I looked at Vespera long and hard, getting lost in her red eyes, letting the sparks of passion set the air between us ablaze. I took a step forward, towards her, and she opened her arms to welcome me.
Then I walked past her. "I think I'll keep going, thank you very much."
"Whaaaat?" she shrieked. "Sol!"
But I was already vaulting over the crystals, for the first time in my life truly letting loose, enjoying what sixty Dexterity made me able to do, feeling the adrenaline course through my body. Looking down, or up when I was upside down, the crystals loomed below me, but even above and all around, dangerous and sharp.
Then I was on the other side, the rush making my muscles tingle. Elyra laughed, borrowed the stats from the bond and joined me, followed by Zery, Calla and finally Vespera, who was still pouting and grumbling to herself.
"Meanie," she said.
I flashed her a grin, but did not look away as I usually did. Her pout melted into a blush.
"Shtop," she complained. "What's up with my mind these days? You make me blush like a demonling every single damn time!"
I was only glad I had such an effect on her. Although, a big part of it wasn't something so innocent as a demonling's shyness, I assumed. She wiggled a bit, rubbing her thighs together and sending little waves of stimulation through the bond.
I shook my head and kept going, taking the lead until we were finally there.
"Where it all began," Zery muttered. "The first chapter of your story."
"Our story," Calla corrected her. When we all looked at her, she shrank into herself and fidgeted.
"That's damn right," Vespera boomed, hugging the little girl with force. Still hugging her, she poked a finger at Zery. "I could tell, back then. There was a Zery and Calla-sized hole in our bond. You weren't there with us, but your absence was."
"What, like fate?" Elyra asked. She was… smirking. "Like the gods willed it?"
Vespera went from merely joking to hissing. "Gods???? Fate? Fate is only there to be rejected, miss. And gods?" she chuckled. "The gods are either dead, don't care, or are assholes. You're getting bold, little angel-cat. Where's the shy little masochist we all know and love?"
In response, Elyra walked up to the demon and puffed out her chest, chin lifted up high so that it gave her the appearance of looking down on Vespera. No, wait. Her wings were glowing! She was hovering just a tiny bit off the ground so that she was taller!
"What are you going to do about it?" she asked her. "Punish me?"
Vespera sputtered. "That's it. I—"
"Played right into her hand," I said, very amused. Vespera's words died in her throat, and she glared at the angel.
What followed was a fierce tickling that had the two of them tumbling on the ground, getting smeared with dirt and detritus, their hair a mess as their fits of laughter filled the empty cave.
"What an unruly lot," Zery said haughtily. She held her mock disdain for a fraction of a second before her mask crumbled into a smile. Still, there was a seed of an idea in her mind, and she looked at me with playful sadism. "Forbid them from using their magic to clean up, Sol," she said. "Let them stew in the consequences of their actions."
"Ohhh," I said. "Good idea. Girls, you heard her."
They both froze at once. They opened their mouths to protest, to say that I was no master of their actions, while secretly feeling flames in their chests. But before they could say anything their heads snapped to the side.
We have company, someone sent through the bond.
Within moments, fractions of a second, we went from playing and being silly to utterly serious, magic already gathering within our bodies. Zery took charge, as usual, a map of the battlefield and our role in it already forming for all of us. The bond intensified until it was a searing presence in the air between us, just shy of us melding together into a single entity, and we studied the incoming enemy with laser-like focus.
Not a Skitterpede, this time. A new enemy, but one that tickled Calla's ancestral dryadic understandings.
It lumbered into the room with ponderous, earth-shaking steps that rattled the whole cavern. Its body was a collection of loose rocks, packed together into misshapen limbs, all different from each other and made from materials clearly scavenged from the rubble pile. Its whole body was like this, save for the head. A single slab of smooth stone with a ridge, a slit and a glowing crystal at its center.
A golem, Calla supplied. A twisting of life created by the ancient dryads, an animal's mind yanked from its body and implanted in inanimate rock, bent and remade and given a single purpose: to defend the System infrastructure. The memories came to her in a rush, but Zery took over and didn't let them distract us.
Her presence was like a cold, calculating tide, the general and the soldier, the mastermind of the battle. She took in the new information and devised a battle plan in moments, rising to her full height and charging at the thing before the brightening of its head crystal could reach a critical point.
She dashed, long legs eating the ground, then one of Elyra's shields appeared in mid-air and she stepped on it, shattering it in the process. It didn't matter. She used it as a platform to redirect her momentum, and the golem's energy beam cut through the air uselessly, superheating it and melting the rock of the cave, but hitting nothing of import.
