After dinner, Minerva approached Galiena. “Do you have time right now, Miss Galiena?” She asked.
“Yes.” Galiena replied. “Before we speak, I would remind you that you do not need to be so formal with me. Just ‘Galiena’ is fine.”
“Miss Galiena, you’re one of history’s greatest warriors and my personal savior, I can’t simply be less formal with you, especially not right now.” Minerva replied.
“That is a thing of the past at the moment.” Galiena said. “I do not have that strength yet, and this simply muddies our relationship. Regardless, what did you wish to ask of me?”
“Well…I was hoping that you would train me to be more like you.” Minerva said. “You know, better at fighting and sneaking.”
“As I thought.” Galiena replied, nodding sagely. “I would be happy to take you under my wing, on one condition.”
A surge of hope welled up in Minerva. “I’m listening.”
“Until you finish raining with me, you will have to simultaneously train as a maid.” Galiena replied.
Minerva paused, staring at Galiena dumbfoundedly. “W…why?” She stammered. “I thought you were doing things yourself out of a desire for efficiency or something. Why me?”
“That is correct. It is most efficient for me to do the work myself, and taking you on will reduce that slightly, but I believe training a protégé is worth the small efficiency hit, especially because you are not likely to be as active a combatant as the rest, due to your inexperience.”
“Hey, I’ve been given lessons, I know how to fight.” Minerva said defensively. “And most of them were just villagers, I’m sure I can be as helpful as them.”
“Potentially, yes. But, based on your reactions in general, I assume you have never seen actual combat.” Galiena replied flatly.
“Well, no…but, again, the rest of them were just villagers, when would they have fought?” Minerva pointed out.
“From what I understand, on a semi-regular basis. They lived on the outskirts of what I have been given to understand is the most dangerous place in the world. Queen Maia said that it is village policy to teach everyone to fight in case of monster attacks.”
Minerva frowned. “Isn’t that the country’s job? What were they paying taxes for, if not to be kept safe?”
“From what I have gathered, I do not believe they paid taxes regularly.” Galiena replied. “They lived meager lives, and Amy was the only one who regularly visited them. If I had to guess, their country lost a few tax collectors to the Deepwood and decided it was not worth the pittance they would collect. Ask Steph about it, she would likely know. Regardless, they have far more practical experience than you.”
“Okay, but…why me?” Minerva asked. “I have no experience whatsoever in daily chores, I’d be far more effort to train as a maid than others.”
“Monster girl maid techniques differ from conventional techniques due to our unique constitutions, and often vary from species to species.” Galiena replied “You are a shapeshifter, and much like boneshifters, shapeshifters are highly in-demand for maid work due to their versatility. And even if you do not decide to continue with this profession after your training is over, you will at the very least be capable of helping train other maids, and will help expedite the process in the future.”
Minerva thought on that for a moment. If she thought about it like a knight and their squire, then it actually wasn’t that unusual for nobles to be doing servant’s work. And, if it let her learn from the Bone Tyrant, then it was a small price to pay. “I’ll do it.” She said. “What will it entail?”
“Hold still for a moment.” Galiena said, reaching into her apron’s pocket and pulling out a small strip of cloth. A shard of bone slid out of her pointer finger, then pierced both ends of the cloth, holding it taut. She walked up to Minerva and quickly held it up to various parts of her body, then stepped back and put the cloth away. “You’re dismissed for tonight.” She said. “I’ll talk with you in the morning and give you your uniform.”
“W-what?” Minerva replied. “Are you going to make it tonight? Was that taking my measurements?”
“Yes and yes.” Galiena said. “I have been receiving silk from Lily regularly, and I have decades of experience as a seamstress. I believe you will find your new uniform to be both more comfortable and more practical than your current clothing, both in daily life and combat.”
“But aren’t skirts terrible for fight–”
“They are excellent places to store various small items, provided the skirts have been properly created.” Galiena said. “And a few small alterations to normal design as well as a touch of magic will ensure that they are a boon in combat.”
“Do we have any enchantment tomes?” Minerva pointed out.
“I can use this magic and many other simple spells without tomes.” Galiena replied. “Any other questions?”
