Both weaknesses were nurturing as they were torturing. My two muses were the cause.

Heitir straddling me and kissing me everywhere shoulders up but my lips while I laid down, more passionately and slowly than even my most romantic and long make-out sessions.

Natalie singing sweetly and sadly the bittersweet song I'd hum most if only once in awhile, accenting in the kings english no less, while she laid beside me and kept her left hand over my heart. I could feel her song in her hand radiating out, as well as every vibration of sound, the pulsation of emotions.

"I'm lonesome since I crossed the hill, and o'er the moor a-and vaaalley, such grievous thoughts my heart do fill, since parting with my saaally. I seek no more the fine or gay, for each but doth remiiind me, how swift did pass the hours away, with the girl I left behiiind me.

"Oh, ne'er shall I forget the night, the stars were bright abooove me, and gently lent their silv'ry light when first she vowed to looove me. But now I'm bound for brighton camp, kind heaven, I pray guiiide me, and send me safely back again, to the girl I left behiiind me.

"The bee shall honey taste no more, the dove becomes a raaanger, the dashing waves shall cease to roar, ere she's to me a straaanger. The vows we registed above, shall ever cheer and biiind me, in constancy to the girl I love, the girl I left behiiind me."

She hummed it lightly and more playfully than sweet a couple of times after, but it just came off as sultry with her eyeing me as if I'd break soon. I'd already broke, but the climate for my prospering the energy I needed to cultivate was making me whole.

At least I had told myself so a hundred times or more in the last few days.

She was too good at bittersweet, sandwiched between sweet and happy notes at the beginning and end of every line was the sad and bitter ones that barely reached above an emotional flatness, and those central tones were motivated by her own sexual frustrations. In other words, pained truly, but those tones clawed. They made me feel her hurt when I didn't want to.

As much as I wanted them both to keep doing what they were, their charms were too much to ignore forever, yet the years of distance I'd kept them from pushing things saw everything turned around on me after they were no longer intimidated in any sense. As well, now they brushed my hands away, but only most of the time. Not all as I had.

Thankfully they had some mercy, and knew what I was about, but the situation was not making things easy on us or others. All of our frustrations were subconsciously obvious to most, but clear to some consciously, and with all folks reincarnated you begin to see maturity trying to overdo itself too much. Few were against that enough.

Reborn or not, nobody wanted to see kids with adults, and few young teens found themselves attracted out of their age range. It was not so uncommon for people to die together and find each other, but that took a certain amount of consistency. It meant living and dying, fighting and growing, doing all together.

Even should some strive for it, they had to be close in certain things. Their powers developed, the volumes and types of said powers, their experience gained and level, if those things weren't close they'd be split. If one was below by some margin, they could lose some power forever and end up imbalanced. That assumed they were at all.

Few this far had never died, those were still in the eighth division.

I didn't know about my past comrades. Catherine had been on the two-hundred and thirteen, Kate had died, who knew about the others. Alyssa, Marguete, Skulde, Eleanor, and Paige. They'd be Old-Goddesses still, with light-bodies, if I found them then I could help them reach fruition and get their help. Of course I could get them to be queens of cities in the prime.

Some capable allies were likely ahead, but I hadn't seen them in my peering into prophecy while achieving fruition. While they hadn't done that themselves, like Konagi they were not visible to that. I was glad to have met her and learned that they were likely still alive, and still annoyed at myself a few years on for not figuring out more from Catherine.

I'd heard to go down that many divisions she'd no doubt have lost some powers, but she'd used quantum power to teleport us to the capital from somewhere in the Valkyrian city. There, people didn't call it such, the people there more typically identified less with Akyrian in favor of Earth knowledge and lore. 'The City', it had been called, ambiguous and distant.

To think she might have had grinded experience to go down divisions without penalty was too much. But then I remembered something. What had made them different besides a lot of other things later had been them slipping their souls into Akyria. It was one difference that might well be why they'd become impossible to see. It could be what Konagi had done too.

I wondered if they did not have access to the same, or a different neutral area as the split male and female spirit species of humanoid, or a method of travelling between divisions.

Fucking-A!

They were making new bodies after moving their spirits to other divisions astranautically! They'd made the astral and the physical their bitch! By remaking only themselves they'd be free of bias or corruption where creation was concerned, but there was that one question, why hadn't they done the same for Kate?

'Stop thinking. Get up, go out, do something.' I thought, but the act, in trying to I was held fast.

"I'm not done with you. You need more training. Stiffening up to a dangerous contestant is accepting defeat. Do you admit surrender so easily? It's only been three days and nights, fool."

Heitir cooed, mocking me with my own words. I'd taught them to her for her earliest battle mantra, though she'd already known love and war were one. So here we were. She kissed with no more or less vigor, but my whole face and neck were long sensitized, the blood circulated to the surface everywhere by the firm pursing of and gentle suction of her lips.

"You could defend yourself when we fought, or at least we both accepted that lie when I told you those words. This is not a fight, but if it was, you'd be beating the defenseless." I nagged.

"That's right! It is like he's defenseless!" Natalie exclaimed, mocking feint annoyance, then looking to her partner in crime. "Heitir, it's just like when we were being retaught to fight, he needs some time and pressure to realize that his strengths are really his weaknesses and his weaknesses are his strengths.

