Into the Fire
Thirty Nine
The two pokegirls paused and looked around slowly. Their lower bodies continued moving, coiling up the lengths of sinuous gold scaled serpent’s tail beneath them while they watched the solitary kattle grazing up ahead. One started forward only to stop when the larger one snapped at her and hissed.
Twenty meters away Canaan glanced questioningly to her left at Iain. He gripped his staff tightly and nodded. Her antennae twitched. Go.
Three black and silver arrows suddenly sprouted from the middle of the back of the largest Basilisk, Ninhursag’s shots coming so quickly that the ground affinity arrows seemed to strike simultaneously instead the fraction of a second between the shots that actually occurred. The dragon pokegirl screamed and reached behind her, twisting her body as she futilely tried to reach the source of the terrible pain.
At the noise the kattle bolted, only to flip off its feet when it hit the end of the lead Pandora had used to tie it to a nearby tree. It went flat and froze.
Pandora stood from where she’d been crouched in hiding, summoning tremendous purple feathered wings already sweeping backwards as the second Basilisk began looking for their attacker. The Fallen Angel’s wings snapped forward, releasing a spray of purple bolts of energy that shredded the grass and bushes in a straight line towards them. The feather shuriken peppered both Basilisks, making them scream with anger.
The first Basilisk focused on Pandora and used dragon breath in return while the second shot forward. Her serpentine body began to glisten as venom started seeping from the base of each of her scales. Pandora almost blurred sideways as she changed position and the dragon breath shot harmlessly past her.
All four of Canaan’s fists clenched and her body tensed. The second Basilisk went into convulsions, her body twisting around itself as the psychic attack ripped through her mind. Pandora hit her with another feather shuriken and she went limp, her body slowly uncoiling as the muscles relaxed.
The first Basilisk cried out again as more ground typed arrows took her in the side. Her head lifted as the breeze changed direction, bringing her the scent of her foe, and she raced forward as Ninhursag stepped out of cover. The Elfqueen put her hands together and fired a beam of blue energy that took the Basilisk in the chest. Ice spread in all directions, covering her and stopping her charge dead.
Iain watched as Ninhursag grimaced and began rubbing her hands together. Using an ice beam doesn’t really do me any real damage, but it hurts and makes my fingers numb from the cold.
Canaan glanced at him. “Empties.” He produced two pokeballs from his pocket and held them out. They lifted into the air and split up with one shooting towards each Basilisk to finish the captures.
Iain pulled out his pokedex and typed in the data from the contact. “I was right. We are seeing a surge in feral pokegirls. I’m not sure why, either.” He frowned. “Hmm. I wonder if we can get a meteorological report on the region from Tralee.”
“You have an idea?” She caught the now filled pokeballs as they flew into her hands.
“Maybe. If we’re seeing more ferals coming up from downwind of where we’re living, it might have something to do with the Omega tree. The increase in ferals seems to have happened after the tree came into being.”
Ninhursag and Pandora joined them. The Elfqueen eyed him suspiciously. “If it is due to the tree, what do you want to do about it?”
“I’m not going to suggest doing anything to the tree. It’ll just mean we can expect to find more ferals when our sweeps head downwind of it. That and it’ll mean the tree might draw ferals away from the house, making it a little safer around there.” He checked the clock on his pokedex. “Ok, it’s time for a change again. Canaan, you’re on point now and Ninhursag is with me. Pandora, you’re free to roam this time.”
The Fallen Angel looked over her shoulder. “What about the kattle?”
“Thanks, I almost forgot about our lure. Kill it and put it into your pokepack. We’ll clean it when we get home.”
They’d been moving for a half hour when Eve’s mind touched his and he signaled a halt. We’ve flushed a dozen Doggirls and Hounds down near the road to Tralee. We captured them all with minimal injuries on our side. What’s your progress?
We’re finishing our sweep and we’ll be turning back to the house in another fifteen minutes or so. We caught a couple of Hamtits and two Basilisks. Nobody got hurt and Canaan is melding well with the group. We’ve also got a kattle carcass we’ll be cleaning and butchering up once we get back.
He felt a feeling of satisfaction from his wife. See you there.
Ninhursag was watching curiously. “Eve?” She made a face when he nodded. “She was only talking to you. Was she making sure you were still in one piece again?”
“Pretty much.”
“She worries too much.”
