There had been no hate and insane lust from her, but upon reaching adepthood I saw no further growth, not even the second time we'd taken each other. I'd had to be more careful with her when my body was neutralized. Her hips were pretty bruised and her ribs weren't whole, indestructable body that she'd had, the spritual quality she'd lacked had returned to her.
Now neither of us knew what she was, besides a dark body with a spirit, or what I was. My body wasn't shadow as the meeting of divine and void should imply based on what I knew.
Neither was hers illusion though she had been dark and her spirit returned.
Physician became my sign instead of Crusader or Destroyer. Advisor became my station instead of Jester. Whatever medium I'd found from this class upgrade, it was not the type of change I had feared though it was unexpected, and having unknown potential for manipulating others beings could be useful.
Will would shape how it was harnessed.
The phantom-sun-sword I'd sheathed had taken the place of my spirit-sword. It was visible to myself as well as Syorina, since the moment I'd had itnin my hand, but when we had been facing it for a few seconds only we'd come closer to death than either of us had been in a long time.
Less than a half hour after I'd ended up there, I'd crawled out from under her with a battered neck and a shredded tongue, for healing.
She'd stood and cleaned herself, then threw towards me the utensil she used after wiping herself between the legs, turning the used portion of the folds of the handkerchief towards the inside. It wasn't even close to enough dryness left to use for the wet mess we'd left on me.
I still used it for what it was worth cleaning, produced a small and thick towel to finish cleaning myself which she reached for needing again after I used it, dropping the orb of occupance and the crystal that Aerich had in his hands at my feet.
I didn't have the words to comfort what she was feeling, so didn't try, besides vulnerabilities she had been long without what distressed her most was having mated with a man her daughter was the same age as.
It really and definitely wasn't the time to tell her I was in the process of marrying the daughter she had muttered I was the same age as.
I don't know why I felt the drive to run and grab her hatchets, just that it was why she ended up returning back where I did into the twelfth division world, still wiping at the last drizzling moisture when she wasn't pulling her corset back tight. It didn't make her skip a beat, she threw the towel on the ground and strapped herself back up, ignoring every look she drew on us.
They were my age, but the divisions knew teleportation and also that subtle queues and waves of smell could reveal where and what people had been around or doing before they teleported, and a young man without pants or shoes with a woman who had no dress needed no explaining. There was no good excuse.
The front of my loincloth was soaked, mostly smeared with our fluids.
Her hair was still mostly neat, but it was disarrayed enough where it had been pinned tight to leave the pins lopsided with a few hanging strands, and the fact we were both numbly relaxed despite all this could only be seen as some attempt at mine of making a statement.
If I was, it would never have been there nor then, where all the worst things I could imagine happening did and were made possible.
Natalie and Heitir came looking for me after someone saw a boy disappear in a lime-light, I'd learn from them later, only when they cooled down. Hailey had already been waiting where they had been and the field I'd waited to go to after setting eyes on my other classes buildings had more than one adult in a teacher position come.
It wasn't just all three I romanced, but some of the teachers I'd be learning from who had sought answers, and Hailey of all people the most stood to be shocked all around.
An empress her senior in the world now, her fiance who clearly had just been with said mother, all while she expected to find a missing love she instead found two. She was the one I most worried for then naturally, but, she'd come at me with enough of a measure of anger the mother who did not know her daughter stepped in the way.
"Mom, it's Hailey! Your daughter! He's my fiance! You step aside for a moment and we'll talk, but right now I'm going to kill him." Hailey boomed. I'd never, not ever heard any bass in her voice, but what little bass there was to her was in every word fully. If she was a killer she would be killing mad, but she was not, she was a lover.
"No. I'm sorry whether you are my daughter or not, but if you're who you say, you'll know that we belong together. Even if you saw us apart, but especially this close, you shouldn't miss it." Syronina rehearsed this as if she'd said it a million times, instantly rebutted was further indignance by her tone, yet Haileys look pressed on.
"That may be true except for the fact our marriage was arranged before you two skipped all but the last step, you might have the dominance now, but if you don't step aside I'll have it later and there's no way I'll let you by his side then. Someone like you shouldn't be around him, or even want to!"
"Is it true you are arranged to her, an empress, that she's my daughter?" Syorina asked me, softening after a short sigh, with a look like she wanted to clear the air between us all.
"Yes, it's all true. We arranged it three years past, Hailey and I, she has been the empress-heiress for the last year. Hailey I didn't go looking for this or.. have sex with her for no good reason. I can barely say I did it to help her and explain that clearly without some time, but-."
"He did. He healed me. I'm whole and my body was dark, now it's light, so I won't let anyone near him for now. The only person I can trust is him. This place and those of you in it are corrupted, except for those two, I don't see anybody with anything worth calling life. You're all as dead as the world we came from, even you, your body is not as it was daughter.
"I don't want any of you touching what belongs to me. Say what you must, but if you try to touch him or move his heart I'll respond in kind. If I have to move anyones heart they'll not like it." Hailey moved to face her mother directly, her eyes searching both of her mothers hurt, then looking at me and the smirk softening into a smile.
"Tell her to let us talk." Hailey offered. Syorina reached for hatchets I had in my hands, first searching for them at the small of her back where an empty sheathe sat.
"How about - both of you - fuck off!" Natalie started, Heitir added the second, then both said at the end. But Natalie was pushed away trying to move Hailey away, and Heitir was shoved on her rear trying even for trying to push Syorina closer to me away from Hailey.