"That's why he complains so much, his weakness is trying to show him it can be greater than his strength." Natalie dealt more of my words against me, piling it on, and Heitir had to hold me by the hair of the head to stop it from turning towards Natalie. "It'll be over when you finish your training. Bare with it, for all of our sakes." Heitir said as if to comfort me, and they kept on with the theme.

"I'm just saying we were supposed to go to the hot-shot-high-school here to be screened and tutored where we stand to learn, there's stuff I have to do eventually that's best begun yesterday. Now we won't even know where the classes are. I'm starting to think you two are upset because you'll be in different groups than me.

"If we didn't need to redevelop muscle memory, I'd blow it off mostly. Also there's a potential for three spots in our party, and if I'm going to catch up to you in a year, it'll need to be filled up. Catch my drift?"

"Hear him now Heitir? Blow it off mostly. He's revealing his thoughts and trying to pawn it off on school like we're really kids again. Doesn't he know we can see through him like he did us?" Mock concern, a favorite sarcastic twist of both of them, they'd stolen my thunder. Now I just had sad sarcasm left where the hole was that had been my favored enemy insulting and teaching tool.

There was no mock concern left, only a lot of very real concern. I now lived in constant distress, our lives and our evils were now one. Lord, help.

"No. You either know, or you are confused." Heitir said, overmockingly serious for my tastes as a joke, but the drama it added was a flare that made Natalie laugh long until it petered out as giggles. While she had, smiling lips had kept on their work, but she was too busy trying to hide the smile to take notice she couldn't seem serious to me.

I'd told her too many times she was more attractive smiling than serious, but lately she'd done it only to fish out compliments, and then mostly flirt. Or mock me when she didn't, especially at these times, when we three were alone.

"He's definitely that. When do you think he'll figure out his cock has more sense than he does?" Natalie asked, and her chin started quivering just as she finished saying it, before both burst out laughing. Heitir bounced off me unceremoniously and the two walked out if the door of the room in the inn heading to the bar to order breakfast for themselves. I was left like an outgrown toy.

'I'm not gonna say the male race just went, but sorrry boys, we had a good one. I won't sell us out and join over, but uh, I just looked our death in the face too clearly. Humanity is doomed either way you spell it. Why even bother trying to unfuck this mess when either way I'm fu-."

Rolling over, I quickly looked out the window to peer at the sound of a carriage too heavy and with too large a team of horses to be other than imperial, but moved to sit back down when nobody jumped out right away. "Speak of the devil. Here I was thinking about being royally screwed, too. It's a shame, the two together are company but the third is a crowd alone.

"Y-chromosome, hold on little buddy, wait til' they see what happens when we turn sixteen. The last laugh has not yet been laughed, pal, then they'll be the ones left with their motivation burned out and on the bed. I'm not an overgrown toy. I'm not." The identity crisis had to wait as Hailey - or the real Hally - jumped out of the carriage, and beelined towards the inn.

The Whizzing-Wyvern was mostly a place nobles got drunk, but the few prostitutes around the capital were also frequent flyers, the rooms being seldom used were truly both nice and cheap. Yearly rent was a platinum penny. Most chose a house or shop front to live in free, but living outside of the square came with risks. There were not enough people to fill even the smallest inner city section.

Still, that also meant that the capital had more crime in it with everyone there, it was just kept out of the capital itself.

The minor taxes on businesses, new goods and high value or volume trades, non-imperial-charter services, and contracts all funded guards and reparations to charter beneficiaries. In essence, imperial services, but it was more service than shakedown usually.

The imperial charters were usually to allocate people as a resource when threats attacked the capital. They technically and literally would requisition people and their items, but the need for items was not near the problem in the twelfth division generally. There were more of all resources, but still at times there were threats that required a lot of what groups might hold the most of.

Contracts could be any service, usually seeking a particular sign, station, or at least skill-set. They might be imperial or royal, and noble or common ones, even serfs and slaves could issue contracts. There were attacks on the capital often, besides times when events outside of it threatened the lands around it.

As such there were times resources were necessarily sold at prices that wouldn't be pitched higher when they became needed. Folk who tried to bankrupt the people they had to live with in the divisions and got it in their head to profit from misfortune wound up taking the descending dive down divisions.

I'd been borrowed from, bartered with, robbed a couple of times, but all in all the imperial democratic functions kept things fair. Resources that had been unimaginably rare for me had a habit of coming back to me at least threefold most times, others were things in bulk I was remembered to have stored, those types often came back tenfold at the worst times.

It sounded nice, but it wasn't, they'd have better tabs on what I had than me if I let them. I'd never have minded, but they thought of me as a pushover, thankfully they did so because I wasn't lending out things they couldn't and wouldn't replace. It was a concept a lot of them pushed for, even knowing I had kept little of the dozen domes boons. They'd gone so far as to try and seek out Kate where I told them.

The middle of the Pharoae in it's deep, desolate desert. They'd never reach it, you either looked for years or you were shown its location by someone else who could teleport there. Finding it once was all a body could physically do, I had only gone there with Kostya, teleported by him the once and a few times myself after. Here it was much more of an olympian oasis.

Most of what healing leaves from a tree they wanted were found there, and a few dozen potion donations from them were as desired as the fruits that replinished massive volumes of stamina even as it went down ones throat, but the weary waters of the oasis had a special still quality like the void steel and the void itself.

Potions made with said waters didn't lose efficacy outside of material space. Inventory space was minimal and time sensitive as storage items, with spatial qualities, both were susceptible to spoilage by time. At least, temperature and moisture, or contamination, exposure to sunlight and other such factors were still eliminated by storage items and an inventory.

