Dear Diary,

On the good side, Saffron tells me I didn't wake up at all last night. On the bad side, she spends her Devotional day in her room with Isnomi, so I'll have to get through today on my own. Not looking forward to that, let me tell you.

Not quite selfish enough to ask her to stay with me, and I suspected my Patron would have words for me if I spent the day locked in her room.

Since Diana dislikes me now more than ever, I couldn't spend the day with you, and if you fail to attend me on your day of Devotion, you would break our contract.

I hadn't really expected my Patron to be that dedicated to the idea of contractual obligations, but...

The Patriarch of my Pantheon is the God of Lawyers. It would ill serve either of us to forget that.

I just hoped Artemis didn't tell Saffron to break things off with me. I'd hardly even started figuring out what we were, but I kinda wanted to find out.

She would hardly do that. Deities do not speak with followers willy nilly, and she dislikes me, but not enough to start a Holy War.

You'd start a Holy War over my love life? That's both sweet and terrifying at the same time.

I guess he's not likely to answer if I don't ask a question or say something referring to him that more or less needs clarification.

At any rate, Saffron woke me up, although she did so via the most unsettling manner possible. I drifted near wakefulness, and she nibbled on my ear gently for a bit, then stuck her tongue right in my ear. That hit my 'must fuck now', 'get that out of my ear', and 'gah, ooky yucky' buttons all at once, and I more or less jumped straight up about six inches while still lying on my back. That tumbled her out of the bed onto the floor, where she lay laughing her ass off while I pawed at my ear.

I growled, "vengeance will be mine!" followed by a rolling leap off the bed to pounce on her. Things digressed from there. Afterward we both agreed that while the mattress did a great job of imitating a slab of rock, it was, in point of fact, significantly less rocklike than the stone floor.

Vengeance achieved, we got dressed and headed to breakfast. She'd had the foresight to bring a change of clothes, and we arrived at the Dining Hall just as they opened up for breakfast. We took our normal seats, which I felt some kind of way about, but didn't say anything, preferring to focus on seeing how many trays of spicy eggs I could devour. The other people at the table screwed my count up by insisting on snagging some from the first two trays, but I got the third and fourth to myself. Right around then the Barbie Brigade got up from their table, moving with more sense of purpose than I remembered, and I dropped everything and bolted for the Practice Yard. I passed them just as we got to the door, and I noticed with glee that they'd all swerved and waited to stay out of arm's reach of me.

Combat Training was, frankly, boring for most of the day. The Barbie Brigade refused to spar with me. I managed to get Angel into the ring, but she immediately charged me and grabbed at me. She took her several tries at getting a hold, as I blocked and escaped and tried to get one of my own on her with equal lack of success. At one point I managed to grab her wrist and start pulling it behind her, but she powered her way out of my attempted arm lock, leaving me stumbling away from her. In the end, after what Saffron tells me was like ninety solid seconds of grapples, escapes, and missed or blocked jabs and slaps, I twisted to hide one of my hands and powered up a quick Stabilize. Before I even finished the Spell, Angel came at me, taking advantage of her extra hand to start a combo I couldn't even follow, and I wound up face down on the ground with both hands behind me and Angel kneeling on my ass, her fingers interlaced with mine keeping me from even attempting anything like Stabilize.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I spat out a mix of blood and stone dust in front of me and said, "you know I can't slap the ground like this."

"That just occurred to me too. You give?"

I thought about it a second. I wasn't really in pain, but I couldn't break the hold, and any attempts to do so really would hurt, with no real expectation of success. "You know I could outwait you."

"That occurred to me as well, but I'm not putting out a lot of effort here. You really got the attention span for that?"

That got a laugh out of me. "Nah. You win. Good fight."

She let go of my hands, rolled back off of me to her feet, then helped me stand up after I'd rolled over onto my back. I pulled her into a quick victory bro-hug, and she said, "Good fight yourself. I got worried there for a bit, thought you'd tire me out before I got a grip on you."

After that, since Angel wasn't up for another round and Saffron had nothing to do but referee us, she suggested we try a quick spar.

I raised an eyebrow, "You sure?"

"Let's do this."

We got in the ring, Angel officiating, and I slid into my favored side-on pose, already charging up a Stabilize in my hidden left hand. Saffron just stood there at Parade Rest, staring at me. I edged forward, jabbing at her face and shoulders with my right. She bobbed and swayed, backing up with every step, careful to slide sideways as much as back, so I wouldn't force her out of the ring inadvertently. After a little while doing that, I changed my target and started jabbing at her chest. I managed to land one quick jab, and she shot me a dark look as she backed up again.

"Bitch!"

I laughed when I realized what I'd done, even though I felt a little bad. I mean, they're big targets, especially given how small a target she was in general. Only a little, though, because it wasn't really a good spar unless you learned something, like where your own weaknesses were.

I guess that meant Saffron made our next exchange a good spar for me.

I'd gotten tired of chasing her, so the next time she circled to put a corner behind her, I leapt at her, bringing my overcharged Stabilize around in a wide swing that would catch her even if she sidestepped away from it. She surprised me by jumping toward me, spinning to put her back to me as she did. I pulled in my swing; it didn't need to have a lot of power behind it, the Stabilize would do its work if I just touched her with it. I just barely managed to land it on her shoulder.

Just as hers caught me right in the crotch.

I have no idea how long we both stood there, because I lost all sensation of time in the ensuing spasms. I discovered right then that Stabilize wasn't an 'electric' Spell, no matter how much it felt kind of like that. Yeah, it had a bit of a 'make muscles twitch and clench', but it also just poured raw life force into the target, hence the whole 'Stabilize' thing. Having all the muscles in my crotch clench had the expected effect, and I realized that I would never really be into S&M, because while I'd have had the pleasant kind of mess in my shorts if I'd been a guy, having everything else from my tits to my knees simultaneously experience a Charlie horse pretty much took all the fun out of it.

The moment the Stabilize stopped locking my body into an endless clench, I toppled backward to the ground. Saffron caught my right hand as I fell; she didn't keep me from hitting the ground, but she did at least make the impact on the back of my head annoying rather than potentially harmful. I lay there on the ground, lifted my left hand into the air about six inches, and let it fall.

"How, the, fuck?" I panted.

She smirked down at me. "You're a little predictable. Also, I never stopped charging my Stabilize." My expression must have conveyed my confusion, so she explained further, "I hit you with everything I had, and since I was still charging I hit you with everything you'd pumped into me as well. For what it's worth, I can't move my left arm."

I couldn't help it, I just laughed as I climbed her to get back to my feet, forcing my aching muscles to obey with nothing but pure fuck you. "Good fight. Now let's get you down to Sister Siobhan."

She flinched. "It'll go away on its own."

I shook my head. "Nope. I mean, yeah, it might, but I'd rather find out now that we're overreacting than find out tomorrow that Sister Siobhan can't do shit because it's been too long since the injury."

She pouted. I insisted. Angel sided with me, and I won.

It felt kinda good to be the mature one for once.