“Princess.” I flinched at the word, even though Master’s voice was quiet and calm, with a hint of worry to it. “What’s wrong? You’re slinking around like a dog that tipped over the trash can while I was gone.”
My head sank even more, shoulders hunched. It was difficult, but I managed to get my eyes to look up at him. The concern on his face made me feel even more guilty, somehow. “…You have a tail.” It was just the two of us, so my scales were out in the open. Even though many people saw me the other day, I still used my illusion spell to disguise myself when others were around. It just felt weird to go around without it on Earth.
A frown spread across his lips. “Yes, this had not escaped my notice. Just like the other twelve times you’ve said that since it happened. I had to cut up a perfectly good pair of pants for the darn thing.”
I flinched harder. “Sorry, it’s just… I-I mean, you… What are we going to do about it?”
Master rolled his eyes and went back to reading the book he had sent over from Terra. Now that the StormShield was in place, it was easier, but there was still too much interference for a full-sized opening that would let people through. “My plan is to do nothing about it. Transformations are temporary, my soul will assert itself and shake off the effect sooner or later. It is a mild inconvenience, and a short-lived one.”
The words were almost cold and clinical. Maybe they were rehearsed. For dealing with me, or for dealing with others asking about it? “Mrrreh. I still ruined a pair of pants with it.”
At that, he raised an eyebrow. “Oh? ‘You’ ruined? As I recall, I’m the one who grew a tail and burst them.”
The dismissive attitude was making me bristle. “You know what I mean! It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t… If I didn’t mess up…” I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I looked downward, staring at his feet, and the tail that hung behind him with the end of it resting on the floor.
He sighed softly, and the tip of his tail flicked. “Look, it was my idea to combine energy. I knew it was risky, I knew it was a dumb decision, but I tried it anyway. It’s my fault I’m draggin’ this along for a bit. …Get it?” The last bit was said with mirth.
It didn’t help. “Yeah, I… I got it. It’s just… I dunno, I can’t shake the feeling this is bad.”
“Hey now, which of us is the expert on magic, girl? I’m telling you, it’s fine, transformations aren’t permanent. Don’t worry, as soon as it’s gone, I’ll let you know. You’ll get a de-tailed report.” There was that mirth again.
I let out a groan to let him know I got that joke too. Then I sighed. “It’s just… Well, you say it won’t be permanent, but… Mine was.”
The white-scaled limb flicked again, the spaded tip sweeping across the floor, and my eyes went wide as it triggered a memory. “Yes, well, that’s different. You’re a very special case.”
I was finally able to work up the courage to meet his gaze, putting as much seriousness as I could into my eyes. “Master, have you been consciously moving your tail like that?”
He twisted around to look at it, and the tip flicked once more, back to where it was. “Not really, no. It just sorta does stuff like that.”
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes so I could focus on pushing the words past the heavy pit in my stomach. “Master… When I was first transformed, mine didn’t do that. It was like lugging a dead weight around, I had to consciously move it. It was like reaching an arm into a hole and feeling around until I found the right wire to pull. Mine didn’t move subconsciously until my soul changed.”
Master froze at that, slowly untwisting enough to get his eyes on me. His expression had lost all the teasing smiles he had before. “That, uh. Huh. That’s… Hm.” His lips were pursed for a bit, the expression of one screaming internally. “I think I need to start requesting some more books, just in case.”
Both our tails were curling downward, trying to tuck between our legs. “Yeah, that might be a good idea.”
Tensions were starting to build in the city. It had been nearly a week at this point, since the Storm cut us off from the outside world, and there was still no sign of it going away. The StormShield was certainly getting one heck of a stress test, but we were all getting one as well. It didn’t help that food was starting to run low, and perishables would soon start perishing.
Janice was already working out with Master Korrigan how to get some form of supplemental food relief into the city, but Master and I weren’t present for that talk. Instead, we were up on the roof, with Ro, Jared, and Roffil. It was time for magic practice, after all. We didn’t know what we’d be called on to do next, after all. Janice promised she’d join us after her talks, but to start without us.
Master was sitting backwards on a chair he’d brought up, resting his arms on the back of it and his head on his arms. Above us, the unnatural sky continued to lash the occasional red streak against the shimmering shield. We might have gotten used to it, but that didn’t mean we didn’t welcome the distraction. We couldn’t really go out, either, without being swamped by citizens desperate for answers we didn’t have. So at least we had something that let us feel like we were being useful.
