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2:16 | Proactive Measures

I heard something, my cans were rattling. My eyes popped open as I grabbed my shotgun and blasted a shot through the window, then the other through a different section of the shattered glass.

I dropped it onto the bathroom floor as I took up my sword to plunge out of the absolutely shredded window and onto the grass. I clutched my foot and stumbled as, in a rush, I realized that I had uncomfortable amounts of glass sticking into the soles of my feet.

Going from the lights of the bathroom to the pitch black of the night made it hard to see. I thought I saw something and pushed the vile slime to my eyes to activate Evil Eye. The darkness was barely better to see through, but what gave it away was that whoever was laying there started to scramble away from me on their back. I ran through their body with the sword, making sure to not make it a killing blow. Probably.

“Fork?” I had him planted to the ground with my sword and saw some good seasoning, er… peppering with shotgun pellets through the right side of his chest and ribcage. A depressing bit of damage from the shotgun, I had been expecting more.

“Get off me!” He was scrambling against the sword. I felt a desire to twist it and gave into it, just a little bit. He howled and I pulled the slime away from my eyes. I hadn’t been able to see any shadows flowing around him, but he noticeably calmed down when I stopped ‘Evil Eye’.

“What the fuck! Why-” He grimaced and tried to clutch at the sword, only managing to cut his hands before he snapped his fingers and then grabbed it again. It sounded like his fingers were made of stone as he grabbed onto the blade. ‘Stone Skin’ is an actual ability? Interesting.

“My name’s Ron, dickhead, and can you stop holding it inside me? Why are you twisting it?”

Oh shit I was twisting it. Teehee. I kicked him in the ribs once, then tried for another but didn’t make it before he snapped his fingers a moment before my foot came down again. I grimaced as my bare, glass-peppered foot hit his unnaturally hardened ribs. It felt like kicking a wall, barefoot, which I was, with glass in my feet, which was also there.

“Tell me why the fuck you were creeping outside my window.”

“I wasn’t, you ass! I was patrolling on Master Morrigan’s orders.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You said someone tried to kill you the other night! Arggh-”

Oh yeah. I guess that makes sense…?

I pulled my sword out of him, he glared as he coughed out blood.

Dammit. Well, actually. At least I’d get some heal charges out of this, so it wasn’t a complete wash. If anything, I was going to end up a bit ahead. Though wasting two shotgun shells wasn’t ideal. Well… were they a waste? Don’t be sneaky around me was a good lesson to drill into someone at hundreds of feet a second.

“Hold still.”

I stabbed my sword into the grass and snapped both fingers before laying my hands and pulling out the sword wound. I felt it stab into me with uncomfortable clarity, then I repeated the action to take out most of the buckshot wounds in softly flaring spots of a gentle golden glow. The buckshot stung, worse, it itched as the sensation of it peppered my own flesh, I’d definitely be using that one as heal-fuel for my poor feet. I looked down, they were freely spilling blood onto the grass.

“Need a hand?”

Fork slapped away my hand as he stood, “How’d you heal me?”

“Got a few tricks.”

He grunted and fumbled for his pitchfork, then stormed off.

I hesitated for a few moments as I looked around, half expecting some sort of confrontation or even a reprimand. Not… nothing. But that’s all that was there. I shook off the feeling before I climbed back in, trailing blood across the floor.

Fu fu fu fuck, my feet were killing me. I debated pulling out the glass before healing but only managed to get the biggest shards before the state of absolute itch from the buckshot forced me to burn the heal. I had to focus on… intensifying the pain? Then pulling it with my Will and directing it into the wounds. Something like that. While I was amplifying the phantom pain of the shotgun I pulled on it with my directed Will and laid a hand across both feet to push it into them. I felt the flesh restore itself with a flash of soft gold as it pushed the remaining shards of glass onto the floor.

“How are you doing that?”

“AH! FU-!” I snatched my sword up and swept around, barely managing to throw myself off course before I sliced Meredith through the head. Her eyes drifted downward. I followed her gaze. Shit.

I rummaged through my bag and pulled out a pair of boxers that were… a bit tight. Thank God cat-lady had a preference for those. I’d have just ended it all if I had been forced to loot and wear cat-panties.

Still, the repeating cartoon cat face-print wasn’t great. They were also kind of itchy. God, women had no idea what made a good pair of boxers. Probably why Duck had stolen so many of my own.

“You really like cats, don’t you?”

I turned to glare at her as I put on another shirt. I refused to acknowledge what it said on it on general principle. Nope.

“What do you want and why are you here?” I started pulling and stacking furniture in front of the broken bathroom door. What a fucking disaster. I’d absolutely ruined the room. To be fair, I wouldn’t have been forced to do any of this if people would just use the front fucking door, and you know, stop trying to ambush me.

I pulled the drapes shut on the room’s window as well, just to be safe.

“Who was it? Did you kill them?”

“It was Ron, and no I didn’t.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She buried her face in her hands.

“What? What is it?”

“Ron… he likes me, I don’t know if he was trying to see where I was going.”

Great. So now, potentially, Ron could be suspecting that I was banging his crush. I don’t know, maybe I was overthinking it. Not every assumption I have is going to be right.

“Does he usually patrol or does he just stalk you?”

“He patrols at night a lot but he must have seen me leave my room.”

“Alright well, now that my bath has been ruined… out with it.”

“I… I saw someone get killed the other day, in the wine storage area.”

“You know who killed…”

“Westley?”

“Yeah, wait. How do you know his name?” My hands itched for the shotgun again almost immediately.

