"Is that why you jumped at the chance to help a human infiltrator?" I asked Vespera. "Because any change is better than the fate waiting for you?"

"Pretty much," she laughed bitterly. "When I met you in the art class facing hallway and tasted your sparks, I thought - finally, something interesting, a human in Skyfall! When Em started texting about you being human, I thought that would be your undoing. And then you just... embraced it. Made it into this elaborate joke that everyone's in on except Em. She can scream all she wants to but it's like you shifted reality and she's just stuck on the same track heading off a bridge and has no idea what to do.”

She smiled softly and wiped at her eyes, more sparks falling.

"That's why you keep joking about marrying me?" I asked. "To cope?"

"Partly," she admitted. "It's also because you're the exact opposite of what my parents want for me. A human? With no status, no magical ability, no corporate connections? They'd have an absolute meltdown." She grinned through her tears. "Plus, you're actually fun to be around. You don't look at me like I'm just some corporate asset to be optimized."

I nodded.

"You're literally everything my father fears," Vespera laughed quietly. "A human infiltrator using technology to subvert Omnithean society. And here I am, helping you. Because at least it's MY choice. Not his. Not Zheng's. Mine!”

Vespera's talons tapped against her magisteel armor.

"You know what the worst part is?" she whispered. "Dad's not even the villain of this tragic tale. He loves me. He wants what's best for me. He just... can't see that his version of 'best' is killing who I really am. My entire family is invested in this damned merger, cus' it would bring greater prosperity to everyone."

"Parents often hurt us most when trying to help," I said, thinking of how mom pushed me onto Uncle George instead of telling me the truth.

"Yeah," she agreed. "And the thing is... I get it. I understand the business logic. The political advantages. The technological possibilities. This merger could revolutionize everything. But..."

Her voice cracked.

"But I can't do it," she lamented. "I can't marry someone who looks at humans and sees vermin. Who treats Omnid service staff and sixies like they're beneath him. Who thinks that everything and everyone exists just to serve him. And I can't... I can't let them rewrite my brain to make me want it, want him!"

Tears were flowing freely now, sparks dancing between them.

"Dad says it wouldn't hurt," she continued. "That it would be slow, day by day, month by month. That I wouldn't even realize anything had changed. That I'd just... wake up one day and be happy with my life. Be the perfect daughter he always wanted. But that terrifies me more than anything. The idea that I could just... stop being me. Stop caring about the things I care about right now."

I carefully shifted Cinder off me onto the couch and moved to sit beside Vespera. She flinched slightly as I approached but didn't pull away when I put an arm around her shoulders.

"Hey," I said softly. "Look at me."

She turned her tear-streaked face towards me, gray eyes swimming with gold sparks.

"You are not going to let them rewrite who you are," I said firmly. "You know why? Because you're stronger than that. You're not just some corporate asset to be optimized. You're Vespera fucking Simmi, and you get to choose who you want to be."

"But what choice do I have?" she whispered. "I can't run away - they'd find me. I can't fight back - they're too powerful. I can't even tell anyone this shit because who would believe the ditzy party girl over the respected CEO?"

"I believe you," I said. "And I'm going to help you."

She let out a bitter laugh. "How? You're just one human."

I stared at her.

“Fine, you're a sneaky, clever hobbit,” she said. “One that's constantly walking atop the blade of a knife. Seriously tho, what are you going to do? Fight my father's entire corporate empire? Blow up my fiance's compound?”

"Ehhh," I shrugged. "There are smarter ways.”

“Such as?”

“I don't know,” I shrugged. “It's late and my brain is soup and Yulia doesn't have internet access to provide greater API AI-wisdom. For now, I can provide a shoulder to cry on, as is my job as your Quartermaster.”

Vespera buried her face in my chest, sobbing louder now.

“I've been alone with this fucking burden for so long… all this unsolvable shit hanging on my neck,” she sniffed. “It’s… nice to have someone so incredibly illegal so outside of the curve of my peers that I can tell all this shit to. Thanks."

I nodded.

"You know... You've got no magic in ya, you're so weak, so frail..." She let out.

I arched an eyebrow at her.

"And yet I see in you what I wish I could be. Cus you're also someone who looks at the rules, decides they're stupid, and just... changes them. You don't accept the status quo. You don't let others define who you are. That's nice."

I simply hugged her.

"What's horrifying is that we do it to ourselves," she said bitterly. "Optimize, sharpen, improve our minds with the talons produced by our clan. I've seen it happen. Cousins, friends... they go in wild and free, come out perfectly proper. Perfect heirs. Perfect wives. Perfect empty shells. Like well-polished diamonds. Sharp. Brilliant. Nice to look at."

