Demon Queened Ch. 09

"Um... Should you really be discussing all this in front of me?" Lenora asked. "I mean, I really am just the apprentice chef, and you're talking about your relationship with a general..."

"It's fine. After all, you're also my friend." I smiled brightly, and she ducked her head in embarrassment.

"You totally forgot she was there, didn't you?" Abigail whispered, softly enough that only I could hear.

My only response was a bright red blush.

***

I stepped into the bathing chamber, closing the metal door behind me to seal myself in. Despite the extravagant name, it was actually a fairly plain room, fit for its simple purpose. It had no windows and only gray stone walls. The only furniture in it was a large, porcelain bathtub, but that alone was massive enough that I could practically swim in it.

Since the tub was so large, it actually took several maids to conjure enough water to fill it. Since this room had no windows, and the interior of the tower held only so much water in its atmosphere, they were forced to pull water in through a window in the adjacent room, and carry it carefully to the tub. Then they had to work together to heat it.

In the past, I had treated all this as a simple luxury. Now, I was all too aware of the hard work that went into its operation. Since my plan so far had been for my people to turn against me, I'd initially chosen to let things continue as they were. Now that my plans had changed, I would need to either get a smaller tub or start filling my own baths.

That was a choice for later, though. Today, the bath had already been drawn and heated. I'd only offhandedly mentioned my destination to a single maid, yet they still managed to do everything before my arrival. The speed my servants worked at was obviously nothing to be sneezed at. Perhaps that should have made me proud? But when I considered that they'd gotten so fast in order to meet my unreasonable demands, the only thing I could feel was guilt.

Shaking off my melancholy, I reached down to grab hold of my pale green shirt, pulling it over my head. My breasts sprung free of the cloth a moment before my head did, and the weight of their movements caused my eyes to travel downward.

I really did have nice breasts. Large enough to overspill my hand when I cupped one. Soft like a cloud, but firm, like the perfect pillow. Perkier than I would have thought possible without the assistance of a bra, and tipped with stiff nipples that were practically begging for a pair of soft lips to wrap around them.

It wasn't just my chest, either. My stomach was flat as an ironing board. My ass was prominent, without being fat. My hands and feet were small and delicate. I had no body hair, excluding a small landing strip above my currently concealed slit.

None of this was new to me. It wasn't as if this was my first bath, after all. Just counting the time since the Rite of Insight, I'd had a handful of them already. Yet every time I had one, I found myself staring at my body, wondering just how it had changed since my last life.

I couldn't really remember how I looked as Jacob. Even though my other past life memories were clear as day, I simply couldn't picture myself as I used to be. Indeed, whenever I tried to imagine my past self I'd end up mentally substituting my current form for Jacob's. I wasn't sure why. Perhaps my mental image of myself had simply shifted too dramatically to recover?

It hardly mattered, really. Regardless of how I used to look, I was comfortable with my current self. Indeed, the very thought of ever-shifting back filled me with revulsion, but it was strange to think that I'd drifted so far from my starting point.

What was it that brought about this change in me? Why was I so comfortable in this form? Was it merely a case of the body affecting the soul? That was the only explanation I could come up with, but it didn't feel quite right. Maybe it was simply that I'd lived this life as a girl for so long that I couldn't imagine anything else. I didn't know.

It really wasn't that important. Finding out the cause wouldn't undo the effect, and I wouldn't want it to in any case. It was simply that it bothered me, not knowing something so basic about myself. But thinking about it too long wouldn't get me anything but a cold bath.

I pushed my skirt and underwear down in one fell swoop, then stepped out of my clothing altogether. Striding up to the bathtub, I stepped carefully inside and lowered my body into the water.

It was warm. Not too hot, not too cold; the perfect temperature. That wasn't really much of a surprise though, as I always wanted my bath the exact same way. I'd thrown quite a few tantrums over it being too hot or too cold in the past. Especially hot. I'd accuse them of trying to scald me.

How ridiculous. Was being scalded even possible for me? I wanted to say no, though I couldn't be sure. It was certainly true that I could take high temperatures - I'd realized that during cooking. No matter how hot Abigail said the food was, it never burned my mouth. Even when I reflexively caught a pot of hot oatmeal in my hands as it fell from the stove, it didn't hurt me at all. Still, it wasn't as if I'd ever gone out of my way to test my limits. For most of my life, I'd acted as if I didn't even have them.

A memory surfaced, unbidden. Walking back into the village, after taking care of the wolves, my vision blurry and my body heavy. I'd managed to run completely out of magic, using up even the dregs. As a result of that, I fell unconscious for three days, all because I hadn't realized I was approaching my limits - because I hadn't even known what that would feel like.

What if I wasn't as immune to heat as I believed? Was it possible that I could be hurt by a hot enough flame? If I ended up face to face with such a blaze, it might very well be too late to conduct an experiment.

