Chapter 261: Helpful Intentions, Catastrophic Magic, and Creatures That Should Not Be Summoned
Chapter 261: Helpful Intentions, Catastrophic Magic, and Creatures That Should Not Be Summoned
The office was quiet.
For approximately four minutes.
That was how long it took before things went wrong, which was, in fairness, longer than anyone who knew these children should have expected.
Thalira had decided, with the particular conviction of a child who had found a purpose, that the office needed to be arranged before the Queen returned.
This was a good intention.
It was a genuinely good intention, which was perhaps the most dangerous kind.
"When she comes back," Thalira said, surveying the desk with focused energy, "she should come back to a clean office."
The parchments were everywhere.
Stacked in uneven towers, spread across the surface in overlapping layers, some half-slid off the edge and hanging at angles that suggested they had given up on the idea of being organized some time ago. It was, by any reasonable measure, a desk that had been worked on recently and heavily and with no particular attention paid to tidiness.
Thalira began moving things.
Carefully at first. Both hands, slow and deliberate, lifting parchments and placing them into what she had decided were meaningful groupings. Her light blue hair fell forward as she bent over the desk, and she pushed it back with her forearm without stopping.
Aziren appeared beside her immediately.
He was not one to be left behind when something was happening.
"I’ll help," he said.
He said it with the full warmth of someone who meant it completely and had also not thought through what helping might involve when you were a fire demon who had not yet fully mastered the finer points of control.
He reached for a stack of parchments.
"Thank you," Thalira said, and she meant that too.
Across the room, Azerion was conducting a search.
It was a focused, methodical search — the kind that moved from one end of a space to the other with clear purpose. He had already checked the snack box. Both of them. His and Elyn’s. They were empty, which was not a surprise because he was the primary reason they were empty, but hope had to be maintained.
He was looking for snacks.
Specifically, he was looking for snacks that might have been placed somewhere new since his last thorough investigation of the office, which had been approximately two days ago.
And he failed to recall that Rin had only hidden the snacks to mess with him that day, so technically... there were no snacks in the office.
Velira sat near the window.
She had her stuffed bunny in her lap and was engaged in a quiet, focused conversation with it that no one else could hear, occasionally nodding at whatever the bunny was communicating back.
Retheris was on the couch.
He was lying across it with one arm draped over his eyes.
"I’m bored," he said, to the ceiling.
No one responded.
"Extremely bored," he added.
"Then help us," Thalira said from the desk, without looking up.
"I don’t want to help," he said. "I want something interesting to happen."
"I miss the Queen," Aziren said, from where he was carefully — very carefully — lifting a stack of parchments with both hands.
Retheris lowered his arm and looked at him.
"Me too," he said.
"That’s why we’re doing this," Thalira said. "So when she comes back, the office is clean and she’s pleased."
Retheris considered this.
Then put his arm back over his eyes.
"She’ll be pleased either way," he said. "She’s always pleased to see us."
This was true, and no one argued with it.
Azerion had moved to the far side of the office and was now checking behind a cabinet.
He stepped back.
He stepped sideways.
And because he did not look where he was stepping, his foot came down directly on Velira.
Specifically on the edge of her bunny, which was close enough.
Velira looked up.
"What," she said, in a voice that was very calm and therefore very dangerous, "is wrong with you?"
Azerion looked down.
"I didn’t mean it," he said. "I was looking for something."
"Watch where you’re going," Velira said.
"I said I didn’t mean it."
"Maintain yourself," she said, sitting up straighter. "Just because the Queen isn’t here doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like." She fixed him with a look that had inherited a great deal from her mother. "If anything, you should be on your best behaviour when she’s not here."
Azerion looked at her for a moment.
"At least," he said, gesturing toward the desk, "Aziren and Thalira are doing something useful. It’s not my fault you were doing nothing and happened to be stepped on by me."
Velira’s eyes narrowed. "Really?" she asked him.
"What?" he asked her. "It’s not like I’m lying after all. You’re just sitting there."
"I am keeping the bunny company," she said. "That is also useful."
Azerion opened his mouth.
Then Thalira screamed, sending everyone on alert.
Every head turned.
The parchments were on fire.
Not all of them. But enough. The stack that Aziren had been helping to arrange had caught a soft orange flame, working its way up from the bottom of the pile with cheerful efficiency, spreading sideways onto the parchments beside them.
Aziren stood frozen.
His ears had drooped. His eyes were wide, and the flames in his hair had gone very small, the way they did when he was horrified, and he was staring at the burning parchments with an expression of someone who had tried extremely hard and had achieved the opposite.
"Aziren—" Thalira started.
Retheris was already up from the couch.
He moved fast, crossing the room in seconds, both hands coming up.
"I’ll stop it," he said.
He called the water, and yes, it answered—but perhaps not in the way he had expected.
The first issue was the amount of water, and the second was what came with it.
"Oh... oh," he said as he stared at the creature with wide eyes.