“Well, that was fucking anticlimactic,” Avery said, kicking a hardened slag of something dark that was once the arm of the Troll … or its leg? Head maybe?

  “It’s still alive,” Mia said, wand pointed at the monster with her Familiar hissing on her shoulder. “Hit it.”

  It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, but the clump of slag and soot before them still exuded a presence.

  “I told you Trolls don’t die until you burn their hearts,” Mark said, big tower shield in hand as he eyed the monster warily. “Though how this dumb cunt’s heart survived that assault, I don’t know.”

  Behind them, a few dozen metres out were some of the more adventurous mages looking on with varying levels of curiosity and wariness.

  The horde had been wiped clean, the mages’ combined barrage having obliterated the Orcs and disabled the Troll.

  The resilient creature managed to crawl around a bit, but that was the extent of its contribution to the fight. Beyond drawing 99% of the fire of course.

  They even had casualties because of that, a small squad of hobs having managed to grapple up to the wall and shank a mage or two and a few soldiers before they were gunned down.

  Mia didn’t notice. It happened a good hundred metres away from her position, where she unleashed the full might of her arsenal on the goblin horde. Meaning, homing barrage. Twelve goblins for the price of two Bolts was a steal, after all.

  Now, only corpses and the embers of an inferno remained as people went about cleaning up and putting out the fires now leaping over the nearby buildings. Earth mages just collapsing whatever was burning and burying it all in a ditch seemed to be the go-to solution, but Mia caught a few Water mages closer to the Mur river lifting large globs of the water and dumping it over fires too. There was even a man that walked around and inhaled fires thrice as large as he was before patting his stomach like he’d just eaten something tasty. Some Classes made people weird.

  “So which part of this … ,” Avery waved an exasperated hand over the ‘Troll’. “Has the heart in it.”

  Mia pointed it out, then with a nod, Avery flared up like a sun. Flames flowed out of her fists and licked across her arm, up to the shoulders. With a shout, the girl punched with her entire body put into the motion.

  The fireballs exploded on contact, washing over the clumps of hardening black sludge. Or so it seemed, Mia could see though, no, she could feel how the fire mana pushed into the sludge and rampaged through it, pushing deeper and deeper until-

  “Step back a bit,” Avery said calmly, and sensing what was about to happen, Mia didn’t hesitate to use Mark’s armoured form as a shield and even dragged the nearby Lina along with her.

  The sludge caved in, running red hot, then white before it exploded outwards. Mia yelped, a small splatter of melted ewwwww landing on her bare ankle. She kicked it off with a grimace.

  “Dead yet?” Avery asked, and Mia reached out with her senses.

  “Yes,” Mia said after a moment. The presence had been faint, barely an ember of what it’d once been and she suspected the Troll would have died either way. “Finally. That damned thing really didn’t know when to give up.”

  Still, she really didn’t want to leave it up to chance, which was why she dragged out her party to finish it off for sure. Just to be certain. It didn’t cost them anything beyond a little anxiety to walk through the aftermath of the battle.

  “Well,” Avery dusted off her arms, flames slipping back inside her arms. Her veins glowed orange under her skin, then went back to normal. “That was … an experience. I guess. Yes, that certainly was an experience.”

  Mia looked down at the now lifeless lump. She’d expected a fight, a struggle for survival, some epic boss fight with this monstrous creature.

  Alas, she’d failed to consider a simple thing: numbers.

  Sure, the monster was an escaped Rift Guardian and a level 14 monster, maybe 15 which gave it a whole bunch of leverage over any one of the defenders.

  But it was a lone monster. With none of its lesser kin proving to be much trouble, it had to bear the weight of the combined attention of almost a hundred mages averaging at around level 8 with dozens at level 10.

  It simply couldn’t bear that pressure and crumbled. It struggled, sure, but it still crumbled and fell. And now it was dead, despite having regeneration that made even a vampire like Carmilla stare in amazement.

  “Could you have recovered from that?” Mia asked in a whisper, nudging the vampire.

  “No,” she said, then snorted softly as she shook her head. “At Rank 4? Maybe. At Rank 5? Certainly, but now? … No way in hell.”

  “Well!” Avery slapped her thighs and turned towards the party, and the group of slightly disappointed, but mostly relieved mages. “We killed the monster! Saved the day! I think we deserve a celebration for that, who’s in for finding the nearest stash of alcohol and throwing a monster-killing afterparty?”

  Mia watched in disbelief as the grinning Fire mage sauntered over to the group of strangers and had them cheering and laughing in seconds with just a few short jests and questions.

