Really Short Break Breakfast!

Just as one’s attention would be gripped by the castle’s architecture prior to laying eyes on the royal family, so it was for the chamber Zayobi had entered:

The solar, what could be referred to as the family’s private living chamber.

Or in short, where Zayobi sat awaiting breakfast to be served.

Perhaps because the room was of the informal spaces in the castle and didn’t require symbolic decorations, the color most prominent was a cloud-white.

Being one floor lower than the princesses’ chambers and two of the parents didn’t limit the construction of grand windows, which heightened the bright scent of morning further.

Zayobi materialized a cherry from the tip of her finger and threw it in her mouth.

The whole castle can be white for all I care, the only red that matters is my strawberries.

“Say Sgura: Why is it that things grown in the Hallowed Forest resist our duplication? Regardless if one has a level five Creation like Form that majorly enhances your materialization ability, it’s still impossible.”

A Flame Soul could absorb and replicate the dye or the fruit itself if they so desired, yet plants grown in the Hallowed Forest resisted their near-perfect synthesis.

“Maybe it has to do with how they exist, and I mean fundamentally. First we gotta think of them as living beings without the connotation that plants and us are different.”

“Sgura, are you still in your dreams?” Zayobi bluntly asked.

“I’m not dissecting the fundamentals of what makes something alive, the core of this theory is that plants can’t generate Spiritual Energy equal to their size or physical bodies.”

“Wait, that’s a whole different topic.”

Zayobi put her hand in the air in a “give me a second” before continuing.

“A Flame Soul must train intensely to reach the ability to take a living being, that’s partial immortality after all. It’s like the opposite of a tree bearing fruits, connecting a fruit to a tree to keep it constantly fresh.”

At that she created another cherry.

Sgura nodded. “The issue with taking a living being regardless of the Flame Soul’s capabilities, however, lies in whoever they are taking.”

“You’re saying being alive is not a factor?”

“The only factor to a race like us who are already a step above the mortality of nature is not what makes us so different, but what we share with them.” Sgura gave her sister a smile before adding: “We always forget it’s even there.”

Zayobi raised an eyebrow, ignoring the cherry she was playing with.

“Heh. Well, obviously we can’t see it, albeit we’re named with it.”

Then the heir princess’ eyes widened.

“Are you saying… Not every living being has a soul?”

“I’m saying the weight of the soul does not match the body in every case. It just so happens that whatever the soil of the Hallowed Forest is made of grants the flora an unheard of Spiritual enrichment.”

At those words Zayobi eyed the cherry. “Just what can make a piece of grass store more Spiritual Energy than intelligent creatures?”

“That’s a good question, although I want to correct one thing.”

Zayobi turned from her cherry as Sgura finished: “Nothing guarantees that a living being would have Spiritual Energy matching it’s intelligence. It’s the soul that generates the Energy.”

Just because I trust your words doesn’t mean my stomach respects this lesson, little sis. Zayobi thought as she threw the cherry to her mouth.

Though I do wonder: What granted us our cores which allow us to escape death? Why do Divine Creations allow us secondary vessels for our souls?

She sighed.

Maybe food will enlighten me.

And soon enough her wish for breakfast to begin had come true.

As if the room wasn’t bright enough, the dinnerware too was a porcelain white-gray, delivered by the many servants who quickly came and went.

“Sgura, can you sense if Kamiko or mom are on the way? Obviously I don’t need them to start, yet it’s odd.”

The mystery was enough to, contrary to her words, hold back Zayobi’s appetite for a few seconds.

“Father said he’ll be training Hedyla, right? Maybe Kamiko heard about that and was so invigorated that she requested the same of mother? Imagine if she said as an answer ‘after breakfast’ and Kamiko countered along the lines of ‘a real warrior doesn’t need breakfast.’”

Is part of her training to have the same imagination one has in dreams while awake? I asked a yes or no question.

She turned to her food.

When did dad say it? I heard it from Hedyla, and I didn’t see him today. If only I researched the morning schedules and knew who uses which training fields when… Guess that’s part of my future-queen studies.

The round table now hosted many cast iron cocotte sets, some stood out with vibrant vegetables while others irradiated the heat of meat that left the flames of an oven only seconds prior.

Inside the meat category one would notice a set made purely with different proportional portions between the beef and poultry covered or submerged in eggs. If the diner had been able to focus with their eyes and not be swayed by the smell, it would be clear that the eggs were added to the ovens so recently they had yet to boil from the meat’s heat.

“Protein is what truly makes a queen, with enough muscles I could do anything, and thus not become one.”

Zayobi snatched five pots to herself and dug her breakfast out one by one, before obviously reaching to grab five more.

Yet that wasn’t possible.

At the moment she neared her fingers on the handle of the first in the set, a cut appeared in the space standing between.

A line cut across the table.

All the plates and cocottes either fell to break on the ground or shattered directly from the slice.

...Huh?

Her eyes moved down as the table fell.

Zayobi thought to herself in a single breath.

The slash came from below... Horizontally…?

The next breath, she saw the exact same cut spread across the ceiling.

That means…!

Faster than she could blink, the floor caved in that same breath.