Iain waved everybody back into motion. “At one time I would agree with you, but too many bad things have happened to me when people didn’t worry quite so much.” He made a face. “No matter how much I don’t like it, the truth is always going to be that I need you ladies to protect me from the problems plaguing this world.” He sighed mentally when she gave him a slightly hurt look. “It’s not that I don’t like being with you. It’s just that I was raised to be self sufficient. I’m not supposed to need to be protected by other people. The fact that I have to be is really aggravating.”
She regarded him for a few seconds. “So it’s not the fact that I was taller than you to begin with and I’m even taller now?”
“Ninhursag, you’re not too tall.” He grinned. “Especially not when you’re lying down.”
She laughed. “You’re wrong, you know.”
“You are too tall when lying down?”
“No, Iain, that’s not it and you know it. We do protect you, but you protect us just as much. We are a team and we’re jelling into a damned good one.” She patted him on the back. “You are slower and weaker than we are, but you pull just as much weight as anyone else here does.”
“I hope you’re not saying that because I have the dick.”
The Elfqueen shook her head solemnly. “I am most definitely not saying that just because you have the dick, Iain. You trust us. Although you could make us into puppets for your will, you don’t. You let us act as we see fit, increasing the efficiency of the team. In addition, I’ve seen you shoot and fight. Your decisions are sound. You do make mistakes, but you don’t make stupid ones. Because of all of that, I trust you to back me up in any situation.”
“It’s my understanding that’s rare praise from you.”
She smiled slightly. “You probably won’t hear it again.”
“Thank you.”
“You earned it, Iain. Just don’t let it go to your head or I’ll kick your ass myself.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
***
“I forbid you to tell him.” Eve’s eyes were hot.
“I don’t see where that’s your decision to make, Eve.” Dominique glared back. “Iain requested to be kept appraised of any developments, no matter how minor. This is a development.”
“Maybe it is, but it’s a dead end. At best it can’t help. At worst,” her voice trailed away.
“He’s a mage, Eve. He might have an idea of how to improve the effect and make it viable.”
“I don’t feel he can contribute anything to this.”
Dominique sneered at the Megami-sama. “That’s not the awareness talking, that’s a scared woman trying to lie to me. You’re failing, by the way.” She folded her arms. “Scheherazade would have agreed with me.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Scheherazade is dead and can’t support you. It’s my call to make and I say it’s not necessary to brief him on this. Don’t defy me on this, Dominique. And don’t mention this to anyone else. You’ll regret it if you do.”
The Archmage suddenly looked wary. “I hear you, Eve.”
“Good.” Turning, she headed off.
***
Iain paused and let the sounds, scent and feeling of the night soak into him until he became the night and could sense anything out of place. It was actually a tracker’s trick he’d learned before he’d come to this world and required no magic at all.
Which meant that Ninhursag wouldn’t feel it.
He turned his head slowly, letting his vision go out of focus so he could look for impressions instead of specifics. The truth was that if Ninhursag wanted to, she could move through any natural area without leaving the slightest signs of her passage. But tonight she wouldn’t do that because it was against the rules. If she did, he’d go back to the house instead of catching her and then she wouldn’t get laid. But she’d insisted that he prove his worthiness by tracking her and each time she made the exercise more difficult.
He realized that some of the plants to his right didn’t look quite right and after analyzing it for several seconds saw where she’d stopped and backed up a few paces, being careful to walk in her faint footprints, before turning to the right and heading off. It was the fact that those almost impossible to see footprints were slightly deeper than the others that gave away what she’d done. He knelt and felt one of them gently. The edges were crisp, indicating that he was only a few minutes behind her.
He was gaining.
Then he stopped dead when Dominique teleported in front of him. “Iain, can we talk?” She knew why he was out here and wouldn’t interrupt without a damned good reason, so he nodded and waved her towards a mound of stones that had been a fence over three hundred years before. “Thank you.”
Iain sat down next to her. “What is it?”
“I had a breakthrough. It’s not much, but it might be useful if we can iron out the issues.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Why aren’t we having this discussion in your lab?”
“Eve forbade me to even mention this to you. In fact, when she finds out I’m having this talk with you she’ll probably do something abrupt.” She patted him on the knee when his eyes narrowed. “You can’t protect me all the time and when she strikes I’ll be ready for her and I will fight back. She and I have never fought in anger and I think she’s in for a surprise or three. I am an Archmage, after all.”
“Well, if the two of you are going to brawl over this, you probably need to tell me all about whatever it is.”
She nodded. “I’ve told Ninhursag I needed to talk to you and she’s going to give me a couple of minutes. What I found out was how to separate a piece of you and make it stay alive like it was still connected to you. I got some of the idea from the flesh bits that The March Hare pulled out of those Megami and the captain of the Des Moines gave to Eve to ferry to Lucifer. Once I thought about it a bit, I realized how it must have been done and did a bit of testing to confirm I had it right.”
