Chapter 43 - Starstruck

Still at the PB&B

Horus

The plan worked even better than I could have dreamed.

Nyx had done that. My new Best Friend.

He’d turned those many secret hopes, and wants, and desires – those mere dreams in my heart something more – something better. He’d made them real.

Weeks spent in this delightful cottage with oversized doors and vaulted ceilings that finally fit my vessel’s frame. A bed that could support my weight and an almost endless supply of monkey meat kept fresh with just a small spritz of the poison from the springs – just enough to kill the so-called “bacteria” and easily applied with the revolutionary bamboo and poo-crete sprayer bottle he’d left beside the sink. Kitchen cleaner, he called it.

Which, of course, was used to clean the kitchen he’d built for me. An oversized furnace, a waist-high counter that kept Danae’s grubby, thieving little paws off my food. And to top it all off, there were even delightful new recipes.

Blood Fruit Tarts.

Fluffy Bamboo Bread.

Demon Monkey Sliders.

Blood Fruit BBQ Sauce.

Those were all treasures. Worth a fortune, the food chock full of nutritious nimbus and the sweet blood of a thousand monkeys brutally murdered – the faint note of agony and despair elevating each dish. Designed to be prepared only by someone of tremendous strength like me and my Best Friend – vessels that could pound the bamboo into a fine powder with our bare hands. Yet, in contrast to the final item, they all paled in comparison.

Because at the very bottom of that list was another recipe. Nyx’s Proprietary Blend of Herbs and Spices, it said. It only required a few dozen different mushrooms from the garden. They were dried, then smashed and combined in precise ratios.

And the finished product? A glowing green powder that could refill that empty jar he’d given me all those days and weeks ago – back at that first, crude camp.

A perfect concoction that eased My Lady’s tension and improved her sleep. That kept Danae incapacitated – lounging around the cottage with her precious plate of demon monkey burgers, the food always protected by a dome of glimmering amber energy… which left the vulpin’s fragile, furry, and swiftly growing body left exposed.

Vulnerable. Weak. Distracted. Easily killed.

The poison springs were an obvious choice to dispose of the body. It would be so easy to punch her once, dump the body, and let that poison melt through her flesh and bone, leaving little evidence except for a thin pink foam that floated across the surface.

I even tried, but the vulpin was… different now.

She lived only for her food. Those precious burgers.

And tucked inside those flaky buns must lie some secret – some secret art of a warrior. Because there was now a fire burning in her eyes. More metaphorical than My Lady’s, of course. But Danae had found something worth fighting for – worth living for.

She had survived all of my attempts on her life – even my latest. I can remember it so vividly. She woke mid-punch, my fist colliding with her shield – the one protecting the precious burger plate. The amber energy had collapsed under my indomitable strength, of course, shattering like glass and pressing her back hard into the wall of the cottage. However, she recovered quickly, jumping up from her crouch – warrior’s repose.

We froze, the two of us staring at each other. Neither blinking. Each of us waiting for the other to flinch – for our next move.

And then Danae surprised me again.

She made me an offer. A “truce,” she called it.

If I supplied her with the burgers and didn’t kill her, she would stay out of my way – would even go so far as to help me. Join forces in the war for My Lady’s love. It seemed she had wormed her way into My Lady’s confidence somehow.

I had asked her why, of course. Why help me? Why betray My lady?

Her answer had been simple. She was hungry.

Also, this had been the most relaxing few weeks of her life. “She needed this badly,” she said. And, in her own words, “If I tried to take this away from her, she would tell My Lady that I had staged my own death.” She even claimed to have proof. A backup plan that would divulge my secrets in the event of her untimely death. For example, if she was crushed to a pulp or accidentally fell in the springs.

All good reasons to keep her alive.

So, just like that, I had an accomplice.

A mission – to never leave this cottage. Ever. Or, at least, until we ran out of food.

And a plan – to cook and massage and talk my way past My Lady’s defenses until her heart was within striking distance. Until she finally admitted her feelings.

And it was an overwhelming success. Not only had My Lady embraced life here at the cottage – focusing on her “research” and the blood fruit and the endless experiments involving monkey shit – she had even started asking questions.

That wasn’t new, of course. She had an inquiring mind – one not shy to ask an endless barrage of fiery questions. That was one of the reasons I’d fallen for her. She asked about the fruit. About the bamboo. About the flaming monkey shit. And, of course, about my Best Friend. All normal. But this time?

This time, some of her questions were about me.

About my childhood. My parents. My herd. My eventual exile. My life in the Order. My work – my impressive kill count – highest in the Order. My swift rise through the ranks. Copper, Bronze, Silver, and then Gold…

That mountain hadn’t been scaled in a day. I’d learned that lesson many cycles ago. Having the highest kill count wasn’t about how many monsters and vessels and corrupted spirits you killed each day. It was about putting in the murder every day.

