Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

"You! What happened? We heard the official report, but what happened after we left the camp?" One of them asked, while the other broke from her stupor and ran over to pick Tian up before she ran away again.

Priya hugged her old friend and subordinate. "You have so much to catch up on that I'm not even sure where to start. But I suppose we can start at the very beginning with the last time that we saw each other.

When the artillery and the gas started, someone sounded the retreat before we were properly prepared. It wasn't us who told everyone to flee, and there was no rearguard to hold off the advance of the mundane army. Without a rearguard, they would have just swept through our lines and hunted down everyone who was fleeing, so I stayed behind with Wolfe to keep the barriers up for a few more minutes while everyone else fled.

Then, we pretended to be prisoners whose cell was destroyed by the bombardment and the Grand Dutchies force just let us walk right out into the Frozen Wastes.

They didn't care at all as long as we weren't headed into the Coven's Territory, they just took over the camp and swept right past us." 

The surrounding witches laughed at the absurd spectacle that she was describing, allowing a Demon Lord and one of the most powerful witches since the Great War to walk out of their camp without even questioning her, and then allowing them to set up a forward observation post that annihilated their reinforcements for the rest of the winter.

Tian was enraptured by the description, and squirming in her guard's arms, trying to avoid being returned to the children's area.

"Then what? Did you sneak back and beat them up?" She asked, hoping for answers before she was taken away.

"We went out into the Frozen Wastes and made ourselves a nice hiding spot in a cliff, where we could go out every day and look for more soldiers and then report back so that other people could beat them up in a group.

But when we got strong enough later in the winter, we went out ourselves and beat them up really good." Priya informed her little sister with a smile.

"As good as the Snow Demon? I can hear mom's radio from my room if my window is open, and all winter long I heard that he was beating the bad guys everywhere." The little girl asked with starstruck enthusiasm.

Wolfe laughed at her enthusiasm, and gently took her from her guard to place her back on his hip.

"Let me tell you a secret, little witch. I know who the Snow Demon is, and he's not nearly as scary as your sister Priya. If you get to visit us, just ask anyone. She trains them until they're half dead with exhaustion, makes them do their homework until late at night, and makes them do it again every day, so she's way more scary than the Snow Demon is." He mock whispered to the giggling girl in his arms.

"She's always been like that. No dessert unless you did your training, no going to the park until you do your chores. All of our other cousins are afraid of her." Tian informed him very seriously.

"What's this? Is my own little sister saying mean things about me instead of greeting all her friends?" Priya asked.

"See, she's doing it again. Bye, Mister. I hope I can see you again, you're warm." Tian informed him with a giggle and then slid down his side to run into the kids area with one of her guards following.

As she ran off, the older witches in the vicinity all turned to Wolfe, and an Elder that looked a lot like Priya tapped her cane on the floor.

"So, young man, what is all this about my great-granddaughter finding you warm?" She demanded.

"It's an unavoidable part of being me. I radiate a small amount of mana at all times. To Witches, it feels warm and comfortable, like a favourite blanket, or a sunny day." Wolfe explained.

"Like most of us would even know what a sunny day feels like." Someone in the back muttered.

"Alright, maybe that was a bad example, but perhaps because they don't know the feeling, they tend to be drawn to it, especially the little ones. I'm quite popular with children." Wolfe replied.

The old woman snorted in amusement and then shook her head in dismay.

"Your sort always are. My Reginald is a huge hit with the kids every generation. I think that half of the reason is that they know he can't lie, so when he makes them promises, they know he means it, but the mana is a nice touch."

Wolfe assessed the old woman with much more interest than before. "Oh, you have a humanoid Demon as a Familiar?"

The Elder nodded. "Not as human as you, but he's a greater Imp, nearly Rank Two now. He's bigger than the children, but not as big as the adults, and he likes pranks just as much as that little Demoness in Witch's clothing does."

Priya stifled a laugh at the woman who Wolfe assumed must be her great-grandmother.

"Oma, you can't just go calling your family members Demons, no matter how much trouble she causes."

The other guard raised a hand to stop Priya's rant.

"You have no idea how bad she's gotten since she found out where Reginald sleeps. She conned him into enchanting her favourite stuffed bear with an invisibility charm so that they could sneak out for snacks or trips to the park together. You know how Imps are: if it wasn't specifically prohibited, it is allowed, and there is always some excuse for him to help her escapes."

Priya's laughter could no longer be hidden, and her eyes glistened with moisture as she pointed at Wolfe.

"This one, he awakened a twelve-year-old witch in the Myrrh Coven, and then gave her a [Levitation] inscription as a gift. The first thing the girl did was steal a whole tray of cookies and escape to the roof, where nobody could take them away from her." She explained.

"What can I say? She was a lively one." Wolfe joked.

"Where will you be going after this?" The Elder asked Wolfe, seeming quite eager to keep the troublemakers separated and change the topic before he got any more ideas.

"I am headed out to the villages tonight to start getting them set up. I want them to be ready for what is to come. The Coven Leader will make the announcement in a bit, and I'm pretty sure that it's going to shock a lot of the Coven Members with its brilliance and simplicity." Wolfe replied with a smile.

They were going to freak out when they heard the plan, he was completely certain of it.

Hopefully, it wouldn't turn into a big incident like the uprising in the Morgana Coven. The Coven Leader here seemed pretty competent, but Wolfe hadn't spent enough time around her to know if the Council was scheming against her, or if they were mostly on the same page about this new plan to keep the borders safe.