Claps resounded all around him as he stood. Imitating his teacher, he placed a hand on the piano and the other, swishing and fluttering, to his chest. He bowed and lowered his head in one smooth motion like a breeze. Once he stood back up straight, he delighted in a deep breath before a heavy hand wrapped over his shoulder. Madella and the orphans had been watching with the crowd and would've approached him had they not seen the two girls competing to reach him.
"Hey, Paley." Dillie and Negie greeted, stumbling over each other's feet, both their hands on Paley's shoulder.
"Hey."
"We're sorry about Mr Neidu," Dillie said. "Are you okay?" Negie asked. They took their hand off his shoulder.
"Yeah. I'm okay. I realized he's much happier now." He looked to the stars, "Ib'nalims will be reunited with their loved ones in heaven… beyond the stars. He'll see his wife again."
They both gave him a smile of relief.
"… Do you believe in soulmates, Paley?" Dillie asked. Negie's ear perked up.
He fell quiet. "I don't know."
Before they could *subtly* press him on the topic, their families caught up and joined the reunion. Dillie's father, Hiruyo, with his wife's support, strongly shook his hand, complimenting his improvement in piano. He greeted Negie's parents, Krish and Parva, by clasping his hands and bowing: their traditional way of greeting. He received a violently proud cheek pinch from that. Negie's parents competed with Dillie's by inviting him to play at a relative's wedding which quickly began to escalate. Her younger siblings tended to shy away from Paley. Lastly, he and Shenn met, both giving a quiet thumbs up to each other.
The way Paley communicated with Shenn had the others scratching their heads. Either he was extremely good with babies or Shenn was a prodigal genius. It deeply warmed Dillie and Negie's hearts as they couldn't help but picture him as a father.
Madella invited them all to dinner, which they readily accepted, for 10 pm – in two hours. Excited but not showing it, Paley gave rise to a creature of earth. It had terrible twisting fangs coming out of its fat mouth, a large and wide snout, and two shifting eyes. Its wings spanned from shoulder to heel; they had needle sharp ends. A gargoyle.
"What's with the creepy bird?" Hiruyo asked.
"Creepy? I think it's cool." They couldn't tell if Paley was joking. "Fly." He commanded after his family climbed on and it flapped its wings, gaining height. All he had to do was control the direction it flew in. It was much slower than flying with Air Magic, but he had to maintain that he was an Earth Magic Type with the people of Gouon.
Adimia rushed to the corner and turned on a colour-changing device in the shape of a musical note. A misty yellow interface popped out of it and he selected his playlist 'Hullabaloo'. Paley and Madella began cooking, swinging their shoulders and hips to the music, while the others used every last body part in concoctions of strange moves. Teerom and Jurie stuck to a fast and awkward, stepping over each other's feet pace; they did slowly get better. Bacha spent her time in her hut accompanied by Rauba, who had a distaste for loud and fast music, practicing alchemy to create higher-tier flavour cubes for Paley and Madella.
The main food attractions were two gigantic bowls of rice, one in East-Hijian style and the other in East-Nijian style. The pantry was rather empty so Paley speedily completed a shopping trip to buy fresh ingredients for an array of dishes including lobster, salmon and cod, Tier I monster's eggs, a cornucopia of vegetables, a few exotic beefs, and a huge Grey Pork belly. He helped Madella with the large dishes before leaving her and going to the Mana Zone Lake to begin construction on an hour-long project.
Snacking on monster flesh to replenish his mana, he returned to find his guests already in the villa, lounging around waiting for him. Dillie and Negie wore clothes they recently bought in their homelands. Dillie wore a long buckled blue pleated skirt with a butterfly patterned blouse. Negie wore darker blue colored wide trousers and a long tunic; her parents' birth country, Ningal, which lies in the Eastern half of Nijia, calls this a Salwar Kameez. However, there was one strange addition to Negie's outfit which couldn't possibly have been cultural. Her great-axe was strapped to her back.
She noticed Paley staring and contemplating about it. "I'll just leave this outside." She quickly hurried out.
Dillie noticed the choice of cuisine and gave Paley a gaping look. "That's so sweet. Is this your first time cooking Hijian?" She asked, counting the plates and reprimanding herself for the feeling of disappointment when there were as many Hijian as Nijian dishes.
