"Kastra... can I just... ahhhh gentle. Ow. Ow, gentle... GENTLE!" Damien cried out as the Fae lay on top of his chest, biting at his neck.
"You kept moving further away," she said, turning her innocent eyes up to look at him while sliding partly off of him, resting her elbows on the bed and lifting her upper body.
His face softened as he turned his head and observed her. A smile surfaced.
"Unfair, using that expression," he said, propping his head on top of his left hand while looking at her, doing his best not to let his eyes wander to where her hair hung down, covering her chest.
"I know!" she said, grinning while leaning forward to peck his lips. "Lexi and I always win from this moment on once I teach her how," she replied, reaching back to poke the Celestial, who was asleep on the far side of the bed.
Damien had finally unwedged his hand out from underneath the Celestial's head and had been working on retrieving it from Kastra as well, but the Fae had woken and wasn't letting him leave. The three lay on their bed, half-covered and uncovered by the sheets. Kastra was the only of them completely on top of the covers from her knees up yet even now, looking at her curves, the way her hair draped down and partially covered her body, and the sultry look her face held as she bit her lower lip, he couldn't find it in him to do anything except want to get away from this predator that had found its way into his bed.
"We slept for less than two hours last night, Kas, and never once got up to eat. Twenty plus hours, non-stop. I need more food and water than anything. Please," he begged.
The sun was peeking through their window but not casting any long shadows, causing him to assume it was about sixteen O'clock. That was usually when morning became afternoon.
Alexa and Kastra had fallen asleep about thirty minutes ago and he'd been hoping to get some me-time by escaping to the kitchen, but that had gone horribly. Using any mana would have woken both of them up immediately, so using silencing magic or air magic of any kind to help him be stealthy would have been against his original purpose.
'I need to learn how to mask my mana signature...'
She smiled at him and shrugged as he made a mental note to look up books on stealth and spacial magics. Damien's head fell back to the bed as he groaned and she chuckled.
"Fine fine, but I get to come with. We have to get something for her too," she replied, pointing back over her shoulder.
"Thank god," Damien breathed out, lifting his head and trudging out from the bed as she hung onto his hips, body dragging across the bed.
He grabbed his briefs off the ground and pulled them on before heading for the door, dragging Kastra along as she stayed hanging onto his waist while keeping herself propped horizontally in the air with her wings.
"Were those necessary?"
"If I didn't put them on, you'd jump me," Damien replied with indifference to the indignant Fae.
"I made them; I can unmake them," she replied, whispering right next to his ear.
He ignored her and made his way downstairs across the overly large house, headed for the kitchen. He rounded the final corner and pushed open the swinging door, leading him into the excessively large kitchen.
"Do you want a sandwich too?" Damien asked moving for the pantry as she detached from him.
"You've given me more than enough mana through our... activities. I'm not exactly hungry," Kastra said as he glanced back at her, the Fae no longer hanging onto his waist but leaning towards him from across the large center island. "But if you are offering more of that..." she trailed off, gliding around the counter towards him, laying her bare figure against his and placing her hands on his hips.
She leaned up and kissed him while Damien sighed and accepted his fate. His hands found their way around her waist, pulling her in tight. His face adopted a smirk as they began to mark another room with desire.
"I'm not goinggg," Alexa groaned out.
"Agreeeeed," Damien said, face down in a pillow.
"Get up guys you'll be late," Kastra reprimanded while pulling at their hands in her small form, trying to drag them out of bed. "You both do look terrible though..."
"Who's fault do you think that is!" Alexa complained, laying on her back while staring up at the ceiling.
"You were cute and inexperienced..." Kastra replied with a grin.
"So were you!" the Celestial retorted, going red in the face.
'So easy...'
"Yeah, but you were fun to tease and Gallion taught me how," Kastra replied while leering at Alexa's body.
"I was not," she replied, blushing from Kastra's gaze.
"You kind of were, love," Damien said, still face down in the pillow.
Kastra laughed and continued pulling at them. "Come on, I already dropped Piper and Emra off with Gallion for the day. What do you think Layla will do if you two don't show up? She likes us, especially Damien. She'd probably kick our door in and accept no excuse for being late."
"Gallion's going to taint my pets," Damien moaned out. "And she doesn't like me that much though," Damien declared to his pillow.
"She does actually. Said she'd be giving you extra attention during the obstacle course and the rest of the year after you upset her," Alexa supplemented as Kastra watched her sit up next to him. "She's right too. Layla actually might come here to beat us into submission."