“Does that mean you can chop people into bits and keep them alive like she did?”
“It does. I’ve got some more testing to run. I’ve still got some questions, like what happens if you do that and then try to retrieve the subject into a pokeball. The math gets a bit complex at that point and there are several possible events that could take place when the wave function collapses.”
Iain blinked. “Please be careful. I once calculated that a fifty kilogram pokegirl being released as free energy would result in a gigaton blast. Not only would that destroy everything for kilometers and crack the tectonic plate we’re on, it would likely rip a large chunk of the atmosphere away from the earth and into space.” He frowned. “On the other hand, that would make a dandy way to kill the High Council.” His eyes closed for a moment. “A Hentaicute weighing two hundred and thirty grams would result in a blast of nearly five megatons. That would work nicely if I didn’t care about killing everyone in the surrounding city.”
“Stop showing off, Iain. I can’t do that math in my head. I will be careful. I know it’s dangerous. Can I continue now?”
He shrugged. “It’s not that hard. Forty six grams of material converted to energy gives you an energy release roughly equivalent to a megaton of TNT being detonated. However, I apologize for interrupting. Please go ahead.”
“Thank you,” she said primly. “The piece is magically connected to the host it was separated from and continues to draw sustenance from it. This limits certain things. If the body or the piece travels through a portal, magical blocking shield, phase or teleports any distance, the connection is broken and the piece instantly dies. If the missing piece is healed or regenerated, the removed piece will die. If the piece is vital to the host’s continued existence, for example a piece of heart tissue, the host body will remain alive for as long as that piece does. If the piece is vital and it dies while removed, the host will also die. However, if the piece is poisoned, not only will it not die, it will not poison the host. In addition, the piece can be destroyed by any means that would normally kill the host and if the host dies, the piece also dies.”
“I can see why Eve tried to keep you from telling me about this effect. She’d be worried I’d lop off various body parts to test this out.” He looked up. “What’s your test subject?”
“I kept a feral Hamtit that we caught and have been experimenting with her.”
He nodded. “You know what the logical next step is.”
“It’s using a nonferal, of course, to see how she reacts when aware. The problem is this is probably going to be considered torture by Eve and maybe by others, so I’d need someone for a test subject that nobody would feel was being abused when I dismantled them.” Iain started to speak and Dominique covered his mouth with her hand. “You are not going to volunteer to be my test subject.”
She cautiously pulled her hand away after he nodded. “All right, I won’t. But I will be on the lookout for someone who will volunteer for it.”
“You think someone would?”
“Well, not counting the obvious surgery fetishists, someone dumb enough to attack us would probably do very nicely.” His smile was darkly sinister. “While they won’t volunteer on their own, someone like that can be volunteered for it without unduly bothering Eve, Pandora or Vanessa.” He stood. “I won’t tell Eve that you told me this.”
Can we learn to do this?
He blinked. “Uh, Dominique, Emerald wants to know if you’ll show her how to do the dismantling.”
She looked surprised and then smiled happily. “Of course I would. I’m just glad someone is excited about it.”
“Oh, I am too and I intend to have you teach me what I can learn about it just as soon as possible. It’s just right now would tip Eve off that I know about it.”
If I am taught how to do this, then Eve may presume that I showed it to you. I can tell her I spied on Dominique. We do, so it’s not truly a lie.
Iain shook his head. “Emerald will drop by later. She says they’ve been spying on you and you might be able to convince Eve that Emerald learned it without you knowing and told me.”
Dominique blinked and a calculating look appeared on her face. “I don’t really want to fight Eve if I don’t have to. Let her know I’ll expect her in my lab in an hour.”
***
Iain hit the ground hard and rolled away as Pandora’s sword flashed down. He clambered quickly to his feet, backing and shifting to put a tree between the two of them as she moved forward.
The Fallen Angel paused as he spat dirt and wiped the blood from the cut she’d put on his cheek. “You’re improving quickly. I intended to slice you right over your eyebrows, blinding your vision as the blood ran into your eyes.”
He wiped the rest of the dirt from his mouth, looked at it and then rubbed it against the cut. “It’s like fighting lightning. You’re just so damned fast.”
She nodded. “That’s what fighting pokegirls is like. Eve and the others have been holding back to let you progress in a fashion they consider safe. Ninhursag and I, on the other hand, believe you learn the fastest if every battle is just a little too tough for you.” Her sword blurred sideways and the tree between them shivered and then began to topple to the right. Iain backpedaled quickly as she stepped over the stump. “Now we continue.”
