"Are you sure you"re done?" asked Precious, looking around at the town around them."Yep," Aella nodded, clapping her hands in satisfaction.
"But Aella, you still have two more weeks of the full moon. What are you going to do?" he asked, tilting his head to look at her.
Aella sighed. "I don"t know. I want to check on Seifer, and make sure he"s not doing idiotic stuff with my kingdom, and I want to check on Jogug, to make sure he"s doing alright with the triplets. I still need to check in with all of the leaders to let them know I have this town finished, and I have to get with Josephine about getting her water powers."
"All of those things aren"t possible right now with your pheromones," muttered Precious, laying his head down on his paws. "If you would just get pregnant, your pheromones would stop."
"What?" she asked, glancing at him.
"You won"t gain control over your pheromones until you"ve had a kid," he said, looking up at her as if that were obvious.
"How do you know that?" she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. "I think you just want me to get hit up so we can get back to doing things!"
"Well, that would be nice, yes," he agreed, nodding. "But I heard it from the whispers of advice from those dead generals in your head."
Aella paused with her mouth open and gave the thought consideration. Shutting her mouth as she realized he was right, she sighed again.
"Alright, if I can"t do those things the way I would want to, because of my pheromones, I need to think about this a little more," said Aella with determination.
"What do you mean?" asked Precious, looking up at her perplexed. "Why do I get the feeling you are about to do something crazy?"
"No one ever said I was sane," she smiled. "If I give off pheromones that make everyone around me go crazy, no matter what it is, then I need to control them. I can"t seem to figure out how to turn them off, apparently, but I have the powers of air at my fingertips, and pheromones travel through the air."
"Yes?" agreed Precious tentatively.
"I made a bubble of air around us when we went underwater, to keep air around us so we didn"t drown, but obviously the pheromones still managed to travel outside the bubble."
"Yeah, and it attracted a monster!"
"I don"t think it would have attacked us," she said thoughtfully.
"Still, if you plan to use your air abilities to keep your pheromones from escaping, you need to work a lot harder!" demanded Precious.
"There"s one way I"m sure will work," said Aella with a nod.
"What"s that?"
"The last time I was underwater, I attracted that creature. If I work on getting my bubble more secure, the creature shouldn"t be attracted to me anymore."
"That sounds like the dumbest idea I"ve heard you utter out of your mouth," said Precious with a look of horror on his face.
"I take it you would rather stay up here?" asked Aella with a smirk.
"You know my feelings on being near water," he sniffed, glancing around at the town again. "I bet I can find some more things you need to work on while you"re gone."
"Alright," she nodded, as he jumped off her shoulder. "I"ll be back in a couple of days."
"You better," he growled as she teleported away.
Aella had to get as much of the pheromones on her as gone as possible, so she hovered in a strong wind, high in the air. Then wrapping herself in a tight bubble of air, she tried to make the outer edge of the bubble completely air tight, so no air would travel through it. Then she teleported down to the water and started to sink into it, watching to see how the creatures around her reacted. When several swam up to her, she tightened the bubble even more, and they swam off.
She was so focused on making the bubble as tight as possibly, she missed the approaching figure until it was right on top of her. Recognizing the eye that had stared at her before, Aella studied her bubble. Could her pheromones still be traveling through it?
"There"s no way," argued her air.
Aella watched the figure get closer, noting it didn"t look anything like the turtle or the otters. What else lived in these waters? Would she have to modify her island again?
As it approached her, the entire front of its face suddenly opened to reveal a mouth as large as the body. Aella watched as it went to swallow her, with rows of teeth as tall as she was protruding from the inside of this things mouth all the way down its throat.
Shooting a stream of air to her left, she made her bubble smaller, and avoided getting swallowed. Apparently, no pheromones meant she was just a meal. As it swam past her, she had a better view of this thing. It was a giant sea snake, with a body that flattened to allow better maneuverability through the water.
"There is no way in h.e.l.l I am going to let this thing live!" she growled, preparing to let it swallow her as it turned back for another attempt.
Forming two long blades, one from her sword and the other from her shadow weapon, she prepared to slice its insides into ribbons.
"It might have stomach acid that could kill you," warned air.
Aella frowned at that, then smiled. Turning her body into sandstone, she then used her fire to change her body into that of gla.s.s. Acid wouldn"t bother her now!
Watching the rows of teeth flow past her as she was engulfed, Aella twisted and turned to avoid them. With the teeth behind her, she watched as the pulsing muscles around her tried to force her down deeper into the looming opening that would dump her into the stomach. Gritting her teeth, she slashed out at those muscles, cutting deep into them.
The snake didn"t seem to appreciate that, and it writhed, trying to force her back up to where the teeth were. Noticing a frantic thumping on one side, Aella stabbed both of her weapons into that spot and twisted them. Everything became crazy at that point, with everything around her writhing and pressing on her from all different angles, but she held tight to those swords and focused on cutting the muscles in front of her to shreds.
Before she was crushed, Aella teleported herself above the waters, and watched as the giant snake thrashed, staining the waters red with its blood. Changing herself back to normal, she noticed the two otters coming to investigate. They seemed hesitant to attack the wounded snake, but the turtle didn"t hesitate at all.
Coming up from under the snake, the turtle chomped down on its head and the two otters rushed in. Over the next couple of minutes, the snake was torn to pieces and eaten. Only a froth of blood lapping against the walls of her island attested to the battle that had just ensued.
"Back already?" asked Precious from his sunning spot he had found.
"Yep," she grinned.
"I take it you succeeded in avoiding getting eaten?"
"Nope."
"Wait, what?" he cried, jumping up and looking at her carefully.
���Don"t worry, I"m not hurt," she laughed. "I teleported away."
"Seems if you don"t smell good enough to mate with, you"re nothing but a meal?" he grumbled, licking a paw.
"Seems like," she agreed, raising an eyebrow at him.
"What?" he asked, looking up at her.
"Can you think of anyone else that could benefit from that advice?"
"Who?" he asked, scrunching his brow in thought. "Jogug?"
Aella sighed. Precious was being difficult on purpose. He knew what she meant, but wasn"t going to admit it.
"Come on, I need to go hunt something good for Jogug to eat that isn"t fish."
"I bet he would like a nice steak," purred Precious, jumping up and flying to her shoulder.
Aella thought about that for a moment, then teleported to the fields north of her city, glancing over towards it for only a moment, before turning her attention to the various dinosaurs that had managed to survive the storms.
"Hey, look! That looks like antelope!" cried Precious, turning her head to look at a herd of deer-like creatures grazing on the gra.s.ses. "How do you think they survived?"
"I wonder if the world tree has started populating the world with new species to replace the ones that died during the storm?"
"That would be wonderful! One less thing for you to have to worry about!"
Grabbing one of the small deer, she quickly killed it and teleported to the kitchen area she had made for Jogug.
"Aella!" he cried, as a large tentacle wrapped around his throat and pulled him into the fishing pool with a splash.