Man in the Dark 30

Chapter 30
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The mansion of Count Mott was an elaborate affair, perfectly reflecting the tastes of it's owner. Numerous works of art lined the halls, rich carpeting across the floors, exotic plants in flowerpots at tastefully chosen intervals across the myriad corridors, and chandeliers that fairly dripped with gilded crystal chains.

...all in all, it was a testament to the gaudy and irresponsible nature of it's master, the Count obviously a man with many tastes to be satisfied.

Not only the needlessly gilded furnishings, but the staff of servants that took care of the mansion proved quite well that next to monetary wealth, the Count had one other specific taste that he liked to indulge in.

All female, young and pretty, the maids here were constantly bustling through the halls, hurriedly attending to their tasks. Short skirts that rode up tantalizingly with each motion of their hips, thigh-high stockings designed to show off that eye-catching zone of creamy skin just between stocking and hemline, and low-cut, backless tops designed to show a maximum of skin, there were no illusions as to Mott's perverse tastes.

They had welcomed him home with smiles on their faces, as expected, but as she had walked down the line to be introduced to the head maid, and be instructed in her duties...Siesta had seen the tightness in those smiles, and the haunted look in their eyes. It was something in the way they would, every few moments, turn to look slightly behind them, as if afraid something was coming up on them unseen.

In short...exactly as she had expected.

Water rippled as Siesta leaned back, staring at the steam obscured ceiling far above. If nothing else, she reflected, at least the baths were nice.

Like everything else in the house, even the servants’ quarters were bigger than they needed to be, and far more lavish than would be expected. Certainly, they were nowhere near close to the luxury enjoyed by the nobles and other such visiting guests and residents, but they were a far cry from what would ordinarily be expected. Grudgingly, she had to admit that even the Academy had not been as luxurious as this…

…though equally, she had to admit that while they had not been, the Academy quarters had instead been a lot more functional and just enough for their residents to be comfortable with it. In a way, it felt more ‘honest’ somehow, and if she was to admit it to herself, at the very least, it had been quite a kind place to her.

Good people, relatively decent superiors (save for the occasional overly pompous aristocratic student), and a faculty that showed no real discrimination in how it treated those within its walls.

She had heard the stories, of course, of some of the…things that could happen in the homes of the less charitable nobles. So it was with no small amount of relief both she and her parents had experienced when she had been taken on to work in the Academy. Sure, the old Headmaster could be a bit too ‘observant’ of the other maids, but at least he was harmless, and otherwise a gentle old soul.

…besides, ever since that new secretary had arrived, she had done an amazing job of drawing most of his attention. Unfortunate for her, but one less thing for the maids like Siesta to look out for.

…or rather, that’s how it had been. Siesta looked down at her reflection in the still water, seeing the sad smile on her face.

She no longer worked there, after all. And for all of the glamour and glitter…inside, she knew that it was just a mask, hiding something rotten to the core. Especially in this particular mansion, and considering who owned it…

Despite the steamy room, Siesta felt a faint chill run down her spine. Given a choice between this small, elaborate and private bathroom or the humble, friendly public bathing area in the Academy…she’d pick the Academy every time.

“Ah…!” She started, bolting upright with a splash. “No, no, I can’t think like that…I promised that I would be brave like him…!”

Lightly smacking her cheeks with her hands, the maid took a deep breath and ducked under the water one last time, emerging with a splash.

Getting out of the tub at last, she reached for her towel…and stopped, as she saw what was lying folded on the bed.

She’d left it there when she’d arrived at her room, trying to ignore it…but now that she’d run out of distractions…

The maid uniform stared back at her.

A far cry from the modest outfit back at the Academy, this one was…distinctly more revealing, something she could already tell even without unfolding it.

Sighing, she grabbed the towel and set about drying off.

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“So, how far is it to this Count’s place?” Kirche grimaced, holding one hand up to shield her face from the wind.

“Oh, there’s something the great and mighty Ardent doesn’t know, is there?” Louise shot back, yelling over the sound of Silpheed’s wingbeats.

“I’m Germanian nobility, remember? I hardly have time to be worrying about every little deviant and pervert noble over here in Tristain, now do I~?”

“Wha…!” Louise struggled for a retort, realized that grudgingly the dark skinned mage’s logic was sound, even if her wording wasn’t, and instead settled for a dirty look. “Oh, like you Zerbst are a shining beacon of morality!”

“Fifteen minutes.” Tabitha’s cool reply cut across the spat, stopping Kirche’s next retort in its tracks. The Germanian gave a whistle.

“By flying? I guess he really must be a big deal if he has an estate that far out.”