Material storage items were all the rage as one entered the twelfth floor and needed timelessness for items, and yet, they were an item one could make with resources found in the division worlds central divide from the two-hundred and thirteenth one on. Storage items had the potential to be long replaced by some.

There just weren't nearly as many who'd readily expirement with the effects of enchanting new resources, or enhancing them with alchemy if not fusing them with other materials, once people found a use for one it would go where it was needed. Accidents were more commonly how a breakthrough occurred, when discovery was not necessary it was left behind by most.

Lately instead of nice free potions and fruits, I'd worked the last year making things people could have had more of if they'd expiremented more theirselves. Instead they'd begrudgingly pay high prices for what they should be able to look at and get an idea of how to make. Potions might be hard to recreate, but items were often easy to replicate with the skills.

I wasn't making anymore Papao storage items, they were too overpowered, and Konagi had brought down a church in the inner city that luckily was as empty as that part of Valkyria happened to be in this division.

I made my way down to breakfast, which I nearly made a whisky until I remembered my age. Hash and eggs wasn't normally on the menu here, unless the larders were empty, they were at least once a month since we'd moved into the inn. As stated, most came to drink, but the owner slowly bought more groceries to prevent waste. I liked his shrewdness, but Natalie was mean hungry.

And she didn't like hash or eggs, nor bread. In other words even though I really liked hash and eggs we never got to eat them because Natalie wasn't having it.

"Hey. How fare you, battle-brides?" Hailey greeted the others first, not offensively or even passive aggresively but seriously and familiarly.

Of course Heitir who I'd thought to kidnap once and make a trophy toy out of had reversed those roles long ago. Even before she'd become cocky having learned to fight fist to fist with most anyone. Who could blame her when there she was to teach them better in every sense? Nobody smart.

"We're well here wonder-wife, and yourself?" Heitir responded.

"Wonder-wife?"

"We call you that because we wonder where you are while we lie near naked against honored husbands body." Natalie clarified.

"Can I have a glass of whisky there, Jorge?" "A shot?" "No a glass. And a plate of breakfast to wash it down with."

"We're not eating here." Heitir clarified. Jorge actually stopped reaching. "Jorge, I'm a paying customer and a fellow man, you make me a plate and hand me that bottle." I said and put down a gold penny, a fortune for what little I was asking. Sadly the man ignored me, grimacing a bit nervous while he picked at his own hash.

"You bastard traitor to men you, don't you dare listen to them over me. I'll burn this bar to the fucking ground after I cram you in a cask in the cellar, bust up all the bottles of good gin you keep the bottles all polished up of, drink all the cheap shit on a bender until it's gone. Don't test me Jorge, I've been tested for the last three days and nights.

"So help me god, if you look over to okay it with anyone but me, I'll start the fire with the marrow from your spine and rip off your arms so I can break this place up with the hands you keep it clean with."

We weren't the only ones at breakfast for the first time, but I didn't care, my masculinity was flaring up all the wrong ways. At least it wasn't a bad time. It turned out that I got a glass of whisky and breakfast after all, which I needed, because the girls were only getting wound up.

Sure Natalie and Heitir were swell, but the idea of an empress being more than an occasional wax seal and charter demands to us, they rightly contested all things Hailey together. It had just evidently reached a boiling point. Drink, Jack, drink. Just not a bottle, you're a lightweight in a lightweight body.

"That's not training anything but his patience, imbecile, don't you dare put your filthy crotch on him until after I've married him. I thought I made it clear I get him first since we're marrying first." Hailey criticized and scolded at Heitir.

I slammed down the empty glass but didn't break it, it was a close deal but I was trying to relieve tension on both sides first, and second I needed the subject to change immediately. By the smile on their faces it wouldn't.

'Uh-oh.' I said, feeling pretty drunk already without the bulk of the glass I'd knocked back taking effect yet, and pouring another glass full in my cup. Then I started breakfast as if I hadn't heard what Natalie said to Hailey.

"He married us months ago, long after we each beat him alone in a fight once, as he vowed to at our discretion."

'It was a promise, not a vow. I said I would marry you, but not when. You both decided that together but you didn't do it to hurt Hailey or me. Why would you now? Am I to be the fulcrum of your leverages against each other?

Of course Heitir didn't wait for me to admit defeat. They both knew like I did who had lost, yet only I was certain that we would all win later if they didn't muck things up.

"You're both really stupid. Truly, you insufferable wenches never should havd made it beyond the division you were in. Hasn't it occured to you that a wedding isn't officialized until it has been consumated?" Hailey responded.

I fell for her a little at that, not true love because I couldn't, but oh did I remember love and feel it stirred inside indirect. It felt fresh whenever it happened although it wasn't such a common feeling, the last time had been for a few minutes days ago, before Heitir had taken a sweet idea too far and kissed me for days.

A guy was attracted to what he was attracted to, for better or worse, at least she didn't stop to think that letting me kiss her back would have really made what she wanted to happen occur.

Natalie had to hold Heitir back, whilst Haileys guard literally smiled like a buffoon eager to see his own empires heiress fight another young woman. Hailey flashed a smart grin and knowing eyes at me with a quick wink, then strode over graceful-careless with an envelope having her own seal, then exited without looking at cracking Heitir. She did stop to look back and moon at me a few moments at the door.

