The elf's golden hair swayed freely in the cliffside breeze, her gaze undistracted by the furious, panicking, and crying noises behind the stone wall that was their cover.
A sweat trickled and blurred Ciel's vision, Quia's image overlapping with Summer's.
"I didn't… spare you…" Ciel breathed out. "I just had a knack for avoiding savvy, strong people."
"Then you should've retreated from the cliffside instead of staying here." Quia's foot skated the staff idly.
Indeed.
Ciel pursed her lips. To conserve mana, she must negotiate. "Would you believe me if I said I want to make friends?"
Quia raised a brow. 'Seriously?' Ciel could practically hear the complaint.
"Then, how about I propose a safe and very beneficial deal to you? For us to partner up?"
Her stamina was a huge, huge weakness. Crystals were a makeshift solution, but Ciel won't risk the journey further with her weak body alone.
The elf, her chosen partner, relaxed. With a nudge, she kicked the staff to face it away, before kneeling to face Ciel.
Quia's stare were flat and calm, the nonchalent blue eyes awaiting Ciel's last bargain.
Ciel took a deep breath. "You thought I was a mimic, didn't you?"
The elf twitched, then nodded.
"Well, I am." Ciel lied. "But that should be an advantage for you, if we team up."
"Huh?"
"I'm suggesting we could team up." Ciel interrupted as bloodlust flickered in the elf's expression. "Unlike that merchant, my very life served as the crucial piece to end the exam."
She continued. "In other words, as long as my life remains, the exam will not end when, say, nine mimics have been eliminated."
"So you're tempting me to kill you here?" Quia chortled, though her knowing smirk was anything but mockery.
"You should protect me." She reciprocated the elf's smugness with a smile of her own.
"Because if the exam does not end, you've all the time in the world to wait for all mimics to be hunted, then kill all of their killers so you can safely score all the points."
The elf's piercing gaze didn't ignore the contradictory proposal.
"What's in it for you? Do I keep you alive so that I can only kill you in the end?" Quia's hand held into a fist, the knuckles cracking with blaring irritation.
The noises from afar began to settle down with the smoke. The dusted veil finally folded apart to reveal the renewed cliffside, its land like an omelette with a rigid pit in the centre.
Ciel shook her head, then merely stated with a distant look.
"I don't care much about my life." She confessed. "But I figure since the shadebeasts were my brethrens, I should at least accompany their last moments. Does this answer satisfy you?"
Quia twitched, an intensity burrowing into her scowl.
"Don't give me that vague, sentimental excuse." Quia seethed. "I've had enough of it back home."
"Sorry." Ciel hung her head.
A sigh died in Ciel's throat. She could hear the death toll ringing with her slip-up just now, but for some reason, she couldn't bring up the last strength in her to resist.
And right when the tension boiled, a chuckle, as sweet as a breeze through a garden, brought a refreshing chillness to the air.
Ciel froze, glancing at the teasing, almost doting blush on Quia's face, whose pleasure manifested as heat on her cheek.
As if from the start, she never played it seriously with Ciel.
"Here's a little tip." Quia poked Ciel's forehead, the gesture soft and playful.
A strange warmth bloomed in Ciel's chest before Quia's cold advice buried her mind under an heave of snow.
"When lying about belonging to a race, group, or organization, always use 'we' instead of 'they'," the elf's eyes curved. "Makes you a little more convincing."
A breath hitched in Ciel, confusion caught beneath her tongue, hollow and bitter as if to take away the sense of taste she cherished.
"I thought I did?" She felt the need to answer.
"Oh, did you?"
Quia patted her head, sweeping straight the messy strands of white hair with a tinge of affection.
"Then at least don't go the mimic-wanna-be route. Didn't you claim you're bad at speaking?" Quia put on a serious face, or what looked like if not her quivering lips that threatened to laugh .
"Personally, I hope you're never a good liar though," Quia whispered. "Everyone begins to fall flat the moment they become good at lying."