In that case, the obvious answer was to check what I could handle now, in a safe environment. And since all this began with the question of whether I could be scalded...

I began to pour my magic into the water around me. In contrast to how I heated the oil, this time I chose to suffuse the entire bath's worth of water with my magic. Then, I began to heat the entirety of the tub's contents at once.

First, the bath started to simmer. Then it began to boil, bubbles bursting across the surface of the water. It was strange - I could tell the heat was going up. It was certainly hotter than any bath I'd ever sat in, but it didn't hurt one bit. My skin didn't even turn red.

I upped the temperature. More and more steam began to rise from the surface of the water, but since my magic was suffused through the vapor I could control that as well. I called the steam down to myself, making it wreathe my upper body even as the boiling water bubbled against my lower half.

Eventually, the entirety of the bath turned to steam. Since I had no liquid, I decided to raise the temperature of the vapor instead. The more heat I poured into the steam, the more pressure I was forced to exert upon it in order to keep it from dispersing. I could feel the steam pressing against me as if it were a physical force, yet this hurt me no more than the increasing temperature.

I don't know how hot the steam got before I gave up. Enough that things began to get a little strange. The water, which I had most definitely turned into steam, seemed to no longer be vapor or liquid, but something beyond both. Perhaps if I kept up the pressure, I would eventually turn it into a solid, and encase myself in some strange form of hot ice? The thought disturbed me, so I decided to stop adding heat and pressure.

Only then did I recognize the fatal flaw in my experiment: I had a bathtub's worth of superheated water under my control and no idea what to do with it. Generating heat is easy, but getting rid of it is another matter entirely. It was impossible to make the heat simply vanish - it had to go somewhere.

Of course, given time, the heat would naturally disperse. So long as I didn't prevent it, I'd eventually be left with nothing but traditional steam. But I didn't even want to think about how long it would take to cool something that had grown this hot. If I waited that long, Abigail would probably yell at me for delaying my meeting with Sylvanna yet further.

Thankfully, I had a solution. If all I needed was a heat sink, then I'd simply use my own body to contain the heat. It was a bit of a risk, but this too was me wanting to test my limits.

With the threat of Abigail's glare driving me onward, I began to draw the heat out of the water and into my own being. At first, I worried that there might be an issue - my blood might begin to boil, for example, or my organs start to falter. But no matter how much I took in, I felt absolutely fine. I was starting to think my body might simply be immune to heat.

I continued sucking up the heat, refusing to stop until the steam returned to being water, and flowed back into the tub. I had forgotten about the actual bathing, ignoring the soap entirely in favor of my experiment, but I was fairly sure no germs had survived.

Unfortunately, I still had a problem. Namely, that my body was now superheated, to the point where my change of clothes began to smolder and smoke when I touched them. Hastily, I dunked them in the bath to avoid them catching fire, causing steam to once again rise up from the tub. It was clear that I needed to get rid of this heat, immediately.

I had an idea. The room I was in had no windows, for security reasons, but since water was drawn from the room next to it that one had a rather large opening. All I needed to do was open the door, enter the neighboring room, and stride to the window. Then I could expel all this heat into the sky, where it could do no harm.

The only problem was that I'd have to do it naked.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and gathered my courage. Then I breathed out, opened my eyes, and walked right up to the door. On the other side of it were two maids, dressed in much the same way as Abigail: a black dress with white ruffles and a headband.

How I wished it was Abigail who'd been waiting for me instead... but there was no time for that. I needed to get this over with and go back to my room before too many people saw me.

I marched into the next room, practically skipped to the window, and pointed my palm up toward the sky. A jet of fire erupted from my hand, flying high into the sky before exploding into sparks like a firework.

With the heat safely drained, I let loose a sigh of relief and turned to leave the room. The maids were peering in, eyes wide and mouths open, but they quickly closed their mouths and stood at attention. I ignored them, walking to my room as quickly as I could. I did my best to act confident, as if this were perfectly normal, but I couldn't help the faint flush on my cheeks. I was proud of my body and happy to show it off, but preferably only under circumstances I could control.

Upon reaching my room, I yanked opened the door, and slipped inside, hastily closing it behind me. Then I let my eyes slip shut, leaned back against the door, and let out a haggard sigh. In the end, I was only seen by those two maids, but worrying over who else would see me and what rumors they would spread had put me very much on edge.

"You would not believe the bath I just had, Abigail," I complained, opening my eyes. "It was productive, I suppose, but-" I stopped. Not just talking, either. I stopped moving, stopped breathing, and even failed to blink, so great was my surprise. Then I closed my eyes and let out a low groan.

I was being terribly rude, and I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. Standing right in front of me was the general of the 90th floor. The toughest person I knew, excluding myself. The absolute genius who always made me feel like a fool.

Sylvanna the slime.