Csala

The strong winds swept past Csala as she dived down from the mountain heading North, the loose robe Jerome gifted her fluttering around her. She had to do everything possible to make sure Jerome didn't figure out her secrets—the secret of her kind—and only the old crone could help her with that…probably. Her psychic powers were not as powerful as they once were, but they were still powerful enough to get her down from the mountain safely.

She pushed upward with her psychic powers so as to keep her descent at an angle parallel to the mountain wall. When she was a few feet to the ground, her body slowed and she landed on steady feet. Csala looked around and shot forward, moving northeast. She reveled in the freedom of her body, her real body. Not the soul avatar of Jerome’s mental plane. The wind on her face and the earth beneath her feet was bliss. She breezed past the trees smelling the wildness of nature in them, the vibrant greenery around her relaxing her mind and filling her with the joy of freedom.

Csala made it to the old crone’s treehouse in twice the time she would normally do it. When she got to the tree she was breathing hard, exhausted from putting in more effort than she normally would—her limbs screaming at her. She had never run that much in her entire life. She could have just carried herself on the wind with her psychic energy, but Jerome had siphoned the majority of that making flying impossible.

“Muna!” She screamed in faerie, “Come down or I’m coming up!”

“Yes, yes, Muna come down now,” came a weak voice in the human language from the treehouse.

The treehouse was a utilitarian structure, built with tree branches and thatch. It rose above the top of the tree looking a bit slant, as though it would tilt to the side at any moment and fall to the ground.

A very old woman came out of a doorway and floated to the ground. Her garment was made from thatch, which complemented the dirty mop of hair on her head making her the picture of a crazy old lady.

“What now?” Muna, the old crone, asked, “Can’t ya let weak ol’ Muna sleep in peace?”

Muna’s voice wasn’t very audible, her consonants softer than they should be. She had very few teeth left in her mouth and her skin was wrinkled, her back hunched with old age. It was clear she wasn’t long for the afterlife.

“You owe me, Muna. I’m here to collect on one of my debts.” Csala said, in the human language. Since the old crone wanted to speak human so badly, she’d indulge her.

Muna opened her eyes wide in shock. “Ya sound desperate.” She observed the younger succubus from head to toe, putting the clues together.

Csala’s feet were dirt ridden which was unusual—succubi liked being clean. They use their mental energy effortlessly from childhood to do it until it becomes a reflex. Csala’s usual provocative clothing was no were to be seen and she was sweating and trying hard to appear calm.

Muna scanned her carefully and almost fell flat on the floor, “Who do this to ya, child?!”

“No one you need to worry about. I need a portion to help me put someone to sleep…perhaps forever.”

“Did he…?” Muna asked hesitantly.

“No!” Csala barked and Muna exhaled in relief.

“One hand it be good thing he no take ya,” Muna said almost in thought, “Other hand it for have been good riddance! Ahahah, follow Muna, child!” she flew up into the air and into her treehouse.

Csala gnashed her teeth in frustration, her anger boiling over. She would knock the remaining teeth out of Muna’s mouth if she could, but the old crone was thousands of years old and a lot more powerful than her. She gathered up her meager psychic energy and jumped into the air, using her powers to help her land gracefully.

Once inside, she took a sit beside the doorway ready to bolt in case the old crone turned hostile. Succubi weren’t known for their hospitality to each other. Everything was a business transaction for them.

“Drink this, child…ta help ya powers, strong,” Muna, the old crone, handed Csala a calabash filled with a herbal mixture.

“No, thanks,” Csala said. “We’re not friends. So don’t show me fake hospitality…and then you’d stab me from behind. Hrmph!”

“Now, now, Muna too old for all that ubus crap. Muna not long for Valhalla. Ehn!” she waved her hands exaggeratedly in the air as she turned around and stalked off to a stool in the corner of the room. “Csala do Csala. Muna do Muna.

“So?” Muna asked after taking a seat.

“He’s proving to be too much to handle. Give me something to knock him out…as much as possible.”

“Ye young suck don’t know way to man’s heart,” Muna grinned a toothless grin.

“Suck?” Csala asked with a raised eyebrow, clearly irritated. The nickname sounded insulting.

“Yes, yes. Incubus tell me they call y’all. Ya legs not only way ta make man stay,” she said with a laugh as she bounced up and down on her stool with a vibrancy that should not be possible for one her age. And then she calmed down almost instantly. “Muna hope Csala know what happen if man take her. Csala lose…” she pointed at her temple to indicate that Csala would lose her senses.

“I know, I know,” Csala butted in. “Succubi don’t have sex with men else they lose their minds.”

