Maia was surprised at how quickly Galiena picked up screening the food for Deepwood magic. Maia simply had to show her the technique, and she was able to replicate it almost perfectly on her first try. According to Galiena, it was similar to checking food for poison, something she had apparently done all the time.
Afterwards, Galiena invited Maia to watch as she cooked, and Maia took her up on the offer. Though, in all likelihood, the goddesses wanted Maia and her group to pick up Galiena, Maia couldn’t bring herself to unconditionally trust her, and Maia wanted to make sure she didn’t do anything to the food. Still, Galiena didn’t mind; in fact, she had praised Maia for staying vigilant around someone new and suspicious.
It felt odd, hearing Galiena admit that she was suspicious, but it wasn’t like Maia could deny it; the reality was that as much as it was overwhelmingly likely that Galiena was who she said she was, there was technically no confirmation. One thing was clear, though; Galiena obviously knew the castle like the back of her hand. She immediately led Maia to the castle’s kitchen, where Maia was shocked to find that it was still stocked with metal cookware.
Furthermore, there was a well in the courtyard just outside of the kitchen, and the water it drew didn’t have any magical contamination. With the practiced ease of someone who had done this innumerable times, Galiena transferred the well water to a pot, grabbed what appeared to be coal from a container in the kitchen, loaded it into a stove, and set the water to boiling. Maia watched the process carefully, going as far as to check the cookware that was being used for magical contamination, but it was clean and Galiena didn’t try to add anything to the food, so she soon had an admittedly tasty-looking soup finished.
Galiena tasted it with a spoon, then nodded. “I suppose it’ll have to do.” She said. “Not my best work, but it’s adequate. I will gather the others, feel free to dish yourself up if you do not wish to wait until I return.”
“I can just make bowls for everyone.” Maia volunteered. “You have all the dishes set out already, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
“My thanks, Your Majesty.” Galiena said. “I will return momentarily. The dining room is through the door to your left.”
Maia split the soup between six bowls and brought them into the dining room, where she set them up on one end of the long table. The chairs were made of stone, and while they seemed to have had some padding before, only scraps of it remained now. Still, it was better than the floor, so Maia wasn’t about to complain.
Violet was the first to enter the room, tail swaying happily as she sniffed the air. “That smells…really good.” She said, eyes locked on the bowls. “Is that really our stuff?”
“Yeah.” Maia confirmed. “I haven’t tasted it yet, but it’s all stuff that was in our pack, plus some well water. The water didn’t seem to have any magical contamination and it was thoroughly boiled first, so it should be safe.”
Violet took a seat at the table, tail sliding neatly through a slot in the back of the chair, then began to dig in. “Yeah, this is great.” She said between bites. “I’m not sure how to feel about her yet, but Galiena knows her way around a kitchen.”
Steph and Emily were next, and while Emily just sat down and start eating, Steph stopped near the table, looking at one of the seats thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I move the chair instead of going back to human form?” She eventually asked.
“By all means.” Galiena said, walking into the room with Elise. “The chairs are meant to slide out easily for just this sort of thing, but the mechanisms might have degraded with time. If you need assistance, please let me know.”
Steph slithered over to a chair, and with only a little effort she was able to slide it away from its resting place. “Ah, I see.” She said, moving over to where it had been and coiling her tail up in what was apparently a lamia’s way of sitting down.
Elise sat down next to Maia. “Are you waiting for something?” She asked. “You haven’t started eating yet.”
“I figured I’d wait until everyone was here.” Maia said. “I didn’t want to be interrupted in case I was needed for something.”
“I would have handled everything.” Galiena said, taking the remaining seat. “Do not worry about that.”
“And I would have felt bad about it.” Maia replied. “But it doesn’t matter now, everyone’s here, we might as well eat before we prepare to get moving again.”
“What time is it?” Galiena asked. “I could not easily tell through the trees. If it is late, it may be worth staying the night here, where we have shelter.”
“It was just after midday when we entered the castle.” Maia said. “I’d say it’s probably evening right now. So…yeah, let’s stay the night here.”