"What is this shit, Jack?" Heitir started. "Hailey, Heitir, think about it. Truce, Hailey. She bedded him too fast for any of our good, his included, what do you two think will happen now? I may have had him once, but that was before, none of our charm worked in years Heitir. He can't ignore all three of our wills, but she'll die easy to the three of us." Natalie suggested.
"Agreed." Hailey said without pause. "I'm in, but shared custody, no primary or secondary business empress or not." Heitir clarified to which Hailey conceded again without taking her eyes off her mother. Only Syorina had her eyes on me at all, unbothered, the only one of them still rational.
"Will you three calm down? You're not making any sense, but the further this goes, the more of an ass hole you three are making of us all." 'Wasn't it enough I'm the ass here?' I demanded the question, suggested my statement, then wondered annoyed.
"Hell no we won't calm down, don't patronize us." Heitir threw back. "And don't include her in that us!" Natalie accused. "A destroyer can't be part of any kind of us at all, they're solitary creatures, you can't expect me to marry the same man my mother will try to! Plus, she's old!" Hailey complained bitterly.
Syorina didn't look like she'd ever left her teenage years, but while she had been a century old with a dark body, it took those who were old-gods about the same time to mature as she had lived. In a way, she was only a few years our elder physically, and besides that we'd all lived longer than she had.
"Hailey, she's younger than we are, for goodness sake. Current age of her body aside, we're her elders, and I'm not going to send her away unless she decides to go. We worked together to live before I helped her, and I'm sure not betraying someone I owe my life to, besides that I'd say the least you owe your own mother is compassion."
The mighty mistake, bringing up the mother relationship of a daughter you're in a relationship with, on the premise of a relationship you've had and plan to perpetuate with her mother. The look on Hailey was just broken.
If the roles were reversed I'd want someone to do what? Not hold me, not someone disgusting enough to sleep with my father and plan on having me too. Dear God what was I anymore?
I took Haileys hands, lowered to my knees and put my face towards the ground unable to meer her eyes, and just let myself feel the desperation and helplessness. Long before I looked up I was resolved neither to beg with the truths, nor lose more of her with lies, I wasn't going to try and confuse her with a focus to digest for the future but wouldn't understand now.
"You must know I wouldn't ask if we didn't need her to live, and noone in the world could blame you for saying no though it could cost everyone, but before you make any decision based on the many extreme emotions you feel right now at this moment please take time. Just take time to think, relax and reflect, calm and consider.
"I won't accept anything you say right now anyway with you like this, even if you're just holding in all the bad stuff you should be saying instead, hold onto the good things you want to destroy with your words. I beg you that and to take the time we all need you to." I looked at her after and she just seemed confused.
Hadn't I just poured my heart out and even bypassed the love barrier? Of course I had, and the barrier was broken, but why had the cancelled curse not let her be moved by my words? She looked so hurt still I didn't know what to do at all.
"Jack. Feminine posturing is a little different from mens. You don't need to worry so much. I'm not that hurt it's my Mom, or that you jumped into a romance." Hailey said and affectionately brushed the tear and worry from my face. At least for that moment. After it she was fingering the bruises that hadn't healed on my neck while looking at Syorina's bruised hips and back to her mothers eyes.
"You know what you did wrong now, right?"
I didn't. I was pretty sure it was just that I'd messed around with her mom. The blank look, disappearing relief on my face, and my gaze becoming lost towards her short skirts must have somehow come off as understanding. It wasn't, but got my head gently brushed, and Hailey flashed me a worried look through a calm demeanor I wasn't sure had relaxed.
Or had she even been stressed?
Adepthood or not, I couldn't peer the minds of those more powerful, so I couldn't know the answer I would have stolen if possible.
What had I done wrong if not what I had done wrong?!
Natalie and Heitir only looked worried at me too, one crouched beside me at either side after Hailey walked towards the palace, bodyguard in tow looking more disheartened than the last time. I bet the bastard was just jumping thinking he was sure to get a catfight this one, but the parting look of disdain could be for many reasons that he shot me.
"You're nasty. I'm glad my mother wasn't caught up in this place." Heitir chastised, throwing chagrin in my face and taking off quick with a blush that was surely shame, surprising me on one side.
"Graverobber. I guess that's what gets him off now." Natalie continued to pile yet sounding as unsure as I felt, adding else to Heitir as they walked away more certainly. "Was I too hasty with that Hailey thing? I don't know how I really feel about her, Tir, what if she-."
"Are you courting your servants, and my daughter, and me?" Syorina queried as I made my way behind the others. "I am. Why do you ask?" I countered whilst nervously considering all that happened. I felt closer to death than I had with the phantom-sun-sword unwittingly attacking me and her by cause of my own fears.
"Seems like a lot of involvement. Now I could see it if you merely bed them, but allowing and encouraging all of them to hold sway over you, that's going to end in futility. Most likely I'll have you end that slowly without you ever realizing it was me, unless Hailey surprises me, or you find the plight of servants more exciting."
"They're not servants, I spend more time serving them honestly. Both are able enough to awe, they're the best sparring partners I've had in a long time, they just have some pretty radical ideas of what constitutes as training here lately."
"I see. You serve them more so they'll serve you back better, on and on, in essence you're trying to make them equal. But they're not, you don't need to be sparring with people you've revealed all of yourself to and neither do they, all three of you should be finding opponents to your measures.
