[Ti]: Sumr Break, Day 36 — 12:00 PM
[Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · Spirit Sea Venue · Eastern Courtyard
Paddy's gaze swept through the assembled apex predators of the Inner Sea, the greatest combat talents, the most terrifying magical minds, the entire field of their imdiate competition, bypassed all of them, and locked onto Camilla.
She raised her hand and waved with the specific cheerful energy of soone who had no idea she was standing in a minefield.
"Camilla!"
For the first ti across two separate lifetis, Hathaway watched a human face successfully render a doctoral thesis entirely through micro-expression. Her corporate-honed pattern-recognition instincts fired automatically, parsing the millisecond-long data stream cascading across the Seventh Seat's exquisite features:
[Fucking Plud Dragons.] Layered under [Born evil, every last one.] Compressed beneath [Why am I physically present at this event.] Threaded through with [Please, by the stars, do not walk over here.] Collapsing finally into the defeated, spiritually evacuated [Sigh. Fucking Plud Dragons.] It was an expression so dense with conflicting data it threatened to spawn a two-thousand-word psychological monograph in real ti, playing out across a single second.
The two legendary Dragon Witches flanking Camilla reacted with the speed of a security detail. Vessar and Phet stepped forward simultaneously, their hands dropping to their weapons.
Hathaway watched Vessar, possessing the notoriously short fuse of a Serpent Dragon, draw her staff in one fluid, aggressive motion.
But right as the weapon cleared her robes, Hathaway caught a microscopic flicker of Paddy’s mana.
The staff vanished between one fra and the next.
Vessar froze mid-swing. The Dragon Witch lowered her eyes.
Hathaway stared.
Vessar was gripping a 1:1 scale, hyper-realistic replica of Camilla’s tail. It was perfectly accurate to the real thing: impossibly fluffy, snow-white, and tipped in a soft blush of peach-blossom pink.
Vessar was gripping this deeply alarming, anatomically accurate piece of unauthorized boss-rchandise exactly like a baseball bat.
Everyone saw it. Paddy saw it. Phet saw it. Every Witch in the imdiate vicinity saw it.
Camilla turned her head. Vessar looked at Camilla. Camilla looked at Vessar. Both of them looked at the incredibly lifelike body-part replica currently gripped in Vessar’s fist.
Hathaway watched Vessar’s face go completely, horrifyingly blank. The Serpent Dragon’s tactical processor had clearly encountered a fatal deadlock.
Hathaway’s own corporate survival instincts instantly mapped the impossible trap the Plud Dragon had just forced the bodyguard into.
Oh no, Hathaway thought, wincing in acute sympathetic agony. She is trapped. Option A: Drop it imdiately. Result: It looks exactly like she panicked and discarded an illicit, hyper-realistic replica of her sovereign’s body part the mont her deeply private collection was exposed in public.
Option B: Continue holding it. Hathaway swallowed hard. Result: She looks like a genuinely unwell fanatic who genuinely believes that brandishing a 1:1 plush replica of her boss’s appendage is a perfectly normal combat choice. Both options lead to social execution.
While Vessar stood frozen, visibly blue-screening through her total lack of viable dialogue trees, Paddy continued her approach, unbothered.
Camilla, staring at what appeared to be her subordinate’s deeply disturbing secret hobby, took a slow, involuntary step back.
Phet intercepted. The Ancient Ray Witch stepped smoothly into Paddy's path, extending a hand.
Paddy actually stopped. She tilted her head and looked up at the imposing draconic form with wide, completely sincere eyes.
"Lady Phet," Paddy said.
"...What is it." Phet's voice was glacial.
"That 1847 scholarly review on the ecology of the Ancient Ray Witch lineage," Paddy said brightly. "You wrote that, didn't you?"
Phet's expression didn't shift. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"But no one else has ever written about your species except that one piece," Paddy continued, her tone perfectly reasonable. "Such specific nonclature. Such a precise spell-model frawork. It had to be—"
"That piece was published anonym—"
The word cut off in Phet's throat.
Hathaway, watching intensely from the sidelines, caught the fatal syntax error a split-second before Phet did.
You fool, Hathaway thought, her eyes widening in pure, secondhand horror. You said 'that piece.' Not 'which piece.'
The corners of Paddy's mouth curved upward into a crescent of devastating sunshine.
Phet turned to stone. Hathaway watched the Ancient Ray Witch's imposing draconic aura completely short-circuit as the logic trap snapped shut.
