Two nights after the masked enforcer had dropped the invitation crystal at my place, Medea woke me up in the middle of the night.

  Medea sounded terrified.

  I didn't wait to ask or even untangle myself from the sheets. One half of me cast the yellow portal spell instantly and the other half switched over to Medea’s perspective.

  It was not at the ravine. For whatever reason Medea had flown inwards into the woods and it had managed to not get eaten by the things in the forest on the way. Before Medea lay a bunch of smashed brown egg shells that looked like they were buried in the ground and then dug out. Medea had helped itself to a nice snack, obviously.

  And their mommy had taken umbrage at it. How did I know that? Because Medea was missing the entirety of its latter half and several legs. The moment I realized the extent of its injuries, Medea screeched into safety in my apartment, that was definitely big enough for a horse sized spider-scorpion. Its legs squished in on themselves and my bed snapped in two under the weight. Thankfully the walls were reinforced (a necessary expense in this city), despite their neglected appearance. Medea shrank down and I cast Molt vaporize tier 5 spider-scorpions.

  I was not happy at the answers I received. Medea had correctly assumed that the giant lizard had a strong venom but it had been stupid. Very stupid about doing it. It hadn't informed me about its plans and it had waited until I was asleep to do it. As I saw it, either Medea was becoming more human-like and thus reckless or the decree of the gods was making it subtly suicidal. Neither option particularly pleased me. At least Medea's escapades had given me quite a lot of experience. Not enough for me to max out my class or something but to shorten it? Yes. Very much so.

  The next day was another one where I was not going to kill slimes all day. No, I had something more interesting to do.

  The morning was bright and I was excited. No, not for that ball. I was about that, especially after Fahria had attempted to drill a hundred little nuances of interacting with people of different regions into my head before giving up. Well, she did teach me how to behave like a proper Dellish lady (not a street urchin, in her words) but insisted that anything other than that was going to be a disaster. And I was inclined to agree, I was sure that I was going to mix up something in the worst way possible. And that was still a day away.

  No, the reason I was excited was because I was going to learn to fly. First on Medea and then by using my new aspect skill. Unfortunately, flight within the city walls without a permit or extreme circumstances was generally frowned upon. Not prohibited because there was no way to enforce it but not something you want to do unless you fancy the bad kind of attention from the council.

  First problem: It turned out that there was almost no place to actually securely sit on Medea without impaling myself on the tapestry of spikes and ridges that was its back. Second problem was that even when I found the one place that was safe (the small part that joined the two segments of its body), I got in the way of its hemelytra and tail so it couldn't fly fight.

  With my hopes of flight on Medea thoroughly dashed, I stripped down and activated Swarm Aspect

  My face was just a featureless mask of stone that could split in half to reveal a whirling maw. Slits for my four eyes appeared a moment later on the mask. My body’s slightly adjusted so that it was more like the segmented design of spiders but in some heavy coats, I thought it could pass for human curves from a distance. Finally, my upper back gained a small mount from which four green insect wings erupted.

  “You two can open your eyes. I’m decent now. How do I look?” My voice was distorted, as if my voice box had moved a bit closer to my stomach.

  Wow. Rude.

  “You are hideous.” Fahria said simply and I put a hand over my heart as if wounded. “But this is a fascinating skill. How are your skills now?”

  I pulled up my status screen. My stats were all around 50% higher than usual and I had a copy of every single one of Medea’s skills. All of them had big flashing disclaimers about being temporary and 50% weaker and more inefficient than normal. Another disclaimer below told me that permanent changes that occured when I was using an aspect were only in effect on that aspect. A timer ticked down at the top of my screen.

  “Have everything, just inferior to Medea's.”

  “Interesting. So you can eat something to grow like it?”

  “Yes but only when I'm using the skill.”

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  “Medea, can you snap off a finger or something? I wonder if your mom can eat you since technically you two are different.” Medea grabbed one of its fingers with another hand, with an audible ‘crunch’, broke it off. I winced at the sound but opened up my mouth panels. Fahria tossed it in and… nothing. It disappeared down the grinder as I hastily closed my panels to not splatter it everywhere. Thankfully I didn't have any taste buds in this form. I shook my head.

  “I guess Medea and you are considered the same thing. It would be silly to be able to eat yourself for power, right?”

  “Yes. Yes, that is very interesting. But I'm on a timer here. Can we start practicing flying?” I was not just being impatient. I was on a timer and then a day long cooldown.

  “Fine.” Fahria reached behind her and unclasped something. A piece of cloth fell away from her back, still attached to the waist but hanging from it like a coat-tail. Two massive orange wings burst forth from her back and she took to the air with powerful flaps.

  “I don't have a cooldown but this is very exhausting. I would prefer to get this over with quickly.”