"They would not be able to counter you if you didn't reveal all of yourself."
"Don't read into their thoughts too much, you'd only be misled as you are about that. I worked them only to the point where we were trying to kill each other, firstly, but too competently to be killed by each other. I still had some further to go, but they'd reached the limits they would in a few years.
"Muscle memory takes time to develop, but full spectrum techniques and abilities don't take more than a few years, and they're both developing. Trying to kill them while fighting them a bit ahead of their level was a good start, they may know most of what I do, but it'll take repetitions to shorten the time and build muscle memory.
"Second, I don't know this new body at all, but to compare me to them now just shows you're lost in their thoughts. Looking through to many memories at once, you take in all their biases."
She looked pleased and thoughtful. "I'm glad to note that, but I don't mind biases with you around, who do you think I plan to correct them by? An advisor instead of a jester; I don't know how useful a physician would be at combat, but an advisor as a lieutenant-general would be worthwhile."
There was too much to tell her of differences, and I was not the only with beneficial advice to give about them, but the rest of the morning I'd missed a lot of went towards giving the teachers an idea of my physical potential. They weren't impressed really by other than overall dynamic.
Folk with certain traits coupled with full measure dynamic attributes, they were the stars that shined, exemplary here or there with strengths and weaknesses. These were the ones to watch out for in the future, those that eyes were upon, I could hardly be called average by general comparing.
I was just too average to be called average, in other words, nothing special. It wasn't like I could have put in more effort and been appraised different, that was the reality, I'd excelled in truth and yet the standardized measurements were stacked against a particularly average person here.
They were looking for strengths to mark for, weaknesses against, so I floated through as if unnoticed. There were plenty of high and low to see where the instructors and teachers looked.
The other classes were similar, although adept I was able to join Natalie and Heitir, Syorina was content to literally counsel with instructors and the teacher in our other classes that she could. It appeared she had actually dealt with most grandmaster level theory, but only one practice, miasma was something she peaked above.
The concept of powers being below someone wasn't farfetched in theory, just practice. It seemed my knack was not for such breakthrough at all, just the opposite, things coming easier for me had reached limitations long ago.
I theorized adding a third element to the corrupt love energy required for me to continue cultivating towards full-fruition, but I didn't know of a more centralized element than all of the pure ones associated with the heart, and those were not something I could share in within the division worlds. Not even restored to love.
My vision and voice had prospered to come back plentifully, but still, there was something I was blind to and could not find with words yet had encountered.
Something minimal I knew had occurred between arriving back and being confronted by my three partners. It had been a minimal movement. It was not from lust and an awareness there should be hate, those days were done, and it couldn't have been related to lust. The only thing that stood out was Hailey's forgiveness.
I tested the theory to find the conclusions inconclusive, but near certain, likely the indications were even in a moment that adding forgiveness to an offense in the midst of lust and an awareness I should be hated without being hated were the answer.
"Natalie, you were older than Syorina when we did it." I'd tried that first, to try and offend her without thinking much, flinging her words against her while the horrid teacher listed away at categories of everything non-physical that was a power you could wield.
She had just flipped me off casually and smiled boringly. "I'll be younger than her too, when we do it again." She promised feinting pouty tones, sultry as ever about such topics. I couldn't gripe with her after that one, her win, throwing your own wit back at you was like breathing to her.
I could only shrug and pick an easier target.
"Heitir, you know what's really nasty? Remembering how chubby you were."
No, no, that had gone too far. Oops. Disbelief, confusion, anger, fury, and then the volcano erupted.
"You god-damned son of a bitch, if I was so nasty and chubby why did you kidnap me to be a sex-slave? Huh? Ask yourself that question, mister smart guy, c'mon and respond to that one without making an ass out of yourself!"
"Well you'd be harder to carry, but easier to outrun."
She slapped me, the second time much harder, then stood completely red in the face and inhaled sharply preparing to holler every word she was about to say. I pulled her down quickly into my lap.
"Relax, I'm sorry, I was trying to break the tension I feel. Plus I'm not getting anymore developments from you two, and I know it isn't your fault, but you two are the ones I rely on for them. I know you were attractive and I don't really think you were chubby or nasty, you weren't chubby and only the way you treated those two was nasty."
"Maybe. You do treat us better than I treated them, but don't play too many mind games Jack, that's how it starts."
I couldn't determine whether it was her forgiving that part of herself or me, isolate whether she felt any attraction for me in that moment, but I could at least say she didn't hold any hate though I'd roused some with her ire.
There had been a marked rise in the energy that fruition required, but only a little, and all I could decide was that it wouldn't be worth alienating them. Not even a little, what I'd already done was unnatural for me, and for them as much as me. At least originally the idea of the two of them with me was odd for all involved.
None of us had done anything like that before.
There was one other thing I tried when we had gotten to the inn. I'd bought an Akyrian hound puppy for Heitir who had been long angered at the loss of her dog among other things caused by the moon crashing into division two-hundred thirteen. Something I hadn't really been forgiven for, nor had she forgave herself over losing what was out of her control to save.
I was sorry for a lot more than just her dog, but I could only try to make it up to her, and though the convenience made it less genuine I looked at every young hound to find the friendliest and make up for that some.