“Um…what should I call you now that you’re my teacher?” Minerva asked.
“Simply call me Galiena.” Galiena said firmly. “Formalities are mostly pointless within this original group.”
“What about Maia?” Minerva said. “You always call her Queen Maia.”
“I am trying to get her used to the reality of her new station.” Galiena said. “In the years to come, I am sure that will become unnecessary and I will just call her Maia, but for now it is.”
“Oh. Well, no more questions then.” Minerva replied.
“Very good. You may go.”
Minerva left, and, unsure what else to do, went and found Steph, who was coiled up next to the fire reading. “Hey, Steph, I have a question, do you have a moment?”
Steph looked up from her book. “Of course.” She said. “What is it?”
“Galiena mentioned that your village didn’t pay taxes regularly for some reason, and said you would probably know why. Do you?”
Steph nodded. “Yes. She’s right, the village was only taxed once every decade or so; most tax collectors had no desire to stray so close to the Deepwood, and the village produced little more than was necessary to feed ourselves.”
Steph paused, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I don’t think they knew about our food stores. Or maybe they did and didn’t care so long as the village didn’t die off. That’s not to say that the village didn’t contribute to the country, though; we were the only reliable source of Deepwood wood, and my understanding is that the curiosities Maia brought back from within the Deepwood were very popular in noble society.”
“I ended up getting taxed heavily on those, and I think that’s why they were mostly fine with the situation.” Amy said, looking up at them. “It was the cost of doing business there, but the business was lucrative enough to be worth doing if you knew how. Travel that close to the Deepwood can be extremely dangerous if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, and not many people were willing to risk death while learning. I inherited the know-how from my master, so I ended up making a killing as the only merchant willing to stop there more than once a year.
“If you’ve seen anything from within the Deepwood that was brought back within the last fifteen to twenty years, Maia was almost certainly the one who brought it back from inside the Deepwood, and there’s a seventy-five percent chance I was the one who bought it off of her originally.”
Minerva thought back on that. “I’ve seen a couple of taxidermied monsters while I was being tutored.” She said. “My tutor said she had bought them recently for a study she was doing, and that they were some of the latest to come out of the Deepwood.”
“Ninety nine percent chance I hauled them out, then.” Amy replied. “I’m the only merchant I know of who had the know-how or guts to bring monsters, corpse or not, outside of the Deepwood.”
“Know-how?” Minerva asked, frowning.
“Deepwood stuff is nasty.” Maia said, sitting down next to them. “If you’re not careful, even the tamer stuff can contaminate outside material. Anything you’ve seen outside of the Deepwood, taxidermied or not, is almost certainly pretty safe by Deepwood standards. Why do you ask?”
“I just realized that my tutor had a couple of monsters that were probably hunted by you, personally.” Minerva said. “You killed those, as just…a villager? No formal soldier training or magic knowledge?”
“What were they?” Maia asked. “I don’t exactly have a standard set of stuff I ship off, just the mild stuff that isn’t great for eating.”
“A dog-thing that had a bunch of spikes and really, really tough hide, and a bear that my teacher thinks had used some sort of acid.” Minerva replied.
Maia put a finger to her chin. “Not ringing a bell.” She said. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t hunt them, though. That sort of stuff is pretty common, so I don’t pay them much mind.”
Minerva stared dumbfoundedly at Maia. She had wondered why the goddesses would make some random villager from the middle of nowhere their champion, but she was starting to understand. “Those are mild?” She asked incredulously.
“Well, yeah.” Maia said, as if it was normal. “They didn’t have any ranged attacks, magic, or mind-warping auras. They might as well have been sitting ducks.”
“You…do know that either of those would normally require evacuating the area they were seen in and forming dedicated subjugation team, right?” Minerva asked.
“Really?” Maia replied. “Any halfway-decent fighter in our village could take them down.”
“How?!” Minerva pressed. “My teacher stabbed the dog-thing with a nice knife, and the knife bent!”
“Then it wasn’t a nice knife.” Maia said matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t trust something like that in a fight.”