Arranged on the rooftops were a stack of department store mannequins, with one set up for practice behind the gathered mages. Lining the edge of the roof were a set of metal poles, each topped with a gemstone. Together, they formed a ward like the practice grounds of the Mage’s Guild had. Any errant magic would fizzle when it tried to cross that wall, preventing anything from causing danger to the rest of the town.
“Jared, glad to see you back. Sorry we didn’t get much of a chance to talk before, I didn’t even realize you were in town until right before the whole shield deal.” Master nodded to the young man.
His left arm was still in a sling. It was healing, but it still hurt a lot for the poor kid. We’d gotten some books on healing magic from the Guild on Terra, but it wasn’t the easiest to follow. Still, at least we could speed up his recovery and dull the pain. “Yeah, I was in that hospital for a while. N-not that I’m, uh, blaming you and stuff? I was a real jerk!” Master was making a “get on with it” gesture, waving his hand in a circle and nodding, so Jared swallowed and shelved the rest of his backpedaling. “I’m glad I was able to be back in time to help out with all this, though. To be a part of the fight to save the town, y’know?”
Maybe Master was still holding a little bit of a grudge from his first encounter, but he had a bit of a scowl on his face. “Let’s save that talk for after we’ve actually ‘saved’ the town, huh? Until that Storm is gone, we’re still in danger. We just have more time than we would have had before we die.”
“That’s pretty harsh, Master…” I looked over at the deflated Jared. “We should probably try to be more, I dunno, pep-talky? I’m not saying things are great, mind you, but that Storm can’t last that much longer, can it?”
Ro pulled out her phone, but then put it away without even turning it on. There wasn’t much point in bothering with the thing most of the time. You could still use the functions that didn’t need a network, things like the camera or playing music stored on the phone itself, but these things were designed around a constant connection to the world. “Like, I don’t think so? I was gonna look it up, but… I wanna say they’re, like, gone after a few minutes to an hour? But it’s been like a week now. Mom and dad are not handling this well at all. Like, I don’t even know if they’ll even talk to me when this is all over, between the whole magic stuff and then the Storm and then…” She gestured vaguely at the sky rather than search for the words to finish her sentence.
Master turned his glare over to the blonde girl. “I can’t even go out. I feel like a celebrity surrounded by reporters, all trying to ask questions. Between the show I put on at the center of town, and this lousy extra limb, everyone knows who I am. And half of them keep asking if the Shield is going to give them all tails to match.”
I flinched at the anger in his voice, at the thought of him having to go through all that. “I’m sorry… If I hadn’t… I dunno, just… If I’d done a better job, maybe…”
There was almost a growl in his voice as he snapped at me. “I already told you, it’s not your fault, Princess! Look, just… Forget about it, okay? Whatever, it’s a tail, I don’t care. Roffil! Let’s start with that spell of yours, the one you used during the Ogre fight. Can you show us how to cast that spell so we can practice it, in case we need it?”
The young man jolted at the sound of his name. “Oh, you actually want me to show you something?” There wasn’t sarcasm in his voice for once. He’d been a lot more respectful ever since the day the StormShield went up. “Of course, Mage Tola.”
With that, he set to work demonstrating it. Emulating the style of his instructors at the Guild, which is more than Tola had for most of his career, he set out explaining each of the runes that went into it. Ro was nodding along, Jared was looking lost, and Master was getting increasingly frustrated as he was trying to draw them onto the pages of a cheap notebook.
Jared was the first to speak up. “Woah, hey, hang on a sec. How do you even figure all this out? All those runes, and how they go together… There’s so many!”
Roffil gave him a questioning look, but then turned that look over to Master. When that didn’t get a response, he turned back to the kid with his arm in a sling. “The… same way I learned any other spell during training. I had an instructor that went over everything, the way I’m going over it now. How far along are you in your studies?”
Master finally gave a light scoff. “Go easy on him, he’s still pretty new to all this. Last time I saw him, he knew how to use a Fire rune, and that was it.”
With a sheepish expression, Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’ve gotten pretty good with it. I’ve been practicing, both power and control. But with Boss Man gone, and with you and Ro back on Terra, I didn’t have anyone who could teach me more than that.”
The Guild graduate was staring with a face of horrified shock. “You let… a bare Initiate handle one of the Echo Devices? A single rune! Not a speck of rust on his badge, if he’d had one! Kingdoms of Old, Mage Tola, are you trying to make me faint?”