Her talons sparked dangerously. "The worst part? Everyone acts like it's normal. Like it's just part of growing up. 'Oh, little Vee finally got her optimization! Isn't she so much more pleasant now?' Not a single one sees it as evil or wrong. Better. More efficient. More... suitable."

She spat the last word like it was poison.

"We'll figure something out," I yawned.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"You really mean that, don't you?" she looked up at me, gray eyes searching my face. "You're actually crazy enough to try and help me."

"Of course," I grinned. "What are friends for?"

"Friends," she repeated the word like it was something precious and new. "Did you... have friends before, in Acadia?"

"No," I said. "Just my mom, and then Uncle George who taught me how to jailbreak everything around me. Machines, locks, people, systems, paperwork, social structures, rules. I didn't have time for friends."

Vespera nodded, understanding shining in her gray eyes. "Makes sense. You've been surviving, planning, seeking revenge, running away. Not living. Boop."

She poked my nose with a talon, tiny lightning jumping from her finger.

"Boop," I pointed a finger at her nose and visualized lightning running across me from the little bits of Thunderbird in my human body.

Nothing happened. No lightning, no spark. I frowned.

Vespera burst out laughing. "You can't just will electricity, silly hooman! It takes years of training!"

I dug captain's lighter from my pocket and ignited it out of Vee's view for a few seconds, letting mana permeate the air around me.

"Boop." I said again, willing the universe to bend with all of my will.

A tiny, almost microscopic electrical spark jumped from my finger. It flew slowly through the air between us like a small, fractal snowflake of inexplicably-contained electricity and landed on Vespera's beak with a soft crackle.

[LV 1 Skill gained: Lightningball.] Sparks dancing in my vision announced, the Lazarus bracelet tingling on my left arm.

"How?" The Thunder-girl blinked at me.

"I'm a Wizard," I replied sagely.

Vespera stared at me, her beak slightly open. Then she burst out laughing, careful to muffle her sounds so as not to wake the others.

"A wizard," she repeated, wiping a tear from her eye. "Right. Sure. You're totally a wizard, my dude."

"Tomorrow I'm going to get these three to make me shakes from their flesh too," I said, eyeing our sleeping friends. "And then I shall have unlimited powers."

I snapped the lighter shut.

"Abyss," Vespera chuckled softly, her laughter gradually subsiding. She wiped away the last of her tears, her gray eyes now sparkling with a mix of mirth and something deeper - a newfound sense of hope. "I think... I think I get what Ci sees in you."

She shifted closer, magisteel plates clinking. I could feel the electrical charge building around her as she leaned in, her gaze intense.

I could see radial waves of electrical magic dancing between us like we were two magnets.

[LV 1 Skill gained: Electrofractal Sight.]

Suddenly, all around, everything had a charge to it, polarity shifting and dancing between us like northern lights. Her gray eyes seemed to glow from within as electrical currents traced delicate fractal patterns across her magisteel armor. The fire's light caught on her feathers, making them shimmer with contained storm energy.

Magic. Genuine magic. I finally had it, after eighteen years of bumbling about and running... I had stolen a spark of magic from the god-beasts.

Tiny arcs of lightning began jumping between her talons and my hexasuits, creating a web of soft blue-white light. The air itself seemed to crackle with potential energy, making my hair stand on end. Each breath brought the taste of ozone, sharp and metallic on my tongue.

I was the ground and she was the thunderstorm up above. Gray steel eyes, like broiling storm clouds.

Down was up and up was down. Gravity between us had given up.

All that existed was electrical currents, beautiful in their radiance and magnetism.

The crackle of electricity intensified as Vespera leaned closer, her breath hot against my cheek.

Pulse. Another.

Heartbeat. Lightning. Polarity.

[You see that, feel that, sense that... don't you?] Vee's voice whispered, distant and fuzzy like rumbling thunder. [You see me. I see you. I feel you. Resonance. Feathers to feathers. Heart to heart. Brain to brain. Soul to Soul.]

She wasn't speaking with her lips, she was somehow communicating with electrical impulses alone. Her talons reached out to the sides of my head, microscopic lightning pointed at my neurons, electricity running across my brain.

The sensation was indescribable - like being caressed by the northern lights, each point of contact creating intricate patterns of energy that danced across my entire nervous system.

[You make me smile.] Her voice in my head like a distant whisper across everywhere.

[You make me smile too.]