Tabitha shook her head.

“Air currents.”

“Huh?” Kirche blinked. Next to her, Louise started and looked up.

“…she’s right. Even for a familiar like Silpheed, there are a lot of trained knights that wouldn’t try to rush through a sky like this. There’s a lot more turbulence than there should be…”

Seeing the surprised look Kirche gave her, the Valliere heir blushed self-consciously, covering it up with an indignant stutter.

“A-as part of the noble Valliere lineage, i-it’s my duty to know and learn as much as I can in order to be prepared to carry out my duties!”

Kirche stared at her for a moment longer, then stifled a giggle.

“Wh-what’s so funny?!”

“Hee…I’m sorry, for some reason I just had the thought of you as a child trying to read a treatise on war in a book that was probably bigger than you were.”

“D-don’t look down on me just because I’m short damn it! I haven’t hit my growth spurt yet!”
One hand holding the raging Zero at bay without any effort, Kirche leaned forward, a serious look on her face as she spoke to Tabitha.

“Is she telling the truth though?”

Tabitha nodded.

It hadn’t been too bad at first, but it was nothing Silpheed couldn’t handle. She’d simply attributed it to one of the signs of a storm brewing later, as there had been dark clouds lurking on the horizon since early morning. It wasn’t until Silpheed had been forced to change tack multiple times just to keep making headway that she’d reconsidered her prior assumption.

Her familiar was far from being worn out, but still, it was…perplexing, to say the least.

“Hmm…can you try any magic to smooth it out?”

The Gallian shrugged.

Using Wind spells to ease passage through the skies was an old, simple trick, but given the strangeness of this particular situation, Tabitha wasn’t quite certain she wanted to try that just yet. There was something else behind this wind, a faint metallic ‘taste’ of a sort, mixed in with a scent she didn’t quite recognize, smoke of some kind.

“Dammit, if we don’t get there in time…” Louise gnawed on a thumbnail in distraction.

“Well, look on the bright side, Zero.” Kirche gave a sheepish smile. “At least you can safely say your familiar isn’t a commoner anymore. Not unless commoners can fly now~”

“That is the worst attempt at consolation ever.”

Kirche shrugged.

“Either way, he’s probably stuck in this, same as we are, so we’ll probably catch up to him well before he gets there!” A moment, and she wrinkled her nose in disdain. “I do wish there wasn’t that weird smell, though.”

“Huh?” Louise looked up. “Smell?”

“Yeah.” Kirche looked around in annoyance, Tabitha nodding next to her. “Every now and then it smells sort of like something’s burning…”

“Burning…?”

Louise looked up, the color draining from her features.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that both girls had drawn attention to it, there was no mistaking it. Metal and smoke…she knew this scent, all too well, and it was no wonder she hadn’t paid it any mind.

Rust and smog, dust and heat…

The scent of that colossal, sprawling alien city in her dreams at night.

Add to that the faint bite of strange magic that thrummed at the edges of every gust, and she knew what this was.

“T-Tabitha, use your spells!” She drew her own wand. “You were right, this isn’t normal, but it’s not a disturbance in the wind!”

The Gallian turned, eyes widening slightly as she realized what the Zero was saying. Even as Kirche frantically tackled Louise, hastily stopping her in the midst of trying a wind spell of her own, Tabitha’s staff swept out, hissing with power. Even as she felt the resistance, she knew that Louise had been right. It wasn’t the wind that had been disturbed, but rather, the ambient magic of the area that had been thrown into disarray. Tabitha was no expert on the subject, but even she knew the theories of magic that made up their world.

Magic was literally a part of everything that made up Halkeginia, right down to the earth at their feet, and the air that they breathed. Nobles were simply humans that were capable of learning and manipulating this power using innate magic in their own bodies.

What they were in the midst of right now was a magical turbulence; the natural world thrown into disarray due to a disturbance of the magic that made it up. Much like the eddies and waves in the wake of a large ship crossing a body of water, so too was it the case here.

Air roared around them, winds called forth by Tabitha’s spells, and already she could feel Silpheed speeding up beneath her. She held it for a moment longer, directing the rushing streams with her staff, before she felt the strange, unnatural feeling subside.

Kirche gave a yelp as their speed suddenly dropped, the winds dissipating.

“Wh-whoa, Tabitha…! A little warning next time would be nice!” She huffed. “What was that about?!”

Tabitha ignored her, looking at the sky around them. The strange feeling was still there, accompanied by the occasional stray wind buffeting them…but already it was receding, each wayward gust weaker than the last. With her spell having dissipated the worst of it, the natural equilibrium of the environment was restoring itself already. Now that they were free of it again, she could get a general estimate for how far the band of turbulence had stretched, determining that in order to have gotten past it they would have needed to change course significantly.