Jared’s eyes were glued to the ground, his shoulders hunched as if he wanted to shrink in on himself at the scathing words. Master nearly growled again, his tail slamming down against the ground for emphasis. “He did the job, didn’t he? In case you hadn’t noticed, we didn’t have that many options! We worked with what we had, and when the chips were down, he got it done! He’s got what it takes, he just needs a chance to learn. Screw this, we’re gonna start with something easier for him, a fire spell with a bit more substance to it. Instead of throwing a ton of new stuff at him all at once, let’s introduce building a spell from a few runes, a simple fireball.”
With that, he practically threw himself out of the chair and onto his feet, flinging it to the side and letting it clatter against the concrete of the rooftop. Pushing past Roffil, he faced off against the mannequin, holding his hands in front of him with a gap between them. A toss of his head signaled Jared to come watch, and he brought runes into the air one by one. “It goes like this. You’ve got Fire, you’ve got Containment, you set a few of those up to create a space which you’ll fill with the fire. You set up a Force rune here, this will help propel it when it’s ready to launch. Now, you want to set up a Repeat rune like this, and that’ll cause it to pump fire into the ball. And when you’re ready, you’ve got as much fire as you can contain, you let it rip like this.” With a thrust of his hands, he sent the ball streaking into the plastic figure, causing it to burst in a bright explosion, the sound almost covering the strangled grunt that came out of him.
A wave of heat washed over us, with Jared’s eyes going wide as he beheld the melted display piece. “That was incredible, sir! You just… You didn’t even have to think about it, you just put it all together like it was nothing! But… could you maybe… go over it a little slower?”
He was gritting his teeth, but Master managed to get the words out. “I’m planning to, yes. Would it kill you to be a little patient? We’ll get you up to that yet.” But his expression had shifted from annoyance to betray the pain he was feeling. “Just… gimme a sec… Hnnh. Guess I’m still a little… soul-burnt, after the Shield fiasco.” His breathing was a little ragged, but it seemed to be getting better, more steady. Once it passed, he stretched a bit to relieve any remaining ache in his body.
And as he did, the back of his shirt lifted, and I saw white scales on his lower back. I’m pretty sure they weren’t above his belt earlier, but maybe the pants slipped a little?
“You know, it’s funny. Your ‘Boss Man’ actually used a similar spell on me, once. It took him a lot longer than it took me, and I was explaining it. Plus, he was sloppy, and I was able to catch it in a counterspell, inserting my own runes between the Force and the Containment runes.” Realizing he was getting distracted by memories, he shook his head and held his hands up again. This time, they were held apart as if he was holding two balls, one in each hand. “Okay, so, again, slower. Fire rune, you know that one. Containment, it looks like this. Copy this one.” In one hand, a Fire rune formed, and in the other, a Containment rune hovered in the air.
Jared nodded as he held his hands together, staring intently at the shape of it, committing the lines and angles and curves to memory, summoning a copy in the air between his hands. Inert, without anything else to link to it. Once he had it to Master’s satisfaction, the lesson continued.
“Okay, now, we’re gonna put them here like so. Make a space.” Several copies appeared around the Fire rune at once, and Master’s tail flicked a little like he was irritated by something. “With that done, let’s do Repeat next, save Force for last. Here’s the Repeat rune.” His offhand now held a copy of that rune. I couldn’t help but feel like there was something… subtly different about the flow of magic, now that it was being sustained.
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Once again, Jared copied the rune, while Master did his best to not show his building impatience. The tail was betraying him, though the humans likely didn’t know what the movement meant. It wasn’t a steady motion, it was pulling to one side, then lashing to the other, held there before whipping back again. After a minute or two, Jared now had a copy of the Repeat rune in his hands, his eyes staring at it in wide fascination.
“Ghn. Good. Doing good there. Last one’s Force. You might’ve seen this one used before, it looks like this.” His breathing was getting a little labored again. Was magic really this painful? I remembered when he used Blood Magic, how it had weakened him, and how painful it looked when he used magic. To fight Jared, in fact. Strange, how life repeats like that sometimes.
Jared excitedly showed off his progress with the rune, prompting Master to nod. He added it to the ball in his main hand, his offhand now pointing at parts of the spell. Start and End runes appeared off to each side, at his thumb and pinky respectively. One-handed casting was difficult, but possible, especially for someone with as much practice as Master.
Once he started putting energy into the spell, however, the flow felt worse. Ragged, raw, wild. It was inefficient. Master was distracted by the growing pain, his other arm hugging his chest and grabbing at his ribs, but he refused to back down. Hissing through his teeth, he built the fireball hotter. After a moment, he propelled it at the half-melted mannequin, another explosion flashing in the air. Once it was gone, the target dummy was fully destroyed, bits of burning plastic melting off into lumps on the ground. Next time, we should really switch to wooden targets, they wouldn’t smell so terrible.