An hour later they headed back to the house. “You’ll need to wash your cheek before someone heals it or it’ll scar.”
“I don’t scar anymore.” He shook his head. “Hell, I even lost all of the scars I brought with me. For a while I caught myself looking in the mirror and trying to find any evidence that I’d had them. Some of them dated back to when I was an infant.” He snorted. “It made me feel like I’d been replaced by a copy and frightened me for a little bit.”
“You were picking up scars as an infant?”
He shrugged. “Even then I was an overachiever.” He rubbed the cut. “I have to still be doing something wrong with this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a mage, a truewizard. I am learning more magic, but it’s all an extenuation of what I already know how to do. I’m not learning new things and I should be. I’ve just scratched the surface of what I should be capable of and this had better not be the apex of my magical skills. Dominique would laugh herself to death.” He muttered something under his breath too faintly for Pandora to make out the words.
“What was that, Iain?”
“I said I’d probably die of shame if it turns out I’m a lame truewizard.”
“Can one really do that?”
“You can if its bullet assisted shame.”
“You would truly kill yourself and leave us bereft of a tamer, husband and provider just because you aren’t as good at something as you feel you should be?”
“Now you sound like a Seraph.” He sighed. “Of course I wouldn’t. I’d live and just suck.” He grimaced and stopped walking. “And I’m whining. My problem is that I’ve become entirely too complacent with where I am in my studies. Instead of continuing to think outside the box and come up with new ideas, I’ve built an entirely new box around myself.”
The Fallen Angel watched him curiously. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I think I need to find myself a sledgehammer and start rethinking the way I think.”
Pandora dropped in beside him as he resumed his trek to the house. “You do realize that your metaphor is not very clear.”
“In this case as long as it makes sense to me, that’s all that matters.”
***
Iain closed his magic tome and leaned back in his chair, his eyes thoughtful as he considered something completely different from what he’d just read.
He’d been thinking about the problem he’d mentioned to Pandora a couple of days before and had finally started to realize the depth of the situation he’d gotten himself into. It wasn’t that what he could currently do was the apex of his power. His limits were far from any sort of peak, in fact, and would be for centuries or even millennia if he lived that long. The real problem was that he was using the tome as the primary guide for his studies. The tome was a mirror of his interests and helped him to focus his development along those paths. It was both the tome’s primary strength and its greatest weakness. It did not and could not contain information on subjects outside of topics that were of interest to him when he created the individual tomes. It did not innovate.
This meant that using only the tome was a mistake. In his situation, it could prove a critical mistake that could get people important to him killed. However, experimenting without some kind of guide had its own inherent hazards and explained why most successful truewizards either had a teacher or had already completed formal study in another system of magic.
The Dragonesses had a library he could peruse, as did Dominique, but he knew that since he didn’t understand how they did magic, reading those books would be as useful as a high school student trying to pick up a PhD level education by reading the books in a public library. In other words, it would be almost completely useless.
What he really needed to do was go to school, but even without the trust issues involved he didn’t have time to complete a formal course of study at Vale, Nuevo Tenochtitlàn University or the Avalon School. Dominique was too busy to try to teach him, Ninhursag’s magical education was haphazard and Eve was as bad at teaching magic as she was at teaching everything else.
Worrying about what he couldn’t control, at least at the moment, was definitely counterproductive, so Iain sent his book away to wherever it stayed when it wasn’t with him and closed his eyes to begin the relaxing exercises that Canaan had insisted he perform. He’d fought the idea in the beginning, but had finally admitted they did help him relax. There was only one problem with them if he did the relaxation exercises properly.
They worked just a little too well.
The shock of his butt hitting the ground woke him up. He looked around groggily, rubbing his eyes as a bird screamed angrily somewhere behind him. He twisted around to look and the camp robber jay moved to a higher branch on the oak tree and kept screaming at him.
He was pretty sure it was cursing.
Iain looked around slowly. He was sitting next to some bushes with tiny red berries that he recognized as yaupon. Trees surrounded him on all sides, but he could see that in one direction they abruptly stopped after proceeding for only a short distance, suggesting a clearing of some kind lay beyond them. The air was chill, and the sun was low on the horizon, but he wasn’t sure if it was rising or setting.
He heard a soft footstep behind him and looked over his shoulder. “What sad kind of joke do you,” he began, only to break off at the sight of the deer staring at him. He blinked and looked again. It had four legs, a flicking tail, and a deer like head with brown eyes that stared into his as it scented the air warily. He frowned and looked again. “You don’t have breasts. You’re a deer deer.”