I'd come back from one of the last locations where a farmer had pups, and while they'd been halfway to fully grown, those puppies had been involved around all sorts of activities and animals besides the mans family. All three of them had been engaged enough with the world I'd paid him ten times over for all three.
Natalie might be a feline demi-elven woman, but I couldn't imagine she wouldn't like a puppy, and I figures Syorina might like a companion since she slept alone in her room beside ours in the Whizzing Wyvern. An inn was no place for a pup, people would be giving them alcohol or they'd eat a drunks vomit if they weren't watched.
There was a more marked and definitive increase this time, but me and Heitir had all three puppies, and Natalie worried over me as if I had come home with a midlife crisis. It took her no time to name all three and give them my plate of food, the barbecued pork and fried potato wedges he rarely made and I liked, but they were sports if she wasn't.
I had french fries off the floor they nosed off the plate for the grease and oils.
"The hairy one is fluffy, she's mine. The scary face one is scruffy, he's Jack's. Muffy has a quiet bark, she's Natalie's-slash-Syorina's-slash-Hailey's. Since she has to be masterless, it's good she is so quiet, that way Natalie won't hear her lil' tiny heartbreaking whimpers."
"I'm not taking a puppy! My extra time is mine, I'm not wasting it on animals that won't outlive me. Go buy me a dragon hatchling, or a unicorn foal." Natalie had said endearingly and serious.
"Reptiles stink. Like they smell bad. And I'm just gonna say if you don't have time for a puppy, you really aren't getting any equine animal whatsoever. I won't tolerate you abusing an animal that needs plenty of training and caring you aren't willing to give."
"I'm willing for a baby unicorn. Go buy it and teach me." She implored. Heitir even looked excited for her as if it was a given now. I couldn't say too much, I'd just brought home three puppies where one would've been too much to my mind already.
"I didn't see any young ones around. We can ask next time we're out though." I promised.
"You're not going to find a young one. The mother cares for them even after they're too big to feed, adolescent ones would be young. But only scum would kidnap a young one from it's mother." Syorina informed us. She'd taken to eating with us when we did. Evenings she was drinking until night.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Well I'm worse than scum, I guess kidnapping a young one is trivial compared to other things." I decided. All three humphed at that undecidedly about how they felt. "What's with the faces and attitudes?" I asked to pester them.
"Me jackass. It's me they made the face and tone at."
"Julia and me. Well I guess they can only see my legs behind her."
"Catherine?"
Both looked haggard. Catherine looked exhausted in every way, and mentioned going to grab rooms and food, but Julia held out a hand before she left and then threw me what Catherine handed over.
It was a second spherical crystal that I recognized, again one I'd seen in hands different than the other had been in, those visions close. There was a third I'd seen in my hands before the vision ended, but what they were for, I could not say. If there was power or energy I couldn't tell it exactly, they screamed it, but it wasn't known to me.
"From your lunacy. That was in the ashes of that biiiiig thing you burned. You might remember it, most had seen it, at least once." Julia referred to the moon-landing I was not well known for, not by name anyway, though I told anyone who'd listen I had done it. Of course they knew I was lying, but, all I could try to do was convince them.
If there was another to test it with, I wouldn't, and I'd put it back if I could.
"They know about the lunar landing Julia, I told them, I tell everyone but they think I'm lying because of where it happened and when. If I wasn't here now ahead of it so fast, they might believe it soon." I commented while admiring the crystal.
"Like the guy who does that really needs a power-up. I see you're burning awful bright, not so subtly as transcension, what exactly do you call that state?"
"Fruition. It's not typical, besides the obvious development it begins by doing the opposite of much of what the states enhance, because it floors all but minute powers and energies. You don't just lose almost all of those though, your potentials may grow but your growth slows, as well the ninth esper and the vessel element open up.
"As far as what the actual state does, I can't say other than I can alter it with the other six states I most used before it, and that my head feels straighter than before."
"I hope you mean that. It took us awhile to get to you if you, we actually had an easier time finding and reactivating a destroyed portal than finding a way into the dungeon."
She kicked a hole through the inches thick door, then ripped a sizable chunk out of the doorframe that was thicker and of a harder oak, last she mangled the steel knocker outside the door and added the inner doorknob when next speaking.
"We looked for a way in the dungeon for over a year. Sur-space me and you could get in only together, no longer accessible, do you have any idea what I had to do in order to move through so many divisions this fast?"
"Probably rob, steal, kill, beg, borrow, I'm just guessing but I'm pretty sure you committed crimes to do it that fast." I heartlessly joked. Nobody stopped her from going at me, certainly not me. I had it coming, she needed to let out tension, and I wasn't going to restrain that yet. Better she let it out and I apologized later.
The no nonsense look and doubt said it all before she charged.
Not everyone had lowered themself as much as I was willing to, she'd undoubtedly roughed herself for too long, but I'd never imagined they would catch up. Nope, they were far behind and I hadn't envisioned that, in truth I hadn't come close to meeting those I saw. That would be some time on.
She charged but it was slow, measured and yet as if the fires of hell pushed her on and it's chains held her back at once, if movements could stutter with fury that's what she was doing.
"Get out." She demanded low.
Natalie and Heitir shared a look before the second went out. Natalie said a bit to Julia. "Be easy on him physically, Heitir hasn't had him before, and we agreed if anyone had him before her again she'd take him as soon as physically possible."