Embrace of four hands.

Electricity rushing across all of our Neurons, reaching out to every cell, flickering, investigating, connecting, understanding, connecting, understanding.

A loop of ever-expanding fractal senses, going deeper and deeper in with each twist of current.

Then suddenly a voice cut through the electrical haze enveloping us, hexasuit covered arms wrapped in shadows pulling us apart, attracting the lightning, disrupting the frequency, breaking the connection.

"Stop with the light show! Trying to sleep," Kat said, shaking each of us like little kittens by the scruff of our hexasuits. "Get a room."

"We are... in a room," I breathed out.

Sparks danced across my vision. I tried to blink them away.

"Go thunderstorm somewhere else," Kat sighed. "Noisy."

"Wasn't trying to thunderstorm," Vee said. "I... don't know how that happened."

"Mmhmm," Katherine rolled her emerald eyes, still holding us apart with her magisteel-covered arms. "Sure. You weren't trying to merge your electrical fields with him at all. That's totally not what that was."

"I wasn't!" Vespera protested weakly. "I mean... maybe a little? I just... got carried away. The resonance was..."

"Your resonance was about to fry his human brain," Katherine growled. "He's not a Thunderbird, Vee. You can't just sync with his nervous system like that. I could feel that like four meters away."

"But he made a spark!" Vespera argued. "He's got bits of me in him! That's it! The resonance is so pure because he has my bits in him. If he was an Omnid, his body would just reject my Thunder-strata. But there is no rejection... and..."

"I don't want an Abyss-damn lecture about Thunderbirds," Katherine growled. "Bed now. All of you. Make out like normal people next time, don't start producing Slayer-damned Celestorms in a confined space!"

"I wasn't..." Vespera choked.

"Don't care," Katherine said. "You were floating. In the air. If I didn't stop you idiots, you would have set fire to the entire room or worse!"

I winced as she shook me and Vee.

"Look," the Stollwurm pointed at the edge of the fireplace. "A thunderbolt from you two floating knobs struck the stone here, it's turned slightly transparent."

I looked at the shimmering edge of the dark fireplace brickwork. It looked like a piece of silver-blue quartz was embedded in it now, shaped like a lightning bolt impact.

Katherine dragged me to the large bed by my hexasuit collar and tossed me onto it like I weighed nothing. Then she did the same with Vespera, unceremoniously dumping the Thunderbird next to me.

"Stay," she growled at us both. "Sleep. No more electrical experiments at night!"

"But..." Vespera started.

"Sleep!" Katherine hissed, her emerald eyes flashing in the darkness wrapping her. "Or I'll drop you both into the deep and leave you there."

"You too, rainbow," She picked up Cinder from the couch and deposited her on my other side. "Everyone stay. Sleep. No more magical whatever."

The Stollwurm tapped the Kitlix lanterns extinguishing them and then went back to her nest, grumbling about "horny idiots", "dumb humans", "celestorms" and "bullshit magic lighters".

Cinder's wings wrapped around me, her feathers shifting through sky-blues and content silvers as she snuggled closer in her sleep. On my other side, Vespera was still like a mouse, her gray eyes wide and confused in the gloom, black and white wings fluttering.

"What... what just happened?" she whispered. "How?"

"I think we almost caused a magical incident," I whispered back. "Ummm... I might have released too much mana into the room."

"No shit," Katherine growled from her nest. "Now shut up and go to sleep before start bonking on the head. You're lucky that you have me to watch over you. I take my Knight job seriously, unlike some people who just want to screw around."

Her eyes closed, radar-dish ears twitching.

Vee buried herself into my side, looking very embarrassed.

The room settled into a deep, underground silence, punctuated only by the sound of crackling fire and soft breathing.

The fire in the Kitlix-managed hearth slowly died down to glowing embers. The Ignix Kitlix stared at me from the fireplace with a concerned expression.

She knew what we did. She saw everything.

She did not like it.

Kitlix didn't have feelings, I assured myself. They were just magic algorithms. Crystallized mana without thoughts, without a personality. Dumber than a snail. No long term memory. No memory of any kind in an Ignix Kitlix who's only job in life was to light firewood and hold heat longer in a room.

Tomorrow. There was always tomorrow. The mana would dissipate and that would be that.

This totally would have no long term consequences. I absolutely wasn't thinking about that crystallized bit of stone.

I glanced at my stats. There was still an ungodly amount of mana in my body.

This was fine. Kat was watching us, listening, keeping us safe even when asleep. She stopped us from making a big mess.

My heart slowed and sleep finally won.