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Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.
"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."
"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."
"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."
The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off, bracing to fight yet another city-destroying monster, and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.
...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.
Near the Golden Coven capital, in Aurum
Near Savarasse, in Thilanushinyel
Near Whately Academy
With Unbitwise
witchwatcher
her_imperial_radiance
"That's probably more negotiable. It isn't that Mama doesn't care about forms of death and destruction that aren't vampire-related, it's just that the size of the vampire project is already a little ambitious and she doesn't want to spread thin. The ideal would probably be for there to be sufficiently reliable interworld transit that she could just have jurisdiction over both worlds' worth of vampires."
witchwatcher
"I just want the damn war to be over already. Then everyone could go home. Not that I don't like my squad, but it's a bit sad that a common enemy is all that holds us together."
her_imperial_radiance
"I understand. But if you add vampires to the world it might just make things worse if it were done clumsily. Morphine doesn't work on turning, vampires are overwhelmingly stronger and faster than humans, new ones have little self-control and at any age human blood is much more appetizing than the alternatives, some people acquire witchcraft on turning even if they didn't already have it, and because it's contagious it can't just be a handful of trustworthy people. Vampires also do a thing sort of like werewolf imprinting that under unpoliced circumstances usually results in non-consensual turning."
witchwatcher
"Ironically, as much as I hate not being able to fight Neuroi, I think I could use a few days where I can't help but not fight Neuroi. This is a long tunnel, isn't it? Do you mind going into a run?"
witchwatcher
"I'll just run, I won't get tired unless it's more than ten miles." She runs, only about half again as fast as a quick human.
witchwatcher
She nods, and keeps running.
It shouldn't take too long to get the rest of the way to the village at this rate.
It shouldn't take too long to get the rest of the way to the village at this rate.
her_imperial_radiance
Indeed, there's the stairs. It looks like an unusually tasteful housing development with a high opaque fence, and there are kids playing outside.
"There usually aren't this many kids here, but some of the ones who live in Italy are on a field trip," says Elspeth. A kid runs up to her, and she picks him up and tosses him into the air like he weighs half a pound and catches him gently and puts him down. A little girl says something to her in Italian, and Elspeth replies in the same language, then adds to Gren, "The cafeteria's this way. Dinner will be soon."
"There usually aren't this many kids here, but some of the ones who live in Italy are on a field trip," says Elspeth. A kid runs up to her, and she picks him up and tosses him into the air like he weighs half a pound and catches him gently and puts him down. A little girl says something to her in Italian, and Elspeth replies in the same language, then adds to Gren, "The cafeteria's this way. Dinner will be soon."
witchwatcher
"That sounded like Romangan. I never learned much of it, though. This place is very nicely laid out. The 42nd's base is a damp old castle that used to belong to the third princess of Suomus."
her_imperial_radiance
"Italian," says Elspeth. "Italy contains a city called Rome which was the capital of what was called the Roman Empire."
The cafeteria is starting to fill up. There's a bunch of buff, variously brownish adults with short-cropped hair. One of the men looks up when the door opens, and then jogs across the room, beaming at Elspeth, to pick her up and swing her around and put her down again and hug her. "Hi, Elsie! And this must be Grendyne?"
"Grendyne, this is Jake, my wolf and the Imperial Alpha - that means he runs the one of the three wolf packs that reports directly to Mama."
The cafeteria is starting to fill up. There's a bunch of buff, variously brownish adults with short-cropped hair. One of the men looks up when the door opens, and then jogs across the room, beaming at Elspeth, to pick her up and swing her around and put her down again and hug her. "Hi, Elsie! And this must be Grendyne?"
"Grendyne, this is Jake, my wolf and the Imperial Alpha - that means he runs the one of the three wolf packs that reports directly to Mama."
witchwatcher
"We have a Rome, too, it's even the capital of Romanga. Nice to meet you, Jake. Gren is probably an easier thing to call me, if you don't want to use my squad's nickname of 'copycat'. How many wolves are there, anyway? Are there more packs than just those three?"
her_imperial_radiance
"Just three packs," says Elspeth. "Because there's only three wolves who have the right ancestry to run one - as far as we can tell, anyway. It's not a well-explored area. So Jake has a pack and his sisters Rachel - she's over there - and Becky, who lives in La Push, each have one. There are currently sixty-four active wolves, eighteen imprints including me, and fifty-three puppies who haven't activated yet."
Her wolf is looking at her like she is the center of the universe.
Her wolf is looking at her like she is the center of the universe.
witchwatcher
She doesn't actually notice right away. She's more attuned to be alert for hostile faces, and things like Neuroi.
"That's not nearly as much as I was expecting. There's something like one and a quarter million Strike Witches on my world. Are there more vampires?"
"That's not nearly as much as I was expecting. There's something like one and a quarter million Strike Witches on my world. Are there more vampires?"
her_imperial_radiance
"Lots more. Wolves have to reproduce to make more; vampires can just turn humans in batches the size you saw as often as every three days - or twice that if we wanted to lock Addy into one job."
witchwatcher
"I was imagining both populations having been around for a while. Witches have happened as long as we can remember, more or less one every five hundred female babies. There's even books- Could you be a Witch? Here's how to tell!"
her_imperial_radiance
"Wolves aren't a very old population and the phenomenon was isolated to a particular small tribe until recently. The vampire population used to be more limited too, because the previous vampire government was concerned with secrecy more than we are and turning used to be very difficult for most vampires to accomplish without killing the person instead, but it's always been global."
witchwatcher
"Hm. What's dinner going to be? I'll be very glad if the answer is not 'salted fish and rice,' which is what we have the most of back home."
her_imperial_radiance
Jake speaks up: "It's taco night. I think there's fish, but you could just go for the ground beef or the beans. And there's other stuff too if you don't like tacos. Nobody goes hungry in a wolf cafeteria."
witchwatcher
"Never heard of 'tacos'. Beef is rare where I'm from, though. Is there coffee or tea? We get a little box of the stuff with every week's rations delivery, but it's never as much as I like."
her_imperial_radiance
"Yeah, there's both," says Jake. "No rationing. Tacos is you get a tortilla... that's... like a flat bread thing? And you put meat and whatever else in it."
(Elspeth sends mental images of tortillas and complete tacos.)
(Elspeth sends mental images of tortillas and complete tacos.)
her_imperial_radiance
And presently some people put out huge platters of stuff, the cafeteria finishes filling up very quickly,, and all the buff brown people take extremely large amounts of food and wolf it down.
(Elspeth makes herself a very small taco with little tastes of most of the things in it.)
(Elspeth makes herself a very small taco with little tastes of most of the things in it.)