"Sure." Julia agreed after a shake of her head, eyes rolling harshly through narrowed eyes at me from her, then sigh-scoffing. Natalie bounded out with a mischievous smile after and a little wave.
My heartbeat sped up a bit, but Syorina wouldn't betray me. I wouldn't be left to the dogs.
"You too. Out." Julia demanded with no hint of patience.
"No. You're not going to kill him, not even if you could resurrect him. You can't remake what you break when it's beyond what you know and examine. He's not the same of body, it would take at least four of our level to safely do that if the one heading the task knows how and I won't take part even if you get the others to help.
"It would risk him and his odd manner of developmental subsistence, and the costs of his cultivations tastes already make more trouble than I like for him."
"How'd he get an empress wound around his finger? Especially you, the world needed you two millenium ago when you were sought for peace. Was his pull on you the reason you were cheated from your greatest hour?"
The silence forced me to action, but I couldn't move then. Julia couldn't be winning Syorina over, certainly not enough to let her kill me, but more hopefully not enough to let her bed me. That was more trouble I didn't need. For all we knew, Syorina could be pregnant, and the idea had been a group discussion.
Things were already tense again.
"Get out, please." This time it was soft, but her hands went to her legs and her forehead dropped a bit as if she might bow next, though she went from that not back to her drained stance. She took a posturing one, leaning more towards aggression after it, already.
"If you agree not to touch him, I'll go, since you've agreed not to kill him. No debates, Heitir would be hurt, don't listen to what Natalie said even if they talked about it. They didn't expect it."
"I'm not here for that. I just want a fight. If he had not denied me and then went on to do exactly everything wrong that I wanted to do right with him, left me behind stranded and lovelorn, and if he hadn't given me that see you soon look before doing it I could forgive him. He did nothing but mislead me then and cast me aside after.
"Nobody has been with him longer or knows him better than me. You're all part of a ploy he's going to pull you into. I don't want anyone to die but I'm most concerned he will. If I was trying any of what you worry I'd never have revealed myself to all those who would act to help him."
'No, don't trust her, stay so she's calm.' I sent to Syorina. She flashed a smile and walked out.
Thank God I'd laid the groundwork for this the first time she said get out. Weaving the spirit energy of quantum to myself and enchanting it to where I'd stood, I used the physical power of the same element and a quantum crystals energy to teleport in one go. I could speak safely from a distance and yet be there at the same time.
My subconscious was in my teleported body, where my soul was, and my conscious could move freely between or split to both the avatar and my body.
"Put your fists up, or use your flashy feet, but I'm coming charging if you don't say something Grub."
"Be-boo-biiip. We're sorry, your call can not be completed as dialed. Please hang up, or try-."
"Grub! If you run, I'll beat the shhhhhit - out of you."
"-goodbye."
It was too quiet where the second avatar was located outside the inn. 'Things shouldn't be this quiet, not with Julia.'
Glass sprinkled to the ground after crashing, mostly the sound of something large going through a window and to the ground, but I didn't think the object was as large as it sounded so much as likely Julia herself. "That's gonna cost you in teeth, Grub!" She yelled, one of the puppies had yelped, and it didn't sound like Muffy. Too loud.
I was sure they were just scared, Julia wouldn't hurt a puppy unless she was going to eat it.
'Where do I even go at a time like this? I've got to figure out how to move down divisions to hide, and see if it's possible to come back, but obviously she somehow knew which division I was in. Each one is huge, I have to start staying out of the capitals, I'll catch Catherine at a better time when there's no Julia.'
"Found you." I heard familiar voice in my ears with a known breath on my neck besides. It wasn't the second avatar she was breathing down the neck of, and there had only been the two.
"You shouldn't be this high in the atmosphere." I barely caught the ploy before she started falling, panicked look in her eyes, and damned if there wasn't sand from Pharoae and mud from Revenia clinging to her split toed boots. I got a look and taste of both while following as she slowed by ki, catching her before she could drop more than forty feet through the frigid and thin air environment.
"I guess you caught me fair with that one cannibal companion."
"Is that why you're avoiding me?"
"Understand that what I felt for you was not the first time I had this feeling. That another woman than my wife had some pull on me. It just kept happening worse each time, but, then she was there. After that I was in a party with her and two of the women I had those urges for.
"That had never happened for me like that except with you when I was really young Kate had split, with you Victoria, but then when I woke up and you were there like that I was pretty disturbed. Worse was figuring out Kate had been dead. I've brought her back but there is still the question of why she died and how.
"I'm not sure I trust Catherine. I'll admit there was some real emotion here of nervousness meeting you again, but I wasn't just being playful or theatrical. We should talk about your experiences with her among other things.
"Also please elaborate why we ate people again?"
"It took time for everyone to adapt. You do understand why there are guns in most worlds, but not trucks or missiles high up, right?"
"Yeah. The bigger things and storages don't go together, there's dimensional limits more than mass limits on the items, so each division things have been left behind and the ones ahead tend towards necessities. Everyone lives like they're waiting for the prime to go all out.
"So the beginning in the lowest division. People had to adapt to the things from Akyria, the changes their avatars there had on them?"
"At a rapid rate. There weren't really any developments for others, they could steal powers of a sort after a fashion though, killing people with more power rewards higher experience. It also granted you their potentials if they were significantly more powerful, back then. It didn't happen much suffice to say.
