Sora
“Softie, could you tell your goddess to leave Bryce alone?” Thea asked without any preamble as she made it to the top of the stairs, and I looked up from where I was lying alone on the couch reading.
“That’s not exactly how it works, but I could try talking to her. What’d she do this time?”
“She somehow managed to ambush us just outside the ship even though I’m wearing an amulet that’s supposed to hide me from gods,” Bryce explained while looking around the place as if she’d never seen it before.
“Damnit. Right, that might actually be my fault. I kind of invited her over to watch a movie before I knew you were alive.”
“Is that going to be a common occurrence? Congratulations on becoming a paladin, by the way. That’s a huge deal.”
“Thanks, and I’m not sure.” I sat my book down on the coffee table so that I could sit up. “Kai is covering for her wife while she’s busy with whatever errand Tess is having her do, and since I’m her only paladin that actually bothers to talk to her, that kind of makes me her go to right now.”
“Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the errand Tess is having her wife do is hunt for me. So, when Kai found out where I was, she showed up to kill me in order to get her back.”
I froze after I realized what she had just said, and I could see Thea tensing, likely having done the same thing. “Bryce, I need you to tell me right now whether or not Kai still wants you dead, and don’t you dare lie to me.”
“Sora, what’s wrong?” she took a step back, and Thea stepped forward to stand between us.
“Babe, send me a contract. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Just get it to me now.”
Bryce lifted her hand in the air, and a small green circle appeared in front of it, followed by a nearly transparent scroll that she swiped towards Thea. My contract with her ended once she accepted the new one, and immediately after that, I felt my paladin spell kick in as a fireball appeared between the two of them, slowly expanding outward.
I leapt over the back of the couch, darting forward to dodge under the still expanding fire and slammed into Bryce’s side. I followed her to the ground and summoned a dagger to point at Thea as time returned to its normal speed. “Thea, wait—”
The air was knocked out of my lungs, and before I even realized what was happening, I was lying on my back with an angry devil on top of me. Still, I somehow managed to get my blade up against her throat, and was holding it there until I could finally call in the cavalry. “Uh, captain, could you please explain to your girlfriend that Kai doesn’t want you dead, so we don’t need to fight.”
Thea glanced back out of the side of her eye, but didn’t take her hands off my neck. Nor did she retract the claws that were threatening to decapitate me at any moment.
“Thea, it’s fine. Kai and I talked it through, and she doesn’t want me dead.” Bryce grunted as she pushed herself off the ground and sprinted over to us to pull Thea off of me.
I felt her grip start to tighten and looked up at the captain in desperation. She made a horizontal slicing motion, ending the contract and causing all Thea’s strength to immediately disappear.
She blinked down in surprise, as if she didn’t know how she ended up on top of me, and I carefully pried her hands off my neck. Her nails were still covered in my blood, but my divinely enhanced skin had stopped most of the damage and what was there would probably heal without a scar in a few minutes.
“Softie, what are you doing on the ground?”
“Do you remember how you got here?” I asked, and she shook her head. “Okay, I’ll be happy to explain everything, but first maybe you should get off of me? I think we’re making the captain jealous.”
“Maybe she should be,” Thea joked, but then shot to her feet when she finally noticed her hands. “Wait, is this your blood? What in the hells just happened?”
“The contract we signed was... wrong.” Bryce shook her head while she stared down at a mostly transparent scroll. “I don’t know how else to describe it. Here, look for yourself.”
She motioned with her hand and the scroll floated over to Thea, who caught it and started reading with growing horror. “Bryce, what is this? Why would I ever sign something like this? How could you ask me to?”
“You didn’t—I mean, I didn’t. Okay, look, Thea, you and I just got back to the ship, and on our way here, Kai stopped us so that she could threaten me. I told Sora, and when they got weirdly intense, you told me to send you a contract.”
“And this is the one you sent me?” Thea actually sounded genuinely hurt, which had me equal parts concerned and curious. Obviously, one of my closest friends hurting wasn’t a good thing, but I couldn't help wondering what could possibly be in that contract.
“Can I see it?” I asked, which made Bryce cringe, but Thea just set her with a glare and swiped the scroll towards me. I pushed myself to my feet as I started to go over it.
It didn’t take long for me to realize just how bad it was. Hells, it was worse than bad; it was outright evil and written in a way that had obvious thought put into it. The very first clause would cause anybody other than Bryce who signed it to forget not only what happened while they were under the effects of the contract, but also a full three hours leading up to when they first signed it.