Kastra laughed and flit behind Alexa, pushing at her back to continue moving her further upward. She glanced over at Damien and found him still comatose. Perhaps she had been a little greedy the last two nights.
"Great. Just peachy. The most sadistic person I've ever met actually likes me AND has a grudge against me. Have fun guys, I'll be here trying to create a bunker," Damien exclaimed, lifting his body up by his elbows.
"Stop complaining so much. It's good for you," Kastra declared.
With that, she flew to the end of the bed and began to grow past her full size, wrapping her hands fully around both of their ankles. "Now get. Out. Of. Bed!" she said calmly, yanking the two reluctant sloths onto the floor as they yelped at the sudden movement.
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"TEAREN, YOU'RE LATE!!" Layla yelled in Damien's direction as the class stood, lined up before their terrifying instructor. "And you look like shit, same with the N'moran girl. Why does Kastra look more radiant than ever, the Fae finally decide to suck the life out of both of you or something?" she finished with a curious look.
'If only you knew.'
"I'm actually five minutes ear-"
"LUCKILY FOR YOU I'M IN A GREAT MOOD AND DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS ABOUT YOUR EXCUSES!" the instructor interrupted, hands on her hips while smiling wide.
Damien took a small step backward, as did everyone in the line, at the showcased dagger-like teeth.
"Right then! We leave in a few minutes. We are heading into the forest beyond our town and into the fourth layer," Layla explained as more than a few students looked around at each other with worry. "Oh shut up, it'll be fine. More than manageable for you lot."
Damien heard sighs come from a few students around him.
"We've all only been to the second layer on our downtime or in other classes and haven't really had much practice yet except in pain though, Ms. Deathclaw. Isn't that a rather steep jump?" one of the Combatants, a Kreel himself, asked nervously.
"OH! WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT, YOU'RE MOST RIGHT! I FORGOT YOU WERE THE FUCKING EXPERT! BE MY GUEST. LEAD THE CLASS," Layla demanded loudly, stepping aside and causing the poor guys face to turn white as he remained silent. "NO? NOT COMING UP HUH? Then shut the HELL up and let me do my job!"
He shrunk back as Layla gathered herself and once again addressed the class, albeit in a much more civil manner.
"And you've all ruined my good mood already; can't believe I didn't expect that. It'll be fine. The layers generally correspond to your tier. The lot of you will be grouped up anyway. If you can't take down a platinum ranked beast while paired or even in groups of three, you don't belong in this class," Layla stated. "Plus, we have two Diamonds with us already. They'll be your safety net. Well then, I'm sick of waiting. The two that didn't make it in time are done in my class. Blame yourself for them being removed, coward. We are leaving," she declared, pointing at the Kreel again before turning on her heels and dashing towards the forest.
Damien looked at his ring and found there were still two minutes before class started. He shook his head as he and his company took a quick moment to process what she'd said before dashing after her, leaving most of the class behind. One Elf combatant had sprinted forward at the same time Layla had while the rest of the class was behind Damien, Alexa, and Kastra.
Damien recognized the girl as one of the first who had gone during their obstacle course. She'd set the record for almost the entirety of the course until the minotaur had broken it. He'd also noticed her on more than a few occasions throughout the year, having been typically the one that lasted the longest throughout Layla's constant bludgeoning. The Kreel seemed to take it upon herself to be the girl's partner in many of the two-person exercises as well. Perhaps he was wrong in assuming it was just the girl's bad luck.
It was very obvious the Mages wouldn't be able to keep up using just their physical prowess. Damien and Alexa began supplementing their bodies with mana to keep up initially. Layla was rocketing along the ground at easily two times the top sprint an average person ran at, and he assumed they'd be keeping this all-out sprint until reaching the tree line. He was wrong.
'Note two for the day, read the damn enchanting book on a priority — self-augmenting magics.'
Layla glanced back, noticed most of the class keeping up, and increased her pace. More and more of the small group began to chip off and soon it was only himself, Alexa, the Human male combatant, the Minotaur, the Elf female, and a Dwarf female that were keeping up. All the while, Kastra was riding on Alexa's shoulder with an aloof expression.
'Cheater,' he cursed in his mind.
Once again, the Kreel looked back to see the group hanging on and sped up. Teeth clenched, Damien watched as the Dwarf and Minotaur slowly failed to keep pace and started falling behind. The Human began to lag a bit but seemed to be hanging on just barely. They had only gotten a mile or so feet from where they started at, too. This was going to be a long run.