Master was catching his breath, his right hand still outstretched, eyes squeezed shut. “Okay, that. That’s the last… one I’m doing today. Hurts. Roffil’s gonna have to show you if you need it again. Or Ro, she’s good at that.”
But Jared wasn’t paying attention to his words. “Your… your hand! Did you burn your fingers? Your nails!”
Forcing his eyes open, he raised his hand up to inspect it. And said something I hadn’t actually heard him say more than a handful of times, in the year and a half I’d known him.
“…Well, shit.” All of us were staring at the black claws that tipped each finger, curled and sharp. Dragon claws.
I let out a soft whine, looking between his hand and his face. “Master…?”
His voice was shaking slightly. “I don’t know, girl. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Master and I sat in Janice’s office, with the mayor pacing. “You’re turning into a dragon.”
The white-scaled tail lashed from one side to the other. “Yeah, that… seems to be accurate. Clearly, this is not ideal.”
Janice stared at him, but he didn’t fill the gap, so she spoke again. “You can’t give me any more information on this? Is it the Storm? Do we need to be worried about the townspeople? Do we need to be worried about you? Can you just… give me anything to work with here?”
My head was still lowered, but I spoke up. Quietly, at first, but it needed to be said. “It’s because of me. Master and I, we… we combined energy, in order to power the Shield. Somehow that’s caused… something to happen. Somehow I did this to him…”
Master rolled his eyes and gave a groan. “Princess, no. It’s not your fault, okay?”
“Then why is your tail white? A-and gold? Why do you look exactly the way I pictured you would as a dragon?” I couldn’t bear to look in his direction. Just seeing a single scale was enough to drive a knife through my heart.
The silence only twisted that knife. Master did speak, after a moment. “Look, I… don’t know. Maybe you were able to sense something, by instinct. Maybe it’s because you told me about it, so it was in my subconscious. Maybe there’s something else going on that we don’t know, but it doesn’t PROVE it’s your fault! So will you please knock it off with the self-pity, already? It’s a thing, we’ll deal with it, we’ll fix it.”
The mayor spoke sharply. “What about the rest of us? Is it going to affect those of us with the Echo Devices, who had to… what, re-channel the spell, or however that works? Are we going to be ‘infected’? What about the Shield that blanketed the town? Am I going to have a town full of dragons in a few days?”
The questions made me whine softly, picturing two thousand lives ruined because of me, should they even survive. Master took a breath before replying, “The spell doesn’t carry… whatever’s in Princess’s energy that’s causing this to happen to me. I don’t really know how to explain it in words, just… nobody has anything to worry about, okay? Trust me.”
Janice’s two-way radio erupted with a squawk of static, prompting her to pick it up and turn up the volume. “Hello? …There’s– Are you serious? How!? …Well, did you talk to him? …You WHAT? You didn’t! …You idiots, I can’t believe you–”
Her anger was cut off by a scream from the radio that even the rest of us could hear. “He’s BACK!”
At the western edge of town, police cars sat, with officers using them for cover and keeping their guns trained on the golden-skinned human who had just stepped out of the Storm. One was on the radio with Janice, the panic he felt making his voice waver. “He just… stepped out again! The same guy! Unless he’s got an identical twin!”
“Well, don’t you DARE shoot this one unless he actually attacks, got it? We need answers!” The self-appointed Town Protector shouted back. Since she was the one with knowledge and connections, people didn’t fight her on it.
Meanwhile, the strange man was staring down dispassionately at his own bullet-riddled body. When it started to dissolve into golden mist, he sighed. “Do you know how much energy it takes to incarnate on this plane? Such a rude greeting!”
The officer on the radio stood up from behind the car, slowly stepping forward, hands raised. One hand held the radio, the volume now turned to the maximum, thumb on the button that let him transmit whenever someone was talking. “Um, we’re… We’re sorry? But, could you tell us who you are?”
The figure gave an almost bored glare towards the approaching man in blue. “I am the one who’s come to try to help you. Though I am reconsidering that, given… this. What even was that? Those things propelled some sort of… tiny metal objects? Just so you know, that hurt quite badly.”
Janice’s voice was staticy and tinny as it came from the radio. “Help? We’ll take any help we can get! As Mayor of Ida Grove, please accept my apologies for the way my men reacted. The last beings that arrived unexpectedly were… very aggressive and violent.”