"Anyway we didn't kill people so we didn't catch up or regain them as fast, so a few frigging times we were starving and ate a little bit of other people, it was just enough to escape hunger pangs until we'd find something that wasn't recently dead people. We saw three of four die."
"Yeah stop talking about it. Really shouldn't feel sick about it. Okay, now, I need to know why we were together for twelve-centuries when two-thousand years passed."
"The original sur-space we made had time pass faster outside than in by a large margin, we entered that for a short time early while things were at their worst, centuries had past by then. It was less dangerous and more so with less people, most of which had lost the bulk of their potentials who were that low, but some powerful figures stayed to lord over it.
"It's part of how we ended up not finding the people you were looking for I'm sure. I wasn't sure what you were doing, but I figured that could be it."
"Why'd you say you didn't know I had a wife, or tell me who you were? You didn't use any powers that you had-."
"Stop. I lied to protect another lie, it might sound bad. The truth is you and I would've just been killed if I had let you open up those trains of thoughts. I can't use powers anymore because someone sealed them. I didn't say who I was because Kostya and Kate both asked me to look after you, and if you knew I could tell you some of your history you would've sought it.
"Catherine isn't your enemy or an untrustworthy ally. Your wife was killed and her soul was sealed by the same person. The same person who sealed my powers, probed at your empty memories, and who killed Kate and sealed her soul. Spartuin, a Legand, a man with the same station as you but a sign unlike any other I've seen. He has full measure physical attributes, of every one of them, basic and dynamic.
"He.. is actually the reason that your invulnerability and immortality were intertwined and appeared used up. As well he is another large part of why we spent twelve-centuries instead of two-millenium together. When he couldn't kill you he found a way to tax both of those states in you to the point they barely functioned.
"The more he constricted each, the more they intensified. Instead of mere immortality to time outside of you aging your body, it slipped inside. Your invulnerability did not naturally take its place, it would be simplest to say he beat it out of you. He never let you die though it was was near the point of activating to resurrect you often, with you near death most of the time.
"I can only guess he found some way to do the opposite and inadvertently condition you with time, although he was trying to make you old. That's what I believe, anyway, not that there was any evidence of the time thing. When he came along from below us he brought trophies he'd won above us. Kates... remains.. were one such.
"When you saw that I didn't see you again until I found the retreat where he'd left you not much more than a corpse yourself. He stuck around a long time just enjoying expirementing on you."
"You're..."
A different Legand than me. There was nothing I'd ever seen or heard about that, and if there had been others, it was certain they'd have been and remained ahead of us. Something was just too off about the reality Julia had suggested. I knew I'd never been captured or tortured, but she was not lying, and both of those things could only be true one way.
There was reason to suspect it.
I was no longer within time, I'd been outside of time long before arriving in the divisions from the ethereal world of Akyria, the place I'd gone along for decades after the few years of playing the ethereal reality Akyria like a game. The world had been less realistic if more real, the game-like reality more realiatic yet less real in practicality than the fantastic world.
I had a keen idea of where and when all I'd experienced happened. Not quite all knowledge, but pretty good guesses even for ideas shy of that. If things had happened to me even my subconscious did not know...
They could only have happened in a time I had not been directly part of. One I'd been indirectly part of in a reality she knew of and I didn't. Julia might be able to say anything and it be true, for she may have seen any number of realities. I felt no threat from her and yet she was potentially the greatest threat aside from the one I sought.
She might even be the one I sought if not an agent of them.
If I was completely outside of time then someone who was entirely within it
"You've been looping. But if you can circulate time-."
"I can't interfere with you. Any time I try your development is only detrimented by my actions. How many people do you think can really rebuild and reconstitute themselves? There's thirteen, and you're one, the only one who does it without losing himself. Everytime you discover me things go out of order more quickly.
"I ask why you trust me better when you figure it out, you say because you can only trust the people who trust others besides themselves, then the end starts when either of us die. Well, sometimes you have indirectly killed the Legand-Legion-Leader, but those end the same way. Nobody but you makes it beyond division-three.
"It's always a testament to your character that you trust allies so fully, you always know that the truth confounds demons more than trying to lie or cheat them, that has always been the thing that makes you a legend to my mastermind from yours. By the time everyone is doomed and starts living death you have blossomed to dying alive." I can't believe how old and distant she suddenly sounds.
Her words are not earthly words and they have no spirit. All divinity in them disappears, even the earthliness is gone, there is only void and emptiness left. Rather than depressing and empty sounding the stillness to her words are chilling to the core and enrapturing.
"So there are no patterns. There are no cyclical nor repeating hinges you can put in place to counter opposing forces. That means every time there is some passive randomizing factor here and there is an active chaos factor on earth before any of this starts. Things that create inconsistencies."
"Wrong about it being people or groups and correct in that there's factors. Me and the Faded-Dreamed have been over a thousand in number since the origin of this opened us up to the run-one, the primeval singularity of this system starting. Believe it or not you were never in the run-one scenario.
"They let us know - that they do not let us know the truth about what run we are on, which loop this is by sequence so to speak, but since the second run you have naturally been joining and doing as you have. Our end has tried all you can think of finding and building up groups and individuals.
"The intelligence and knowledge exists. We know that while we thought you were not part of run-one that you must be, it was the best and worst experienced, our team has thinkers and dreamers like you'd never believe besides plenty of time to think.