Alexa had her wings pressed hard against her back and had switched to using water magic to carry her across the ground, similar to how she'd looked in her latest duels. Unlike in the duel though, it seemed to only cover her lower legs as she moved in a straight line, face composed, and looking like a queen.
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Damien had been trying to use his mana similarly to the Elf combatant. The girl had started using trace amounts of mana on the ground beneath her feet, causing it to push back at her with each step. At first, he'd been using large poles of earth to launch his body forward in giant leaps, but when she'd began to use mana he tried to adopt the tactic and found it a very taxing, if not interesting, way to move. He couldn't push as hard against the mounds to give him the same forward momentum she could, and couldn't increase the velocity they hit his feet for fear of breaking them, so he quickly swapped back to launching himself. When Layla sped up again though, he had to change tactics again.
He considered his options as he slowly fell behind, reluctant to show his excessive knowledge in air. Using fire was out. Nature was impossible for him currently. Earth, the way he was using it, didn't move as fast as the other elements unless he poured way too much mana into it, so he wouldn't be able to surf on top of the ground like Alexa nor keep doing what he was with it. Neither could he use water like she was. He had tried before but had yet to grasp how she got it to carry her legs forward like that without falling through. Water was his best option, but individual manipulation of it was out without knowing Alexa's secrets.
'Glider? Too advanced to create on a whim. Iceman? Not enough practice with ice, and creating snow is too complicated for snowboarding... cart... skating... surfing? They probably have surfing. Summer camp all those years ago is going to pay off finally?!'
His face lit up at the option. Manipulating multiple different magics was difficult when going past three for him, but he had more than enough practice to handle two that he was comfortable with easily enough.
He launched his body higher through the air and watched as Layla began to speed up as expected. While he was leaving the ground, he broke the earthen pole off its base and left it following him from behind, trying to quickly form it into what he remembered a surfboard to look like. Simultaneously, he began creating as much water as he could. The wave didn't have to be huge, excessive... it just had to be steep, narrow, a bit self-sustaining, and quick moving. All easily achievable if he created enough before he hit the ground. The hard part would be balancing and getting going.
As he approached the ground, he threw the large wake of water he'd created in between it and him to create a ramp of sorts then manipulated the board made from earth to position beneath his feet. Damien crossed his fingers while paying as much attention as he could to the fine details of his magic and balance. Layla had begun to pull away and the only one near his landing zone was the Human Combatant, so this was his opportunity free of people.
The board touched the moving wave/wall of water and he began to slide down it a bit slower than expected, allowing him to keep decent control of everything. The wave lifted up beneath him and roiled off to his left into a tube, shooting all it's water back underneath his board again. All dirt, rock, or undesirables that gathered into it was thrown out the back/top portion of the wave like an exhaust.
His board was wide enough to keep from tipping over on either side, but the vibrations and movement began to cause it to get more than a bit squirrely. He began finely rounding out the edges and smoothing the water in his vicinity, feeling as a few of the problems disappeared only to realize his board had begun eroding from the water tearing away at it. He should have made it from marble or stone, or at least condensed the pole further.
Damien hurriedly patched up the places with stone that had been hit the worst, causing the drag to lessen, but the board became unbalanced from the weight. Once the fin had just about snapped off, he knew he was in trouble.
Damien slowed everything down as much as he could, and just as the fin broke, a large pole of earth slammed through the wave and into the bottom of his board. The pole shattered the board and met his feet, bailing him out of the potential disaster. Letting his control of the board go, he maintained the large wave of liquid and once again flew through the sky, creating a board out of stone this time while keeping the water circulating around himself, as if he were the eye of a storm.
The debacle had taken nearly a minute and had cost him quite a bit of speed, trying to fix the board and regain control of everything rather than speeding up the wave. He'd fallen behind the Dwarf already while the Minotaur and larger group of folks slowly caught up as well. Layla had already pulled more than a few hundred feet away and was growing smaller by the second.
Damien launched up again, needing more time to manipulate the hardened stone into correct form, then began his descent, one final pillar picking him back up and propelling him forward into the sky. Regaining some of his speed, the surfing project mk. 2 was ready for action.
As he fell to the ground, he noticed where a few of the larger group had caught up. None were directly beneath him, but Cedar was close to his landing area, trying to mimic his earth-cannon like movement. Damien changed his path slightly with a bit of air, wanting to avoid landing on the fool or being close enough for him to ruin things, before once again commanding the water to crash towards Eleria.