When he spoke, the deer bolted. He listened as it crashed through the underbrush until the sounds stopped. “There are no wild deer at 300AS in any pokegirl world. Either I’m in someone’s private reserve, in which case I’m probably in a lot of trouble legally, or I’m not on the world where I was when I drifted off.” He pushed to his feet and reached out with his mind for the delta bonds. They were still there, but muted somehow. Unease began to shift to fear. “Aurum, Beryl, I think you should come out now.” Nothing. The mental links with the Dragonesses were just as nebulous as the delta bonds with his living harem.
He pulled up his sleeves and, when he didn’t find what he was looking for, tore off his shirt. Other than his stored staff, he had no tattoos anywhere he could see. In addition, his armor and undetectable lie rings were gone. “Oh, shit. This is not good.” He snickered briefly. “I wonder if I’m in Kansas now.”
He focused his mind and a light globe appeared in front of him. “Well, at least I still have my magic.” He dismissed the globe and brushed off the seat of his pants before putting his shirt back on. Then he took inventory of his situation. “Ok, I’m wearing the clothes I was when I fell asleep and I still have my knife. My pistol, pokedex and the contents of my pockets are all gone.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s an improvement. Last time I started out naked.” His mood soured suddenly when he remembered that he’d needed Scheherazade to escape.
“Well, standing around like a lump isn’t going to get me back to them.” He chuckled slightly. “Wherever they are is home now and that’s where I need to be.”
Deciding on impulse, he headed for the clearing. As he’d thought, in this direction the tree line ended to reveal the start of a bumpy plain. It could also be a very large cleared area instead of a natural clearing since he could see a building of some kind a mile ahead and more trees on the far side of it. Where he stood, there were no saplings or seedlings anywhere, suggesting that the area was artificial and actively being maintained.
With a start, Iain realized that the bumps on the plain were discrete objects and headed out to examine the closest. It was a body. He stopped a few meters away and summoned his staff. “Yeah, I’ve seen the movies. Get close and the monsters stop playing dead,” he muttered to himself.
Monster was a decent description, he decided. The creature was bipedal. Standing, it would be a foot or so taller than he was, and significantly broader in the width of its body. However, it was most definitely not human, with dark gray leathery looking skin and pointed ears that stood above the heavy skull. It wore darkened steel back and breast armor. It was armed, carrying a sword in its hand and he could see a scabbard for the sword on the creature’s belt. His author’s abilities kicked in and he identified it from some of his writings. The creature was an orc.
“No, I’m definitely not in Kansas or on any pokegirl world.” He straightened up and looked over the plain, which was carpeted with the dead. All were orcs. “Creepy.”
A cursory look revealed that every body he could see was facing towards the building ahead and looked as if they’d just dropped dead. He didn’t smell or see any blood or anything else, suggesting that they’d died from magic of some kind. “So, what do you do now, genius?” He leaned on the staff. “Well, Iain, you’ve got a conundrum here. The facts in evidence are pretty straightforward. First, you already know there are orcs around and you’re very much aware that they’ll cheerfully chop you into roasting size morsels if they find you. Don’t forget that you’re currently dressed like a first level sorcerer and only have a staff. A whole bunch of orcs died here, and there’s a significant gap between the leading rank of the orcs and the building, so they never got to it. Those two facts suggest that something in that building was responsible for their deaths. Now here’s the conundrum. Assuming that whatever did this is still there, does it not like orcs specifically or does it not like everyone and will toast you too if you go over there? Which is it going to be, human?”
He looked at the building for several minutes before nodding. “My gut says I should go there.” He shouldered the staff and started carefully threading his way through the rows of the dead.
The building resolved itself into a small stone tower maybe four stories tall. It was plain and utterly functional, with a peaked roof made of slate and an empty pennant pole at the crest. He stopped in front of the door and looked around to see that the orcs had completely encircled the structure before dropping dead. “To paraphrase Alice, creepier and creepier.”
He jumped when the door swung open. The woman standing in the doorway was tall, with dark green eyes and long black hair that had been woven into a thick braid. She wore comfortable looking robes that hung loosely on her slender frame. She was beautiful, but it was the lethal beauty of a glacier or volcano and it removed all thoughts of her sexuality from the mind of the observer. Iain recognized her and fear shot through him. He forced it aside and bent at the waist. “Your highness.”
She regarded him without speaking for several seconds before finally nodding slightly. “You know who I am, Iain Grey, don’t you?” Her voice was a sweet soprano completely empty of emotion.