“Csala forget one more,” the old crone said, holding up a crooked finger in front of her face, waiting for her to say it.

Csala glared at her, “I’ll become a slave to the man who sleeps with me, both in body and soul.”

“Hmm. Hmm,” Muna nodded her head, satisfied with the younger succubus’ answers.

“He’s probably found out I can’t wield essence,” Csala said.

“That not good, hmm,” Muna said as she gathered materials and herbs in preparation to make Csala’s portion. “That not bad, too. Succubi no wield essence. Muna make strong sleep sitr. Ya man sleep like Tialana.”

Muna probably didn’t know the human word for portion so she used the fae word ‘sitr’.

“I don’t want him to sleep like Tialana. Tialana was brain-dead and couldn’t get excited. I want his male parts to work. Only his male parts.”

The old crone laughed long and hard. After a long while, her laughter transformed into a coughing fit and she struggled to calm herself down.

“Ai, ai, ai. Muna old too much,” she complained.

With her mortar and pestle, she ground the selected herbs, scooped a granular substance from a jar and added it to the mixture in the mortar, she added a liquid with a very potent smell, her hands moving with practiced deftness. Csala looked carefully at the liquid the old crone was adding to the mixture. It gave her a strange feeling.

“Dream lotus flower. Muna give you good sitr,” the old crone chuckled.

Csala was dumbfounded. Dream Lotus was pretty hard to get hold of. And they grew at very dangerous places, even for millennia-old succubus. The conditions necessary for their growth couldn’t be met in a greenhouse. Muna picked up a spoon and began stirring the mixture inside the mortar. It turned silvery after a while giving off a dreamy, illusory feel.

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“It’s beautiful,” Csala said.

“Hm-hm,” Muna responded, her focus on stirring.

Csala was mesmerized by the swishing silvery liquid inside the mortar, she couldn’t take her eyes off it. The liquid felt like it had a mind of its own, struggling to avoid the spoon trying to push it in a different direction than the one it wanted to go. She felt like she could sit there all day watching the mesmerizing movement of the silvery liquid. When she regained herself, she was sitting in a chair in the center of the room unable to move her limbs.

“You’ve lost your edge, Csala,” Muna said in the human language, her voice strong and her speech impeccable.

Csala glared at her, “Free me now you old crone!”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Muna tsked and stood up stretching her limbs. “You little ones never learn, do you? That Sprout must have been something to be able to shave off layer after layer of patience you honed for a hundred years.”

Csala looked at her dumbfounded, “Muna you…you can speak human fluently!”

Muna snorted, “Do not feel too bad, child. Succubi much, much older than you have fallen for that. You’re just one of…” Muna got lost in thought trying to remember how many succubi she had scammed and Csala stiffened.

The implication of that was very heavy in her heart. It would mean Muna was a lot more powerful than she let on. Which meant Csala had no chance of escaping. Plus she had no idea why she was being held captive.

“Ah, fuck it,” Muna gave up trying to remember. “Once…my dream was to become the first immortal succubus of this new age.”

“That’s impossible!” Csala said.

“Yes, well. We ancients who missed our opportunity eons ago found a way to extend our lives,” Muna said as she busied herself moving stuff around the treehouse towards the center. “Succubi live very long lives — almost as long as the fae once did. You’d think for a being who’s lived very long, dying would be an escape but no.”

She grunted as she used her psychic powers to move a big, heavy box out of the wall and toward the center of the room where Csala was tied. The surface of the box was smooth and black like the deepest of shadows. It floated as she moved it, never once touching the ground, “It’s scary as fuck. You get to that age where nature catches up to you and you just want more time.

“More time, more time, and more time. It never ends. You take and take and take…jumping bodies as you would change clothes.”

“What did you say?” Csala asked with her heart in her throat.

“Huh?” Muna came out of her reverie. “Hmm. Did you know that when you get old enough you obtain…no, develop the ability to ‘steal’ another succubus’ body?”

Terror hit Csala paralyzing her so that she forgot to breathe for several seconds. She came out of shock a moment later, and tried to free herself but her body wouldn’t obey her.

“You just reach for the soul in the depths of their being and yank it out,” Muna continued as if talking to herself, not noticing Csala’s struggles. “A void is created; the vessel, empty and you just…pour yourself into it.”

She noticed Csala moments later and chuckled. “I don’t own any of them fancy toys the fae used. But my psychic energy is more than a thousand times stronger than what yours used to be. You…are a dumb ass succubus, Csala…you’ve gone cahoots…coming out here with defective powers. And I thought I taught your mother well. Well, I guess she didn’t teach you well. You should never have come out here at less than half your psychic capacity.”