"Look out!" one of the smaller Combatants yelled, causing those in the area that could sense or hear the water to look upward.
A few panicked and scattered just before the impact, tumbling away or diving. Damien was certain he'd be landing somewhere he wouldn't harm anyone, but felt bad at how startled they all appeared, enough that one even tripped and tumbled from the shock of a couple thousand gallons of water slamming into the earth beside him. Putting the others out of his mind, Damien formed it into a roiling, tall ramp of sorts and once again manipulated the board beneath his feet for round two.
Once the board hit the water he almost fell off backward at how rapidly it slid across the surface this time. The board kept straight as he leaned forward and began to take care of the minor details of his control, allowing the water to move forward like an unstoppable force in its own right as he simply willed it to churn and slide across the ground quicker and quicker. Soon enough, he had the wave rocketing along at the same speed everyone around him moved at and began to slowly increase it's forward velocity.
Whenever he leaned to one side or another slightly, the board picked up a lot of friction and slowed, nearly sending him and the board over the top of his wave at one point when he'd tried turning a little too sharply. The increased small vibrations had started shifting his feet around as well, not having a grip pad to keep them steady, so he willed some stone to bond to the board and latch around his shoes and ankles an inch, immediately resolving that problem and making turning a much less daunting task.
Carefully, he began condensing the sides of his board into itself, making it slightly thinner while maintaining its weight. The drag lessened and it became harder to keep everything from sinking, so he sped up his wave. The best part about this particular form of movement was that after the initial creation costs, he wasn't expending mana to control or speed up the wave. Water naturally moved in the manner he was making it, so the only thing he needed to do to continue it moving like this was will the created element forward.
Speeding up was similar except as he began to move faster, some of the water escaped his grasp because of the centrifugal force generated by the waves rotating motion, so vague amounts of his water shot away, causing him to need to generate more. It was small enough not to be noticeable at this point, though he noted to address that in the future.
Glancing back, Damien smiled as he noticed no one directly behind him. The chute he'd made for rocks and dirt that got picked up was working great to keep any debris out of his wave, even if it was unpleasant for people behind him at first.
'They learned fast at least,' he thought, shrugging off what wasn't his problem.
Soon, he began accelerating past the rest of the lagging group. He ignored the blatant attempt at destroying his momentum that he felt as a few pillars of earth and a blast of fire hit the wave he rode. He also almost laughed as he felt Cedar launch himself with abandon to crash land on top of him when the rest didn't work.
Putting things on autopilot, Damien looked up and spotted the idiot on a collision course.
Lifting an arm up, he swatted in the air as if trying to brush a fly off and a compressed blast of air exploded into the moron's side. His body immediately shot to the left as he threw his wings out with surprise to try and stabilize himself. Damien looked back where he was driving the water and felt through his sense as the kid failed to gain control and landed on another student, both tumbling out of his sense.
Damien once again shrunk his board's width and increased his waves speed, catching back up to the Minotaur, Dwarf, and eventually the male combatant while playing with turning and other things. One of the perks of his increased abilities due to the small amount of rumination he'd done at a young age was the increased balance, reaction time, and overall control it gave him over his person. This form of movement was a hassle at first but a few minutes into it he was already comfortable with going straight and turning had become a breeze. The fact that he could control how the water acted and pushed him only made it that much easier and smoother of a ride. It was like he was gliding on a ripple-free lake's surface while going sixty miles per hour.
It seemed Layla's goal had been to throw him off and nobody else because as he got closer to the lead group, she increased her speed again. The small increase was a non-factor as he settled in next to Alexa once again with a wide smile.
"Pretty neat, huh?" he yelled out as she looked over in shock.
"What are you even doing!" she yelled back as Kastra laughed out loud, flitting over to Damien and landing on his shoulder.
"It's called 'surfing'!" he yelled back over the sound of his wave continuously crashing into itself. "I don't even know how this is going so well, but I love it!"
Kastra continued laughing as he got strange looks from the Combatant female and Layla both, slowing down a bit as they watched his ingenuity. He felt the Fae climb down his shoulders and body, making her way to his legs. Looking down, she stood directly next to his back left leg, latched on with a wide smile, blue hair adopting the same coloration as the water as it whipped about, tickling his calves.
