Trying to distract myself from contemplating my failures, knowing that Teuila is still struggling to come to grips with her own misgivings on various losses of life, I pull some insect meat from the dimensional pouch. Te gladly accepts a hunk and we chow down together while passing the feasting hall. Eating of course only takes about one or two seconds for each of us, being digital critterkin, or Can’Z’aasian critterkin adjacent, thankfully. At least as far as digital food is concerned. It’s incredibly weird that the shops can produce non-digital produce, by rezzing them into existence.
Speaking of the shops, I withdraw the smartphone from the dimensional pouch to check the time. Wow, it’s still not even two p.m. What a morning! I wish I could catch up with Illy to check on her. I hate that she’s suffering about the loss of her sister, but I can’t reach her to console her right now. Instead of focusing on my inability, I let the majority of my psychic walls drop as Teuila and I spend time cuddling in thinkspace and reality while I T K Surf us down to Mount Verdimenn. I stop by the library before heading down too far, to check in with Nala.
As I near arrival to the library, I hear mentally from Nala, “Fortuitous timing, fortuitous indeed friend Reggie. I’d been about to send for Pawn to fetch you in order to, well, no matter, come come. Apparently I’ve you to thank for this slight bit of bother, though it is rather amusing in a fashion.”
Te and I raise our eyebrows at one another in curiosity at Nala’s statement, but it’s pretty evident what Nala was referring to as we enter the library. A host of kobolds are making their way from stack to stack, checking out all the shelves, feeling up the books’ spines, reading titles aloud, and so on. Apparently some of the refugees are either avid readers, or would like to be. Oh boy, poor Nala. Her refuge is now shared with others.
Floating up alongside her, I ask, “Nala, are you okay? How are you handling this?”
Her response contains only a hint of the usual gruffness, “Did you know that some of them have never even seen a properly bound book before? The savage conditions by which Terrorzin rules and subjugates those beneath his banner is appalling. I’m endeavoring to withstand the onslaught of questions, but this is after all, a public library, so I’ll be having to make do, until I can perhaps appoint an adequate assistant from amongst their multitudes, or something similarly accommodating along those lines.”
Before I can ask, Nala continues, “That is not the reason I’d been about to request your presence anyway, I have to dutifully handle my own responsibilities after all. No, I’ve sorted more previously owned, and incoming material, and even without my Latent, many of these set off obvious red flags that demand they enter into your custody immediately. Please, take this stack and then shoo, as you can see I’m quite busy with matters to attend to.”
Suddenly addressing a tiny kobold that’s attempting to lift the massive central dictionary from its podium placement, Nala turns away from me to call out, “You there, put that down, you’ll flatten yourself under its heft, that one is meant to be read on the pedestal upon which it sits, it’s a dictionary you audacious diminutive lunatic. If you’d like to read it, there are stools and stepladders all about for you to take advantage of.”
Nala then turns to one sitting at a table dragging his hands across the pages of a delicate-seeming tome, “Do be cautious of your claws you inconsiderate little nincompoop. You need not trace every word with your deadly little digits to read them.” She returns her attention to me only momentarily to dismiss me, “Huff, away with you Schism. I’ve matters in hand. Yes yes, you’re all welcome to stay, and I’ll help you find the topics you’ve an interest in, just, please, behave yourselves.”
The chatter from the kobolds makes me chuckle slightly, but Nala’s reaction serves to further lighten my humorous mood from the doldrums I’d been on the way to experiencing. I snag the several tomes that Nala had indicated in one of my telekinetic grips and cast a quick glance her way. She *almost* seems to be enjoying herself, almost. Teuila and I -book it- from the library, and Nala groans over the wordplay in my internal monologue. Another fact which I can’t help chuckling about. Even Teuila half giggles through a groan while riding my mental wavelength. Leaving the library, I float us towards the prison, and Teuila begins to poke and prod for my attention.
Raising an eyebrow towards her, and pausing our locomotion, I await Teuila, since she seems giddy about something she apparently wanted to share, but hadn’t yet for some reason. I set us on the floor of this seemingly deserted hallway, and Te drags me towards a dead end before planting her lips firmly on mine. I sink into the kiss, and her embrace, accidentally letting slip a short moan of pleasure. Of course I end up blushing furiously at the escaping sound, though Te just grins through the kiss. Teuila and I have not spent anywhere near as much time as either of us would like sharing our physical joys with each other over the last week or two, or really our entire journey on Rayileklia.