And exited just before a glass finally struck the door frame from Heitir. Not her glass, someone of the other individuals present had lost their juice, yet hadn't noticed it for the argument they were trying to ignore.

I could only wonder how many fights like this had happened across the divisions. God knows, I don't.

"I'll consummate him on the steps up to the palace, in your own bed, I'll do him in the square where everyone will know I took him first. Fuckin' bitch." Heitir said, dropping a silver coin in an empty jar on the bar, one for the tax on cursing reigning imperials.

"Legally, I'm obligated to remind you it's a silver coin per curse involved, but only an additional copper coin to repeat it until this same time tomorrow. One copper coin per curse for the exact same statement, naturally." One of the men among the group of five of them said to Heitir.

"Naturally huh?" She said, adding another coin with a humph, then looking at me a bit guiltily. Her eyes didn't show any apology or remorse for her actions, just a longing to have not blown up so much at once to a person she saw as competition. I was trying to dissuade the idea, but it would take her time to understand Hailey would busy herself in endless needs everyday.

The future doesn't exactly wait around as much as we like, she knew that well, we had to shape it to be.

"I've been reborn ten times in these higher divisions, been loved a hundred times by as many as a dozen women, but youth only seems to be easier yet grow harder each time. Every reset it seems like some of the clarity fades." The same man added aloud, looking wistful as he still smiled dreamily. It wasn't a daze he held still, but many memories as if burning in his eyes.

"I feel similar, but my worse failures were early and I learned from them. I'd never cut loose or committed a crime until the divisions. Hm. After them I was one of the first to go batty, but by the time I pulled myself together in a few years it was other people I saw were the crazy ones. The ones who forgot their worlds from before, and took the divisions for a new one." The man across from him added.

Both got up with the others and ordered a drink before leaving.

Something about that group made me long to have more philosphical conversations, but that wasn't in the cards for me, not anytime soon.

I only realized I had used up a sizable portion of the time we had after a few minutes of sitting still, second glass still half full, plate empty as my mind had been. Drinking more once in awhile might not be too bad, I decided, feeling more relaxed.

"Let's go, neither of you have eaten in awhile either, and we have no familiarity with the grounds."

"We do. You were delivering your works a week back when we went, so, we can show you where you'll find yours too." Heitir led where she and Natalie grabbed fresh bread and milk, both still warm, then they explained where my classes were. Everyone had physical training first and last so the cool of morning and evening were not subtracting from exertions.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The rest was typical, classes based on potentials, those with too many were basically left to philosophers where I'd been taught though. Champions and Heroes here, six or seven espers were not atypical to them, only there would be none who mastered them all and at least one who'd gone beyond mastery in a lone element.

I'd been taught sorcerers were those with an edge in power positively and energy negatively.

That mages were the opposite, both were double edged, and that naturally every person fell into one category or another. My class was fool, my subclass was paladin, these were the ways I'd once viewed my sign and station. Jack here was fool, not to be taken too serious or discredited, everything but nothing. Master of everything, but nothing beyond.

An omega in all ways, but not an alpha in any way. A balance, broken to a balanced state, it was still a broken balance never meant to be fulfilled or exceeded. I'd fulfilled it, once, but I had not exceeded it yet. I could only do that in the future with powers, some day, unless I could not exceed it. I didn't imagine I would, but perhaps I could.

Legand was something else, here and in the ethereal Akyria, it was all the just and moral authority of a legate with all the corrupt and immoral potential of a brigand. Legate and brigand. One thing trying to be centralized, Jack or the fool, while Legand was two opposing things, but one balance in contention.

Only a fool could try to fulfill a jack of all trades status, like only a paladin could try to fulfill a crusaders status. You were never a crusader until your crusade was over, never a jack of all trades until you knew everything. Part of the beauty of both things was you could never realize either sign or station. Others could take those next steps, I never could.

My advancements were unobtainable goals, my sign and station were things I had already realized before I ever chose a broken sign and station, yet the realizations which were supposed to be destinations never would be for me. The crusade only ended when you died, you only knew everything when you returned to God where he could answer all the unknowns.

And so, I was the only individual who gained only numbers with a level, no benefit. Attributes, I'd conditioned myself to them, body and mind had both been oppressed by increasing strains and stresses to do it. Skills, abilities, aspects, traits, all manual, products of efforts that saw movement make reality. Not a level up from killing making reality gain movement.

Skills and abilities others could gain if more slowly.

Aspects and traits took longer, they represented more than mere physical and mental changes, there was a spiritual quality to developing yourself to the point of permanence in such ways.

Sure you could pump AGI, but, were you quick in every spirit of the word? A trait had spiritual quality, depth and life, it was animated even when the effects it had couldn't possibly be. You could only have every trait that made sense, otherwise you'd find change necessary.

Being heavy had advantages and disadvantages, just as light did, not all were neutral yet all were useful. Even the double-edged. I'd worn away every double-edged trait to a balance. That was what an Akyrian Jack did. I'd gone down the circuits of contention, it was what an Akyrian Legand did.

What did I say about my powers and energies becoming one thing? Two made one. It was as if they were both double what they should be, both for my developmental stage, yet they were one unit undivided. That happened as I became a journeyman.

How did I explain that each element had seemed to split? I genuinely could not make myself create words for unknowable facets, divisions I could only ascribe to more energetical and spiritual sides one way with powerful and physical sides the other?