Five sets of eyes recorded the not-quite-laser for later, Elyra already thinking of ways she could use what she was seeing through mundane and magical senses to improve her own magic. But now was not the time. Drawing from the shared pool of mana, she replied to the opening salvo with a red laser of her own, tighter than the golem's beam, deadlier. Like proper sci-fi weapons pitted against silly magic, mere parlor tricks. It traveled at the speed of light, much faster than the golem's puny and slow beam. It was tight, almost invisible, like a deadly string of red only visible because of the dust and water vapor in the air.
Where it hit, it made the loose rocks hiss and explode, searing a line on the animated construct's body that dislodged entire pieces of it. Only the head remained unscathed, much more resistant.
Then Zery was upon it. Right as her punch connected, her split of the shared stats from our bond gifting her with great physical power, two more magics connected. One was my magic missile, the blue projectile streaking past Zery but not much faster than her, embedding itself into the rock of the golem right below its head and then exploding, dislodging more stone.
The golem's limbs prepared to strike. If stone met dragon, I didn't think our stats would be up to par. But it never did. Calla was done casting, and her brambles and vines ensnared the monstrous stone giant. Its brute strength tore them apart in moments, but they had served their purpose of slowing it down.
Zery's punch connected, and she threw the thing back with sheer spite. Her hand hurt, but her pride didn't let her register the pain yet, another punch following soon after, a cross after the initial jab that was at least twice as powerful, her entire weight behind it. The golem was taller than even her, but she was determined to bring it down, to step over it and show the world that she was the one who remained standing at the end.
The golem ate the punch with barely any recoil this time. Its limbs rotated around, forming new joints where needed, and it struck. Elyra's shields appeared and shattered. Calla's vines were torn apart.
Zery defended with her forearms, but the golem hit like a fucking smith. She bit down a curse and tried to strike again, but the golem was truly revved up. It pummeled her and when she finally revealed an opening, it didn't hesitate to go for the fatal strike.
"Forgot about me?" a syrupy voice said from behind.
Vespera's tail, shrouded in boiling shadows and reds, shot forward and impaled the thing through the hole Zery's punches had dug into its neck. It came out the other side, vibrating like a jackhammer, making more stones and pebbles fall to the ground.
But even impaled, the golem was still standing. It grabbed her tail, squeezing.
She screamed. The monster was trying to pull her by the tail through the hole in its body. It was going to rip her apart!
A magic missile to its face distracted it for a moment. It did nothing, but it forced the golem to acknowledge my existence. Zery attacked it again, and another laser seared its body, and its grip slackened enough to let Vespera remove her tail from the hole.
Zery punched again, and this time her hand shimmered with the deep, murky blue-green of new magic. The punch moved… slower. But even just looking at it, I felt the immense momentum and inevitability of the abyss itself. Of immense pressure.
When it connected, the golem's head snapped back 180 degrees.
Now we had a clear shot. Laser. Magic missile. Brambles growing from the ground and seeping into every conceivable nook and cranny, their roots carrying seeds of mighty sequoias that germinated, bigger roots made of knotted, hard wood doing what roots did best. Enter into gaps, widen them, douse them with acid, strangle and crush stone, break even the mountains apart.
The golem's head fell to the ground, severed from a body that crumbled into loose rocks no longer held together by any magic. Then Zery stepped on it, and only the gem at its center survived.
When I retrieved it, I saw that the energy inside it was sputtering, on the verge of death. A curious thought reached me, and I tossed the whole thing to Calla. We were out of range, but…
The gem dimmed at once. The smooth stone of the golem's head became dust.
Calla glowed with veritable magic. The shy Anchor Dryad was embracing her connection to the System, it seemed.
Skill level up - Power of Love 2 → 3
Manifesting aspects of each other can now be used to create weapons.
We gaped, stunned into silence as the last echoes of battle were absorbed by the utter silence of the underground cave, replaced by only the faint sounds of dripping water and shifting feet, and our own labored breath.
◈◈◈
Status: Sol Nightguard
Human (Great Race)
Bonded to:
Vespera Nightguard (Demon - Great Race)
Elyra Nightguard (Angel - Great Race)
Zerynthia Nightguard (Abyssal Dragon - Great Race)
Calla Nightguard (Anchor Dryad - Great Race)
Slaves:
B2TTn#-7 (Treemind)
Guild Rank: E
[Bound to the Fallen - Upgraded]
Bond Level 4
+50 to all stats
Status is always concealed from prying eyes.
Skills:
Matter Transmutation X
Power of Love 3