  “Coming?” Avery asked, looking over her shoulder with a grin. “Come on, the soldiers can be useful for a change and handle the stragglers while we have some fun!”

  Mia looked at her group, at Helene, Carmilla and Mark. Then at Lina and Brent.

  Seeing as no one had any objections, Mia shrugged. It’s been a while since she’d let loose like that, and felt it’d do good for the rest of the party too. Especially now after a stressful battle like that, they could use some winding down just as much as she could. “I’m in.”

  “Fuck it,” Lina said, huffing out an angry breath. “I could use a drink. Let’s fucking go.”

  With Mia and Lina in the lead, the rest mostly going along with the two, they melded together with the other group and wandered back behind the wall and found a bar in short order.

  During their walk, a few others joined in who’d stayed behind on the wall and the size of their group swelled to above fifty by the time they filed into the cozy little bar.

  “Don’t say a word,” Mark said, nursing a large mug of foamy bear. Mia quirked her lips in a grin, maintaining it even as the waitress — a tiny slip of a girl who was coincidentally also a dwarf — fluttered over to the table to place a sweet cocktail before Mia and Carmilla before hurrying back over to the bar to deliver another order.

  Mark watched her go, his gaze super glued onto her back. “You’re being a creeper, at least act like you aren’t staring.”

  “I don’t mind!” The dwarven girl shouted over her shoulder, grinning back at Mark as she somehow heard Mia’s quip. “He can stare all he wants!”

  “He can stare at my crowbar once I beat him black and blue with it!” The older dwarf at the bar, the owner of the place and the father of the waitress said, glaring Mark’s way.

  “This is why you don’t have any grandkids yet, old man!” The girl snickered, delivering a grand total of ten mugs of beer at once to another table.

  “You’ll have to challenge him to a drinking competition,” Mia said, nodding sagely before taking a small sip of her drink. It sent a pleasant buzz down her throat as the sweet, fruity taste spread over her tongue. That’s good. Damn. “That’s how this goes, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up,” Mark grumbled, taking a large gulp of his drink. “I hate it so much that it might just go that way. What the fuck.”

  “The dwarven curse.” Mia nodded, taking a quick second sip of her drink. It was somehow more delicious than any drink she’s ever had before. She wanted to down it in one go, but just the thought of doing so felt like a waste. “Next thing you know, you’re opening a smithy and talking shit about elves.”

  “I’m already doing the second in my head whenever you open your mouth.”

  “I’m not an elf.” Mia rolled her eyes, resting her right cheek in her palm.

  “You look elf enough,” he said, shrugging before standing up as he downed the last gulp of his mug. “Hey old man, this beer ain’t shit! Don’t you have something stronger?”

  Idiot. Mia snorted, watching him get into a stare-down with the old dwarf. The severe barkeep gazed at him cooly. “I might just have something.”

  “Get two glasses,” Mark said with all the bluster of a man with two mugs of beer in him and a pretty girl in sight to show off to. “I’ll invite you to whatever is the strongest thing you got.”

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “Like a pansy like you’d be able to handle my strongest drink!” The old man snorted in derision, then grabbed a clear glass half filled with some caramel coloured liquid. “You won’t even last the first glass!”

  “Bet I can last at least two!”

  “Hah!”

  “This is so weird,” Carmilla murmured, watching the two dwarves going about proving every single cliche and trope to be true.

  Mia could honestly say she’d never seen that much rampant masculinity forced into forms so small. The dick measuring contest between the two dwarves was … something else.

  “Yep,” Mia said cheerily, nudging the vampiress next to her with a shoulder before taking another sip of her drink. “How’s the drink? Mine came out surprisingly well.”

  “Did it?” Carmilla asked, looking between Mia’s and her own glass. It was the same, since the girl just asked for whatever Mia asked for. “I … can hardly taste it. Everything aside from blood tastes like ash ever since … “

  “Hmmm,” Mia thought, frowning down at Carmilla’s still full glass. “I’d … offer you an alternative drink, but we’ve made an agreement so I won’t! Instead, I can relieve you of your ash-tasting drink! You’re welcome!”

  With that said, Mia pulled Carmilla’s drink over to her as the vampire looked on with an amused smile.

  Now sipping on two drinks at once, with two straws held between her lips, Mia let her eyes wash over the bar.

  It was down in a basement, with wooden plating all up on the walls and was surprisingly spacious. The fifty or so mages were spread out around the many underground rooms, talking, laughing, drinking.

  Mia watched Fireball-guy — Aiden was his name, as she’d learned — boasting about something to a pair of pretty women with two of his friends snickering at him from behind. Mia smirked, recognising the unimpressed look on the face of a half-elven woman before her as one who knew she was being lied to.