Apparently though, that isn’t why Te requested my attention, she starts, “Sooo, I didn’t want to steal your thunder—,” Te pauses, giggling ridiculously hard at some apparent in-joke with herself before continuing, “—last night Airhead. But you are *not* going to believe what the goons I took down on Friday just had lying around. You know, Missile-whosit and Hairyhousen. I had to scoop it, natch. Check this.” Teuila withdraws an ornate battlehammer with a leather-wrapped handle from seemingly nowhere, and sets it on the ground before me.
The hammer hums with thundrous intensity and crackles with electrical power. Inspecting it, I raise my left brow and query, “Misildyr and Heironymous? Even if they were enemies, I’m surprised you’d joke with their names since they’re dead. You did kill them, right? You’ve had more dragonforce coursing through you since we met up after I returned compared to post-battle on the day of the first offensive, Thursday I think. I can sense at least that much. Yours works differently than mine, it’s like, like yours regenerates itself over time, fills itself back up somehow, while mine keeps eating away at itself, sapping away into some kind of—. Void.” I facepalm as Teuila bursts into another fit of giggles. I had that one coming.
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Still, while Teuila is busy doubling over in laughter, I check out the hammer, finding that I can’t lift it at all. Did Teuila increase its gravity? Wait. No friggin’ way. My eyes fly wide in recognition after spotting something, so I ask, “Te, can you read this? Do you know what it says?”
Teuila shakes her head and shrugs in response, muttering, “Nah, but it was on a big boulder, like they had to move the boulder to be able to move the hammer. Weird, right? Nobody else seemed to be able to pick it up.”
I huff and try not to roll my eyes, since I know that Te doesn’t have the same Fakeworld memories that I do. It’s not her fault for not realizing what this hammer is, and what her picking it up represents, so instead I read aloud the inscription, “Whomsoever bonds to this hammer, should they be worthy, doth possess the power of T—,“ I feel like copyright ninjas are about to leap out of the shadows and strike me down, so I pause and glance around rather than finishing.
Wait, the Goldforce Gauntlets, one of the runotypes’ inscriptions could have been interpreted instead as—. They’d be the Godforce Gauntlets. Jarngripr? Then the storming girdle, the belt of strength that Lil wears—. That’d be Megingjord. No friggin’ way. What the everliving fu—. I mean, Teuila pulled this hammer out of something or somewhere, she does have her own extradimensional bag now, ever since Berinon gave her one back in the swamp, but she definitely had it in her hands for at least a few moments before setting it down. Still, to be able to lift this, she’d supposedly need the belt. She has to have the natural strength to lift this, even without Megingjord. That’s insane. That, or some sort of magic prevents anyone unworthy from lifting it, or both. It could be impossibly heavy, on top of being enchanted for only worthy wielders.
The belt only brings Lil’s strength slightly above Teuila’s, or at least, slightly above the last I remember her having hers at on Can’Z’aas. If she has leveled up to twenty as well, since we’ve fought most of the same battles these last four months, then her strength might be on par with what the belt sets it at, at this point. Oh, wait, right, the little stones floating trapped in her hair, her strength already was as high as the belt. Teuila’s monstrous. She might be *stronger* than Lil even with the belt at this point. That’s ridiculous. I wonder if there’s a cap, or upper limit to her strength.
I’ve always thought of Teuila as a sort of Valkyrie maiden warrior. A warrior-maiden? Something like that. Sure, she’s friggin’ amazing—. Yes, the irony is not lost on me that Frigg is a Norse goddess and my epithet happened to contain most of her name, or rather that her name is most of my epithet. But anyway, Te has the Alias powers of Tenith Grayl, the Sky Unending, Lady of Storms, on top of her gravity or sky based Latent, and now she’s wielding a hammer straight out of Norse mythology from Fakeworld, Earth. Well, out of the comic books of Fakeworld anyway, and gauntlets that could likely be the same. What is even going on with our lives? Who the hell are we?
