About thirty feet from where I sat in the dirt with a glowing spear conjured from spirit stabbed through my thigh, Saelia screamed as the somatonic healed her wounds. Dodging a glowing arrow streaking towards her from mark, she darted towards Lexia. The construct scuttled away on her legs and four arms towards mark, but she wasn’t fast enough to outrun the warden. Howling like a banshee, the shadow primal dove forward, her breacher raised in a reverse grip. With a thud, she tackled the fleeing construct before repeatedly driving her dagger into the construct’s back. “No!” Mark roared, conjuring a dozen more spirit arrows and firing them one after another as soon as they materialized. Pulling her knife free from the dead construct woman, Saelia rolled to the side into a crouch before springing up into a sprint to keep ahead of the volley of deadly conjurations. When the final arrow whizzed past her, a rock the size of her fist diagonally burst from the earth in a puff of dirt t
Spirit spear having dispersed into a cloud of fading light, the hole in my leg bled and radiated nauseating pain that eclipsed all my other injuries. I felt a little woozy as I raised my eyes towards the battle taking place about thirty feet from me in front of the dilapidated four-story building. “Damn… I’m kinda bleeding a lot… aren’t I?” I said, eying the wet patch of red dirt around my thigh and wondering how much blood I’d lost from all the punishment I’d taken tonight. It’s going to be hard to aim like this… I wished one of my briotonics could regrow teeth and close up the hole in my leg instead of accelerating my body’s natural ability to heal. As I thought this, my eyes widened in realization. I dug into the long pouch on my belt and pulled out the vial of somatonic Saelia had given me this morning. A tight, loopy giggle slipped from me as I stared at the potion like it was the most valuable treasure in all of existence. “I’m a fucking idiot!” I raised the stopper of the
In front of the towering, abandoned building, Saelia lay dying in the warm, red dirt. Only a couple of feet away, I was flat on my stomach with a spectral blue arrow staking my forearm into the earth to prevent me from giving her the somatonic clutched in my fist. With a hole in my left thigh and a broken right arm, I stared up in horror and pain at Mark. Framed by a full moon, he was poised to knock me out with a punch to the head. I’d screamed and begged, knowing that if I lost consciousness Saelia was done for. Mark had responded with promises of somehow making it up to me later, but he hadn’t wavered in her resolve to kill the warden. Hearing this had pushed me into a chasm of mind-numbing frustration and panic. At a loss for words, I’d let my rage speak for me. I’d been about to threaten to kill her if she murdered Saelia, but before I could get the sentence out, he blurred into motion trailing black smoke, as leapt half a dozen feet away from me and stood. His face jerked
“Hmm!” The warden’s jaw clenched, and her face scrunched in pain as the wounds covering her body suddenly knitted together. Lysandra let out a deep sigh of relief and a tear rolled down her bloody cheek. “Thank you, Passion, for your benevolence and compassion.” She planted a soft kiss on Saelia’s forehead before gently lowering her head to rest against the soft dirt. “She's… going to be okay?” I asked tentatively. The fear that was wrapped around my heart like barbed wire loosened as I watched the shadow primal’s chest rise and fall with each of her steady breaths. “Quite right.” “She’s just unconscious still because she burned her soul and got hit with spiritual overdraft?” I asked woozily. With the fight seemingly over, my adrenaline started to drain away, causing my pain and consciousness to fade as blood loss started to finally get the better of me. “With her tended to, let me see to you.” She looked me over and winced with sympathy at how thoroughly I’d gotten fucke
The three of us left Lysandra’s glade thirty minutes after we’d started packing. Due to there being nothing of value in it, I left my bag behind and only took Saelia’s. Lysandra had only wanted to bring a few sundresses and some sex toys, so it’d been relatively easy for her to dump her luggage in with the warden’s. Luckily for me, this resulted in me only having one stuffed pack on my back instead of three strapped to me like a pack mule. I cradled Saelia’s unconscious body in my arms as we trudged through the Forest of Embers. Lysandra led the way. With the sheath for her massive greatsword tied to her back between her wings, she held the blade at the ready in a two-handed grip. I’d agreed to only speak during the journey if I needed a break or if I saw an incoming attack. This had resulted in the uneventful hike to the forest’s main trail being a tense affair heavy with silence. Which in turn led to a peaceful walk along the dirt road in which my tired brain and body quivered
“Great.” She let out a sigh of relief and nodded at the crystal pillar standing at the center of the slip gate’s stone platform. “Place your hand on the anchor junction to operate the slip gate. Then all you must do is think of another slip gate you’ve attuned to and will for a portal to open for you.” Deciding to see how much spirit it’d cost before bringing up to her my almost dry spiritual reserves, I awkwardly shifted Saelia around in my arms and settled my palm atop the rectangular cube of crystal. My worries eased as I thought of Stone Lock and the knowledge that it'd cost one spirit to make a portal popped up in my mind. “Damn, that barely costs anything,” I said, my surprise coloring my words. “Saelia told me a while back that the anchor junction is also an amalgam. I’m guessing it covers most of the cost then?” “Quite right.” “That sounds expensive as hell to maintain if people use the slip gates a lot.” “Yes. Once it was explained; that most governments use coin from ta
I opened the door to Stone Lock’s shower room and stepped inside. Lysandra followed with Saelia cradled in her arms. Her eyes flicked curiously at the lockers in the changing area and the large communal showers beyond it. She giggled with approval as I told her about the ridiculously long and wasteful shower Saelia and I took on Myria’s dime. We stripped before undressing Saelia. When I cradled her in my arms, her blood-stained, snowy body felt so small cradled in my arms as I followed Lysandra. At my suggestion, the angelic woman retrieved a jar of rosy soap from one of the lockers before we headed into the tiled section of the room. Her lightly tanned fingers tapped a few dials embedded in one of the walls and the shower heads above them rained down warm water. Lysandra sidled up next to me as I stepped into one of the hot streams of water and lathered her hands with soap before setting the container down with a clink. With delicate touches, she went to work washing the grime a
Because there weren’t any windows in Stone Lock, and we couldn’t venture outside due to the front door being locked, I’d had to rely on my phone to figure out what time it was when Lysandra and I groggily opened our eyes. After I’d willed the chandeliers of sun shards above us to illuminate the cavernous main chamber of Stone Lock, I’d felt around for the device. When my hand slapped down on and I pulled its display up to my face, I groaned at seeing it was a little past three in the afternoon. Having not eaten before fighting the flame krolls last night or taking a briotonic before going to sleep, I’d felt awful when we woke up. My stomach had growled, so the first thing Lysandra and I did after getting up was go hunting for food. When we’d discovered I didn’t have permission to open the kitchen door or command the nourishment construct, I groaned in hungry irritation. Fortunately, though, Lysandra found dried rations, a few briotonics, and a flask of water buried in Saelia’s bag