D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 1965 Lily’s Nap
Chapter 1965: Chapter 1965 Lily’s Nap
— Lily —
It was a bit after lunchtime and Lily was awake. She hadn’t had a chance to eat while on watch last night and even if she slept through a good chunk of it that didn’t mean she wasn’t still ’aware’. Lily knew quite well she could either sleep while keeping an ear out or just properly sleep. The second type was usually done while in Kat’s arms and it was easier to ignore any potential danger, knowing her girlfriend would take care of it.
That meant she was somewhat hungry now, and Steel had said they were free to use whatever we found in the house for a meal. Now, granted, he’d mostly been directing that at Hedera but that wasn’t going to stop Lily from making herself something. She’s be happy to own up to it if asked, but she doubted it would get to that point.
See, Steel was an interesting contrast. As a bachelor you might think his food stocks would be somewhat sparse and that would prove to be sort of correct. Steel had a massive amount of storage space for food that wasn’t really being used. On the other hand, he clearly really liked to keep things neat and tidy.
This meant it looked like his kitchen was basically empty because there was open spots all over the place, but the fact that he had a massive kitchen easily double the standard size… AND a larder underneath all of that meant that it wasn’t nearly as empty as you’d think. Plus, with magic and preservation enchantments you really could stock up. Lily had originally been surprised by the lack of meat around. Sure Steel had said it was rare but he’d also implied he went a bit out of his way for it sometimes.
It was only about five minutes of searching later that Lily noticed Steel had a trapdoor at the back of his cupboard. Lily was tempted to leave it alone… but it wasn’t locked so a shadow hand to lift it up was all she needed to get inside. Flying down into the cool underground larder, Lily found out where all the meat was.
It was a massive amount. Lily couldn’t identify the animal from smell alone, and most of the pieces had been neatly wrapped up in baking paper and placed on shelves but there was at LEAST two cows worth of meat down here. It made it a lot easier to justify eating some that’s for sure. Though the question of what parts exactly to choose was a bit harder.
Clearly this was organised in some way, but unlike the upstairs this place was packed. It clearly wasn’t built to hold much more meat. Well, without utilising some hooks in the middle, but this larder lacked anything like that. Some shelves even had two blocks of wrapped meat.
Lily didn’t want to pick the best pieces, but she also didn’t know what those were. On top of that, she didn’t want to grab anything too large lest that be a waste. All in all, even the mid-sized pieces were larger then she really wanted, but was it fine to chop one of them in half? Lily honestly had no idea and her nose wasn’t much good for figuring it out when she didn’t know if the best smelling part to her was actually the best part… but really the main issue was the amount of meat. Lily simply couldn’t smell the difference between any of the pieces right now.
In the end she decided on one of the spots with two bits of meat inside and went back upstairs. The stove was easy to make use of, even if Lily didn’t exactly cook her meal much. Keeping her ’steak’ blue was always the goal. She threw it on, paused for five seconds, flipped it, waited another few seconds and then called it good. The meat defiantly wasn’t cow but Lily hadn’t really bothered to figure out what it was before she finished it.
Of course, she was chatting with Kat the entire way through this process and now that she’d finished eating, Lily went back to her spot resting to the side of Hedera. She was snuggled up against Hedera’s back. The elf had chosen a couch of all things to sleep on. There were spare rooms, plenty of them in fact… but Steel had asked politely they not use his room… without specifying which one that was.
It was clear he didn’t really make use of whichever bedroom it was because they all looked the same. There were a few unique touches in places… but that was the same with every room and the house might have even come that way. The master bedroom was probably the one with the attached bathroom… but there was actually two of those so in the end, Hedera had just thrown up her hands and claimed the couch downstairs.
Lily was just considering finishing up her chat with Kat and returning to her nap when her ears picked up a soft click. She immediately cut off her conversation with Kat and focused on the sound. Ears swivelling as she tried to get a sense of what it had been. She could just barely make out the quiet sound of someone breathing off to the side.
Concentrating hard, Lily was able to ’watch’ as the figure entered the house, notably not making any noise at all with their feet despite moving inside. Lily quickly identified the likely reason as an enchantment to silence the noise of their clothing and feet… but not their breathing. It was quiet and steady but notably not silent. Kat was quiet on her side of things, but Lily could practically FEEL the attention leaning down the link.
Lily was debating what to do here. Technically she didn’t know this wasn’t Steel or some salacious rendezvous that needed to be kept on the down low… but the chances seemed awfully small. It was far more likely, considering the state of the house, that someone had noticed it was never used and very fancy.
Lily’s choice of what to do was essentially made for her when she noted the breathing getting closer. She’d shut the door to the room and could tell the breathing was approaching it. In a few moments, she’d need to decide exactly what to do. She could play up the slightly smart cat angle, opening an eye and glaring at them in hoops that they’d leave… or she could do a proper job of things and actually try to fight them.
Her first thought was to fight them. She was almost certainly stronger than they were… but she was also inside a friends house and this was NOT the place to start an all out brawl. As she debated this, Lily started to wake Hedera. Shadows snuck around and carefully poked her in the cheek, repeatedly while another hand hovered over her mouth in case she woke up too worried.
Hedera, well used to needing to wake up quietly did so. Lily almost didn’t notice it, but the slight shudder that ran down Hedera’s body and the slightly mismatched breathing was easy to catch when she was listening so intently and pressed up against Hedera like this.
Lily debated how much to say, she was unaware of how good Hedera’s hearing was, and didn’t know if it was worth trying to mime what was going on with such little time… but Hedera summoned a small dagger next to Lily before vanishing it back into her storage. It wasn’t even close to being pointed at Lily, so the message was pretty clear as she continued to pretend to be asleep.
Taking a slight cue from Hedera, Lily forced her horns to retract through partial transformation, and positioned herself so that it would look like she hadn’t moved. Right as the door opened, she had a single eye trained on the figure. Causing them to pause in shock.
The figure was clad in mostly black and grey, with a slight bit of red peaking out from around the mask, likely hair. They looked rather flat up top but the fact they had an hourglass body hinted they were probably a woman. Well, that and the quiet “eep” that was immediately cut off when she was spotted was quite girly.
The figure paused, clearly unsure what to do, regardless of if that was because Hedera was also here sleeping, or that Lily had clearly seen her was unclear. They remained locked in a staring match for a few moments. Lily didn’t think it right to initiate things at this point. Right now the intruder was ’stunned’ and clearly didn’t know what to do. If she just backed off, Lily would allow it. Perhaps memories as much as she could of the person and produce a shadow replicate, but allow them to leave. Hedera seemed to be of the same mind, or at least, she hadn’t reacted in any meaningful way Lily could tell.
So what would they do?