“Their village incorporates Deepwood materials in almost all of their stuff.” Amy said. “Their tools have to be a lot sturdier than normal tools if they’re to be effective.”
“That makes sense, but…still, most people can’t handle monsters like that.” Minerva said. “How would they get past those spikes, and how would they deal enough damage to stop it before it killed them?”
“Well, if it was attacking the village, we’d probably break out the poisoned arrows while it crossed the gap, and it would hardly be a threat if it decided to press through towards the village proper. And if it did make it, the villagers would keep it at bay with spears while the poison did its work.”
“You had poison? Where did you – no, that’s a stupid question, of course you had poison. Probably better than most stuff outside, too. Still, what if the poison didn’t work?”
“Unlikely, given that it’s anywhere near the village in the first place, but if it didn’t, then the villagers would just gang up on it.” Maia said calmly. “And the bear is the same. The acid doesn’t matter if you don’t get hit.”
Minerva gave Maia an exasperated look. “Then what is a threat to you people?” She asked.
“Oh, lots of stuff.” Maia said. “If something really nasty decides to wander near the Deepwood’s edge, then we have to go take shelter in one of our panic bunkers. But that only happens every seven or eight years, so it’s not a huge deal.”
Minerva didn’t know where to start with that. “Panic bunkers?! And that often? Why do you not just move?!”
“Where would we go?” Maia asked. “Aside from Steph, we were all born and raised there. It’s just the way life was, so we dealt with it.”
“That’s…fair, I guess.” Minerva admitted. “Still, I’m morbidly curious. What exactly qualifies as something ‘really nasty’?”
“Well, the most recent one has to be the thing we fought on our way through the Deepwood after we were cured.” Steph said. “It was a real big thing, a huge winged lion with a scorpion’s tail that breathed fire. Fighting it was a harrowing experience, to say the least. Come to think of it…Maia, you knew that it would breathe fire before it did. Had you seen it before?”
“I don’t know if it was the same one, but I had seen its type before.” Maia replied. “I only got away because it had been hunting something else and was a lower priority. We would never have tried to engage before our transformations, but Emily is basically immune to fire and normal physical attacks, so she held its attention while Steph and I pelted it with light magic.
“That didn’t work, so I weakened it with dark magic and Elise actually managed to hack off its tail, and Violet got a good hit on its face. Then while it as distracted, I stabbed its brain with my spear and it died. It’s hard to tell how tough the hide was since my spear was enhanced by the goddesses and pierced it nicely, but it was almost certainly far tougher than that dog thing. I was shocked Elise was able to cut off its tail at all, but, well, we’re also a lot stronger than we used to be.”
“Even Alexios would have struggled with something like that.” Minerva said. “I thought you took out those monsters I had…those monsters so easily, but I had chalked it all up to your transformations making you stronger. Now I don’t think they would have been a threat even before.”
“They wouldn’t.” Maia confirmed. “They were a lot weaker than I thought they were going to be.” Maia paused, looking like she had a question to ask, then shook her head. “Anyway, uh, yeah, I probably hunted those monsters your tutor had. As far as I’m aware I’m the only one who has been actively hunting inside the Deepwood within the last fifteen or so years. Is that right, Amy? There were no expeditions you know of in that time?”
“As far as I heard, no.” Amy said. “That’s not accounting for nobles trying to send private expeditions, but I don’t think the spoils from those would make it to the wider market.”
Minerva sighed. “Were you going to ask how I controlled those monsters?” She asked.
“Um, yeah.” Maia said guiltily. “Sorry, I know it’s not a pleasant subject for you.”
“It’s…fine. Honestly, I’m not totally sure. I tried applying standard monster taming techniques, and it just…worked. It probably shouldn’t have, and certainly not so quickly, but given…well, you know, it seemed to make sense at the time.”
“Probably another effect of the curse.” Maia said. “Or maybe you’re just in tune with monsters. I don’t know enough about non-Deepwood monsters to say.”
“Maybe.” Minerva said. “Galiena might have an answer, but I’ll ask her…tomorrow. For now, I need to sleep.”
Maia gave her a smile. “Of course. Have a good rest, Minerva.”