With a shock Iain realized that he was no longer speaking English, but he didn’t let his sudden surprise show. “You are Princess Nightraven, in exile.”
“I am. You are Iain Grey, lost but not homeless.”
The custom here was to either agree one was the person being named or to correct the naming. “I am and I am not. I am Iain Grey, lost and seeking to return to my home.”
“Here you will find what you seek, if you but look properly.”
He relaxed. She wasn’t going to kill him out of hand. “Thank you, lady. May I inquire as to why I came to be here?”
“I did not bring you here, Iain Grey. You brought yourself.”
He started to argue with her and stopped as her eyes fixed on him indifferently. Nightraven had no reason to lie to him. Until he proved himself, he wasn’t significant enough for anything other than brutal honesty. And accusing her of lying when she hadn’t was a quick way to join the orcs.
He wasn’t dead just yet, but he was by no means safe.
“Iain Grey, do you know what I am?”
This was a dangerous path to walk. She obviously knew he did, but the words had to be said and there were always powers swirling around Nightraven hoping for a weakness that could be exploited. Saying the wrong thing would give them information they didn’t already have and she would kill him for it. Saying too little would insult her and she would kill him for that.
Everything was a test around Nightraven.
“You are Princess Nightraven, in exile where you await the day you may return home and claim destiny for you and yours.”
She stepped out of the doorway and motioned for him to enter. “Well said, Iain Grey.” As the door closed behind him, she motioned towards the stairs. “Your room will be on the next floor. The door to it is open. There’s a coat and some clothes for you.” As he started for the stairs, she held up a hand to stop him. “Do you know why you are staying here?”
“You search for the key that will allow you to leave your exile. From time to time it is your custom to take students to train in the hopes that once they come into their true power, they can help this search. I presume you hope I may be of some small use in this endeavor.”
A tiny hint of emotion appeared in her eyes. It wasn’t happiness and Iain managed not to back up at the sight of it. “You have knowledge of me that few have. It is good that you are deliberately vague, even in here where we are safe. The fact that your mind cannot be probed is to your benefit and it will help to protect you, but do not give what you know to others.”
“Lady Nightraven, I am not from this world and I do not serve your enemies or your few friends. They have nothing that they could offer me that I would truly want and they cannot give me what I do want. If they did claim that they could give me what I truly want, I would know it to be the lie that it was. I will tell no one your secrets.”
“I will hold you to that, Iain Grey. Change clothes and we will begin when you return.”
***
“You should stay at least a hundred times longer than you have, Iain.”
He shook his head. “I have to return home, lady. I need them and they need me.”
Nightraven leaned against the balcony and looked over her plain without speaking. She often drew out conversations and Iain hadn’t yet decided if it was because her mind was so busy with other things or if it was because, except for the regular orcish incursions when the hordes swept out of the mountains and she parlayed with them in order to attempt to warn off any who would attack her home before killing those who refused her request, she didn’t speak for years at a time when she didn’t have a student. “You have shown exceptional aptitude. Staying here would benefit you enormously but you have progressed enough that leaving now will not hurt your development.” She glanced at him before returning to her observation of her lands. “Staying would allow you to progress enough to deal with Sanctuary by yourself.”
She was right, but it wasn’t necessary. “If I go back now, my family and I will deal with them together.” He smiled as she looked in his direction. “That is not overconfidence, my lady. We will not move before we are ready, but we will find a way to destroy their command elements. I now know that Dominique was on a very promising track even before I came here. If that doesn’t work, we’ll find something else.”
“When you have time, you are to return here to continue your training.” When he looked surprised, she turned to face him. “Remember that you are here because you may be of use to me in my quest. I will not know if you will be able to help me until your apprenticeship is complete.”
“Lady, I intend to settle down for some years once my family is safe. It is unlikely that I will ever return here.” Iain suddenly had this feeling he was Skywalker talking to Yoda on Dagoba and shook the mental image off.
“Time is nothing more than an illusion, if one puts one’s mind to it, Iain. I will return you to the instant and the place that you left and you will return to me here ten seconds after I send you away just as soon as you learn how to.” She gave him a slight smile. Iain knew better than to trust it. He had seen that same smile when the last army of orcs had refused her command to withdraw. The words of his refusal had no sooner left the orc leader’s mouth than she had killed every orc on her land with a thought.
After the orc army had ceased to be, Nightraven had made him clean up the mess. Again, actually, since he’d had to remove all of the bodies that had been lying around when he’d first arrived.