“Excellent. I will make sure the chambers are appropriately prepared.” Galiena said. “And, after this meal, I will grab the stash of supplies that I hid away in preparation for this moment. It is nothing major, just some tomes, extra weapons, jewelry, and valuable materials, but it should serve our purposes. And, of course, I will carry it; no need to worry about overburdening yourselves.”
“You really don’t have to.” Maia said awkwardly. “We’ll just lay out our bedrolls in a room, that should be fine.”
“No, I do.” Galiena said. “It is imperative that we get you used to your new role as queen, and that means being waited on.”
Maia frowned. “Why?” She asked. “You said it earlier, too. That whether I want to or not, I’ll become a queen. What does that mean?”
“It means that you will be forced to take the leadership role in our emerging nation.” Galiena said. “It is not relevant at the moment, but there are certain vitally important things that will fail to function if you are not queen. I will assume the goddesses have not filled you in on what those might be yet, so I will likewise hold my tongue. And, speaking of the goddesses, what is your current plan? They must have given you direction, right?”
“Yes. We are heading east, to the Isle of Advent, where we will receive more instructions.” Maia said. “Uh…that’s the island where the goddesses first touched down on the world, in case they called it something different in your time.”
“They did not.” Galiena replied. “And Queen Maia the First did the same, along with me and several other companions. We were much closer to the Isle when we started, though, so I was not sure if the same would hold true this time around. Do you have any plans for how to travel there?”
Maia shook her head. “Not yet. It’s only been a couple of days since this all started, and we’ve been focused on getting through the Deepwood first. I was assuming we would take some odd jobs in a town and then charter a ship.”
“That could work, but we would need to be quick.” Galiena said. “Staying in one place for too long is dangerous. If we are found out, we would have to immediately leave town. You may think hiding will be a simple thing, but it is not; our mindsets are too incompatible with the cursed, and they will catch on sooner or later.”
Maia nodded. “I think we all sort of figured.” She said. “But…you said you were going to fill us in on things we don’t know about being a monster girl?”
Galiena nodded, taking a quick bite of her soup. “I will. Give me one moment to eat some more.”
That reminded Maia that she hadn’t had any food yet, either. She took a bite herself, and she found that the soup didn’t disappoint. There was only so much that could be done with the ingredients they had, but Galiena had made the most of it. The bits of meat were cut to nearly identical sizes to each other, as were the plants, ensuring that no one bit was over or undercooked.
What was more, Galiena had somehow picked up on how best to proportion the ingredients with only a little tasting and some questions to Maia on how the ingredients were normally used. In short, it was a meal that made Maia forget that it was made with whatever random things they could scavenge within the Deepwood. If this is what Galiena considered just “adequate”, then Maia could see why she didn’t want to have others’ cooking.
After a few moments of silence, Galiena began to speak again. “To begin with, let me say this: there is no downside to being a monster girl, or at least, none outside of being put at odds with the cursed. Physically speaking, monster girls are strictly superior to humans. Any individual downsides a species may have are completely nullified by the ability to become human at-will.”
Steph frowned. “Why didn’t the goddesses make us all monster girls to begin with, then?” She asked. “Why bother with humanity?”
“An excellent question.” Galiena said. “There is an answer, but that touches too much upon subjects that are not safe to know. You will learn the answer in due time, but for now be satisfied in the knowledge that it was not malicious on the part of the goddesses. They have only ever had our best interests in mind.”
“I…see.” Steph said. “Continue.”
Galiena nodded. “As I was saying, we are physically superior to humans in all ways. How superior depends on the species, but a few things are constant; we do not age past physical maturity, have significantly more endurance than humans, and any of our other attributes are always at least as good as they would be if we were human. There are occasionally downsides with mobility, notably with species such as lamia, arachne, centaurs, mermaids, and other non-humanoid species, but those have other upsides to balance them out, and in a pinch, they can always assume human form.
