’Doesn’t she know the Winterborne name?’ It was the first time she’d ever come across someone quite so indifferent to her family’s reputation.
Up until now, whenever she’d mentioned her surname, the responses had run the same three ways, awe, outright shock, or what her grandmother liked to call ass kissing.
Her eyes lit up as a new thought crossed her mind, one that felt, to her, rather like the answer.
’She must come from a prestigious family herself,’ she reasoned, before asking, "Sister Magna, what’s your household name?"
A headache had already started forming behind Magna’s temples.
How exactly had this girl turned into such a chatterbox and so suddenly?
Realizing there was no escaping it, he simply threw out whatever came to mind first.
"Magus."
He’d already worked out he was in a world run by Witches, so being called Magus in a place like this had a certain ring to it.
Besides, if he ever managed to cast a spell of his own someday, he could always make the title real enough.
"Magna Magus?" She repeated it back, digging through her memory for any fire-specialized households she ever heard of.
’Maybe it’s one of those ancient families Grandmother used to talk about?’ she concluded when nothing came to her.
According to her grandmother, their own family carried real weight, real power, in their own region. Set against the whole continent, though, they were little more than children next to the true ruling dynasties.
She’d never actually laid eyes on anyone from those grand families, but the stories about them alone were enough to leave her in awe every single time.
She even had a favorite among them, an Ice Witch so terrifyingly strong she’d fought a real dragon for three straight years and walked away in a stalemate.
Convinced now that Magna belonged to one of those legendary bloodlines, her pale blue eyes lit right up.
She hopped in front of him, walking backward, her sun-gold hair fluttering around her face. "Sister Magna. Have you ever met the Witch of the Rime Blight?"
Magna looked at her wildly excited face. ’Who on earth is that?’ he thought. Even so, seeing the sheer hope in her eyes, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say no outright.
He sighed. "Yeah. She’s my neighbor, lives in the apartment right across from mine."
Faye’s face went red at once, as though every drop of blood in her body had rushed straight to her cheeks. Her eyes went wide, shining like two gleaming shards of ice.
"R-R-Really? Right across from your apartment?"
She hadn’t the faintest idea what an "apartment" was, but it sounded ridiculously close, which only wound her excitement up further.
"Tell me, tell me! Is she really so beautiful that anyone who looks at her turns to ice on the spot? Is it true her Witch Hat’s actually made from the hide of a frozen mountain lion? Is she..."
Mid sentence, she tripped over her own feet and went down butt-first into the dirt.
Her pristine, plainly expensive dark blue robes were smeared with mud now, making her instantly regret trying to walk backward.
Not that it slowed her down in the least, as she scrambled straight back up. "I heard her Shadow comes from the bloodline of a Frost Leviathan, big like a mountain... Is that true?"
Magna was already rubbing at his temples, though one particular word in her endless stream caught his attention.
"Shadow?" he asked, pausing while she frantically tried to brush the mud from her robes.
It sounded like some kind of summoning spell, something rather fundamental to Witches, by the sound of it. Curious as he was about any bit of magic in this strange new world, it caught his interest at once.
Faye, entirely oblivious to how little he actually knew, giggled eagerly, taking it as her cue to show off. "You know my mother’s Shadow, Titus? He’s actually my father... He’s so huge that whenever he puts me on his shoulders, I can see so far away."
The moment the words left her mouth, though, her whole cheerful air vanished. Her bright smile dropped away, replaced by a dramatic pout as she let out a heavy sigh. "Honestly, finding a decent Shadow these days is next to impossible, you know?"
’Isn’t it a bit early for you to be complaining about that?’ Magna thought, quietly questioning the sheer strangeness of this world’s customs.
Once he realized the whole topic had nothing to do with actual spellcasting, his interest dried right up, and he carried on walking.
As they pressed on, Faye never once stopped talking.
Even without a single word back from Magna, she rambled on about whatever crossed her mind, her mouth barely pausing for breath.
Walking beside what felt like a noisy box with no mute button was endlessly grating, though not entirely without its uses.
Magna was managing to piece together some rather crucial information about this world.
From her scattered rambling, he confirmed his suspicion, this world was run entirely by Witches. What was more, these Witches were sorted into distinct lineages, each built around its own specialized affinity.
Faye’s household specialized in ice and water spells.
According to her, the family’s standing traced back to her grandmother, a formidably strong Witch who’d completed her 12th trial a century back and earned herself a respected seat in high society.
Aside from her grandmother and those in graves, the household consisted only of her mother, and Faye herself.
From that alone, Magna gathered that Witches were, in fact, rather rare.
He picked up a few things about the territory they were in, too.
A modest region, ruled by the Winterborne family, made up of a single capital city, a scattering of towns, and roughly a hundred small villages, about the size of an ordinary city back in his old world.
Naturally, humans weren’t the only ones living here.
Beyond the goblin-infested regions lay far more dangerous grounds. The swamp, for one.
It was home to a Giant Fire Lizard, worshipped like a god by a tribe of aggressive mini-lizardmen, the sort Magna could only picture as some kind of regional boss.
Magna was still trying to picture what exactly a "mini-lizardman" looked like when he realized he needn’t bother, having spotted something moving up ahead.
"Shh. Quiet," he muttered, clamping a hand over Faye’s mouth to shut her up as he narrowed his eyes at the shifting shape.
A sudden wave of goosebumps ran across his skin as the creature came fully into view.
"Hey..." Magna whispered under his breath, desperately hoping his eyes were playing tricks on him. "What did you say those mini-lizardmen looked like again?"