A few seconds later, she bored of just holding on and created a surfboard of her own, identical to his, and moved to the edge while looking into the water with a grin.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he called out, looking down at her.
"It'll be fine."
"You don't weigh eno-" he started as she bonded her feet to the board anyway and jumped onto the wave.
Damien tried to make the water as receptive as possible, taking all his concentration to exclude that specific piece from moving so rapidly, but the board which probably weighed less than five pounds immediately slipped out from beneath her as she face planted, water shooting her upwards and to his left where she was voided out the top of the wave like an undesirable.
Damien held back a laugh while sighing. She had been manipulating her weight so that she didn't weigh more than a few pounds, and the board was miniature. He wondered just what she thought was going to happen, but then again, she probably didn't understand how surfing or water reacted to things like her when moving that quickly. Fae didn't need the knowledge to wield the elements like a Mage, after all. They just needed time.
Soon enough, she'd caught back up and landed on Damien's shoulder with a sour look, pouting and boardless. He laughed at that and she smacked him lightly.
"I told you it wouldn't work," he chuckled out.
"Well, teach me how to make it work then," she replied.
"Are you going to listen this time?" he responded with a smirk as she nodded.
A few minutes later, having explained the need for weight, correct surface area distribution, and a few other things, Kastra was using her wings and Damien's hand to lower herself onto the wave again while he squatted low. She'd almost dragged him down when increasing her weight but he'd expanded his board just in time for her to lift her weight with flight and avoid eating crap.
Once she found the correct weight and density for her board and herself, Damien let her go and she was doing her own thing next to him, smiling brightly as her hair trailed along behind her. He controlled the water, moving her around from one side of the thin wave to the other, both above and below him.
'This... this is what magic should feel like all the time,' he thought with a huge grin as the small Fae cried out in excitement and disbelief.
He chuckled as he turned to Alexa and found her with a face expressing longing.
"Do you want to try too?" he yelled across.
"I'd definitely fall!" she yelled back. "Especially with how sore I am right now..."
"You're better with this magic than me, I think you'd be-"
"This is a game to you all, is it?!?!" Layla yelled out angrily from in front of them, interrupting while looking back at them.
""""No Ma'am!"""" all four nearby replied in unison as Damien as his two wives stopped fooling about.
They continued the run, Layla keeping the same pace so as to not lose the other students more than they already were. After another five minutes, they arrived at their destination.
Damien stared forward as the forest loomed before him, wide and intimidating. Never eery once the whole time they'd been driving through it, but now it had taken a different tone altogether.
"We are splitting you all into groups of four!" Layla yelled out as the last few, including a very bruised and disheveled Cedar, filed in while panting. "Diamonds will manage two groups! I and Kastra will oversee the other two, not being a part of them but serving as a safety net. Enter the fifth layer at your own risk, but DO NOT, under any circumstances, enter the sixth layer! The power of the beasts in there is NOT for students at the academy to trifle with. And you," she said, turning and pointing at Arion, "You and your dipshit of a friend who got himself hurt on a light jog will be separated, as will you and Ms. N'moran," she finished, pointing at Damien. "In fact, Damien is with Cedar because they hate each other so much. Learn to deal with it and work together! As for your pompous ass, Arion, you'll be with the N'moran. Learn a thing or two from her, and you might not be a lost cause."
Damien deflated at the news but nodded to his instructor. Learning to work in groups would be a boon for later, utilizing each other's strengths and weaknesses, he just wished he'd be paired with people he'd actually be around in the future.
Layla went around assigning groups and lined them up on the edge of the forest, looking in.
"READY?!" Layla called out.
Damien crouched down, ready for the signal to start before it dawned on him suddenly that he had no idea what they were doing. He stood up and turned around, facing Layla as she glared at him, unsure at who was even in his group besides Cedar.
"What uhm... what exactly are we even doing?" he carefully asked.
More than a few students turned around at that, him being the only one crouching, each holding questioning looks of their own. They'd shown up to class, run all this way here, and were prepared to dive in yet hadn't exactly been instructed and most were too afraid to ask because of who Layla was as a person.
She looked at him, disappointed, before a feminine voice spoke up from nearby.
"Isn't it obvious? Kill everything you see."
Damien watched Layla's face turn skyward and she laughed a demonic laugh. When she looked back down her teeth were once again showing.
"Kill all you can before the sun sets. Don't stay out too long though, the layers are only active during the day-time," she said with a feral grin. "Now, go bring me trophy's."