“Speaking of human form, you will note that you have just as much stamina as if you were in your base form, and while your physical strength, speed, or acuity of your senses might decrease from your base form, it is likely still better than what you had when you were human. Due to this, as a rule, if a human can do something, a monster girl can do it just as well if not better.”
“Wait, what about children?” Elise asked suddenly. “We’re all women here, we can’t have kids.”
Galiena paused. “I suppose, technically, that is something that is worse, but not in the way you think. We can have kids, we simply need to focus on conceiving and drink any fluid from our partner, yes, including saliva, that they produced with the intent of conceiving, and we will. Pregnancies are much easier, and we could theoretically even fight while pregnant, though it would be less than ideal.
“The only caveat is that we can only conceive about once every decade or two. Twins are possible, if far rarer than in humans, but that is it. There are no unwanted conceptions and the entire process is much cleaner, it is only frequency that suffers. In my opinion, it is a far superior system to how things worked when we were human.”
“But…how does that work?” Emily asked. “How can the fluid ‘know’ that it was produced in order to have a kid?”
“In the same way your body knows that you want to shift to human form. It is magic. The magic does tend to wear off after about an hour, but situations where the fluid would need to sit out for that long are few and far between.”
“Do you have a human form?” Violet asked. “I know that’s not related to reproduction but you have me curious. And…also, what species is the child if the parents are different species, like Maia and Elise?”
“I do, but it is visually indistinguishable from this form, so long as my bones are not visible.” Galiena said. “Even then, as long as I have not moved my bones underneath my skin, it would take someone intimately familiar with what human bones look like to tell the difference. As you can imagine, I have never had cause to use my human form outside of the one time I was curious what it would look like.
“As for the species of a child, it is determined in a similar way to how the species of a transformed human is determined. It’s much less precise, since it is reading the soul before it has formed a proper ego, but it is rare that anyone truly has a complaint. Even then, Queen Maia can rectify that in the same way she would cure someone. It is truly an ideal state of being.”
“I can?” Maia asked.
“You can.” Galiena confirmed. “And, if you are like the previous Queen Maia, you can heal people and use any tome, correct?”
Maia nodded, and Galiena continued. “Your healing magic is actually just an offshoot of your transformation magic. The two use the same process, and as such you are uniquely capable of healing any injury or disease. As long as someone is alive, you can heal them fully within minutes. In time, you should also be able to learn to control it and even change someone’s species at will, but that is for a time far in the future.”
“Oh.” Maia said. “I…wouldn’t I need tomes for something that complicated?”
“No.” Galiena said. “Strictly speaking, tomes are completely unnecessary for magic. If they weren’t, people couldn’t create tomes themselves. No, what tomes do is simply streamline the process of casting and prevent accidents that would be caused by messing up a spell. What the goddesses have done is to essentially turn you into a tome yourself; they have engraved the casting process of this magic on your soul, and with some effort you can learn to change how it manifests.
“Likewise, you should find that leaning to cast magic without tomes will come easier to you than it will for most. The goddesses gave you shortcuts to allow you to use tomes, and those shortcuts provide a solid base for you to learn tomeless magic.”
“Can you do tomeless magic, or are you just repeating what you’ve learned from…presumably the first Maia?” Steph asked curiously. “I heard only archmages are capable of it, but you talk like you have experience with it.”
“Some, yes.” Galiena replied. “But nothing that would be useful in combat; I just learned some things that are useful in maid work. Small applications of magic such as that are far easier and safer to learn than combat spells.”
“Oh.” Steph said. “Did you have tomes for those spells to begin with? That sort of thing is very rare nowadays.”
“It’ll become more common.” Galiena said confidently. “Most of the tomes I used while learning were created using some form of magic that was built into a certain species of monster girl as a reference. Once we have a tome writer or two cured, we can probably get started making them.”
“Well, I’m not familiar with tome production, so I’ll take your word for it.” Steph said.
There was a short pause before Galiena continued. “Finally, let me say this; becoming a monster girl, whether or not someone was cursed before, does not make someone a better person. If they were not cursed, nothing in their mentality changes. If they were, then they are simply restored to how they were before they were cursed.