"The reason you haven't been there yet is because you haven't been able to physically arrive there, but since you are outside of times factoring your intention to get there persists even after you die in a run. We can't help you do it because even the return of our memories takes time, leaks that become floods over millenium, but even now we only see most of what's ahead.
"With less than seven years left at this point in time and place in divisions, we are already at an end again for the chance at victory, the only other than myself left now is the one who lived through the final flame. They're alive, but they enter a coma they die in on earth upon the pinnacles beginning, and still become a spirit here to suffer the same fate of the final flame at the pinnacles end. The start and restart.
"All of the other faded-dreamed besides me have already killed themselves."
"Julia. Have we ever talked about time? I can listen to facts and think about them all day, but even if this is the millionth run of yours or more, certainly you and I change each time. There must be insights to solve problems you aren't aware of. You've given me plenty of acute and specific but no broad or general logic here.
"I'm just saying let's talk about simple things here. Surely there must be ways you can help me be better next run, at some point I would expect you would have helped me more profoundly if I could help you. Otherwise, everything you're saying comes off like you're literally being stopped from helping. How can you not intervene and give me perspective or help?
"It can't simply make things worse. If we couldn't make it to the end of this place, we'd already be destroyed."
"Okay. No we never talked about time meaningfully. My helping you with the things you're asking for immediately causes the demonic-dimension to start descending from above down into the prime, they don't stop there, and they don't get weaker descending. They only get stronger.
"If you have an idea then share, while not exactly a genius, you have had plentiful opinions that have served us and the world indirectly. We feed a lot of what you taught us and much of what we can share with people over time, but it's very little overall before the ether world and earth meet. Just don't get your hopes up.
"Also, decide whether I tell you everything and things go south, or tell you what I can tell you without - well, causing another end scenario."
"Start with what you can. Look, time loops are hard to truly logic out, if your people are in one with you then you're all in trouble. Your perspectives will be altered - I need to know the parameters in which your original loop began and ended first. Second I have to know how you obtained the ability."
She was quiet too long. Way too long, and I was not about to rush her, but it grew late enough into the night I had to ask Natalie and Heitir for privacy where I'd teleported us to the outside of the inn. Evidently Catherine wasn't involved with her looping business, she asked her for time too right behind the others, then started speaking.
"You're not the only one whose thought we might be influenced by the source of our ability. I can't say what it was without - anyway you have been near it more than once where and when it was - but it served all of us. You, me, all the faded-dreamed.
"The original loop is from launch to fifth division for us the first time, it's been the third mostly since then, you at full fruition when and where you encounter them first. They kill you sometime after when you go beyond fighting through the third, even though your actions are unknown after and you fight through the bulk. They wash over everyone.
"We'll eventually find a tactic that has you reach your potentials in a perfect order." She paused. Constructed her words carefully, preparing to add.
"You made a mistake you never have this time. I can't elaborate on it, but we'll address it next time."
It was my chakra she observed. Not as blind to the earth as I was and full of all emotional motivations as we both were, positive and negative, my sight was keener than ever watching her observe my ethereal chakral circuit. I could see her eyes want to invert it.
"Oh." I said, and swallowed sheepishly, but not the lie. My mouth was dry.
First I knew they were in perfect balance and harmony. Second I knew if they were switched that way I'd feel a pull upwards instead of downwards towards gravity. Third I knew that it wasn't that Victoria was lying or confused, she was being lied to even now, since she said that the only one left conscious was her.
There should be nobody she communicated with left but a person unable to.
So I made a plan based on knowns. As she said I was no genius, but I was damn certain paranoid, luckily being very attracted to Julia right then had me hot and bothered enough to prevent the gooseflesh from occurring. Thank goodness for that lust which kept me grounded, lest she sense unease, a blessing from an angel or angellic being perhaps.
It distracted Julia the moment it had started, as if she sensed it about to happen, and the last time that had occurred I'd been suffering from similar pretensive knowledge without the bright-barrier was just after my subconscious had let out my conscious mind.
I had never fought so forceful.
I thought she should fall asleep and dream as if reality went on like she'd expect, but while asleep, have her body take us to the companion she mentioned was a spirit.
Down the rabbit's hole we went into a warren of wonder.
The senses within their body that was not theirs, I merged with the same sense in Julia and in the same place, and both made of the same beings powers and energies besides occupying the same space and intensities disconnected each from the sources connection.
Those forces destabilizing undid them harmlessly to eithers being, but only because there was no attatched mechanism for deterrence thought that was a potential I'd looked for, but I could not but indirectly manipulate those forces that sat outside a state able to directly interfere with humanoids.
Surrounding whatever the spellform was with every power type I had enchanted in both to connect them in Julia upon their release from the spirit humanoids body, and enchanting them both to return to his body, it didn't require too much finesse. They'd meet and destabilize in her body first, then meet again and stabilize in his.
I only needed to invert them for him. The invasive awareness worked outside-in. Subconscious the spirit mans were inside-out effecting. Reversing that if only the bare majority at the same time I forced them to collide in Julia meant a secondary causal disturbance.
Not only can similar things in similar states not occupy the same space, like repels like while opposites attract. The enchantments would only provide movement, otherwise, it would be natural forces at work that took place.
Inside-out sentience sealed in him flipped outside-in and accelerated leaving him right away, as if naturally eager to leave and return to the original host if not a new one, and it collided more powerfully than I could have forced it to if I'd had master level powers - completely destabilized both forces - and left me pleasantly surprised.
