“Right after we go over one last thing…” Her dark eyes glistened with feigned benevolence as a shiteating grin curved her lips, betraying her impish hunger for outworlder suffering. “No!” Indignation resonated in my voice. “I can handle some teasing, hell, I was able to recover from yesterday, but c’mon, this is sadistic! Educational edging has no payoff!” “Oh?” she asked if feigned innocence. “What happened yesterday?” “You know what happened.” “Can’t say that I do,” she said with false bemusement, her dark eyes brimming with lewd amusement. “The thing in the showers yesterday…” “What thing?” she pressed. Gears turned in my head as I contemplated the sexual calculus of how to go about this. Wait… Why am I not wanting to directly talk about it? Getting direct about it isn’t ‘losing control’ or whatever… It’s a gamble, but being direct and turning things up might be the play… I let my expression transform into a confident smirk. “The thing where I got all worked up and excit
The warden let out a groan of disappointment. “Fine… So, the last thing we need to discuss is regarding the unique effects each divine aspect has on one’s physical body. The spirit divine aspect you possess reinforces your defenses against assaults made directly on your spirit.” “That’s pretty ambiguous,” I said, “feel like elaborating?” “Certain classes are granted magic which lets them attack the spirit of another in an attempt to control their mind. An example of such a class is the combination between the ‘ruler’ fate aspect and the spirit divine aspect, known as a ‘Despot’. A Despot is able to use their magic to forcibly control another through dominating their spirit. Controlling another in this way is known as a ‘forced compulsion’.” “That sounds pretty fucked up.” “It is indeed. However, because you have the spirit divine aspect, your natural defenses are bolstered against such attacks. You’re also a human, which means the passive effects any divine aspect are further incre
“Let us begin with a mundane item.” The warden’s hand went to her hip, pulling back her coat and revealing the breacher affixed to her belt. The blade rasped against its sheath as she pulled it free. Blade and hilt rested atop her palms as she presented it to me with both hands. “Make a wooden replica.” “How?” “As we spoke of before, visualize the components, imagine how they would come together, and will your spirit to make it so.” A symmetrically shaped blade at about eight inches and made from a heavy wood to imitate the breacher’s weight… Oak should work… Its hilt and guard will be part of the same piece of wood, making it a single object. It’s sanded and smooth… A strip of soft leather wraps around the handle. A wooden copy of the breacher appeared in my mind’s eye and I knew it would require only two percent of my spirit to conjure and less than one percent of my total spirit to imbue into it. I willed it into existence and my spirit flared as pinpricks of white-blue energy
A home screen containing six icons over a dark gray backdrop appeared on the display. In the lower-left corner was a bar, next to which read: Storage: 0%. The warden sidled up beside me. “‘People’, ‘Monsters’, ‘Lore’, ‘Catalog’, ‘Camera’, and ‘Downl0ad’...” she said, reading off the names under the icons. “What are these? And what does this ‘phone’ know of monsters?” “Let’s find out,” I said as I thumbed the icon of the little green dinosaur over Monsters. A new screen with a search bar appeared, below which there was a list of drop-down menus, one for each letter of the alphabet. I swiped a finger across the screen to scroll down, finding each letter to contain nothing… except for one. Below ‘S’, there was a single entry: Lesser Slime. “It knows of lesser slimes?” the warden wondered aloud. “That’s oddly specific…” “Yeah…” My eyes narrowed in suspicion as I poked the entry. Another page appeared, on it there was a gray rectangle containing ‘IMAGE NOT FOUND’ in bold letterin
I followed her gaze to the display. An image of the wooden dagger I’d conjured earlier accompanied by details about it was featured. —----------------------- Name: Wooden Breacher Replica Weapon Type: Dagger Current Cost to Create: 2% of spirit Current Cost to Imbue: >1% of maximum spirit —----------------------- At the bottom of the page was a button with bold lettering on it spelling Create. Without warning she pressed it. A wooden breacher replica materialized in front of me before clattering to the floor. She knelt down, plucking it up and examining it. “That could prove useful. It appears if you use the phone to create an item you’ve already made, you are able to sidestep having to mentally construct it first.” She got to her feet and gently prodded my bicep with the faux weapon. “It’s the same as the other one, yes?” It looked identical. My fingers wrapped around the dull wooden blade, discovering it also felt the same. “Seems like it. It also cost me the same amo
“Where’s the library?” I asked hurriedly, my face craning upwards to try and discern which of the four doors along the walkway led to the potential literary treasure trove. “What does the message mean? What does it mean by ‘downloading contents’?” “It means I can transfer the information in the book into the phone,” I said impatiently, thinking of all the potential such a thing would offer. “I see…” Her bubbly positivity faltered as her expression hardened into a solemn mask. “I’ll take you there later today,” she said, moving to the lounge's table and picking up ‘The Carnal Inn’. “Use this for now.” She held out the book as she returned to me. I accepted it, annoyed that we couldn’t get something more informative from the collection of tomes upstairs. “Why not now?” “We need to discuss something,” she replied before gesturing to the erotica. “However, you may first quickly test this function of the phone.” That sounds an awful lot like ‘we need to talk’... ominous... I nodded,
The warden stared at me, her grinning expression frozen as though carved from ivory. Silence hung in the air for a moment, before she burst into hearty laughter. Despite this reaction not being too surprising after making such a proclamation, a blush crept into my cheeks. “Well, I suppose I can promise you that you’ll at least learn how to use your magic!” she said breathlessly as her cackling downgraded to airy giggling. “And here I was thinking you were simply a sexual degenerate with no aspirations beyond sex.” “Yeah, yeah…” I said sheepishly. “Though, I wouldn’t throw stones, Warden Ivory.” “Throw stones?” she asked as she regained her composure. “It’s a saying from my world about not criticizing people over things you’re guilty of as well.” She raised an eyebrow as her mouth curved into a sultry grin. Her arms folded under her breasts. “What are you implying? “That you’re just as much of a sexual degenerate as I am, of course…” “You could be right… possibly,” she said
Being bathed in the natural light of the sun somehow magnified the contrast of the warden’s delicate black and white features, reinforcing my earlier impression of her looking like an illustration penned in ink that’d come to life. One that’d been drawn by an artist that’d put in all the care and love they could muster into capturing.Snowy hands raised before her, fingers loose; a grin curved her enticing lips as her dark eyes glittered with playful curiosity.Fuck…I raised my fists half-heartedly and firmed up my face into a mask of stoic focus, trying to hide my reservations about fighting her, even if it was just sparing.My eyes flicked to the tight white pants hugging her slender curves, then to the long black coat. &l