I'd done everything backwards to go forwards, but the only way the inverse would become true again was if I died. Spirit-side of elements could shield from attack, but didn't use the energy up, wielding elemental energies without releasing them.

Physical-part of elements wasn't even power at all, they were energies, but don't let that fool you. Think; thermal- energy or fire, electric-energy or lightning, kinetic-energy or physical power, water-pressure, air-pressure, molecular-density or earthly mass. I could find words for some others, but felt no desire to.

In a way I was frightful of over exploring this, as such had once led to experiences for me I dared not risk to repeat. I didn't have to use them apart, adjoining them together made them more normal, but then the drain was only about a third of usual upon energy. Feeling my energies clinging and resisting to adhere together and in me was a thrill, it made my blood rush.

I felt like a sun that would not be quickly burned out from all the energy it stood to use. What would adepthood feel like? Mastery? Then, reaching to steps a Jack was not meant to, yet would foolishly seek knowing that you don't break the universe because it breaks you. What then? Death of me? Destruction of all around me, like Kostya worried over once?

It wouldn't be any type of edge extension I'd experienced, which was too many powerful experiences even now.

If there were questions about exquisite goods, then people thinking I had something that slowed energy use of all types would be true trouble, only the idea I would be using crystals energy stood to keep me from being exposed. A journeyman shouldn't have far more efficiency than a master, but, at least the grandmasters would be more so. How much, I didn't know, I had never met one. Not knowingly.

I knew that there had been almost no deeper developments, and the few there had been were mysterious or from fruits that couldn't be grown anymore. Just eaten or saved for losses of powers, if not sold for exhorbant sums. I didn't doubt there was one coming.

Spiritual state development was possible. Physical positions of said spirits to move to where they could develop potential to unlock powers, those had been sealed, and yet the same unsealing of the divided world that had changed me also changed Natalie and Heitir beyond what was said to be possible.

The fruits I gave them didn't keep increasing powers and energies aside from a moderate boost to powers and a heavy one to energies. It increased developmental gains, particularly in children, body and mind ones attributes would experience a fertilization. Regeneration of the stressed and strained being was a part of it.

Those qualities had supposedly been lost to said fruits, they were only supposed to restore power losses and grant a small energy boost if used reactively instead of proactively. Other than powers and energies one had actuated, they were merely a food you got the benefit from once in a life.

Something in us entering and leaving that place, it's unsealing, all of us had been allowed a moment for that lost potential of greater change to fill us. We were using it up and growing again though it was no longer a constant.

All of these potentials that seemed untapped, they were worth fearing, anyone of them I'd neither foreseen a hint over, nor foresaw as necessary to achieve victory. There were many victories worth pushing for, but only the one of remaking or destroying the divisions was required. The one that came was unalarming.

Crusader became my sign where Jack had been, I knew what my crusade was, but I had never consciously put it as a higher goal in my vision.

Jester was then my station where Legand had been, probably since I jumped from fool to clown even in my own eyes, I'd long declared myself and kept doing it every moment more than the last. I'd long meant it and never forgot to remember I'd eventually be what I meant to become.

What I didn't expect was anything else to occur, luckily I was caught off guard, because there was no trauma to it.

I could tell it was a portion of the ether-world of Akyria. The spirit of Aerich was before me. The orb-of- occupance was in his left hand. His right sheathed a spirit-sword, and then it produced a crystal I had only seen in anothers hands in achieving fruition and sensing the full future and its various potentials for fates.

"Haaah." He groaned.

"A failure. My last was the worst, of course. You turned from goodness and cut love from yourself, walk the path evil lays for you to it's truer trap, and you killed. You didn't just kill, you massacred and butchered, playing in gore like a pig rolling in its filth."

"Master. That's all true. But it isn't all of the truth. Do you know why there were less criminals in Revenia, and more in Akyria, noble Crusader and King?"

He waited impatient and seething in his skin.

"They knew what we really were. Their laws were perfect. Knowing the truths of the darkness in you all have is just the path you reward yourself from overcoming the potential for failures. Crimes are not always crimes. Favors are not always favors. Killing a killer after you is not murder, it's self-defense, not choosing the world.

"Lending a helping hand to someone who doesn't want to help themself isn't charity, it's enabling, not choosing the self. Absolutes are foolish as doubts at times, just as you must know, you always have to strive to be better in all ways for the sake of all.

"I've watched Paladins, Monks, Priests and Priestesses, the greatest of gods people live life of sacrifices. The ones who should have had more kids, but they chose to take care of others. The ones who should have had peace, but they gave it to others. The people who went without so others wouldn't. I've seen this.

"Delusions. The ones who deserve children end up with them, these holy people, yet they don't even have to produce children to get them. They had more peace in them because they could create it in others, and made it for themselves more by trying to give it all away all the time. They were never without anything, God sent more than they'd ever need their way.

"Nothing is as it seems, but you truly can judge a book by it's cover after you've understood all of it. Only the writer can know the full scope of the lights and darks or the spirits within it, only they can know all the forms or shadows and bodies within it, and only they know all about the logic and empathic colors and textures as they envision them.

"People are just like books, a record of all they've known and experienced or felt, except instead of being the book they try to be the reader of themself. We can't watch ourself directly from an outside perspective, even when you leave your body it isn't possible, then you're just the spirit looking at the body from outside it.