The key was consistency.

That’s how I’d gotten here.

One murder at a time.

Or, in this case, by revealing all my deepest, darkest secrets.

Now, I realize this may seem counter intuitive – to expose your weakness to the most dangerous creature you’d ever met. And yet, my Best Friend’s plan had worked.

He was right. The trick was to be vulnerable with my lady.

And if that applied to the physical – weapons, blood, and dirt – could that not also apply to the mind – to emotion? Like wielding words as weapons?

So, I lay bare the history of this broken vessel…

All in the hope of luring her in, drawing her out, scaling those defenses that she created around her heart. And with each question… I came a little closer.

During our conversations – hours spent by the springs – she told me more about herself. About her prolific family. Her many, many brother and sisters – a natural consequence of long-lived races. Her dozen step-fathers. Her mother’s distaste for traditional birth control methods. Battle training and warfare and etiquette all infused into her tiny, young vessel. All of that hardship and pain a kind of bloody fertilizer that would help her to grow into the strong, independent, brilliant, beautiful woman I knew. I wished to write it down. To immortalize her story for all of eternity.

To make it last forever – even though I knew it couldn’t.

Nothing ever did. Even the bloodied and most exhilarating killing sprees eventually come to an end. Typically, because you ran out of things to murder.

Or, in this case, because a massive meteor appeared to be hurtling directly toward our tiny, peaceful, and blissfully remote cottage. The one that would almost certainly interrupt dinner. All four courses – the patio table already set. Even the pitter patter of acid rain had slowed and then stopped. A beautiful evening with clear skies, the sunrise an ocean of orange on the horizon. No doubt, the meteor had burned through the cloud cover.

“Horus, where did you put the—,” My Lady began, stepping out of the cottage.

She cut off as she followed my gaze – up, up, up toward that enormous ball of fire streaking through the evening sky. Just a small twitch of her shoulders – it’s where she carried her tension – that’s all that gave away her anxiety. One that mirrored my own.

“Surely, it will miss us,” I offered, hesitantly.

“I’m not so sure…” My Lady murmured, trailing off. Her eyes suddenly burned bright and that fire streaked out into the air around her, forming a complicated series of diagrams and numbers as she calculated the trajectory and arc of that celestial body.

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“It’s coming straight for us,” My Lady said then, the words damning.

“I suppose we should evacuate.”

“Yes, I guess we should.”

Yet neither of us moved even as that fiery ball punched through the few, faint wispy clouds, the moisture dissipating in an instant and forming a glorious halo of vapor that reflected the waning sunlight. It was beautiful. Almost as resplendent as My Lady.

“Is it dinner yet? I’m starving,” Danae grumbled tiredly, waddling out of the cottage and rubbing her stomach. Her precious burger plate must be empty.

“What are we all looking at—oh, shit,” she muttered, fear fighting back against the effects of my Best Friend’s proprietary blend of herbs and spices. “Is that going to hit us?”

“Yes, yes, it is,” My Lady answered a moment later and my brow furrowed. Was that a note of sadness I detected in her voice? Disappointment? Maybe?

Was this it? Were her defenses finally starting to crack?

Would this shooting star finally grant my wish…

Would she finally tell me her true feelings?

“Then why are you both just standing there?” Danae demanded, her eyes glowing gold. “Can’t you stop it or something? It’ll destroy our dinner if you don’t!”

Not a care about her own vessel’s safety. Only her precious food.

“It’s impossible,” My Lady replied calmly, her hands still tracing images in the air beside her – schematics and diagrams; angles of attack. “The meteor is too large. My beam would only destroy the surface layer of rock and the rest would still make impact.”

“Uh, alright, then we can run, right?” Danae asked, turning back to the cottage. “I’ll just go get the food and then we can—”

“It won’t be enough,” My Lady interjected, those flaming calculations growing and multiplying as she stared up at the meteor. “Even if we started running now, we couldn’t get far enough away in time. The blast from the impact will be at least a hundred miles wide.”

“Horus! You can just go punch it or something?” Danae demanded.

“Too big. Too high. My Lady is right,” I growled.

“Then I could shield the cottage and the food—” Danae began.

Only to stop short as she saw My Lady’s stoic expression. “Our best course of action is to go inside the Toxifovos’ cave and layer your shields.”

“But… but what about the food?” Danae asked in horror, the gold in her eyes flickering as she stared bleakly at the table – then back at the kitchen window, delicious, tantalizing steam wafting from that opening.

My Lady swallowed hard. “The cottage will be destroyed,” she said, her voice stilted and too cold. The same voice she used when she was trying not to act upset. The same one that her cold-blooded family had beaten into her fragile young vessel.