“Your… whatever that is, in your hand? It talks? And that box is the mayor?” He shook his head, his hair pure white. “I have been away from these lands longer than I thought.”
The officer grimaced at the strange comment, glancing at the phone even though there was no way Janice would be able to see it. “Uh, no, this… This is a radio. A communication device? You know? This just lets you talk to her, even though she’s not here. What is your name, um, sir?”
“Name?” The man golden blinked, making a show of having to think about the question. “Oh, my, that is right. That’s a thing, is it not? My apologies, it has been a while. Oh, I have had so many… Well, I suppose one of my favorites was Hermes. And who am I hearing from this ‘radio’ of yours? I must say, I am intrigued.” He gave a friendly chuckle, eyeing the device.
“My name is Janice Hearthbloom, I’ve been doing my best to keep this town safe, but I will absolutely welcome help, Mr. Hermes. Would you be willing to meet us in person so we can discuss things more easily?”
Looking off into the distance, towards the town, Hermes stroked his chin. “Would you be near the center of this place? There is someone I need to find, and it might be you.”
“I am, yes. One of the officers can give you a ride. It’s the least we can do, especially if you’re willing to help us.”
The officer holding the radio did not seem comfortable with the idea, but hearing talk of help made less hesitant. Especially if it meant getting a chance to be away from that Storm. Guarding that gray wall was not pleasant. “Right this way, sir. You two, uh, keep an eye on things. And you heard the lady, no shooting unless it attacks. The next… person, that comes out might not be so ready to forgive.”
It took less than fifteen minutes for us to be able to lay eyes on the strange man. Already, I didn’t like him. His scent was just completely wrong, and he was just radiating magic. Not in a “This guy is really powerful” way, more like a “This guy is leaking like a cracked sieve” way. My body posture was low and defensive, and I found myself giving a low growl as I made sure to stand slightly ahead of Master. The two policemen flanking him seemed nervous to be in his presence and were eager to be able to leave the room, but they didn’t want to leave the stranger in a room with the Mayor.
Janice shot me a glare before ignoring me, though she might’ve stood a little further back than she otherwise would. “Greetings. I am Janice Hearthbloom, we spoke briefly over the radio. You are Hermes, I take it?”
The man clapped his hands together in exaggerated delight. “Yes! Oh, this is so delightful! So much to see here. But you are not the one I seek after all.” He regarded each of us in turn, but when he got to me, he stopped. “And what a curious dragon you have here! Doesn’t seem to like me much, though.”
What. I was disguised as a dog, how did he see through the illusion so easily? Master spoke up, his voice guarded. “Dragon? You mean my dog?” I only dropped the disguise for people I knew, and neither this man nor the officers were in that group.
“Dog?” Another exaggerated show of confusion, like a bad actor trying to convey an expression as hard as he could. “No, I mean the dragon. You did know this is a dragon, did you not?”
I growled louder. “He knows, the question is how did YOU know?” My tail lashed behind me, the illusion trying to copy its movement, but that would look strange since dogs didn’t normally wag their tails when angry.
The question made the officers jump, their eyes wide. It only got worse for them when I dispelled the illusion, since there was no point in keeping it on, it seemed. Not with my cover blown. One even blurted out, “Holy shit, it really IS one!” Glaring, Janice shooed them out of the room.
Exaggerated contrition, holding his hands together and giving a slight bow. “Oh, my apologies, I meant no rudeness. I am afraid I do not see… the same way you do. When I look at living things, I do not see bodies. I see souls, and yours is so unique! You even speak! How delightfully curious.” Now he was leaning forward, making a show of examining me, even after admitting his vision works differently.
“You’re one to talk. What the heck even are you? Not many people with gold skin and Soul-Vision or whatever.” I wanted to bite this guy’s hand so bad. Or even his face. Then again, maybe he’d taste awful. He smelled like he was made of dirt and clay held together by raw magic. Maybe he was.
He stood up straight before he put his hands on his hips and laughed, like the worst theater kid ever. “Oh, just a visitor. See, we actually have a problem, and it is a problem you are having too, so I figured I’d help you and potentially be helped as well! Let us see, which one of you is…” With his hand held above his eyes like he was searching, he looked around the room until he spotted Tola. “Yes! You! You are the one with the fate, you are the one I need to talk to.”
Master crosses his arms, tilting his head forward as if looking over the rim of imaginary glasses. His tail lashed, betraying the calm annoyance. “I’m… sorry? ‘The one with the fate’? Care to elaborate on that one?”