It was as if, once in a while, she felt she had to show signs of feeling emotion, but they were random and seemed to have no relation to events surrounding her. In his experiences with her, all of her reactions were out of sync and had merely underscored the fact that she didn’t even pretend to be human.
Nightraven reached out and took him by the chin when he didn’t reply fast enough. It was the mildest way she showed irritation. “I will have your oath on this, Iain Grey, or you will not leave until I have found out what I need to know.”
She meant it and Iain knew she did. “You have my oath, your highness. I will continue my studies into dimensional and temporal travel and when I can safely return to you, I will.”
For the first time he thought he saw amusement in her eyes. “You said that without showing the slightest bit of the resentment I am sure you are feeling right now, Iain Grey. That shows a potential I had not seen in you before this time. It means there is hope for you yet.”
“Hope for me? I don’t understand.”
“The person who would be able to help me return from my exile would have to be able to function in my society, would he not?”
Iain managed not to stare at her as his heart seemed to stop beating for a small eternity. “I hadn’t thought about it quite that way. I thought that person’s usefulness would end with your exile.”
She shook her head slightly. “Considering the circumstances surrounding both my exile and my return, that person would be the only living being I could trust. I would need him with me for some time after my return.”
Suddenly Iain had a new goal, to make sure he was never that person. “I can see where that would make sense, my lady.”
She regarded him for several seconds and suddenly he was sitting in the chair behind his desk and wearing the clothes he’d had on when he’d left. He checked his internal clock and wasn’t surprised to see no time had elapsed.
After a quick check to verify that he had his rings and Dragoness tattoos again, Iain dropped his head onto his desk with a thump. “Fuck me with a toaster oven.”
“That probably wouldn’t feel very good.” Eve touched his hair and leaned against the desk. “What happened to your hair? You’re all shaggy.”
He picked his head up and blinked. “I know I didn’t hear the door and I thought we weren’t teleporting in the house.” Dominique was in the process of casting some kind of detection spell while Ninhursag and Canaan guarded the door.
Canaan’s antenna uncurled to their full length. “April, Zareen and Pandora are in position outside and Vanessa is sweeping the rest of the house.”
“We’re making a special case this time,” Eve said softly. “Iain, you flickered. Nothing happened to the bonds, but for an instant between heartbeats you weren’t here.” She looked into his eyes. “You already knew that. What happened?”
He ignored the question to focus on something important. “If you think there’s a threat, why is Vanessa alone?”
His wife blinked and paled slightly. “Ninhursag, you’re with her.”
“Good call, Iain.” The Elfqueen slipped silently out the door.
“I’ll ask again, Iain, what happened?”
“I was using the relaxation techniques and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was somewhere else. Someone there has been teaching me a bit about truewizardry. She thinks that I unknowingly sent myself to her because I knew she was an expert on the subject.” He looked up at her. “As soon as I could, I convinced her to send me back. She said she’d send me back to the same instant that I left, but I should have realized that was impossible. If it was the exact same instant there would have been two of me in the same space. That would be bad.”
“Did you finish your lessons there?” Dominique shrugged at the look Eve shot her. “Hey, he found a teacher. I might as well ask if it was useful.”
“According to her, I’m not even close to being done. However, I know a lot more than I did.”
Eve ran her fingers through his hair. “It’s had time to grow. How long were you gone?”
“You said I flickered, right? That means I was gone less than a second.”
Her fingers tightened in his hair and she pulled his head around to look at her. “How long, Iain?”
His eyes hardened. “That hurts. Let me go.”
She released him, her arm dropping to her side. “Iain,” she began, only to stop when he pressed a finger to her lips.
“I came back as soon as I could because my place is here with you and the others. Every day I thought of you. Every day I loved you and I missed you. I wasn’t tortured. I wasn’t dissected. It was a lot of hard work and I needed it, but just as soon as I felt I’d learned enough, I came back because I am needed here and I need to be here.” He cupped her cheek gently. “Eve, my love, you and the others are my lifeline. You keep me sane. I’m here, I’m not hurt and so it’s all ok.” When she just stared into his eyes he sighed. “Ten.”
“Ten days?” When he nodded she relaxed. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“Except for the hair pulling bit, no. Do not go down the same path Zareen is. I’m about to bring her hitting me to a screeching halt. It’s not funny and I don’t like it. I will tell her once and after that I intend to be rather firm with her.”
Eve blinked. “Do you want me to talk to her about it?”
“Sure, you go ahead. I hope it works.”
Dominique looked at Canaan. “You’ve got the door, right?”
The Splice didn’t move from where she was. “I do.”