“Well, I saw him stuck in the top of the cask, not moving.”

“Did you see who did it?”

“No, not really…”

“Not really?”

She moved from the bed to a chair, I recaptured my bed and scoped out the room. What a fucking wreck.

“Well, I think it was a man and a woman, but it happened so quick. I barely made anything out.”

“Yeah… ok? What did you see?”

“They were wearing heels.”

“Both of them?”

She blushed, “No, no, just one of them.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded. Super helpful.

I laid back as I added that to my mental map. Fork was big. There was… something wrong though. Something that was bothering me about all of this bullshit. I felt ‘off’ but I couldn’t quite place it at the moment. Well, to be fair a lot of things felt ‘off’, but more than that, it felt like something I was doing was wrong. Like I was approaching the whole thing from the wrong angle. I was trying the P.I. thing though, wasn’t I?

“Alright, well if that’s all, you should be off.”

She stood sheepishly and my mind processed potential outcomes. I could picture it, the woman sneaks into the intrepid investigator’s room to give him a clue, then returns to her room. As she remembers a crucial, and overlooked, detail that would break the case wide open, she rushes to return to the detective. On the way back, she is brutally murdered.

“Wait. I’ve seen this movie before, just sleep here.”

“What, why?”

“‘Broad’ gets brutally murdered after leaving the detective’s office… er, room.”

Her look shifted from ‘WTF’ to ‘he’s insane’ to ‘oh yeah, I think I’ve seen that movie’ over the course of maybe 5-10 seconds.

“Where will you sleep?”

I laughed, “The bed is mine, put two chairs together or something. Or you can sleep on the ground, I’m pretty sure there are some towels that aren’t bloody or soaking wet. Use them as a cushion.”

I threw her a pillow from the bed as I readjusted myself. She caught it then started to look around, a bit lost.

I propped myself onto an elbow, “What Affinities do you have?”

She looked like she didn’t want to tell me but her eyes drifted to my snuggle-time partner, my cuddle buddy, my lady of the night, aka my gorgeous 12-gauged princess.

“Air and Water…”

There was something else she wasn’t telling me.

“What else is there?”

“Well, it makes the Rain-magic Affinity.”

My head spun as I shot up. Wait. WAIT. ‘Rain Magic’?! Magic combines? Of course it does. I just wouldn’t know because I only have a partially activated Light Affinity and… whatever the hell else the invisible force was.

“What is that?”

She snapped both her fingers and it… started to rain in the room. Gently and sparsely, but it was raining. Shit I was even feeling pretty refreshed as it softly pattered down around us.

“Okay okay, stop that. Wait, is that refreshing me?”

“Well it is called ‘Refreshing Rain’.”

That made sense, “That seems pretty handy.”

She blushed and nodded.

“Who do you know here?”

She shook her head, “My cousin… didn’t make it.”

“What else can you do with the Rain?”

“There’s some offensive stuff, though I can’t afford most of the better spells.”

“Can you still use your other Affinities?

She nodded, “Yes, though they’re weaker and harder to control now that they’ve combined.”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged, “Maybe because it’s a Combination Affinity, and they’ve… combined? Well sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

She snapped her fingers and a gust of wind picked up a hand towel and fluttered it around the room. It unceremoniously dropped shortly after. It looked like it drained her more than the Refreshing Rain even though moving a hand towel was decidedly less useful than an AOE buff.

“Can you do the same with water?”

She shook negative, “Not really, it drains too much Fortitude.”

“So, you know about Fortitude?”

She nodded, “Yes, my cousin was the one who discovered most of them.”

Hmmm, Lena had both Water and Earth Affinities. For… Meredith, right I needed to remember her name, if Air was her primary affinity and Water her secondary… Would it be the same result if Water was stronger than her Air Affinity? My thinking was coming in a bit sharper now. Stuff was starting to click.

So with Air she was still able to manipulate it, but water was too draining. ‘Rain’ came easiest of all. The question remained, would it be different if she had a stronger, or primary, Affinity with Water, then a secondary with Air? Would it be ice?

“How many people have you told about this?”

“None, just you.”

“Did you try and kill me last night?” I added quickly, “Or the night before.”

Her face… she was either the best actor in the world, and I the biggest idiot, or she probably didn’t try to kill me.

“No, why would I do that?”

I laid back as I thought it over more. So Tracey, Morrigan’s douchey WASP friend, had an ‘Ice’ Affinity. Working backwards on that, it felt like a pretty safe assumption that whatever combination ended up as ‘Ice’ would have Water as the Primary, whatever the secondary Affinity might be.

I sat there for a while thinking it over before flicking on the desk light and she groaned to turn away from it. In the drawer, I had been half expecting another of Gideon’s Bibles, but I guess the man hadn’t visited here. Honestly, I didn’t blame him. What I did find was a ‘Morrigan-House Vineyard’ notepad and a pen. I charted out the Affinities I remembered from before the Test Affinity purchase.

Fire

Water

Air

Earth

Electro

Light

Dark

I made a chart with them listed with the Primary Affinities across the top and the Secondary Affinities vertically on the left. There were 49 combinations. Actually, there were less, I didn’t think that fire and fire would be double fire. Who really knew though? I’d assume 42 possibilities.

Air + Water = Rain

Water + Air = Ice?

Maybe it was Water and Earth, though that seemed less likely. I added the question mark.

Did Tracey try to kill me? But she was Morrigan’s right-hand woman. He wouldn't have ordered it, that didn’t make sense.