Then there were a number of restrictions on what Thea was allowed to eat, say, or do. That was followed by a long list of obligations that were morally questionable being enforced by a contract. A few of them even I wouldn’t consider without at least a six-digit price tag attached.
Finally, came the worst section by far, where it listed the thoughts and feelings that Thea was allowed to have. It wasn’t a long list, and would turn her into a mindless Bryce-obsessed weapon on a hair-trigger. Well, even more than she already was.
“Bryce, what is this?”
“I have no idea, it definitely wasn’t the contract I intended to grab. Thea, you have to know that I would never ask you to sign something like this.”
I was about to ask the obvious question of where it came from, when Thea whispered two words that made me question everything I thought I knew about our captain.
“She’s lying.”
Bryce just stood there frozen, not knowing how to respond. So, I turned to Thea and spoke slowly while I tried to push down the growing sense of righteous anger. “Thea, she just made a whole bunch of different claims there. I need you to tell me which of those specifically was a lie.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“That she doesn’t have any idea of what it is. I think the rest is true.”
“You think?” I asked, and she took a calming breath before nodding.
“Her phrasing wasn’t super exact, but I know for sure that she would never write a contract like that and she definitely wouldn’t ever give me one to sign.”
Bryce darted across the room and pulled her into a crushing hug. “I’m so sorry. I swear from now on I won’t assume anything with our contracts, and I’ll triple check every word before I even show them to you.”
“I appreciate that, babe, but seriously, stop hurting yourself for me.” Thea tried to push herself out of the captain’s grip, but surprisingly, wasn’t able to budge her. “Okay, what the fuck? Now you’re stronger than me, too? I don’t want to be the weakest member of the crew, damnit.”
“Sorry,” Bryce chuckled as she let go and apologized. “For what it’s worth, I’ve probably been stronger than you ever since I earned my first mantle. We just didn’t notice because you’ve always been under one of my contracts.”
“Good point. Okay, let’s call up Suriel and see if he can fix whatever Mother did to you. Then we can figure out the contract situation,” Thea proudly declared, which caused Bryce to cringe.
“Thea, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Um…” She frowned while tapping a finger on her chin. “You summoned me to Hel. I made food, then we went to Drassun with Es. I don’t know what happened after that, but I assume Ithnaa picked us up and brought us to our ship.”
“Does that mean you don't remember the part where your girlfriend murdered a pirate king in cold blood?” I asked, which made Thea’s eyes go wide.
“Wait, she did what? Please tell me you recorded that.”
“Of course. I’ll show it to you later.”
“The more relevant detail that you’re missing is that Suriel and Leila left shortly after Samira shut off their self-destruct,” Bryce added, which caused Thea to visibly deflate.
“Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Damnit, what a shitty way to leave things off. Could one of you remind me to send Suriel an apology? I kind of said a bunch of really mean things to him the last time we spoke, and it would seriously suck if I ruined everything by being an emotional idiot.”
“Sure, but we still need to talk about where that contract came from and while we’re at it maybe Bryce can explain why her mana feels like Kai’s.”
Bryce seemed like she was finally about to start explaining, but Thea interrupted before she could. “Absolutely not. We need to figure out how we’re going to fix Bryce first. Then we can start catching up and dealing with our other problems. Gods know we have a lot of them.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing we can do about that until Ithnaa gets back with Sami. Until then, we can at least try to find out why your girlfriend accidentally turned you into a mindless murder slave.”
“Oh, was that something I knew about?” Thea asked, then quickly clarified before anyone could answer. “Sami and Ithnaa going to get a cure, not the, uh, other thing.”
“No, it’s not. Where did they go? I thought the venom was here on the ship.”
“I did, too.” I sighed as I ran my fingers through my hair. “But way back when I told Sami that we were leaving New Eden with the colony executive and a scary, powerful mystery woman, she took that to mean I wouldn’t need my tools any more and left them behind.”
“Are you saying that they went back to New Eden?” Bryce blinked at me and I shrugged.
“I mean, yeah. It was a part of Ithnaa’s territory before Teolix trapped her in a bottle, and she still has a safe house a little way from the city,” I explained, but when she didn’t respond, I might have gotten a bit impatient. “No, Bryce, I know what you’re thinking and we’re not waiting for them to get back to talk about this. Hells, the fact that you two aren’t freaking out about it is freaking me out.”
