Arciel. "I was given the impression that you would like to spend the afternoon painting."

The homunculus nodded.

"Then let us do just that," said the Vel'khanese queen. "Shall I return you to your quarters, so that you may gather your belongings?"

Rubia paused.

"We can just go. We bought supplies in advance," said Claire.

"Is there a need to report her absence?"

"No point." Claire walked over to the balcony and assumed her true form. "They'll figure it out."

The others climbed aboard, one by one. Sylvia sat in the very front, Rubia was right behind her, and Arciel sat furthest back. Chloe was a little hesitant, but she eventually joined them as well, mostly because she was using the whole experience as an excuse to wrap her arms around her mistress' waist. Claire briefly eyed Lana, who shook her head and poured herself another drink, before shooting through the castle's barrier and up into the sky.

"Where do you want to go?" asked Claire. Her voice reverberated, as it always did when she grew to her original size.

Rubia paused. She briefly looked at the sierra that spanned the northern sky before pointing to the field just outside the city. It was the middle of summer, still far from the true harvest season, but the pasture had already turned gold. Wheat and hay extended as far as the eye could see. The staple foods danced in the wind, lazily swaying their tips as they waited to be reaped.

And in fact, it wouldn't be too long before they were subject to just that. The field's farmers may have been too busy enjoying the festival, but the government was happy to step in. One of the mage units would likely march on the field in the next ten days and trim it down with blades of wind. A series of tiny tornados would be used to harvest the result, and then a conflagration to fertilize the fields anew.

The service was somehow simultaneously cheap and overpriced. On one hand, the government deducted a full twenty percent of the harvest's value for only about an hour of work. On the other, it was grass and grain that would have otherwise been left to rot in the field. Functionally speaking, it was free money for almost everyone involved. Not even the wage slaves responsible for carrying it out had any reason to complain. They'd signed up for the military knowing that it wasn't all war and glory. The army's purpose was to benefit the nation and, as a form of public service, working the fields did just that. For the slightly less patriotic, the task was spun into an exercise, specifically one that focused on timing and coordination. Each caster would have to pay close attention to ensure that they didn't hamper their peers.

Flying out of the city and past the floating castles, Claire landed in the middle of a field. She lightly swept her tail in a circle and flattened the hay beneath her. Only when content with her handiwork did she lay flat on the ground and allow her passengers to dismount.

"Uhhh, should you have done that?" asked Chloe.

Claire returned to her humanoid form and tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"You flattened the crops."

"It's hay. It'll be fine."

"I can heal them after if you're worried," said Sylvia. The fox gave her spine a bit of a stretch before reaching into her tail and grabbing a box more than ten times her size. Cracking it open revealed a whole slew of art supplies. There were a dozen canvases, all fully stretched and coated with acrylic. The rest of the space was filled by palettes, brushes, and cans of paint. There weren't any easels, but Claire readily made up the difference by teleporting a tree from the nearest forest.

She separated the wood into ten different pieces and made a chair and a stand for each participant. With her vectors, it was easy. She needed only to tear the objects into the right shapes.

"I admit, this is quite the view," said Arciel, as she looked up at the city. "It is a shame that there are so many fortresses to ruin it."

"That can be fixed." Claire flicked her tail before the squid could so much as respond and shifted all but the ducal houses. She grabbed them all at once and raised them far above the clouds so that they couldn't be seen lest sought out intentionally. She was almost certain that she could hear the inhabitants screaming, but that wasn't really her business or problem. It was their fault for cluttering up the sky.

Arciel hid an awkward smile behind her fan. "I suppose that works."

"Any other requests, Your Majesty?"

The squid laughed. "I would not be against a slight drop in the temperature. It is far too hot of a day to be out and about under the sun."

"So demanding."

"Was it not you who asked? I would rather you not, have you no intention of following through."

"Who said anything about not following through?"

Cycling her magic, Claire began to emit a faint but visible mist. It rapidly spread into their surroundings chilling all those wrapped in its embrace.

"Might you dial back your aura, just a little? You have made it too cold," said Arciel.

"Right!? I'm practically shivering in my boots!" complained Sylvia.

"You don't wear boots." Claire pinched the fox's nose as she tweaked her magic. "Is that better?"

"Could you raise it another two degrees?" asked Chloe. "This is fine, but that's around where Arciel is most comfortable."

Claire dispersed the cloud and tried again with the temperature tweaked just a little higher.

"How's this?"

She, however, was the only one perfectly calm.

"What the heck, Claire! The paint's gonna melt! My fur is gonna burn!"

"It's too hot," said Rubia.

"You have gone too far in the opposite direction. It is now as if you are the sun incarnate," said Arciel.

"Oops. Sorry."

It took a few more repetitions of bouncing back and forth for her to arrive at a half-decent temperature. The ability had become a lot more difficult to control after she grew stronger, and it didn't help that she couldn't tell hot from cold. She could have relied on the system's inbuilt temperature sensor, but it was a mess with three different ring-shaped layers, all crammed full of numbers—she couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

"So uhm... what am I supposed to paint?" For a while, the party worked in silence, broken only as Sylvia rose from her empty canvas.

"Whatever you want," said Claire.

"Somehow, I think that only makes it harder."

"How do you write your songs?"

"I dunno. They just kinda pop into my head. Sometimes, I might come up with them in my sleep too, but that's kinda it."

"Would it perhaps be worth illustrating one of your nightmares?" asked Arciel.

"Mmmnnn... I guess I could." Sylvia set down her brush, hopped on Arciel's shoulder, and peered at her canvas. "What are you drawing?"

"It is a view of the heavens, taken from the perspective of an ant."

She'd yet to apply any paint, but it looked like her piece was mostly sketched out. The whole tarp was covered in long, vertical lines that extended up into the sky. In the very centre was a circular splotch of mostly empty space, broken up by the occasional fluffy cloud.

"Huh. That's kinda neat," said Sylvia, before hopping over to the next painter's shoulder. "What about you, Chloe?"

"Uhhh… secret?" she said with an awkward smile. Her illustration was a whole mess of curly lines. The only bits of order were the left and right pieces, which were a little thinner and more evenly spaced.

"Uh huh…" Sylvia paused briefly to read the maid's mind before scrunching up her face and moving on again. "Oh! I don't even need to guess to know what yours is!" she said, from atop Claire's head.

"It's not your tail."

"What the heck do you mean, it's not my tail!? It's literally a tuft of hair that narrows into a point! What else could it possibly be?"

"A paintbrush."

"Why the heck would you draw a paintbrush!?"

"I'm not drawing a paintbrush. I'm painting a paintbrush. Because we're painting."

"That's just silly…"

The fox moved onto the final painter with a shake of the head. Rubia was by far the furthest along—of the five, she was the only one to have filled her canvas with colour. And at the same time, her painting was also the most complex. It was a hyper realistic drawing of a city that perfectly captured both the permanent and temporary districts.

"What the heck!? You're almost done!"

"Not yet," said Rubia, quietly. "This is only the second layer. I want to do three more."

"At this rate, you're going to be done before I even get anything on paper!"

The homunculus said nothing, only flashing a soft smile as she worked her brush.

"Since you're not doing anything, can you pass the red paint?" asked Claire.

"Su—wait! What the heck do you mean I'm not doing anything!?"

"You've been away from your canvas for two whole minutes."

"That's just because I can't come up with anything!"

"Have you considered painting a paintbrush?"

"I'm not painting a stupid paintbrush!" cried the fox.

So on and so forth, their excursion continued.

Only as the sun began to sink did they return to town.

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