A little basilisk girl slithered into the room right at Ella and dove on top of her. "Wake up, mama."
Elanore chuckled and looked down at the snake girl. "I was already awake." She looked at her own mother. "Did you tell her to do this?"
"Hey, you did the same thing when you were little, so I thought it would be cute."
"Do you plan on teaching her all of my bad habits, then?"
Penelope nodded. "It's only right for kids to do such things. If they acted like adults all of the time, they'd end up becoming bitter and losing their playful nature."
Ella sighed and looked down at the 800 year old "child". She reached out with her hand and started patting the girl's head. "I am curious what you've done all of these years while you were waiting. Did you really just guard that place?"
Neshy leaned into the pats with a smile and a nod. "That was the order from you, mama."
The pink witchpire felt a tug on her heart strings and wondered what kind of person would leave someone alone for such a long time. Even if Neshy didn't seem to mind it that much, it must have been boring. Instead of worrying about that, Elanore reached over and pressed her hand against the sleeping nearly-dragon.
Naela grumbled and sat up slowly, stretching her arms in the morning light, and yawning. "It's so early, mistress."
"You're supposed to be my maid. If a real maid saw you in this state, they would think you're helpless and correct you."
Penelope chuckled. "That's right."
The half awake almost-dragon groaned. Her eyes blinked several times, and she covered her indecency with the blanket after realizing she was still naked. Her cheeks reddened, and she looked with pleading eyes towards Ella's mother.
Penelope noticed and nodded. She peeled away the basilisk girl and grabbed onto her hand. "Come on, little one. Let's give them a bit of privacy." She smiled at Ella. "We'll wait for you outside."
Once they were out of the door, Ella gazed at Naela. "You know they saw them when you sat up, right?"
"Mistress, I am okay with being nude in front of you, but it feels weird when a bunch of people can see it."
"Really? You seemed quite comfortable with nudity when we first met. I wonder why that changed."
Naela stood up and started putting on her maid outfit. "I don't know, mistress."
Ella grabbed onto her shoulders as she became fully dressed and kissed her lips. "Let's go out and see what awaits us. I wanted to buy some clothes for my mom and maybe something for myself. It's been a while since I dressed up in anything else. Also, it might be time to get you a new outfit, too."
"Wait, mistress, I am fine with the clothes I have. Besides, most of the native stores will sell dwarve's clothing, and the other ones for visitors will have higher prices."
The witchpire shrugged and grabbed onto Naela's hand, pulling her out the door.
Outside, the city buzzed with early morning workers. There were already dwarves going into the mines, and some were returning with their hauls. Elanore couldn't get over the cute ankylosaurs they rode around on. Her eyes sparkled as she watched them walk along the bridges between the cliff faces.
Though, just as she was imagining riding around on one of them and mining, there was a commotion at the mine entrance. Elanore's pointed ears tuned in to the sound of a shouting man.
"He fell! Mitus fell into a hole!"
"Calm down," the inspector dwarf said, "you need to explain things clearly. Which tunnel was he in?"
"It was the Dwarvinium sector."
Elanore walked over there without even thinking about it, her gang of pink members following behind her. They were all like pink firefighters coming to the rescue.
"We will go grab your friend."
"Miss, I can't allow a visitor into the mines."
"So, you'd rather waste time, then save your dwarven friend?" Elanore summoned a pink eyeball with gasps from the dwarves. She allowed it to float into the tunnel, and it didn't take long for her to find the cave they were talking about. "You have about ten seconds to accept, or that guy will get eaten."
The inspectors eyes looked at her with uncertainty, but a prod from the nearby dwarf shook him out of it.
"Fine!"
Elanore grinned with her fangs on full display. She summoned a pink portal this time, connecting the place her eye was to this place. "Naela..."
"Yes, mistress."
The wyvern flapped her wings and arrived at the tunnel with the fallen dwarf. The giant worm lunged.
Ella looked it the monstrous thing with a grimace. Naturally, she hated all forms of bugs, which is why she didn't want to be the one to deal with it. And this one was even worse. It had a large circular mouth, and there were teeth going around the circumference. Not only that, the sharp structures continued inwards on its body like a lamprey mouth.
She shivered from the thought of being anywhere near that thing. Instead, she watched her wyvern.
Pink flames ignited in her fingertips and formed a whip in that cracked in the air. As she launched it, the spell elongated. It wrapped around the head of the creature and clamped its jaws shut.
The spell made the creature start writhing around from the heat. It screeched loudly and rumbled the ground. The goo around it started flashing with blue light, and that's when Naela grabbed onto the man and flung him out of the other side of the portal.
Mitus fell onto his shoulder near the group, but Naela wasn't done.
She lunged forwards at the same time as the worm started turning around. Its body ate through new layers of sand, the magic changing to make it more brittle. By turning around and fleeing, it was creating branching tunnels, but the maid wouldn't have that.
Naela recalled her whip, and the pink flames transformed into a long javelin. She reeled it back behind her shoulder before heaving it forwards.
The form was nearly identical to those Olympic javelin throwers Elanore had seen on TV, but the outcome was very different. It was propelled forwards by a mass of energy, strong enough to shake the ground behind Naela.
Elanore's mouth hung open as she watched it fly, suddenly having a bad premonition. Oh no, I definitely need to prepare a shield. A big one...
Though, even as she prepared the shield, she couldn't help but smile. "You've grown a lot in a short period of time."
And then, the explosion happened. Pink light erupted from the ground in all directions. It was lucky that the worm reinforced a lot of the walls. Elanore had to only contain the explosion in areas the workers were.
For good measure, she also wrapped Naela in the same shielding, but she doubted the magic would harm her.