Thea gave me a disbelieving look. “You’re joking, right? I just found out half an hour ago that my girlfriend, who has been dead for over a month, was actually alive for the last two days and being tortured by the most evil woman in the whole damn universe. And don’t even get me started on the fact that the same evil woman now knows a spell that wiped out a solar system. So, yeah, I’m freaking out about the contract, but I’m also freaking out about a million other things, and I know Bryce well enough to know that however bad I feel, she probably feels way worse. Hells, being on either side of that contract is basically her worst nightmare.”
I stood there speechless while I tried to process everything she had just said, which caused Thea to cringe. “We didn’t tell you about Bryce’s spell yet, did we?”
“No, you didn’t. Was that the bio-weapon you told Penn about?” I asked Bryce, and she nodded grimly.
“It is, and to make matters worse, the spell I cast on Mother during the ambush is working, and now she knows about it.”
“Then the spell you used in Para Vista is the perfect counter to it.” I connected the dots, then let out a resigned sigh when they both confirmed it. “Fine. Maybe there's more going on than I knew about, but for the sake of my sanity, could you at least tell me why your mana felt like Kai’s when your spell exploded? She hates contract magic, but I seriously doubt she’d intervene in your pact just because of that. Especially not in a way that made it more likely for Thea to kill me.”
“Okay, but just remember that this is only a theory,” Bryce warned, then continued when I nodded. “While I was in Tess’s domain, she did something to my mana that made me a natural caster. Which, don’t get me wrong, was an amazing gift, but at the same time means that I now have to relearn all the spells that I’ve spent half a century perfecting. It’s not anywhere close to the same as having to learn it all from scratch, but it does mean that I have to actually take the time to do it.”
“So, what? You didn’t fix your spell to use your new mana, and that made it generate the worst contract I’ve ever read? Sorry, but I’m not buying it. Clearly, whoever wrote that knew exactly what they wanted.”
“That’s where Kai comes in.” Bryce explained, but when I clenched my fists in anger at the implication, she took a step back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean Kai herself. Rather her mana, or maybe her mantle. Either way, when she ambushed me outside the ship, I managed to talk her out of killing me by offering to help her with something.”
“What thing?” Thea asked, but Bryce just shrugged.
“I have absolutely no idea, and when I asked her to explain what she wanted, she just kept telling me that I wasn’t getting it. Eventually, she offered to give me something that would help, and I agreed. That thing ended up being a small amount of her mana, which she gave me, then cursed before making up an excuse to run away.”
“You think it’s Kai’s mana interacting with a failed spell?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Like I said, it’s only a theory, but yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’ve learned that whenever Kai is involved, probability goes completely out the window. So, a random string of letters turning into a nightmare contract sounds about par for the course.”
“What are you thinking, Softie?” Thea asked, but I just shook my head.
“Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t understand Bryce’s magic under the best circumstances, let alone when the two most powerful gods in existence both start messing with it. Fuck, I don’t know, just try to be more careful, okay? And if defying gods is going to be the new normal around here, then I guess I’m just going to have to figure out how to be okay with that.”
“Is being a paladin really affecting you that much?” Bryce asked, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a mindfuck, right? I mean, if you had told me even a year ago that I’d have to resist the urge to kill someone for being disrespectful to a god, then I would have tried to buy whatever it was you were smoking. Now it just feels like a part of who I am.”
“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind moving forward, and for what little it’s worth, Kai mentioned something about me joining her pantheon if I ascend. I don’t know what that would entail, but it didn’t sound too terrible.”
“Bryce…” Thea warned, and Bryce corrected herself.
“Okay, it sounded pretty awful. I’m sorry, I’m just not very chaos aligned.”
“It’s alright, I know Kai isn’t for everyone. If she’s too much for you, then maybe Zesh is more your style? I have the feeling that following one of them would also put you in the other’s good graces.”
“Except that if Zesh is the ‘Z’ Kai mentioned earlier, then she’s the one who’s hunting me on Tess’s behalf. Which kind of complicates any sort of relationship with her, at least until that whole issue is resolved.”
I shrugged and was about to respond when my favorite djinn appeared nearby with my soot-covered sister.
“Here I found the stupid thing,” Sami said as she pushed a charred leather-clad box into my chest. “Make sure you give that back to me when you’re done with it. Got it?”