“Let me go,” Csala said, her fear making her voice quiver, “Let me go and I’ll owe you a life debt.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Too late Csala. I desperately need your body.” Muna said, shaking her head.

Csala’s body trembled with fear and anger as she glared at the ancient succubus before her. The cunning and manipulative bitch had been fooling with her for a hundred years. And Odin knows how many others.

She was going to die today and no one could stop it from happening. It was all because of that human, Jerome. She cursed him in her heart as she struggled against her invisible binding again to no avail.

“I'll be taking this,” Muna said, slipping the storage ring on Csala’s finger off and onto her own finger, “Never did get me one of these. It’s beautiful,” She laughed.

Muna stored all the stuff she gathered inside the storage ring. She stood in front of Csala rubbing her hands together in eagerness.

“This won't hurt, child…well, not much,” she said.

Csala tried to lean away from her, the fear oozing off her was palpable. "Don't do this, Muna. We've known each other for a hundred years. Why will you put a dent in our relationship?"

Muna snorted, “Now you say we're friends? Your body is the friend I know, even though we won’t be friends for long.”

She placed her hands on Csala’s head ready to begin transplanting her soul but she quickly shot backward in a flash!

“What in the name of Odin's beard…?!”

~~~

“Looks great, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Xerae.”

Jerome was hunched down as he stared hard at one of the nano contraptions on the lightspire table. A projection of it was hovering midair above the table but his gaze was on the spot on the table. He’d had to zoom his sight out with the aid of runes Achilles provided, to see if he could capture every detail of it with his naked eyes. It was disorienting, yet fascinating. More than a hundred of the contraptions littered the table.

“You are one badass engineer, aren’t ya Achilles?”

“I do my best to provide excellence, Xerae,” Achilles’ voice beamed with pride.

Achilles had used various scenarios and theories to create a design and extrapolated its use to generate the chip in front of him. He’d call it a chip. What should have been the creation of a crystal oscillator had rapidly graduated into the creation of a microprocessor. The crystal oscillator sat inside an unfinished pocket watch, waiting to be of use.

“Oh, no, Xerae. Binding. And it does a lot more than a microprocessor would.”

“And whose brain did you pick to get information for this binding of yours?” Jerome called him out.

“Hmph! This is a very good time to let you know that your succubus is in quite a pinch,” Achilles said.

“What?”

“She will be erased in twenty of the durations you call minutes and forty-three seconds.”

“Ahem. She’s not my succubus,” Jerome said. “What happened…and what do you mean by ‘erased’?” There was a slight hint of concern in his voice that he couldn’t mask.

Achilles went ahead to narrate what was happening outside the mountain, explaining the strength of the adversary that had imprisoned Csala. “She’s not someone you can take on, Xerae. But with my help, we can slow her down to get back your succubus.”

“For the umpteenth time… she’s not my succubus,” Jerome said in frustration.

“Really? Your vitals tell me differently, Xerae.”

“Very well.” He’d never win an argument with the AI. “What do I need to do?” Jerome asked. It was best not to indulge the AI.

“Whatever you need to do, Xerae,” Achilles said.

Jerome was startled at that but he quickly understood that Achilles was beginning to slowly step away from giving him suggestions and opinions and letting him choose his own approach to solving his problems. Better now than later when he'd have gotten used to the AI's opinions, unable to make his own.

Achilles was quite advanced…too advanced to be honest, almost like he had his own soul and was his own person.

“That’s because I’m sapient and not just sentient.”

Jerome stored that for later. He searched through his memories, contemplating for a moment. “Give me a minute,” he said and sat down on the lightspire table. A minute later Jerome began muttering a spell under his breath.

“Excellent choice, Xerae,” Achilles praised. “Your choice is a compound spell and a high-level one at that. It’s best for holding back enemies far more powerful than you. Of course, you’ll have to compress it so you don’t end up destroying your succubus too. It is thanks to your remarkable ability to wield ambient essence that you can use this spell. Any other Core Formation Realm artist would only be capable of wielding simple elemental spells.”

Jerome smiled at that. This spell was not just a spell for destruction, it could also be used to form an armor of fire to protect its wielder and also give the wielder more strength and agility but his body couldn’t handle that just yet.

“Hmm. I should also point out the fact that your psychic energy would play a great part in helping to shape and compress the spell. Of course, it’s all thanks to your succubus that you have such powerful psychic energy.”

Jerome snorted. “Thank you for pointing that out.” This was one of the most powerful spells he had learned from the ancient fae — The Dragon’s Wrath. And he couldn’t wait to test it out.