"I won't reject anything that I am, even if I made my mistakes. One-sided acts, arguments, thoughts, feelings, or anything else is limited. I've thought on both sides of enough things to come to terms with some simple truths. At a point a person can only stand so much. Pressure builds. It doesn't always leak, it can explode, and that's what happened.

"I'm no better or worse than any other, but that's all the more reason I don't have to take shit from anyone else, all the more reason I'll do as I please. What pleases me is results, not methods, so I'll use any method to get the results I need without scruples for those gettinf in my way. I know I'll do some bad with the good.

"That's because I'm not confused about what I aim to do anymore. When the evil is dead I'll feel better enough about putting it down to start lifting myself up along with others again. The good, at least they're confused, they don't know. I'm going to be really bad and really good, a mirror, one that reflects the reality it faces.

"The evils I don't let out are worse, but I pull the reigns instead of them, I can only try to not let them possess me by measuring when dark is evil and when it is good. Killing isn't evil, it is dark. Sex isn't evil, it is dark. If you make good of those things, you turn a darkness into light. Nothing is as it seems when you're confused.

"I may know wrong, I can't say honestly anymore what with these wicked worlds of devilish divisions, but I know I can't be moved anymore on certain things like that. Love I can restore other ways, even if I lose every power, I'd use emotional flow to stimulate it back to life. Forgiveness I have and give still, my love is broken but not gone.

"I do not have to live with evil, and I'd rather kill it than let myself or others die by it, from others or myself. Many won't stand for that, but the same people only protect evil. My enemies allies are my enemy. I can't be a crusader and not be a destroyer, a paladin and an assassin both seek to kill the one responsible for aught.

"There are always the dark paladins who kill paladins that stray from the light, or who kill those in the light. So too assassins of light often kill assassins who go from the dark, or kill those in the dark. Other paladins will see a dark paladin as a necessary evil, but a true dark paladin slays all evil as it is and becomes condemned.

"Other assassins will see the light assassin as the same necessary evil, but if they get too eager at preventing leaks or punishing injustices among their fellow killers, the light assassin also becomes condemned. Paladins have assassins, and assassins have paladins, though each is enemy to another.

"Isn't it odd that among both groups they each put those most like what they view their enemy as like above them? The most hot-blooded paladins, dark. The most cold-blooded assassins, light. Enemy putting its enemy over itself, inside of its own ranks to serve as justice over justice, yet no two should be more different. Heavenly paladins, earthly assassins.

"One for God's glory, one for Earth's bounty. Heaven and Earth, light and dark, spiritual and physical, but in the end mere reflections of two sides of the same single thing only able to be contending with itself. Different in every similarity though they are, the same. Paladins given light to go in the dark, Assassins given dark to go in the light, one for justice and one for chaos.

"Both serve out what they think they don't deserve themselves. Paladins serve justice and kill, but are not above the injustice of killing. Assassins serve crime and kill, but are not out of ability to incriminate themselves or others. Each is unjust then.

"But an Assassin can kill a tyrant whose own soldiers couldn't with a flick of the wrist. A Paladin can kill an arch-demon not even a thousand champions could with a single word. Then each is just.

"Constant chaos can become order, too much order is chaotic. A chaotic event can lead to great order, if it's the right kind. Order will naturally lead to chaos if only because people will disturb it when they are. None of us would have to worry if all of us were aware causing contention is a cycle you can deny, but deny causing it, and still accept cleaning up others mess.

"If it wasn't let go so far, it wouldn't need killing when it lost itself, what we call justice. Paladins save people but sometimes must kill the same to do so, assassins kill people but sometimes must save another to, each is incomplete by halving theirself and separating from the aspect that the others embody.

"The difference between me and you, or me and an assassin, I'm whole instead of split down the middle. I've just taken their beneficial and detrimental sides and put them all into perspective. Assassins kill for their own interests in money, but they're too immoral to kill who it would be better to kill, they do it for money and thrills.

"Paladins kill for others interest in safety, but they're too moral to kill who it would be better to kill since they do it for security and lives. The many have this habit of following few individuals, yet, even the most foolish of average people besides assassins or paladins can tell the ones best killed are often the same ones they protect.

"I'm not going to fall into restrictions or laws that protect evil. I'll break every rule I need, break every life in the way, and break myself from the things that try to hold me back from justice. It's as good as war against the whole world. The evil powers will fall when they are forced into order and many will die, the good powers too when chaos comes as many those they look up to perish.

"For one persons interest, it doesn't seem fair, but I can't help it if the masses on both sides choose to follow the immoral who prey upon them. They decided to accept the lives they live, to blame me for finishing off broken foundations will be natural but unfair for me, but that's how things will go.

"Odds are I'll die trying, even if I survive here."

"You won't. The things I hear you say are all the twistings and corruptions that both groups you mention know to watch out for. There is no moral murder which assassins even know, like there is no selfless sacrifice and all paladins know it, both do what they do for selfish reasons that reveal truth. The only way to be selfless is to be selfish for what benefits all.

"Few find that by turning the dark in them light, though many find all the selfish reasons to act. That's why there are few old assassins, but very many old paladins although there are few fit to make that mantle for themselves."

"I always reasoned there were few old assassins because the world was against them that they loved, and that there were many old paladins because God and the spirits they were for were always with them that they loved."

"That's only to prove my point, not your corrupt and centralized view of abstraction. Assassins live in the world and fight for it in an evil name, yet die because God is against them in spirit through us in it, the same way the devil is with them in the world."