  My wings were significantly uglier than hers but they fluttered swiftly and I practically rose vertically. Well, more like I shot straight up before I could actually control it. I would have screamed if my mouth worked like that. The wind rushed through my hairs and I was excruciatingly aware of the ebbs and flows of air around me. I just didn't know what to make of any of it. I stopped and then plummeted. Thankfully I was not high enough (simply because my flight was slow and awkward) to risk death or grave injury but Fahria swooped in and caught me and gently set me back on the ground nonetheless.

  “You know something?”

  “What?”

  “I don't think I should try flying before I get used to walking in this form.”

  After that embarrassing failure, I put my ambitions of flight to rest for the day and we went back to the city on Medea's back. There was a reason even Fahria was not killing mana slimes. And it was simple. We had to try the dresses Kiron’s had made for us so that any adjustments could be made. I was not sure why they insisted on not doing it all literally hours before the event considering that there were probably skills to dramatically quicken the process.

  Kiron’s was as fancy as I remembered it and we were directed to changing stalls with an attendant each.

  “Please stop squirming around. It's like trying to get a cat to sit still. Ma’am.” My attendant complained as she tried to cut, tighten and expand the fabric in a dozen different places at once. All the ‘ma’ams’ and bows had evaporated and a look of intense concentration had replaced it as she wrangled with the black dress. Apparently, black worked with my dark eyes and hair and contrasted with my olive-ish skin. There was a lot of mutterings about colors and something that might have been vaguely racist in there too but the dress was far too distracting for me to pay attention to it.

  It was not as bad as it seemed. Dellish people didn't look too highly upon dresses that were impractical. Actually, no one did, skills were the principal criteria for social stratification here and things that hampered their usage were just frowned upon. But for some reason, it was very itchy. Apparently that was to be expected. The dress was magically actively sterile at the moment and it was constantly annihilating stuff that touched it. That unfortunately meant that until the enchantment was lifted, it would be supremely uncomfortable. The enchantment was not going to be lifted until the sale was actually finalized. How did anyone sit through it all?

  An entire hour later, I left the place with Fahria and we went our separate ways. I went to the Emporium and then to my apartment, Fahria went wherever she lived.

  That night I dreamed, dreamed of a bone spire that twisted in the air and rose to ever greater heights. It looked like a spine. Each individual vertebrae was a world in itself.

  The next day was another day off for me. For the simple reason that I needed the time to get to Kiron's to put on my dress for real, have them do whatever make-up they thought was necessary and then make my way to the Illustris Palace.

  I had underestimated what was considered an appropriate amount of readiness to them. A slow scented bath, manicure, pedicure, nail painting, tactical hair curling and straightening and some kind of magic lotion that cleared up my skin and softened it later, I was helped into the dress by an attendant. And then came the final touch ups. I thought Fahria was being silly when she had made the arrangements and the timing but obviously she knew more than I did about all this. Lesson learned and consider me properly humbled. Fahria didn't say anything to me when she emerged from a different booth in a stunning fiery dress with loose drapes of cloth that resembled fire but I was willing to bet that she knew that I was aware that her insistence on the timing despite my earlier complaints about the timing were vindicated. Her hair seemed more radiant than usual but I not sure if that was because her blood was strong tonight or if it was being intentionally accentuated. For all I knew, it was a subtle display of power to increase desirability or something. That kind of politicking was not something I understood much about, even though I should before I started to go on the offensive against The Unaugured God and Aster. I was not the type of girl to rely on my own might. Why wasn't there a charismatic stat?

  Medea didn't get a dress obviously but it too was the subject of a makeover. Thankfully it was just complementary since it was my pet. The hairs on its body seemed sharper and looked like fine razor wires. Careful application of highlights made its rocky armor look even more like obsidian than it already did. It didn't say anything else but I had the feeling that it was waiting expectantly.

  “You look great, sweety.” Medea seemed satisfied at the answer and skittered out the door after shrinking. Was my baby spider-scorpion feeling self-conscious?

  I think I spoke way too soon. Or thought too soon. Whatever.

  One of the fancier (and more expensive) carriages waited for us outside and it carried us to the venue and I got my first glimpse of the most important building in the city.

  The Illustris Palace. The place from which the Illustris Council that had reigned since shortly after the fall of the Catrian Empire itself ruled. It was a palace, just not made in an architectural style with anything vaguely resembling it back on Earth. Tall and thin metallic towers with circular balconies and spires like antennae at their top clashed with the pillars of marble and gold that enclosed them. If one were to remove the lights, the pillars, the gate, the glass stairs and a few other things, it looked almost like something from science-fiction version of a victorian industrial age london. But with everything else attached on top, it was a chaotic mess. A chaotic mess that still never failed to look majestic and awe-inspiring. Pipes, tubes and towers of iron made it look almost like it was covered in metallic entrails. Everything in New Delport looked like that to an extent but nowhere else was it this pronounced.

  By a gate made of solid gold, a man in the familiar enforcer mask bowed and asked for my invitation. After taking the crystal from me and confirming its veracity, he spoke in a gentle smooth voice.

  “Welcome to the Illustris Ball, ma’ams.”