I was so close. Come on, so close—

“No, no I refuse to accept that!” Danae snapped, her eyes blazing gold once more, her gaze darting between me and Eris. “You two are gold-ranked vessels. You have to be able to do something! Anything. Think of the burgers!”

My Lady just shook her head. “Maybe if I could make my beam stronger. Some sort of lens possibly? It would need to look roughly like this—” Equations suddenly exploded through the air and the fiery outline of a lens appeared – one almost larger than me, its curves calculated with perfect precision. She’d designed this? In a mere moment?

But there’s no time to build such a thing…” My Lady trailed off, the meteor growing even larger. “We only have sixty seconds at most.”

Danae’s brow furrowed, those panicked, crazed eyes meeting mine. Then they dropped to the axe that was leaning against the table.

And in that moment, we shared a connection – a communication.

I started to shake my head – shooting an alarmed look at My Lady. My eyes pleaded with Danae. No, she couldn’t do this – couldn’t reveal this. My Lady would get suspicious. This was something I hadn’t shared with her and for good reason…

However, Danae’s expression hardened.

“If I don’t get my food, then deal’s off,” it said.

“I can get you more food,” I shot back with my eyes.

“It won’t be the same. You promised me!”

My eyes flitted skyward again. “Well, I didn’t expect a huge meteor—”

“Horus can help,” Danae spoke up, crossing her arms and glaring at me. Almost like she was daring me to murder her. I knew I should have just tossed her vessel in the springs…

“Help? Help how?” Eris demanded, looking surprised – almost excited?

I grimaced. My secret had been exposed. My weapon spirit was good at many things. Killing. Murdering. Pillaging, of course. But many things could be a battle. The war for my Lady’s heart – one waged with [Bullshit]. Also, a kitchen. A chef pitting his meager abilities and tools against the fires of the furnace. Grinding up and forming the demon monkey meat into perfect burgers. Pounding the dough into submission.

While that last task might only require bare hands. The rest required tools – weapons of war. Knives. Spatulas. Whisks. Pots. Pans. An oven rack. Measuring cups for carefully weighing out herbs and spices. A grater to add a hint of blood fruit zest to the burgers.

And my weapon had spirit delivered again.

“His weapon. It can transform,” Danae said.

Of course, she knew. She had insisted on watching me cook – standing there and staring and drooling through the kitchen window. To prove I could supply her with an endless stream of food; that I could buy her silence and her help.

My Lady stared in shock, her eyes wide. Looking to me. “Is that true?”

She almost looked… offended. That I hadn’t told her? That I’d hidden this ability? I hadn’t wanted to! But if I’d told her, what then? How long would take for her to start asking more questions? She was far too brilliant to let it end there. For example, if my weapon spirit could bake a quiche, could it do other things? Possibly even chip away at the walls surrounding her heart with an overwhelming barrage of [Bullshit]?

It was a tactical error. The cost of not killing the vulpin when I’d had the chance.

My entire battle plan now put at risk by Danae’s stomach.

However, there was no going back now.

“It is. It’s true,” I growled quietly, head bowed.

My Lady looked back and forth between me and Danae then – her eyes squinting in sudden suspicion, her beautiful, perfect mind already hard at work, no doubt.

“So, all those kitchen utensils. The spatulas. The pans…” she began.

“Yes, that was me,” I answered. I’d tried to pretend Nyx had made them.

We just stood there, looking at each other, that silence growing long and heavy. Pregnant with many more unasked questions with terrible answers – growing almost as wide and as fat as Danae—and, just like Danae’s weight problem, both of us not sure what to say.

And then, the moment I’d feared. The flash of realization in her fiery eyes that I’d kept this from her. A secret. The small quirk at the side of her thin lips – basically a smile. And then the words I’d dread most spilled from My Lady’s lips…

“Why didn’t you tell me about—?” she began.

“What are you two doing?” the vulpin snapped. “Stop the meteor!”

And in that moment, Danae – fragile, fat Danae – she re-earned her place by my side.

“She’s right. There’s no time,” I said, pulling my axe from my back.

As My Lady looked on in fascination, a pulsing white light enveloped the blade, growing into a bright glare. The metal melted away, widening and stretching.

This time, I wasn’t making a spatula. Or a pan. I was making a new weapon. A lens as wide as my arm span and as tall as a tavros. Stretching out, out, out until the metal grew thin and clear as glass, following the outline of My Lady’s lens precisely, my hands only shaking slightly under the tremendous pressure.

Starsteel was the divine standard for weapon spirits, although difficult to wield. With practice, it could adopt the elements of nearly any material. A perfect match for me.

Or… almost perfect, I realized as I watched my Lady.

She stared in fascination and delight at my massive tool.