It’s an absolute social checkmate, Hathaway realized, analyzing the conversational battlefield with grim awe. If she confirms it now, she admits to writing a self-glorifying encyclopedia entry about her own species in front of half the High Council. If she denies it, it's too late. She already outed herself by knowing its exact anonymous publication status. Both dialogue trees lead to catastrophic dignity collapse.
While Phet stood frozen, visibly trying to retrieve her professional pride from the smoking wreckage, Paddy humd pleasantly and stepped right around her paralyzed flank.
Camilla, watching her defense line fall in under twelve seconds, hastily retreated one more step.
Her back collided squarely with Famia Schüder.
Hathaway recognized the fanatical gleam that suddenly lit up Paddy's eyes: it was the exact look of a developer who had just found a hilarious exploit in the live build.
A flicker of mana. A single whispered syllable.
The Adhesion Hex connected. Not to the Grand Witches themselves, but directly to the delicate, unenchanted fabric of their gowns. The kinetic pull on the silk yanked Camilla backward, one stumbling, ungainly step, completely off-balance.
She pitched backward, snapping flush against the Second Seat's chest. Famia, caught completely off-guard, didn't have ti to raise her hands before her arms were suddenly full of a highly agitated Seventh Seat.
The hex itself hadn't survived physical contact with the Second Seat's ambient aura; the second the fabrics collided, Famia's passive mana obliterated the spell. But the kinetic montum had already done its job.
The visual impact of the Philosopher-King of Hortania landing in the Second Seat's arms was significantly more difficult to dispel.
Hathaway's eyes locked onto Camilla's face.
The Seventh Seat wasn't just agitated. Her exquisite features were flushed a violent, panicked crimson. Her body was rigid, radiating a suppressed, desperate tension that was universally recognizable to anyone with functioning eyes.
Hathaway sucked in a sharp, heavy breath.
Oh my god. That's why Vessar has been radiating ambient killing intent at Famia all morning! Camilla has a massive crush on the Second Seat!
Standing nearby, Alisha watched the entire sequence unfold with an expression cycling rapidly through shock, horror, and the specific, involuntary delight of a biographer witnessing a primary source in real ti.
The prank shattered Vessar and Phet out of their respective paralysis. They snapped out of it.
Phet reacted with the efficiency of a VIP extraction team. The instant Camilla steadied herself, the Ancient Ray Witch stepped in, gripped her sovereign's shoulders, and pulled her firmly back to her side, putting an aggressively deliberate amount of distance between the Seventh Seat and Famia, while carefully avoiding a full embrace.
"You useless Second Seat!" Vessar snarled, leveling murderous glares at Famia Schüder. "You couldn't dodge a simple fabric hex?! Did you let yourself get caught on purpose just to take advantage of our Camilla?!"
Famia Schüder, who had done nothing but exist in the sa airspace, looked catastrophically wronged.
She shot a look of stark betrayal at Alisha.
Alisha did not stop taking notes.
Receiving no backup from her closest friend, Famia turned back to the hostile Dragon Witches. She squared her shoulders and delivered her defense with the oblivious, romantic density of a neutron star.
"This is a complete misunderstanding," Famia stated. "I had no such intentions toward her. Believe what you will."
The crimson drained from Camilla's face. The Seventh Seat looked as though her soul had just been parried.
Phet looked at her sovereign's devastatingly pale face. The Ancient Ray Witch's protective instincts catastrophically overcorrected.
"I beg your pardon." Phet's tone dropped to absolute zero, a whisper of pure ice carrying a suffocating, relentless pressure, as she took a deliberate step forward, abandoning the distance she had just put between them. "Are you implying our Camilla lacks charm? Are you blind?"
Famia Schüder stood frozen.
Hathaway stared at the entire disastrous tableau.
No, Hathaway thought, her hands flying up to clutch her head in sheer romantic frustration. No, you utter idiots. Look at what you've done! Do you have any idea how hard it is to progress a romance questline?! If Camilla is still stuck in the 'secret unrequited crush' phase after all these years, it is undeniably, one hundred percent because she has you two operating as heavily ard anti-aircraft batteries! You just forced the love interest to hit the 'Hard Reject' dialogue option in public, and now you're attacking her for failing the stat check you forced her to take!
Hathaway stood motionless, her brain running a post-mortem on what she had just witnessed.
Three minutes. Paddy had been in this courtyard for exactly three minutes.
In that ti: one Arch-Witch had been publicly caught holding a Grand Witch's tail like a weapon, one legend had half-confessed to anonymous self-authored taxonomy, one Second Seat had suffered a complete reputation collapse while standing still, and the most principled Witch in Hortania had her painfully obvious secret crush brutally outed by a gag spell, only to be publicly rejected because her bodyguards triggered the worst possible event flags in sequence.