In a way, it was quite like an invisible storm, only without the rain or lightning, and with winds several orders of magnitude weaker.

An inconvenience, nothing more…but worrying nonetheless for the inherent bizarreness of its occurrence in the first place.

And more so…for what kind of ‘ship’ had caused such a disturbing ‘wake’.
Thought, the answer to that particular question…she looked back at where Louise was still sitting, pale as she clung to Silpheed’s back, and not meeting anyone’s eyes.

Somehow, Tabitha suspected that the culprit responsible was quite easy to guess at.

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Siesta stared.

The girl, no…the woman in the mirror stared back.

After drying off, she’d finally mustered up her resolve and gotten dressed in the risqué outfit that was to serve as her new uniform.

…after which she’d spent another moment before finally taking a deep breath and stepping in front of the mirror to face the reality at last. What she saw there, however, was…well, perhaps not exactly wholly unexpected, but nonetheless quite startling.

Siesta had known just from looking that this outfit had been designed with the intent of being...appealing, for lack of a better word. But actually wearing it now, even with that knowledge…

She found herself admitting with no small amount of astonishment that for all that, the simple fact was that she looked AMAZING in it.

The hemline going up to there, the cream flesh of her thigh tantalizingly exposed before slipping into sheer, black silk stockings and a pair of heels, the front cut low down to here giving a generous view of her cleavage…She turned to the side for a better look at her profile, puzzled.

Maybe it was true what her mother had always said, that it wasn’t the clothes that made the woman, specifically, but rather, it was the woman that made the clothes. It had never really made any sense to her before, but now…Siesta had to admit, she actually somewhat liked the way this looked on her, despite all she knew about it. It did cling rather nicely to her body and hips, before flaring out in a typical pleat. The fingerless gloves were a nice touch as well, though a bit eccentric…

She cocked one hip slightly, looking at her reflection, a slight smile flickering across her expression.

It was strange, before she had been a mess of nerves, but now, looking at herself like this, it was…liberating, somehow.

“Is this that resolve Mr. Von Talon was talking about…?” She wondered aloud. Certainly she felt far more confident now than she had a few moments ago. Her reflection grinned back at her, a newfound determination in her stance.

“To keep moving forward, to handle the things that only I can do…” Siesta murmured. “All right then. No matter what happens, I’ll endure it.”

A pause, as certain anecdotes she had picked up regarding the Count’s behavior drifted to the forefront of her mind, followed by some things she had drawn from her more…private reading material.

…wasn’t it true that in situations such as these, the beautiful, attractive young maid could, by winning her master’s favor, gain elevated status and privileges…?

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“You're...really a very strange man, aren't you? You're not a noble, but you're no ordinary commoner, and you don't really worry about status or authority...you just do what you have to, and keep right on going, don't you?”
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There was a loud cracking noise, and Siesta started, catching herself staring at her reflection. The way she’d shifted unconsciously so that the skirt rode up just enough there, the way she’d leaned forward a bit more here…

“E-ehhhhhhhhh?!” She stumbled back, flailing in embarrassment. “Wh-what am I doing, thinking of something like that?!”

She pressed her hands to her face, feeling the heat in her cheeks. Such scandalous behavior…perhaps she might hold off on reading any more of the next chapter of ‘A Maid’s Afternoon’ for a while, clearly it was getting to her. Especially given that her new situation was almost as though it had been taken straight out of the author’s dirty mind…except with a significantly less attractive individual as the master.

But what had been the cracking sound…?

Looking up, she let out a yelp.

The splendid full length mirror had cracked. One long hairline fracture stretching across it diagonally, it was something that she knew couldn’t be fixed easily.

“Oh no…!” She got to her feet, hands fluttering nervously as she hovered over it. It was getting late already, and she’d be expected to join the ranks of the other maids soon enough…

Thinking quickly, she threw a spare sheet over it and, after taking a moment to look it over once, fled, locking the door and hurrying off towards her new duties, the strange new thoughts from a moment ago already shoved aside in favor of more pressing matters.

She didn’t notice it, but as she passed another full length mirror, mounted on the wall of one of the mansion’s corridors, there was another cracking noise. Continuing on, Siesta never saw the brief glimpse it had provided before she left the frame…

The image of her…and the shadow she had cast on the far wall behind her.

A shadow with six tails.

On another world, in the middle of a corporate palace of bone and metal, two eyes snapped open, one whirring with the sound of cybernetic gears.