The combination of Recoil Burst and Portal Hands was insanely powerful.  It essentially turned Recoil Burst into a ranged attack — albeit one with limited accuracy that took some time to pull off and endangered him while he was doing it.  Still, it was going to be pretty amazing.

He briefly considered going back right then and there to rescue all the prisoners, but thought better of it.  He had little control over this new skill yet and, based on how the giant ockdine had reacted, the gnoll mage had some magics even more powerful than Rikan’s.  He’d only killed Rikan through a very lucky sneak attack.

Escaping for now was the right decision. 

Jerome decided to test one more limit of the new move before continuing with their escape: putting both arms through different portals.  The first one went through, but when he tried to create a second portal he got a message: Limit of one portal at a time this skill level.

When he tried to double-up limbs on the same portal he got a variation of the same message.

Rayi interrupted his experiments with excited chatter.  “If you’re me, does that mean I get to be you?  Did we switch?  You can have my power if I have yours.  Do you think if I die I can respawn with a different power?”

“No respawns.  No power switches.  No—”

“The gnolls said they respawn, so we should respawn too.”

“No respawning for humans.”

“No.  My sister is respawned somewhere.  And she died in battle so she was basically a martyr so she’s gonna be awesome when she respawns, like she’s gonna have an even cooler power and then—”

“Shut up,” Jerome said harshly.  He didn’t want to think about the girl getting snapped in half. He didn’t want to listen to this kid’s weird religion-talk.

“I don’t even know why you’d want a bunch of girls after you die.  So gross.  I want exploding hands and shape-shifting like you have.  Were you a martyr?  Did you fight the World Government?”

“I said shut up.”  The government propaganda videos hadn’t been lying about kids. ‘Kids: they’ll distract you from the pursuit of pleasure.’

Still, there was some primitive longing, hidden deep and not yet rooted out, to provide protection.  Whenever an antiquated game quest had tasked him with saving someone’s child or younger sibling he felt some stirring and wondered what the old systems of kinship had been like.

Whenever he saw someone who looked like him, Jerome had a flickering forbidden thought: are we related?  Do I have a brother, or a sister?

Rayi looked at him with this strange look.  It wasn’t resentful or angry at all, just… hurt.

Dammit.  The kid wasn’t even trying to manipulate him, to earn his protection.  It came as naturally as breathing to him.

It didn’t matter.  Jerome had already made the decision to save someone before all this emotional crap, so he could safely think of his current actions as not being manipulated.

“Come on.  Let’s escape.”

Jerome had transformation access to several of the gnolls from the previous battle, so he transformed into the higher-leveled one (level 8).

The exit still had two guards on it and now they were hyper-alert.  One was even looking inwards, protecting the exit.  It was a futile gesture when it came to ockdine, who could just crawl up walls, but it was hard to truly internalize fighting something with a different form.

Which was exactly what Jerome was counting on. 

His magic was weak enough that he couldn’t expect to use Crystal Overload or Hold effectively this battle.  However, with Portal Hands he could definitely freak out the guards and cause some chaos.

One was standing next to the wall, looking inwards, with his head temptingly close to the stone.  Jerome would walk out around the corner, just enough to get line of sight, then Portal Hand to the side of its head and smash it into the stone with Recoil Burst.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That was the plan.

When he used Portal Hand it ended up just a little bit behind and to the right where he intended.  No matter: he would adjust.

That’s when he discovered another limit: a tiny, almost-imperceptible delay between impact and feeling, between thought and action. Maybe an eighth of a second each way.  He’d been so enamored with the ability before that he hadn’t noticed, but now, using it in earnest… well, it should still be good enough, as long as he didn’t try to thumb-wrestle the guards.  He had to get in, hit them with a Recoil Burst, then get out before the guard had a chance to react.

He adjusted his arm, trying to get it to the side of the guard’s head, but the floating hand somehow caught the guard’s attention.  It turned enough to swat the hand away, landing a hit that knocked Jerome slightly off balance.

