D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

Kat was thankful to be away from that situation and had left swiftly once things seemed to have been sorted out. Del might have wanted to talk but Kat did not. Daryl had been kind enough to hand over a share of the orbs and then she was gone, off to find the mayor. It was easy to find where she was going because of the constant hammering sounds. Kat had expected to run into a quarry if she followed them…

But instead she found herself outside a large two-story house. It had beautiful detailing done… in parts. Currently there was one beastkin woman with a hammer and chisel sitting on a large stone pillar and carefully carving a bunch of mushrooms into the edge of the roof supports.

Kat wasn’t sure what sort of beastkin she was. Kat wanted to say ‘bear’ because of the small rounded ears but they weren’t in the correct spot. They were… about where you’d expect normal ears to be actually, if a slight bit further back. As mentioned, they were rounded and fluffy. The woman’s face was somewhat sharp but that might not be related. Her eyes were chocolate brown and her outfit was brown leather overalls long sleeve shirt and no shoes. Her hair was a dusty sort of blonde and she seemed engaged in her work.

“Hello!” shouted Kat as she walked in between some smaller pillars. Perhaps they were marking out space for statues or something? No work had been done on them yet.

The woman twitched her ears at the call and glanced around a bit before finally spotting Kat down on the ground. “Oh! Hello! Are you here to order some stonework?”

“Um… no I’m here to see the mayor? Also I’m wondering what you’re doing?” said Kat.

“Mayor’s inside but he’s pretty busy at the moment. Still… let me just…” the woman stood up and summoned a spell sigil. Moments afterwards the pillar was zipping across the ground and around to the side, Kat followed to see the pillar lowering down to a window. “Hey cousin! You got a visitor,”

“Mol? I thought I told you to use the door!” retorted a man Kat presumed was the mayor.

“Well I’m not coming in am I?” laughed Mol. “Anyway, when should I send them in?”

“Look… um…” Kat heard the rustling of paper. “Send them inside… in like half an hour? Forty five-minutes? Is it important?” asked the Mayor.

Mol looked down at Kat who shrugged back up at her. “Not really I guess. It can wait for sure,”

“Look… just give me an hour then,” answered the Mayor.

“Will do!” said Mol with a lazy salute while keeping her tools in hand. It made Kat wince, she was worried that Mol was going to smack herself in the eye with that chisel. Still, with that all sorted Mol moved back out to the front on her moving stone pillar and asked. “What was your other question?”

“What are you doing?” repeated Kat.

“Well… what does it look like?” asked Mol confused. “You blind or something?”

“No I’m not but, even before, I’d heard your family had earth magic. You then proceeded to USE earth magic so I’m really curious as to why you’re using a hammer and chisel for this,” explained Kat.

“Eh, I’m not actually a good earth mage,” said Mol with a shrug. “Plus detail work is really, really hard with it unless you’re a savant or maybe just a higher Rank. I can use my magic to summon a big rock,” Mol tapped her pillar “and I can smooth out mistakes. Like say…”

Mol shifted a bit to the side and took out a big chunk of rock from the roof, catching the chip in her hand. “Oh no, I’ve ruined it!” said Mol in a deadpan voice before placing the chip back into its old spot and casting a spell at it. “Tadah! There you go. I didn’t need a completely knew roof, I just put in some miniscule bits of effort and even a major mistake like that can be fixed,”

Kat nodded, “Alright… but if that’s how it is why did your… cousin? End up the mayor? Surely he doesn’t NEED earth magic if that’s all you use it for,”

“Oh that’s just because cousin Stewy is a massive drama queen. He decided that because he doesn’t have magic that his only choice was to become the mayor. Never mind the fact that nobody in the family wanted the job, or that we can always use more stone masons. Nope, that one tragic bit of his backstory became his defining moment. You should see how HE tells the story. A lot of fake tears and some sobbing. Very tragic,” explained Mol.

Kat nodded along. “Right… I can’t really imagine it but I get what you’re saying. How long have you been working on that?” Kat asked mostly to keep the conversation going. She had no idea what else she was going to do for the next hour. *Could look for orbs in the surroundings if I don’t want to get caught up by something in town… but I feel as though I’d still be likely to run into people if I stay close, and if I go too far then I risk not being back in time.*

“Well… if you mean the whole house then this was a team effort that started a few months back? If you just mean the artwork I’m doing at the moment then I started yesterday,” explained Mol. “Though it’s worth mentioning that we keep tearing down and restarting the process, often selling the nicer bits here and there to other people. I know we sold like, half of the old house to this one rich trader a year ago,” said Mol.

“And that’s… just a thing your family does?” asked Kat.

Mol shrugged “It is what it is,” which felt like a way of saying ‘That’s what my backstory is not what I’d actually do’ but Kat felt she might be just reading into things too much.

Kat frowned not really sure where to go after that. So, she decided to ask the other question that had been bothering her. “So… not sure if this is rude or not but what sort of beastkin are you? I can’t quite figure it out,”

“Ha!” laughed Mol. “Depends who you ask. Some beastkin get super ornery about it. ‘Like, how can you not know I’m actually this super specific species of wolf beastkin with thousands of years of history’ what idiots.

“I’m a Meerkat Beastkin. Apparently. I don’t actually know what a meerkat is if I’m being entirely frank with you so,” Mol shrugged. “It’s just what I’ve heard. We’re an honestly rather small tribe. For some reason when we have kids with other beastkin our features tend to lose out. Most people think we’re bear beastkin but we’re not,”

*Do I want to tell her what a meerkat IS? Then again… I only really known what they look like and most of that is because of that one popular movie from when I was younger. So… I might be entirely wrong about them. Best not to take cartoon meerkats as gospel and share that info with the person who is part meerkat.*

“Guess you’ve got a lot of experience with that question then,” said Kat with a sigh.

“Not as much as you’d think,” offered Mol. “Honestly, most people just guess that we’re part bear part something else and don’t even bother to double check. Especially beastkin. They seem to think they know all of the different types and that they can’t possibly be unaware of them all. It’s annoying, and I know of at least three rarer types like that,”

“What makes them ‘rare’?” asked Kat curious.

“Eh…” Mol shrugged. “For my family it’s that we don’t like to roam all that much and that when we have kids with others the features get lost super quickly. For the others it’s more of a fertility issue I think. The wolf-beastkin are EVERYWHERE because they breed more than the rabbits, and the cats couldn’t have THAT so they try to keep up, then there are the foxes which are lucky bastards that tend to keep THEIR traits regardless but nobody really knows why. Bears are sort of common but eh,”

*Well I suppose I wasn’t expecting that.* “So… where is the rest of the family?” asked Kat.

“Looking for high value rocks,” said Mol. “Well, most of them. We go off on expeditions for good quality stone on the regular but I’m more of an artist. At the moment you’ve only got me, my cousin the mayor, my little brother who’s sick, the ‘maid’ who’s really my aunt with a maid fetish and old uncle Bev who I’m not entirely sure is related to us but he’s been around for at least a generation and nobody is going to kick him out at this point,”

*I was sort of expecting Mol to offer me some sort of quest or a deal when I asked what everyone else was doing… but I guess not. Still, might as well keep chatting until I can deal with the mayor.*

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