“You need me to? You do not… feel it? Huh. Well, see, surely you have noticed the rather strange event happening. Storms, you are calling them? Interesting, not entirely inaccurate, ‘Storms’. Well, as you might have surmised, the one currently surrounding this city is not a natural event. It was sent by someone who’s been making a lot of trouble for us, and it seems he is also making trouble for you.”
Tapping his foot, Tola waited expectantly for more information. Seeing as Hermes apparently felt that there wasn’t a need, he decided to ask questions. “Okay, number of things. Who is ‘causing trouble’, who is ‘us’, and what exactly is going on?”
Putting a hand to his chin, Hermes pondered. “Well, surely you noticed the missing souls? The ones killed yesterday, right before the Storm hit? It seems our common troublemaker stole them when their bodies died. It is a serious matter for a deity to steal souls that are not theirs, you know. Makes the rest of us very upset.”
Janice’s eyes looked like they were about to fall out of her head. Not that anyone else in the room seemed to be much better, but she was the one who spoke up first. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘deity’? As in God? God Himself is sending this storm?”
Hermes made the same show of thinking for a moment, regarding Janice for a moment. “Hm, no, I am pretty sure you are talking about a different one. No, this is a newly Ascended deity, but he has hardly been friendly. We have not even been able to get a name from him, and he is… Well, I suppose there is no putting this mildly. He’s insane. Broken. Mad. And now he is stealing souls to keep in his Realm. We did try to stop him, but I am afraid he simply would not have it.”
“And… you are… also a deity? And there are others? Why are you the one who came here? Why do you need Tola? What can we do that multiple gods couldn’t?” Janice was not about to relax when something of this magnitude was happening in her town.
Holding up his hands in what I’m sure he thought was a placating gesture, Hermes smiled. “Ah, please, so many questions all at once. I was chosen because I tend to be the most friendly with your kind. The others see me as a sort of ‘messenger’, so I am usually the one chosen to speak. And we need Tola precisely because he is the one capable of doing what we could not. Within a deity’s Realm, they are of unparalleled power. Outside of it, such as my appearance here or if I were to intrude on this one’s Realm, we are much more limited. But there is a sort of… ‘thread of fate’ would be a good way to describe it. Some sort of connection between him and you. We do not know what it means. It is possible you are prophesied to defeat him, or you are to join him, or he will defeat you… We are not sure, but whatever the results, it will be important.”
I shook my head. “You mean to tell me you can see the future? How does that work? What if we just… don’t do anything?”
Hermes made the same “contrition” gesture as before. “Ah, no, it is not the future, only the connection. There is something between the two of you. Past, present, future, they are more intertwined than you might think. It is likely our troublemaker is aware of this as well, and we believe it to be the reason he has attacked this town. As for doing nothing… I would advise against that. Even if this barrier of yours prevents him from destroying this city with you inside, he will only continue to attack you.”
We were all silent for a few moments, digesting this information. It was Janice who broke the ice first. “So, what do we do?”
Hermes’ face lit up in delight that was so exaggerated I almost expected to actually see the lightbulb over his head. “That is a very good question!” But then his face quickly fell into a worried look. “It will be a bit of time before I have recovered enough to try to take you to his Realm. See, SOME mortals simply HAD to destroy the first body I created on this world.” With one hand on his chin and an overdone “thinking” face, he continued, “I suppose for now, try to make what preparations you can?”
Tola rolled his eyes, his lips curling into a light sneer. “Oh, sure, no problem. I’ll just round up volunteers to go fight God.”
I put my paw on Master’s foot. “I’ll go with you. I don’t care how dangerous it is, I go where you go.”
That seemed to soften his mood a bit. “Yes, I know, girl. Of course you will.”
Janice was next. “I’m in. This guy is attacking my town, I want to help take him down.”
Hermes gave a quizzical look at that. “Hm. There… does seem to be some small thread of Fate between you and our opponent as well. Perhaps you have the determination to be able to assist after all.”
At that, she waved a hand, as though the words demonstrated her point. “See? Golden Boy here says I can do it.”
Looking down at his right hand, and the claws tipping the fingers, Master sighed. “Okay, fine. But it’ll probably be best if we get you some extra training on magic while we wait. We still don’t know what we’re going to face. I just feel so useless, like this…”
And so, we were back on the roof once again. Master sat and watched while Ro and Roffil did the bulk of the teaching. With him on the sidelines, though, he was left to lash his tail about while I sat next to him. The sky was still grim, but at least we had something to work towards, instead of just waiting.