Time for subtlety was over; he probably wasn’t going to get a hit knocking the gnoll’s head against the wall like planned, so he opted for the simple and easy attack.  He put his Portaled hand on the gnoll’s back and used Recoil Burst.

That launched the gnoll towards Jerome.  His Recoil Burst wasn’t leveled up yet and the gnoll form cut his skill level in half, so the gnoll only left the ground for maybe half a foot, but it was stumbling for quite a while.  That left an opening.

Jerome ran forward, recalled his hand, and wound up a vicious claw attack.  The gnoll had only barely recovered its balance when Jerome hit it ferociously, momentum and buildup allowing him to take off a good 37% of its health in one swipe.

A good start, but now there was a problem: the second guard.  It was running towards Jerome.  He couldn’t take on two guards at once.  Without tricks he might not even be able to take down one.

The guard he had clawed was just now recovering.  Couldn’t have that.  Jerome put two hands on its chest and used Recoil Burst as hard as he could, making sure to stagger his feet in a strong stance, press them into the ground, and fully activate both of his hands in order to get as much of an effect as possible.

It worked, launching the guard six or seven feet backwards.

Poor guard.  It hadn’t known what was happening this whole time.

Now, however, the tables were turning.  The second guard was rushing at Jerome and he didn’t have time to react.  The full force of its running claw swipe would hit Jerome in the side, doing massive damage.

That is, if the guard wasn’t thrown off by a small disembodied fist punching it in the head.  “Heck yeah!” Rayi yelled.  “I got’em!”

Now instead of doing massive damage with a claw attack the surprised guard merely barreled into Jerome, knocking them both onto the ground.  He took 23% damage, which made him curse his true form’s continued weakness.

When he got back to camp, he was going to train hard.  Until then he had to survive, and he had a gnoll laying on top of him.

He was able to get his hands into position and Recoil Burst the thing off of him, at least partway.  It bounced up, which let Jerome get his feet between them and do a four-point Recoil Burst.  That was effective.  The thing tumbled backwards, all the while being hit sporadically by the inaccurate but insistent Rayi.

That one was distracted for now.  The other gnoll was getting up and preparing for another attack.

Jerome had a solution for that.  He used Portal Hand to perform a claw attack on it, and then… his wrist locked up.  The thing had anticipated the move, absorbed the claw attack, and then caught Jerome’s hand and arm and put him into a wrist lock.

From eight feet away the gnoll twisted Jerome’s wrist, pushing him painfully and helplessly onto the ground.

Talk about a downside to this move.

Maneuvering out of a wrist-lock was normally hard (he presumed), but because of the eighth-of-a-second delay he had zero chance.  He couldn’t even try to kick the legs out from under the gnoll — it was just the gnoll and his cruelly twisted wrist.

He tried using Crystal Overload, but the pain interrupted his channeling.  That tactic was out.

It laughed evilly, then dragged a sharp claw along the soft underside of Jerome’s exposed forearm.

Jerome bled from a distance, an unnatural and terrifying phenomenon.

He had to get out.

He had to transform.

There is a split in your soul.  You have two options:

* Wait until you put yourself back together

* Transform now and permanently dissociate your right arm.

What?

This was a horrible message.

He had a soul?

Portal Hand split it?

And Transform required the soul to be in one piece or he lost one of his body parts forever?

He wasn’t sure which of these revelations shocked him most, but he didn’t have time to dwell on the philosophical implications.

What he did have to worry about was his HP.  Each rake of the gnoll’s claws brought it down a relatively small 9%, but the bleeding… the bleeding would kill him soon.  There was nothing Jerome could see — save permanently losing his right hand — that could stop it.

Maybe Rayi could save the day again?

No.  The second gnoll had regained its balance and was facing the small boy.  If Jerome didn’t act, Rayi would be dead soon as well.

Time to make a decision.