“Therefore, when putting people into positions of power, it is important to consider both their character and their talent. Flat out rebellion is unlikely provided you rule well, as you will be needed in case of emergencies like a re-emergence of the curse or a brewing war, but internal politics can slow things down.”
Maia nodded. “Understood. Um…if you don’t mind me asking, how did your empire fall, but the curse still vanished? Surely everyone would still be cursed if you were interrupted halfway…right?”
Galiena paused. “How virulent is the curse this time around?” She asked.
“Virulent?” Maia asked, looking to Steph.
“How easily it spreads.” Steph said. “And to answer your question, Galiena, very. Our village was one of the last places to be infected due solely to its highly remote location. By now I estimate ninety-five percent of the world is in the thrall of the curse, if not more.”
“There you have it, then.” Galiena said. “It was not nearly as virulent in my day; we had eradicated it and were in talks with other nations so as to establish peace when we were backstabbed. It would appear that this time it is all or nothing. It means that humanity will be extinct as a species when we finish, save perhaps a few hermits, but I think this is a long-overdue upgrade anyway.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Maia said hesitantly. “In it being an overdue upgrade, that is; if we have to transform the world to stop the curse, then that’s what we’ll do, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being human.”
“Wrong? No. Inherently weaker and less convenient? Yes.” Galiena said. “You will understand in due time; without exception, everyone transformed views it as an upgrade, because it is.”
Maia shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think I like that viewpoint.” She said bluntly. “We’re doing this out of necessity, not out of a misguided attempt to change people’s lives because we think it’s an improvement.”
Galiena smiled fondly. “Queen Maia the First said much the same.” She said. “When she saw the positive impact it had on people’s lives she warmed up to the idea, but never went all-in. And, for the record, I agree with that decision; more war would have resulted in more death, and when people understood how much better life is as a monster girl, they would have begun to join us of their own accord. I understand it makes you uncomfortable, however, so I will drop the subject.”
“Thank you.” Maia said, slightly relieved. “Um…anything else you can tell us?”
“About being a monster girl? No, I have covered everything important. However, you will note that the castle has a magically sealed door, of which I have the only key. That is the library, and I would ask that you do not attempt to enter, as many texts contained therein have dangerous knowledge. I will bring a selection of the most important works, and will give them to you when the knowledge is no longer dangerous.”
There was another period of silence as everyone thought on that. “I understand.” Maia said. “We’ll leave it alone.”
Galiena nodded. “Thank you. For now, would you mind giving me a quick overview of history as it is told today? I would like to understand what is accurate and what is inaccurate. It should give me an idea of how I can help formulate plans for us.”
“I can do it, give me a minute to finish this off.” Steph volunteered. “And feel free to interrupt me at any time with questions; I don’t know what has been changed, so I don’t know where to go into detail.”
“I appreciate it.” Galiena said. “For those of you not interested in this, I have no other information to give you at this time; feel free to leave and explore the castle if you so wish. This castle should have been preserved well and warded from monsters, so you should be safe in here, but stay vigilant just in case.”
“Yeah, I’m going to give the castle a sweep for anything dangerous right after I finish.” Maia said. “Better safe than sorry.”
Elise pushed her bowl away, rubbing her stomach contentedly. “What should we do with the bowls and stuff?” She asked.
“I will take care of them.” Galiena said. “I will be taking much of it along with us, as you seem to be lacking in that area. Just leave them there and I will see that they are properly cleaned. And no, I do not need special consideration for having just awoken; while I do feel weaker, that is only relevant in combat. I am not tired, and in daily life I will still perform better than most monster girls, let alone most humans.”
“If you insist.” Elise said, switching to human form so she could rest her head on Maia’s shoulder without poking Maia with her horns. “I’ll go with you when you’re done.” She said softly. “Just let me know when, okay?”
Maia smiled and stroked her wife’s hair. “Thanks. I’ll only be a minute.”