  I think she just stood a few metres away from him on the wall. Mia thought, snickering to herself as Aiden puffed himself up like a balloon as he started telling how ‘he finished off the Troll’.

  Rolling her eyes, Mia glanced over other groups. Amelia, the subdued woman with the Mana-Cannon Skill sat at a table filled with soldier-types. The archer woman with the arcane arrows sat a few tables down, busy sucking the soul out of some poor sod as she straddled his lap.

  Avery was down in another room, the game room where the billiard tables, foosball tables and darts tables were and was working the crowd like a conductor. The girl was a shining star, and everyone around her fell into her orbit.

  Lina was gone, having slipped away somewhere a while ago. The girl had downed a shot of something that looked radioactive and smelled like toothpaste, then stalked off to hunt. Mia remembered seeing her dragging a younger man up the stairs half an hour later by his tie.

  With everyone’s blood running hot after the battle, I guess it’s no wonder people are like that. Mia mused, a hint of jealousy entering her heart that she quickly squashed. The urge to try and drag Carmilla away to a bedroom was there, higher than ever before for her too, but she promised. She promised she’d be good and behave and not make the vampire’s life harder. There will be a time for that in the future. If we last that long.

  Out of her party, that left Brent and Helene, who were off in a corner at a table filled with the … people of advanced ages. Helene stood out like a sore thumb among them, looking like a twenty-year-old girl, but the woman seemed happy enough by the looks of it. In reality, she was probably the oldest person at the table.

  Looking over to the bar, a red-faced Mark and the equally flushed older barkeep were leaning on each other's shoulders while bawling their eyes out. The small dwarven girl acting as a waitress just rolled her eyes at them, huffing a little before going back to work.

  Leaning back, Mia flopped her head over to the side and watched Carmilla. One of her drinks gone, she was starting to feel the onset of the buzz settling over her mind.

  “So,” Mia started, squinting. “I’m feeling bad that everyone but you is enjoying themselves. Anything I can do to change that?”

  “I’m fine,” the vampiress said, still sitting straight like she had a broom up her ass. She was so wound up. “I’m happy enough as I am … I wouldn't want to risk getting drunk even if I could get drunk.”

  “Why can’t you?” Mia asked, shuffling up against the girl and leaning her head across her shoulder. “I thought you still had a mostly human body that you could just heal and control and stuff? That should let you get drunk.”

  “I digest food differently now,” Carmilla said, poking at her stomach. “This here is practically a black hole that converts anything organic getting in into a little bit of energy.”

  “Lifeforce?” Mia asked, looking down at the vampire’s bare midriff. Abs. Nice. I wonder how they feel?

  “Sort of,” Carmilla said, taking Mia’s hand into her own as it reached to tap at her abs. “Are you … drunk?”

  “I can still talk, and am awake,” Mia said, blinking up at Carmilla innocently. “So nope. I am not, in fact, drunk!”

  Carmilla glanced over at the one and a half cocktails Mia had inhaled, frowning. “Should I get you water or something?”

  “Nope,” Mia said, pushing herself off of the vampire to slurp on the remaining drink. “Just carry me home if- … when I pass out. Also, studies show that overnight cuddling with vampires prevents getting hungover, sooooo- “

  “What studies?” Carmilla asked, huffing out a little laugh as Mia sputtered at getting interrupted mid-sentence.

  “New ones?” Mia said, poking her chin with a finger. “Secret studies, super secret. I only got access to them because I’m a princess.”

  Raising her chin proudly, Mia rested her case. Carmilla just smiled, graciously letting her have this win.

  “Sure you don’t want anything to drink?” Mia asked again, sipping on Carmilla’s cocktail until it ran dry. “Or do you want me to just drip a bit of my blood into a glass for you?”

  “No,” Carmilla said, gently, but firmly pushing Mia’s arm back onto the table as the halvyr went to hold her wrist above an empty glass. “I’m good, really. I’ve gotten to drink your blood every day for the last ten or so days. You can just enjoy today without worrying about me.”

  “But it’s not fun to be alone,” Mia whined, flopping over the bench they sat on to fall into the vampire’s lap. Alcohol really was quite something, giving infinite courage even to Mia as she never would have dared to do something so shameless without its help. “The fun part of getting drunk is the company you get drunk in.”

  Carmilla just stared down at Mia, at her head laid on across her thighs and at the pair of azure eyes blinking up at her innocently. She gave a soft sigh, closing her eyes for a bit.