No wands drawn. No collateral damage. Pure social execution.
Hathaway watched Paddy stroll casually past Marlena's cluster. The Plud Dragon did nothing. Not a single glance, not a stray hex.
Hathaway knew better than to mistake this for sudden, miraculous restraint. Paddy hadn't developed manners; her aggro radar had simply locked onto a much more compelling target elsewhere.
It was only because Paddy had finally settled into a walking pace that Hathaway had enough cognitive bandwidth to notice what the Plud Dragon was holding in her left hand.
A chain.
Heavy iron. A forbidden shimr running along the links. The chain itself wasn't the alarming part.
The alarming part was the living, breathing person attached to the other end.
A small girl. She looked underage. She looked very underage. Paddy was already short, radiating a strong boyish energy, but this girl looked younger still. The kind of small that made Hathaway's modern Earth-raised morality make a loud, unambiguous sound.
Hathaway's hand imdiately dove into her pocket, her fingers closing tightly around her communication crystal.
In Witch society, cris against minors were the unforgivable red line.
I am reporting this, her modern Earth-raised morality scread. If I hit the ergency dial right now, the assembled Grand Witches in this courtyard will serve as an imdiate, on-site execution squad. We have the evidence. We have the culprit. Paddy will be vaporized with full legal justification.
Then, the girl on the chain seed to notice the crowd looking at her.
Hathaway watched, her heart clenching, as the girl’s sullen reluctance completely vanished. In the space of a single breath, the captive shrank into herself, her large eyes welling up with tears.
She cast a trembling, terrified, utterly helpless look at the surrounding Witches. It was the devastating picture of a brutalized child silently begging for salvation.
Paddy didn't even look back. She just yanked the leash. Hard and unapologetically.
The expressions of the surrounding Witches escalated from horrified to homicidal.
Then the girl, having been yanked forward, stumbled, and the heartbreaking illusion shattered.
The trembling, tearful victim vanished instantly, replaced by a face of incandescent, screeching fury.
"Let go of !" the girl bellowed, her voice echoing across the courtyard with the raw power of a seasoned street brawler. "You unfilial granddaughter!"
Hathaway’s thumb froze a milliter above the crystal's activation rune.
...Granddaughter?!
Paddy maintained her blazingly sunny smile. She still didn't look back. "Be good, Grandma. You haven't paid off your debt yet. After you fight in this tournant, the labor hours from that week in the hunting training camp will balance the books. I'm doing this entirely for your own good."
"That is my money!" the tiny girl raged, struggling against the chain. "I earned it fair and square by scamming—" She caught herself. "—by borrowing it from your mother!"
"Shut up, or I'm confiscating all your snacks."
"You wouldn't dare?! You penniless scrub!" The tiny elder laughed, her tone dripping with a distinct, weaponized, and insufferably irritating bratty condescension. "You broke little scrub with zero digits in your bank account!"
For the first ti since entering the courtyard, Paddy's smile vanished. A faint spark crackled from the tips of her dragon horns.
"It's one thing that you emptied my mother's savings," Paddy said, her voice dropping into sothing genuinely dark. "But you tried to loot mine."
Hathaway stood frozen.
The sheer, concentrated bratty aura radiating from the tiny scamr was so overwhelmingly potent that Hathaway's moral outrage evaporated instantly. What replaced it was the sudden, visceral urge to punch sothing.
She slowly, deliberately took her hand out of her pocket, releasing the communication crystal entirely.
Ah. Hathaway took a deep breath, recalibrating her entire worldview. A family financial dispute involving a scamming, unapologetically bratty grandmother who weaponizes her appearance for sympathy. You deserve the chain. I saw nothing.
Across the courtyard, the Witches who had just been systematically dismantled by Paddy finally had a mont to observe the Plud Dragon in the rare state of publicly losing her composure. Camilla's lips twitched upward, sharply suppressed.
Heidi didn't suppress it. Heidi laughed out loud.
The exact mont the sound left Heidi's lips, a rich, intoxicating scent blood into existence: the heavy, sweet fragrance of sothing ancient and impossibly fine. It hit the senses like a warm hand pressed over the eyes.
Then, from behind a marble column, a stampede of soft, glowing shapes poured into the open. Lantern Cats. Dozens of them, wling softly in distress, scrambling frantically to shelter behind the massive figure that had just drifted into view.
Hathaway's brain flatlined.