“Will this be enough?” I asked, trying not to let the strain show in my voice. I needed to maintain my spirit to keep the lens together like this. “Or do you need for it to be bigger?”

“It gets bigger?” she asked in disbelief.

I smiled then. Of course, it did.

“The meteor!” Danae reminded us, pointing straight up.

If only a look could kill…

Actually, could that work? No, no I needed to focus.

My Lady shook herself, fire blazing behind her eyes as more flaming calculations erupted in the air around her, her spirit’s power pulsing and flames coiling across her body. Her suspicion and surprise was soon replaced by something even more tantalizing and rare. Excitement. She was practically brimming with it, her lips peeled back in a vicious smile as the fire clung to her body like hellfire.

She’d never looked lovelier.

“Oh, this will do nicely,” My Lady purred.

Then the fire condensed into her palms, growing in strength and power. Growing so bright that I could no longer look at the flames directly – that I began to grow concerned. Would that heat harm my weapon? It had endured the heat of my Best Friend’s furnace, but even that paled in comparison to the power My Lady had summoned.

Yet there was no time to ask.

Because My Lady fired.

The beam of energy erupted from her hand in an instant, wide and large – the same beam I’d seen destroy a mile-wide swatch of marsh. Yet as that energy touched my lens, it condensed, funneled down into a narrow pinpoint of pure, destructive power.

My Lady’s fingers wound through mine then, that ivory power still infusing the skin. I looked down at her in surprise as even more flaming calculations drifted through the air around us. “There’s no time!” she shouted. “You need to maintain your spirit’s power, so I’ll aim. We’re going to cut it in half first!”

So, we did. That narrow laser beam struck the meteor, seeming too small and feeble to possibly destroy such a monstrous thing. Yet it sliced cleaned through the rock with barely any resistance and the meteor began to break apart, the two halves splitting in midair.

My Lady moved my hand again then. A crosswise motion that was almost too fast for me to follow – but the beam did. It traced those outlines hovering in the air before her, chopping those two halves laterally into a dozen rocky fragments.

And then, just like that, we were done. Both of us staring up into the sky as flaming stars rained down around us – My Lady’s hand still held in my own. Then her eyes drifted to mine – and mine to hers. As though they had some gravity of their own. One that pulled me down into their fiery depths, a blazing inferno I could get lost in forever.

“Oh, shit!” Danae screamed as the meteoric fragments struck.

The ground bucked, just enough to break us from our paralysis.

My Lady glanced at the vulpin, brow furrowed and raising a single, flaming hand as she stalked toward Danae. “Summon your shield. I’ll empower you—”

“I’ve got it!” the vulpin shot back, flinching away from her.

She looked to the kitchen one last time, blood fruit tarts still cooling on the sill – steaming and fresh and piping hot – and her resolve hardened. Then Danae summoned her hearth spirit – calling on its power to save her precious food.

And it answered.

Good gods did it answer.

Golden energy swept away from her in a dome, growing, growing, growing until it stretched to cover the entirety of the cottage and the springs and the blood fruit grove. As that barreling wave of dust and debris rippled across the tops of the forest, the energy thickened. Danae added layer after layer until the shield glowed a solid gold, adding every ounce of nimbus she had – her legs collapsing from under her.

I hadn’t known her tiny fat vessel held this much power – this much nimbus. She hadn’t before, had she? That weak, ineffectual vulpin? She’d barely survived my Best Friend’s hellgate. So, there must be some other answer. The blood fruit perhaps? Weeks spent gorging on BBQ? The nimbus suffusing her vessel?

Regardless, the evidence lay before me. The debris struck with tremendous force, smashing against that barrier and the ground shook under foot, listing and cracking and titling… but the impossible shield held.

And, moments later, the barrier began to collapse.

A single fracture at first, then it exploded apart.

Revealing a scene of devastation.

My Lady and I stood just outside the cottage – the one that was still intact. Only minor damage to the walls – the poo-crete impossibly strong. The bamboo forest around the PB&B had been blown away, piled up against Danae’s shield in huge, twitching, writhing mounds. And overhead, twinkling motes of golden energy rained down around us.

Our eyes met again, once more – My Lady and I.

My blood sang an anthem of victory, one I knew she could hear – it was the rare smile on her lips – the way her eyes burned with fiery passion. My weapon still spread into an impossibly wide lens. My fingers still tingling from her touch. Those equations blowing away on the breeze. That… that was the first time I’d used my weapon with someone else. That was our first real battle together.

And it was utterly glorious.

I could even forgive Danae for betraying me.

Because, at least right now, I didn’t see any incriminating follow-up questions shining in My Lady’s eyes. Only eager excitement and the promise of bloodshed. Pride at the utter destruction that we had created… together.

And I had Danae to thank for that.

Also, the meteor.