Oh, wait, also, go back. Would this mean that Leviathan is essentially Jormungandr? I, I’m so lost. I mean, I have always said Teuila is the strongest of us, the most powerful, but a literal god or goddess? Holy friggin’ crap. I don’t even know where to begin with this. I’m marrying someone that is essentially a dragon queen, one of the eldest dragons on the planet, a ruler of her own domain, though she forgoes ruling in favor of leading. For years I’ve been in love with someone who handles the fate of the ultimate timeline of our lives, and her sister, my very first love, might literally be the god of storms. My Teuila, My Wings, a literal goddess in the Norse pantheon?
Teuila butts in to my meandering line of thought with, “No idea what you’re talking about bucko, but I sure am flattered regardless. C’mere babe, mwah.”
I can’t help chuckling as Te distracts me from my rambling thoughts with another kiss. My eyes slowly droop happily closed, and I find myself sighing contentedly in her arms. I feel so safe with Teuila, even though I’m still technically on a timer. We couldn’t just cure my Changeling Fae mana residue sickness, not without turning me from Reggie Shellcracker into just some powerless human. Maybe after I’ve paid the five and five and six more, or however the Sisters had phrased it.
Still, with three strong dragonforces coursing through me, buttressing my true inner self against the strangulation of the mana residue, it’s only taking about a quarter of a percent or a third of a percent of the current maximum of what resides within me per day to keep me alive at this point. Three to four thousand days is plenty of time to acquire more dragonforces, especially when we’re entering all out open war against a horde of dragons as vast as Terrorzin’s. What are my current dragonforces again? Olashax, Vanathar, Tinth, Hareslayer, right? Yeah. An Ice, a Fire, a Lightning, and an Acid. Once again, a hell of a coincidence.
Te bonks me lightly on the skull, raps me gingerly upon my cheek, and slugs me playfully in the shoulder, muttering, “Airhead. Shush your brain for a while sweetie. Though, I guess you’re you, and that’ll always be pretty hard, huh? It’s okay Air, let’s go to the prison love. If I can’t keep your big beautiful brain to myself, maybe I can get some twin action going on, wink wink.”
Snorting a laugh, I roll my eyes and shake my head in faux exasperation at Teuila while I resume T K Surfing towards the prison. I bet Te would honestly do it too, if she could convince Ahliyui and Ahliyuri to snog. She’s been, as Illy would put it, rambunctiously sexy as her time on Rayileklia wears on. She misses Lin, and has certain emotional turbulences she’s trying to distract herself from. I can’t blame her at all for any of that. I wouldn’t even if I could. I love My Wings beyond measure. She sets my soul alight.
Hm, somehow that concept is familiar, burning souls. Why does that seem familiar? A candle? Yes, no, maybe. There’s that, but then there’s something else. A machine? Huh. Weird. I guess more random stupid Fakeworld bullcrap maybe. Who knows? Teuila stores Mjolnir while I’m pondering my strange trains of thought, so I return to surfing towards the prison with her.
Should I come up with a new nickname for Teuila? Thoruila? Tethora? Teuithor? Maybe just Tenith Grayl? How the hell do the situations around me keep getting even *weirder* than they’d already been? Anyway, we’re almost to the prison so we can speak with Ahliyui and Ahliyuri. There they are, playing cards with four guards now, apparently the previous ones haven’t retired yet, but new volunteers showed up to take over, and they’re all getting along.
Teuila gives me a gentle noogie as I take in the scene. It’s almost funny to me that Ahliyui and Ahliyuri are hanging out with the guards, their very powerful magically endowed equipment sitting nearby in a footlocker and a sack. Like, is there really any further way we could show how much we desire to trust them? We’ve literally given them access to our deepest reaches, left them with their gear, and basically said, “Hey, please don’t stab us in the back, but here’s your complimentary knife.”
My Wings snickers at my line of thought, but I jokingly shoulder-bash her, and she knocks into me in return, ending up sending me toppling from my telekinetic perch, but I simply catch myself in another telekinetic grip. Smirking at me, she blows a raspberry momentarily before hugging me tightly as we end our approach. I wave to the assembled Draconiacs.
Before I can strike up a conversation, Te beats me to the punch, calling out, “I hear you two are Spellknights. Think you can teach me some tricks?”