A Greater Cat.
It possessed enormous, delicate ears with feathered tips, and a tail so voluminous it appeared to defy gravity. Its fur was pure, luminescent white, so soft it seed to emit its own light. Its fra was sleeker than the Storm variant, almost fox-like, with a rich, plush elegance. Its enormous eyes, like still polar lakes, radiated an ethereal, weightless gentleness.
And perched precariously atop its magnificent head was a starched white chef's hat.
It looked like a piece of milk candy carved from actual moonlight, playing dress-up. Simply looking at it made Hathaway's heart want to violently, unconditionally surrender.
Is this the standard for a State Ceremony? she thought, entirely forgetting where she was. A Greater Cat Chef is catering this event? Even if I find cat fur in the soup, I will file a five-star review praising the chef's commitnt to the garnishing.
Then Hathaway looked more carefully.
The beautiful, luminescent cat's enormous eyes were brimming with water. Its lower lip was trembling. It looked seconds away from a catastrophic emotional collapse.
Slowly, as a single organism, the entire courtyard turned to look at Heidi.
More specifically, at the source of the intoxicating wine scent.
...Heidi's gown. The silver-white and deep-blue fabric was saturated with a massive, dark stain.
Nino's face went completely blank.
"That," Nino whispered, her voice laced with the specific sorrow of witnessing a miracle defiled, "is a Moon Spring Greater Cat. They are the masters of arcane brewing. Their wine is a natural elixir of immortality. A single cup extends a mortal's life by a century. For a Witch—it nds hidden arcane trauma, restores full vitality, permanently refines the physical form..."
The sweet, heavy scent hung in the air. The astronomical, incalculable value of the liquid currently dripping off Heidi's hemline pressed down on everyone's conscience like a physical weight.
Hathaway watched the beautiful cat's massive eye release a single, shining tear.
She took an involuntary step back, clutching her chest.
How could anyone have the heart to hurt her?!
The assembled Grand Witches moved with decisive, coordinated urgency.
Josephine Durant wrapped her arms around the trembling Moon Spring Greater Cat, pulling the enormous, luminous creature's head gently into her chest, murmuring soft reassurances, buying ti, shielding the cat's eyes from the scene of the ruined vintage, shooting a sharp, urgent look at Heidi over the cat's ears.
Camilla moved simultaneously, sweeping up the smaller Moon Spring Lantern Cats who were hiding in terrified clusters. She began distributing them with the systematic efficiency of ergency resource allocation.
One for you, one for you. Everyone holds a cat. A softly glowing Moon Spring kitten was abruptly deposited into Hathaway's arms. It was not the Greater Cat, but the breed was identical. Hathaway imdiately abandoned all situational awareness and began frantically, desperately stroking its ears.
Heidi, shaking off the shock of having priceless elixir dumped onto her couture, demonstrated precisely why she was [The Zenith of Transmutation].
She raised her hands. Her eyes glowed. The air around the soaked fabric rippled and buckled as she aggressively seized the localized tiline and dragged it backward.
The dark stain reversed. Droplets peeled from the fabric, lifting into the air, and coalesced into a perfect hovering sphere before settling neatly into an empty crystal decanter on the nearest table.
The disaster was averted. The wine was saved. The cat's tears were, barely, intercepted.
But the reckoning had only just begun.
Every Witch in the courtyard turned toward Adeline.
Seeing the entire room's aggro lock perfectly onto her partner-in-cri, Paddy made the tactically sound decision to imdiately sever all ties. She gripped her grandmother's chain and began backing quietly into the crowd.
Adeline stood in the center of the open space. Her erald eyes filled with fragile, helpless moisture. "Why is everyone looking at like that?" she asked softly, her voice trembling like a reed. "I didn't do anything..."
A woman's face had gone completely expressionless.
"Yes, it was this woman," she stated. "I testify."
Adeline choked. She turned to look at her with an expression of deep, mournful betrayal.
Lily Cable.
Hathaway filed the recognition away imdiately. The scene was moving too fast to stop.
Staves were drawn. Safety catches on arcane focuses were flicked off. Across the assembled faces of the most powerful Witches in the known world, polite aristocratic masks dissolved, replaced by smiles that twisted into sothing feral and deeply unhinged. The consolidated killing intent was now thick enough to bend light.
The collective aggro had officially locked on.
Hathaway slowly backed away, frantically searching for cover as the courtyard’s threat-level overlay in her mind shifted from [Formal Social Gathering] to [Endga Raid: Lethal] in under a second.
The World Boss battle had begun.
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