  “What am I supposed to do with you?” The vampire murmured under her breath, but Mia heard her clear as day.

  “Whatever you want to,” Mia said, grinning up at the vampire. “But some head pats would be a good start, if you were asking for ideas. Since we are being chaste and all that.”

  Carmilla obliged her, caressing her silky pink hair awkwardly at first, then with growing confidence, her movements turned more fluid.

  It wasn’t anywhere close to as good as the scalp massages Gabe could give, as those were the sort that had her melting into a groaning puddle of bliss in minutes. Her brother had magic fingers. Carmilla’s long, graceful fingers caressing her hair gave an altogether different kind of bliss though, so Mia was happy enough with it.

  Maybe it was the two entire glasses of drinks — a huge amount, considering both mainly had vodka in them, which Mia had always been particularly weak to — or her head being up in the rose clouds, but Mia only noticed someone sitting down the table across from her when they set down their glass with a clank.

  Peeking over under the table, Mia identified the newcomer from her dirty ripped black jeans and the scalding warmth that shrouded her presence like a cloak.

  “Hi Avery!” Mia called out, raising an arm up to give a little wave, but not willing to go as far as to remove her head from Carmilla’s lap.

  “Hi Mia,” the blonde giggled, audibly relaxing into the chair. “You seem comfortable.”

  “I am,” Mia confirmed, humming happily as Carmilla’s fingers resumed playing with her hair.

  “You got that cutie-pie all wrapped around your fingers, don’t you?” Avery asked, and it took Mia a few seconds to realise the question was not directed at her, but at Carmilla.

  “It’s … quite the opposite,” the vampire said after a few moments, glancing down at the blissfully smiling Mia before sighing. She was doing that a lot, Mia noted.

  I’ll give her a massage or something. She really needs to relax. She’s been stiffer than a board ever since we agreed to give a shot to this courting-thing. Mia thought, her buzzed mind trying to troubleshoot the problem, but a few cogs were trying to turn the wrong way so she couldn’t get anywhere with that. Massage and cuddles. Can’t go wrong with those. And hugs. Lots of hugs.

  “How did that happen, if you don’t mind me asking?” Avery asked. “You two are just about polar opposites.”

  “Untrue,” Mia said, raising a hand to remind the two of her presence. “I can brood and glare just as well as she can.”

  “She talked me into trying this out;” Carmilla said slowly, shrugging. “I agreed. She is … hard to say no to.”

  “So you’re together?” Avery asked, audibly sipping something. “For how long?”

  Mia stayed silent, quite curious herself about the vampire’s answer to that question. Carmilla herself looked down questioningly at Mia, as if to urge her to answer in her stead.

  Mia mimed zipping her lips.

  “I can’t tell her?” Carmilla murmured in confusion, tilting her head and Mia facepalmed.

  “No, you can,” Mia said. “But I won’t. So? Are we together? Hmmmmm?”

  “We are?” Carmilla said, like the question was obvious, but Mia’s behaviour was making her uncertain. “I think?”

  “Nice,” Mia said, a smile practically bolted onto her face. “That was the correct answer by the way!”

  Avery laughed across the table from them, likely at the nonplussed look on Carmilla’s face. “Thanks?”

  “You’re welcome!” Mia chirped, eyes closing as the vampire's fingers scratched a particularly delish spot.

  “Ah damn,” Avery said in mock disappointment. “She’s such a gem, I’m jealous. Hey Mia, if you ever break up, do hit me up!”

  “That’s rude!” Mia called out. “Like, super rude. My girlfriend is right here. I’m practically lying on her.”

  “Well, it’s best she knows what a great catch she got laying across her lap,” Avery said, not a hint of shame in her voice as she stood. Carmilla’s fingers tightened ever so slightly in Mia’s hair. “Alright, since this has been a bust I’m going to have to look for someone else to enjoy the night with. Have fun girls. See you around!”

  Mia just gave a weak wave, opening an eye to peek up at Carmilla’s face. It was a strange mix of emotions Mia couldn’t quite decipher, but she wasn’t liking most of them. Anger, shame, guilt and resignation were just some of them. Stupid vampire. No need to worry, I like you. Even with all of your (blood)-red flags.

  Heh. I’m hilarious.

  “Ignore her,” Mia said, reaching up to poke the pretty vampire’s cheek. That caught her attention. “She is stoooooooopid. She doesn’t know you’re the real catch between the two of us.”

  Carmilla’s set shoulders slumped a little, and Mia gave a little whoop. Her fingers went back to playing with her hair too a moment later. Silly vampire. You’re the bestest girl there is.