He'd returned to that inside-out state where the forces could not enter, they were bound to, yet could not. He took on a demons appearance but had a mans spirit still, and lied sleeping peaceful and healing, but not even his mother could love that face. God loved his spirit though, so in my book, I'd have to take him as a neutral at worst.
Julia was free and clear but distressed with her state foremost when she woke after it was over.
But that had only been the opening scene of this act.
The individual had become a sort of reverse antenna, broadcasting instead of recieving, and I'd had no desire to stick around sensing the sensations coming out of it. I'd barely gotten Julia and I away from the spirit man a few dozen feet, but as I had been doing it, I found myself positioning our bodies towards sex.
Luckily that took longer - focused on getting away - than the distance to get to sanity was from us. She wasn't in any sort of state for such, but the idea of taking her was intensive and lasting. Sick as it was to be dry humping her while she was raving, at least we were clinging together when the sensations intensity started waning.
It felt like we fought for five minutes making awkward passes and defenses against each other, like a combat neither of us would yield but dared not win or lose, we back and forth perpetuated a war of shifting dominance and submissive attacks.
Whoever made the sweet move, the other pushed them away, but when the other grew offended the attraction switched too. The offender became the offensive, towards desire, and only tried to seem sweet and defenseless. The offended became defensive, away from desire, and only tried to seem sour and offenseless.
Even watching it happen and knowing it was stupid, we might as well have been actors with a script we had rehearsed. There was almost no control left, and the control upon us seemed to have pulled us into magnetic movements as if metal machines, merely along for the ride.
We as well may have been normal again, and caught in a tsunamis tide, in and out of its motions but already dead to any semblance of self direction or control.
"Kostya was getting your faded-dreamed to take care of themselves, I don't know if your group were ever even moving through time, but I know that it takes a lot of power and insane volumes of time energy to even move through that much time once. Any fool knows you should have had more knowledge and perspective."
"This energy?" She countered, every intent against me as she revealed it.
"Tempestive." I didn't know what the hell the word meant I'd said rather than impressive as I'd tried to say. I thought of that time spellform of infinite energy potential as only one thing, defeat, because it exceeded the bounds of my defense to being out of time.
Fire-proof materials didn't burn either, but if you dumped toward the sun they wouldn't just vaporize.
Whatever I said had to have been like a counter, but in truth I was only the most effected by her spellform, that surge of power and energy. Small wonder she had not wielded any powers, she'd been charging a single spellform for over a millenium at least.
The de-synchronization of discordant time did not alter where or when I was after I wrestled Julia over it, her will and mine still wanting to contest, only I never was a fair fighter when the other person wasn't. She wielded what she had power over me with, time, so I lorded over the control of her vessel.
She became like a puppet that thought hers was all the control.
Even still she had started the changes. It wasn't just an uphill contest she pitted against all of humanoid kinds, in her heart and will she did so attempting to give all a better chance besides us and succeeded, but the ideals she had been imparted for me were all the wrong ones.
She'd shaped others wills towards goodness they couldn't have had here naturally at least. Her actuation of the forces she wielded was extremely keen. Mine was intuitive but sloppy, choppy and unrefined, guess-work and a mess of related works I could not bring together as she had.
There we were after almost as if it had been a dream, little immediately different.
A dead Legand and the now dead spirit man were both there, as was an adamant bomb casing, and the only reason I knew the remains of the other Legand were what they were was because I had killed them when Kostya managed to realize Julia was in a sort of grand delusion after she wielded the last of the power he'd given her against me.
It was as if another reality had unfolded to the moment in time we were in, but only a small window for true change had been there, for all that seemed to have occurred there was only a little different to have.
I wasn't certain that the world was unchanged as my experiences and Julia's though.
"Fucking females.." I muttered, letting Julia sort herself out where she laid in a culmination of catatonic and platonic, as depleted physically by her loss as the sex.
"Come on, I'll carry you then, if you're seriously spent. Useless."
Picking her up, the voice I was looking for piped ahead of the man we faced that came running after this encounter.
"General, report." I demanded.
"Sir! The Cockatrices are whole, no issues on our end, we've sacked the surrounding positions and everything else is burning. Your commands, Grunt, Sir?" The general perked up, still at attention, but brimming boldly he was a testament to the void. Body moved but his spirit was still, making machine of the man, perfect precision.
"Debrief the officers back at FOB and then back to the bastion, and loosen up General, this can't even qualify as a skirmish. The real deal isn't far off now."
He wouldn't take informal queue to take a rest position, but at least he was only at attention a short while making me uneasy, all he did after a salute was take a step back with his left foot first and still facing forward. An about face later he teleported off to retake charge of his battalion commanders.
"Julia, just relax and breathe. You're not the first person to be possessed, but you're the first fool I've seen look sad after re-sanctification. Why do you look more lost now?"
"I.. tried to lose to win, but won losing. You tried to win to lose, but lost winning. I think the you from before was right now. My changes might not be what I thought they were."
"Yeeeah. Sounds like somebody had a breakthrough. You can relax, you know, Cockatrices don't judge or engage with civilian elements. Whatever else you have done we'll find a way to forgive and make right. I'm not sure that any change you made will ever even be obvious.
"I was worried too, but I haven't seen much change, just a dead Legand I don't even remember killing."
"He did what you did to me, to you. You used Thomas' body to remove his influence, he used that Legand's body to remove your sanity from inside you."