"Tenth time. I have to say, they're both very complex cuisines." He said, walking with her to wash their hands before sitting down. The food had been waiting for about thirty minutes, but Madella used some Heating Runestones she'd bought a while back to keep it warm. They were large circular disks, one that had to be attached underneath the table and another above that floated. There was a visible shimmer of heat in the disks' area of effect.
The feast began. Negie sat down last next to Paley - there was a rule of thumb with the orphans that when Dillie and Negie were around - the spots next to him were off limits.
Dinner was finally ready around 11 pm, much later than normal of course. After the feast, Negie took Paley away behind the cottage to ask him a favour.
"So, I met this really nice elder in a temple when we visited Ningal. He noticed we had similar Strength Magic and taught me an Art. It's called Pani Art. Can we go hunt a monster? I really want to try it out." She said.
"It's a little late, don't you think?"
"Please, Paley," She begged, clasping her hands together around her great axe – Candul, one of the dwarves, had forged it for her.
"Alright. But it better be good." He said and took her by the waist, making her blush deeply – she still had to get used to that - as they flew deep into the mana forest where they waited in a clearing for a monster to appear. But nothing came. The forest had grown more and more isolated over time.
"I think we hunted all the monsters off." Paley said.
"Monsters can't go extinct, Paley."
"How about this? Fight one of my Earth Golems." Paley hopped off the giant root he'd been sitting on and walked over to her.
"Your golems are overpowered, though." She sighed but quickly readied her axe and stance, "Okay," she said resolutely.
Paley flicked his hand and about twenty meters ahead of her, a large yellow circle appeared on the ground. Runic markings appeared inside it as well as smaller circles that together created bands of runes. Soon it emitted a bright yellow light and from it rose a ten-meter-tall golem. Two years ago, it would've been deformed; maybe one shoulder would be bigger than the other, or one leg too thin. But now it was a perfect replica of a hulky man. One that clearly didn't train legs.
Negie gulped nervously and gripped her axe but quickly shook her head. 'No, I have to calm down' she thought. Since the Pani Art imitated water, it was critical that one be relaxed and their focus calm.
The smooth greyish brown golem stood before her, imposing.
"Attack," Paley commanded and it began moving on its own. Rather than manually moving it, he'd assigned commands to the golem to save on his mental energy.
"Pani Art," Negie's body emitted a fierce red essence, Strength Magic, but as she took deeper and deeper breaths it turned a brighter and brighter cyan. The golem struck first, hurtling its fist down at her. Paley didn't even realize she had dodged until the golem's fist struck the ground, sending a cloud of debris into the air. He followed the blue glow in the smoke, watching it move with incredibly fluidity up the golem's arm.
Negie appeared on its shoulder and swung her axe around into the back of its head, slicing its skull in half. There wasn't a single moment she'd stopped moving, but she wasn't moving fast either. In fact, from Paley's perspective the way each of her limbs moved independent of each other, the way she squashed and absorbed the shocks of landing, and the way she stretched and sprung into the air took after the movement of water.
Yes, now he could see it. As Negie moved around the golem, moving out of its attacks' way with ease, the picture of a stream of water came to life.
The Golem regenerated every attack she'd made; she'd sliced its hands off almost five times and cut off one of its legs at some point. There was only one way to beat Paley's golems. When he'd honed his command words, he had to have a receiver within the golems. It was a trade-off: command words for theoretically infinite regeneration.
But Paley was smart. He didn't leave the receiver, a large yellow mana core, in an obvious place like the chest. He kept moving it around throughout the fight. Hence, why his golems are overpowered.
"Waterfall," Negie said in a gentle voice, seemingly unaffected by fatigue, and jumped high into the air.
"I see," Paley realized why she called the attack 'Waterfall'. She rained onto the golem, striking it straight down the middle, her attack so powerful, it crushed the golem until all the remained were the hands, feet and head.
Where was it? Where was the runestone? She searched in a panic for the bright yellow stone but the golem regenerated and pinned her down. Paley clapped as he approached her, smiling with a mixture of mischievousness and delight.
"That was really cool, Negie." He made the golem leave her and dissolve into the ground, then he helped her up off the ground.
"Where was the core?" She asked, confused.
"There was no core."
"But you gave it a command,"
"I pretended to," He chuckled, "But that was very good. I can't wait to see it against real monsters."
"Thanks-" She smiled but then realized he'd tricked her, "Wait, you tricked me!"
He let out his usual suppressed laugh as he took her by the waist and flew her back to the orphanage. Yes, she definitely still had to get used to that.