A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

As soon as Elora spoke up, Erik and Alice focused their attention on her again. Currently, several stone slabs full of information were floating around her, and she'd drawn several sigils in the air.

"Right…" Erik muttered, looking at all of this curiously. "Remind me what we're doing here again?"

Elora smirked, but her attention never wavered from whatever she was doing. "You know very well that I haven't told you yet… and it's a surprise! For now, I need you two to start gathering some materials from the crafting areas."

The fairy glanced at the exercising Seraphina and narrowed her eyes. "You can help out, too!"

Instantly, the Bond of Service was activated, and Seraphina reluctantly dropped what she was doing with a sigh. She'd been trying to ignore them, hoping they wouldn't ask anything of her… to no avail.

Erik grinned at her as she approached dejectedly. "Don't worry," he said teasingly. "As soon as we're done, I'll reward you with a drink straight from the tap." Using two fingers, he tapped the exposed side of his neck.

Seraphina flinched a moment, her eyes helplessly drawn towards his neck… before she caught herself and quickly looked away. "I— I'm fine, thank you," she growled, voice filled with determination and grit. "I've still got vials. Just tell me what you want, Master."

Erik chuckled, and even Elora looked up momentarily with amusement. Seraphina managed to toss out the word Master with so much indifference, it might as well have been his name—an act she'd specifically practised.

At the same time, they could see the struggle on her face. They knew from Astrid that fresh blood always tasted better, and the vial life was difficult to sustain for any vampire.

Seraphina noticed their looks and grumbled, but didn't comment. It's not like she was oblivious to what they wanted from her. She'd decided they weren't that bad as people, but also that they were always eyeing her for weaknesses that might allow them to make her a loyal part of Erik's harem…

With that short distraction out of the way, Elora quickly forced them back on task. "Alright, here's what I need…"

Next, she started rattling of a long list of materials and tools from around their home, and her three helpers jumped on the task. They gathered items from the alchemist room, the smithy, and mostly from the sigil crafting room, before bringing them all to Elora.

There wasn't a whole lot needed, so it only took a few minutes. But even then, their tasks weren't done. Elora had begun to weave a complicated set of sigils, forming a nexus in the middle of the room, with off-shoots leading to every training area, including the one currently occupied by Emma.

Although their experience with carving sigils was limited, they didn't need to do much. Normally, a sigil crafter would need to imbue power into them as they were crafted, but since these were already connected to the nexus created by Elora herself, she could supply the power through that system.

Thus, all her helpers had to do was draw shapes… which they could do… barely.

About an hour later, Elora declared they were done. Curious what they'd been doing this whole time, Erik, Alice, and even Seraphina then gathered back around her.

"Alright," Elora grinned, waving her hands as dark green aetherium gathered on her finger tips. "Let's see if this sigil works…"

Dark green light flashed, and everyone's eyes were drawn to the centre of the room. Over the past hour, Elora had slowly been constructing some kind of floating gem, which was about half Erik's size.

Then, after Elora did whatever she did to activate it, the gem started to slowly pulse with dark green light and rotate around its axis. Soon after, the lines of sigils leading away from it started to do the same thing until the whole room was aglow. Finally, it ended again.

The lines stopped glowing, and the gem only pulsed occasionally, but still rotated on the spot. With no idea what just happened, Elora's helpers turned to her for answers with curious gazes.

Yet, Elora was lost in her own head. Grinning excitedly, she kept her eyes on the gem and waved at Erik. "It's your turn now! Hurry, hurry!"

Unfortunately, Erik could only blink, then roll his eyes. His arms were casually stuck in his pockets as he smirked wryly at his beloved fairy. "Aren't you forgetting something, Elora?"

Elora frowned in annoyance, but took his words seriously. "No, I'm sure I haven't. I recalibrated the sigil I found to do what I want it to… I reinforced the containment sigil several times to be safe… The transference corridors are all in place… I even added the—"

Erik chuckled, interrupting her. "How about informing your beloved husband about what you're doing, so he knows what you're expecting of him?"

"And me, too!" Alice chimed in, having jumped on Erik's shoulders to glare at Elora as punishment for forgetting to quench her curiosity.

Seraphina just shrugged. She was curious, but she also knew that whatever was happening likely wouldn't benefit her.

"Ah!" Elora cried, flinching a little as she turned to look guiltily at Erik and Alice—naturally completely ignoring Seraphina.

"Right…" she then muttered awkwardly, before coughing and quickly starting to explain. "I came across a peculiar sigil in those archives that I hadn't seen before, called the Cauldron Reflow sigil. Basically, it's intended to aid people who were forcefully grafted with the most malicious of cauldron sigils."

"Normally," she continued, waving her arms after entering teaching mode, "the energy this sigil forcefully draws out of the victim's body can only be expelled through sex, or they explode. These cauldron sigils are exceedingly difficult to remove, but with the Reflow sigil, you can redirect the flow of energy back into the body, thus creating a kind of loop that the victim can still benefit from, while also removing the need to have sex to survive."

"What I did," she finished, now pointing at the gem excitedly, "was repurpose that sigil to redirect the energy out of the body without the need for sex, and into this storage medium…"

She turned to Erik and Alice with a grin. "Get it now?"

Alice still looked confused, but Erik was obviously enlightened, his eyes lighting up with understanding and interest.