"God is never against anyone, none of those he has made, and he made the everything and everyone including the world. The world is neutral, only the devil is outside us in it, but God and Jesus are in every heart whether their hearts are with them or not. The hearts of assassins judge themselves just, paladins involvement is an injustice.

"The way your world and mine used them was wrong. Those were them that needed help the most and we failed them long before they were ever what they became. I became paladin because that was true power you had to be weak for the spirit and strong for the world, defenseless to God and offensive to evil. Even the Arcane like me who became champions were no match with upgraded class.

"If I hadn't become one I never would have learned how much further inaction could go to be justice, nor how much shallower action should be when you feel moved to it. Aerich, do you want to know what it is that both a paladin and assassin lose to become what they are, those aho embody high virtue and sin each lose?"

"Say your foolishness, but nothing you say will end with us not crossing spirit-swords at least the once." He urged this, but flashed a saddened smile, as if pitying a childs world twisted answer to a complex dilemma.

"They give up knowledge of good and evil, Aerich, long before they let others tell them who to kill they sacrifice the most central part of knowing good and evil more than any others do. That's the moment we start trying to make ourselves apart from our two most intrinsic natures, good and evil, and why paladin or assassin people take one look at us and see insanity.

"Those for whom religion means killing, those for whom killing means religion, both are two in one contention that's a balance neither side realizes. Each side can only contest with another, but loses the ability to percieve it as immoral to kill the other, those few always are destroyed for being corrupted are the purest left.

"Light assassins who realize the contention among themselves exists, the ones who snap and begin to see assassins as what they are called the corrupted get put down by the ones who resist the reality, killing the few who struggle to hold onto a reality I can only imagine. Those who see a truth you or I would go insane from too.

"Dark paladins are easier for us to imagine like that. The corrupted ones are just, those who realize the killers among them are more a threat than the ones they are meant to be against, while the dark paladins who kill them resist not temptation but reality. Both of us saw corrupted as better off dead than resisted who lived among us.

"I'm not here for your class upgrade or anything from you. You have naught worthwhile left to offer me, master, but yet I offer you the truth stolen from your perception. Consider upon it for a time skeptically while I prostrate in defenseless poise, berate me while I bow, reflect while I rest easy and free.

"You feel every compulsion to kill me, and yet I have no such designs."

He couldn't do but as I asked while I sat with my head bowed low, legs beneath me, arms away from my body spread with palms to the floor. In no way could I defend myself at that range and resist as he might, Aerich could not strike a defenseless person nor not strike a spiritual enemy.

I had turned the tables, yet they were turned on both of us when he went to lift me by the hair of the head, one moment he'd been snarling for a facial expression and reaching.

Then there was another. A destroyer was there with the crusader, both reaching towards me at an angle, each snarling as they reached towards me. All at once I was me and a me who had been an assassin facing their master, something that had never happened, only it was as if it had.

There was me as an adult who had played Akyria and gone down the path of worldliness. The wise Jack, world weary and material maniac, me without the simple and worthwhile. This earthly version was there with divine steel armor and a void weapon, a me who'd have killed Aerich by treachery long ago for more power. One my superior in power.

The destroyer who stood over this me was the Valkyrian empress herself, Syorina Valkyrian and Hailey's mother, but she was no mere spirit as Aerich. The two faced off, but whatever weapon assassins had apart from what paladins did, it was clear close quarters were not in favor of Aerich nor paladins or crusaders. Spirit or not he was dear to her dealing death to.

Even after his killing she was enraged for a moment longer and attacking at what had been dissipating of him. Then she looked towards me.

"Why would you put my enemy so close to me if you sought to kill me? Why wouldn't you have struck when I was vulnerable? How can you turn away from your need without flinching?" She asked upon crouching, weeping insurmountable insanity as she clung at my collar, voice shrill and eyes aware as if life or death facing.

"You can't be sane, you're a lunartic the same as me, so why can't I kill you?" She asked, clinching me so tight as she shook me by my jacket I could barely believe she wasn't trying to kill me.

"The same reason he couldn't, but I didn't bring you here or him. This was supposed to be my station surveying. I don't know why you're here at all, but the spirit of this world is dead. If not for our being here it would be lifeless, at least of humanoids. Look around."

She did just that a moment, loosening her grip, eyes flashing around as if everywhere around a threat might be lurking anywhere and at all times.

"I was training the body your mind was to be replaced in upon death after your soul separated, but the last thing I remember was readying to leave the empire when you said to. Of course the thing I went back for was that body, but your mind was already in it, and you don't have the dark body I made.

"Your spirit remains in a body so dark I'd say the void itself blessed it, but the void is ill impressed with spirits. But if that bastard could communicate with you because you have spirit, and I can because you have mind, you can't have a light or a dark body at all. What are you if not the unmade destroyer I see?"

"He saw a crusader unmade by his actions, if you see an unmade destroyer you're closer to the truth. But I don't seek to make or break, I seek just change."

Instantly we were fighting after a few sounds nearby, not each other, but a man who appeared undetected and immediately with no percieved power used. The world-weapons she used were two hatchets, that was what I'd learn her ilks weapons were called. It was the first time spirit-weapons and world-weapons fought together, yet in a dead place for no apparent cause then, just survival.

Neither of us alone were capable of anything but that.

Both of us could only exchange an occasional desperate look that quickly revealed we were both lost to action.