Ciel watched Quia in silence. Every second dragged by, before the Queen bit her tongue to wake up her dazed mind with blood.
The elf, frowning, then curled her index finger into her thumb.
With a release, the index sprang and met Ciel's lips with a pop.
"Don't bite your tongue."
With her lips hurt and gaped, Ciel frowned at the pang in her chest, too brief to hurt, but discomforting precisely coz it was fleeting.
This elf had something. Something that even the detached Summer didn't have.
"...sorry."
"And don't keep saying sorry."
"..."
She took it back. She didn't want to be friends with this elf.
A pout made its way to Ciel's cheeks, and Quia almost teased Ciel's 'cuteness' again before a rumble occurred behind them.
Soon after, a panicky shout followed.
"Over here!"
A man revealed himself at a distance, hugging the stone wall with an axe in hand.
Before Ciel's staff raised to reciprocate, the elf cast a casual, yet displeased glance at the intruder..
"Stripey."
Chanting a name, Quia sprung to her feet, spun-
"
And with her fist driven down, a smash imploded the man with loud boom. The floor cracked with dust erupting, as though a giant hammer shattered him.
Ciel barely glimpsed through the smoke, now parting to reveal a striped, white paw resembling that of a tiger's.
Yet when the ashes faded, it revealed not a tiger but only the paw, its arm protruding from a mana circle, humming with a peculiar energy.
Ciel's eyes glimmered. Weight/speed was the law of the magic, but the summon's attack was so fast just now that her eyes failed to follow.
Has millennia of years advanced summon magic? Or perhaps it was a new trick from the dimensional magic?
"Impressed, right?"
Yet as thoughts pondered, Ciel's sparkling amazement dimmed as Quia flashed a prideful look at her.
"If you say so, Miss Quia."
"No, why are you so mad all of a sudden?" The elf's shoulders twitched. Had she been too harsh on the poor girl after all?
"And…" Stunned, Quia scratched her chin with her lips puffed. "Just Quia is enough."
Ciel blinked. Hesitation burrowed into her frown.
The statement was short, but the elf's meaning was clear.
And so-
"Miss. Quia." She bit out every word like a high school bully, resolved to keep a distance with the elf. "Do you still want to team up with me?"
"You little…"
Having thought she made a kind friend in Ciel, Quia's tone was filled with a sense of betrayal.
"Of course," the elf grumbled, then with a move of her hand-
An iron canteen spawned from a mana circle, landing on Ciel's lap with a thud.
Dimensional magic, and it seemed Quia's summon may follow the same logic too.
"Some water for you. Drink up." Quia smacked a fist into her palm, as a rainbow spire arose from the corpse just now.
"Once I kill them all, we will descend the cliffside to hunt others. Be prepared."
Ciel, eying the canteen with a conflicted look, unconsciously hugged it tight to her chest, feeling the iron's coolness.
"No." She shook her head. "We'll wait here."
"What do you mean by 'wait'?" Quia rolled her eyes. "The shout from earlier, and now the spire, were more than enough to give away our locations."
"That's why we wait." An edge began to return to Ciel's voice, grinding away all the dull emotion from before. "Now that their forces have thinned, they will plan more cautiously before they attack us."
"But…" Quia's neck stretched with her ridiculed, drawn-out stare. "Like, doesn't that mean we should attack them before they know what to do with us?"
"You're strong enough to fend them off anyway, Miss Quia." Ciel complimented.
"Wow, what a flattery." Now, Quia aimed at her chin, now raised high with confidence. "Leave your life to this big sis then. So? Is 'waiting' the plan, Ciel?"
"Big sis-" Ciel paused, her hug with the canteen loosening.
Then she swiped off a sweat bead from her forehead, the heat gradually dissipating from her cheeks.
"Yes."
Even then, her black, abyssal eyes locked onto the stone wall, as if beyond it lay a possibility she already foresaw.