>>5707538"Ain't that convenient? The guy knows everything about us already! Saves us a paragraph or two of exposition!" Puck chuckles to Schierke.
"That's just how it is with great mages..."
As the mages started chatting amongst themselves, you followed them through a vast crop fields, with dancing scarecrows that took care of their crops, and jumped around in place, as well as the passing unicorns and the talking tree trunks with faces carved onto them. It really seemed like every part of the forest was alive and sentient.
"And don't you even think of taking this land from Lady Danaan, you faker!" One of the mages waves her staff at the flinching Sivir.
"Auntie Sivir is harmless! She wouldn't hurt a fly!"
"It's alright, dear Isma. I am used to being an outcast..." Sivir's self deprecation made her grow a thick skin from being shunned around mages, and thinking Farnese could get some points with defending her mother-in-law, she stepped in:
"Please don't badmouth Sivir, her resemblance to your master might be weird at first, but once you've--"
"I don't need pity you, dirty mage killer." Sivir quickly shuts your fiancée down, pointing out her hypocrisy for defending her when she has persecuted both of your families.
"How can Vlad have two mothers, and I have to make double the effort to get along with both of them..." She sighs.
"Take a wild guess as to why."
"Morda! How many times have I told you not to cut your dress?!" The old sage complains about a particularly rebellious witch, who ripped her mage clothes for the sake of a cleavage and a better view of her legs.
"You think I'm going to stay with these many clothes on THIS weather? Yeah, good luck convincing me, old Ged." The sultry witch says as she uses an old broomstick to effortlessly float above you all. "I'm already the best mage around here anyway, why bother with the dress code when I barely need to hear the lessons?"
"Sweet, Ye can fly too?" Hyde gets up to Morda's eye level with Violet, shocking her to see a tamed harpy.
"No way! You folks have a Harpy?"
"Several of them, they're all daughters of mine."
"O-Oh..." Morda blushes, making Hyde wonder what the issue was.
"Hope ye ain't blushin' over me, missy. I'm a married man."
"That's not it, I mean. Don't you know how harpies reproduce?"
"Nah, found a nest of them laying around on the mountain, why? Ain't it just like regular birds?"
"Actually, there are only female harpies. They are encouraged to reproduce with other species, usually they rape the male and use their corpse to hide their eggs, they usually die when their cloaca clenches the male's-"
"Actually, I don't think I wanna hear this story of yours. Do ye know any way to castrate harpies, by the way?" Hyde desperately looks for a way to prevent their daughters from turning into killers.