Reacting to a weapon that came from nowhere was one thing, but there did not even seem to be one wielding it.

Every strike I blocked with my spirit-sword destroyed it, while I drew another from my side Syorina blocked the next blow, except after the first round she actually started using her body to shield her weapons and myself. The weapon targeting us began to sunder one of her hatchets our fourth joint movement, the sixth it had been aiming to destroy it.

Her body took no damage when struck but the hatchets had made her sweat thin beads of blood all over, blood which collected and streamed over her with large gaps of flesh visible, her flesh like a million tiny lands with rivers running between dividing them. She had that look that said she was bracing for an immediate impact.

That face and posture were of someone awaiting a sure maiming, but working out the best way to survive it.

Except when I became more scared than anything it would strike her hatchet and injure her permanently, the weapon we'd been against those many moments of short seconds was in my hand. It had been in my control the whole time, only my own confusion about its nature confused it.

My comrade did not trust the sword in my hand any more than I did.

But she still let me heal her hatchets with what miasma I could, draining my vitality to heal her dark body, as such dark healing was the only manner for those without spirit. All I used was miasma, and yet her spirit was there almost instantly, what had originally been healing her began to harm both of us instead.

That was just another shock to us both at this point.

The look on her face showed pain a moment, then she was collapsed flat by a bliss that Syorina would only wish would drive her unconscious. Overwhelming pleasure, but almost none of it sexual, this overcame her and had her mouth gaping as much as her eyes while she through back her head and crawled backwards away from me.

There was no helping my reactions after I finished healing her body with mana, hatchets let loose where she'd started crawling back, I straddled over her after I had stepped enough times to be standing atop where she was sliding herself backwards.

Her eyes showed only fear and sorrow, but the rest of her was overcome by the choking sensation she could not breathe against on her own anymore, only I knew exactly how she felt for every reason.

How long had it been since her heart moved? How long had it been since she felt a goodness that was not an earthly one? This was only her own spirit returning, God was not even with her and couldn't be until it did, but she was dying even as she started somehow living again impossibly.

When I sat and put pressure on her diaphragm with my hands pushing sternum, the limited breaths she drew were more desperate and choked, but she did not notice breaths were coming in easier as well as going out far more easily. If she did, she'd know she only had to want them to come, but that hadn't been the case for her in a long time.

She thought I was killing her, the sword, the miasma disguised as mana she couldn't understand being that neither should be able to harm her much from a weaker opponent and only because of her nature, and now somehow a weaker body was choking hers.

Compressing and releasing to stretch out her breaths worked for a few moments, but her knowing I was killing her rapidly detracted from my ability to heal her, almost as soon as she started breathing on her own she stopped. Not the type she was going to start breathing back again after if she went unconscious, if she did, that was it.

So I did what came natural immediately before her conscious mind could wane.

I put my lips over her lower lip, pulled it into my mouth, and slid my tongue over it into hers and over her tongue. That stopped quickly when she gnashed down hard enough I could feel her teeth close to touching on either side of the muscle now fastened in both of our mouths.

I put her hands around my neck and she obliged me, raspily and shakily breathing shallowly again with squeaks, and cutting off most circulation keeping me conscious. It was perfect, she wouldn't let go with her hands or teeth now.

I slipped my hand up her dress and then down her small clothes with my right hand and began stroking the bottom of her pelvis firm but tender, untying the corset on her back over the next half a minute just enough to get that left hand between her right breast and that damnable device a man could love to hate and hate to love.

Man or woman, both could and should.

By that time, the heat and sense of her heat were overwhelming, she was brimming with emotion no matter what it was. As for me it was the exact same, I was brimming, and with her gaining more breath every moment she thought she was winning while I was really losing I noticed her squirm more.

She wasn't aware of any intimacy, I was just perverse in her eyes, the fact she was responding to the touches was escaping her. She did not feel herself growing wet or notice how easy her sex accepted my touch, nor feel her skin gooseflesh over much of her body, there was only the senses she had conditioned to pleasure the most.

Causing pain and seeing others feeling it.

There was no look of pain on my face, maddening her more and more. Time would not last long for both of us this way, one or the other was perishing, if she had her way me and my way was not going to be any different. Both of us were choosing her.

Pain struck my face when I placed myself in her, that she felt only after seeing a few times what was causing the look she had sought to inflict, and it was then she began thrusting in contention to my contentions.

In only a minute she let go of my tongue, spitting it out with mostly blood and then pulling my own lower lip into her mouth and lolling tongue. I could only wish at first to engage so willing an opponent as her tongue, with mine too swollen and throbbing one end and numbed at the front, it took a few minutes to be able to.

When our tongues met she was breathing half heartedly through her nose and panting shallow breaths of pleasure in my pain, fearful of a retaliation of comeback, and yet she couldn't stop herself from pushing her tongue in my mouth.

That was when for her, breathing and life came back, and she rolled me over to finish what we'd both started. My healing and her killing, only, she still couldn't tell the first wasn't her. She wasn't in a state to hear it dying but now I was dying and couldn't tell her, or we'd loop back.

I didn't want her to let go anymore when the orgasms started, she couldn't ignore those shaking her, and at that time I had no regrets any longer about having squeezed her breasts so brutally the last minutes, that had been the only pleasure I had given her directly at all, a small price for us.

When she let go and we were both somehow breathing, we started over again, by then I was already well into adepthood again.