“I haven’t found anything. I think I’ll join Ninhursag and Vanessa while they sweep the house. After we’re done, we’ll help the others outside.” The Archmage cocked her head at Iain. “I’d like to talk to you again before you go anywhere.”
He nodded. “I’ll be with Eve and Canaan.”
Dominique silently slipped out of the room as Eve spoke again. “Iain, if you accidentally sent yourself somewhere else, what’s to keep it from happening again?”
He’d been dreading this question because he suspected how she’d respond to the answer. “In the short term, nothing. In the long term, iron self discipline and control.” He forced a chuckle. “And, no, you can’t have someone touching me every second of every day just in case.”
She nodded. “At least you have the Dragonesses.”
“That’s right.” It was definitely time to change the subject. “I take it we’ll be going into to town to get me a haircut sometime soon?”
She ran her fingers through his hair once more. “I think we will.”
Canaan snickered.
Eve glanced at her. “What’s so funny?”
“You are.”
“Why do you think I’m funny?”
The Splice glanced over her shoulder at her maharani. “I know why you want his hair short.” She looked Iain up and down. “I hadn’t thought about it until now, but you’re right. There is a faint resemblance.”
Eve turned bright red. “Shut up.”
Iain looked from one to the other. “What is going on?”
Eve sighed as Canaan turned and went to sit in one of the chairs, which creaked alarmingly under her weight. “Dominique and the others have moved outside. The house is secure.” She stretched. “You have to understand that, at their core, pokegirls are defined by sex. It’s in our very structure to be attracted to our masters.” Blue gray eyes met his. “That has always been the case, so it only makes sense that, in the beginning, many pokegirls had a romantic crush on James Sukotto.”
Iain blinked. “I look like Sukebe?”
“That name was given to him by his enemies, Iain. He liked to be called James.” Canaan’s antenna unfurled completely as she tracked the harem members outside. “You don’t really look like him, but while you’re more muscular than he was, you have a similar build and your hair is also the same color as his. His eyes weren’t blue and green like yours are, but like yours they did change color with his moods.” She chuckled. “Eve wants your hair short because he always kept his that way.”
It was Eve’s turn to look surprised. “You got that close to him? I never did.”
“You don’t know much about hunter pokegirls, do you, Eve?” She continued without waiting for a response. “We were created to hunt down and destroy his failures in pokegirl design after the fiasco with the Alaka-Whams that became the Pleiades Group. He exercised personal control over every hunter and he was the only one who could give us our orders. My Amachamp part met with him over a dozen times.” She sighed. “It was a shame he didn’t trust Alaka-Whams as much after that or maybe he would have listened to Bettie and used us to form a Praetorian guard for him. If he had, he wouldn’t have died when he did.”
“He didn’t.” Both pokegirls looked at Iain. “Metroanime’s side stories continued some things after the end of Wild Horses and in them James Sukotto returned from some kind of suspended animation after 200AS to talk to Professor Stroak. I remember laughing at it because I’d have done it very differently.” He smirked. “I’d have had him give himself longevity. Then I’d have had him pull a Conner MacLeod and spend the whole time living in various places and passing himself off as various Researchers in order to continue his work.”
Canaan regarded him with a look of wonder. “How do you do that so blithely?”
“What?”
“Spout off facts that would shake the foundation of the world if they were widely known. Announcing that James was still alive would definitely shake up the leagues and could distract a large portion of Sanctuary’s population of Goths. They worship him as their creator.”
“Without getting into a discussion of the irony of a group of human hating pokegirls worshipping a human, I guess it’s because the information isn’t really all that world shaking to me. Knowing that Sukotto isn’t dead is just a fact. It’s just like the fact that I know where Typhonna is asleep, the fact that I know where the Pleiades Group is hiding or the fact that I know that Professor Stroak faked his death years ago and where he’s living now.”
Canaan was staring at him in shock. “You do realize that your last sentence, if uttered in public, would have you hounded by every agent of every league on the planet and cause widespread panic.”
“That’s why I’m not discussing it in public, Canaan.”
“If you do decide to make an announcement like that, Iain, please let me know beforehand. Judicious stock transactions right before that announcement could make us a lot of money when markets crash in the affected leagues.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
***
Iain looked around his office. “Beryl.”
The red Dragoness flowed off of him and appeared. “My lord.”
“Are you and the others aware of what happened?”
She nodded. “Yes, my lord. You left without us, but not by choice. We will research this to see if there is a way to ensure we travel with you at all times.”
“You’re not worried about what happened?”
“The dead do not worry, my lord. You returned unharmed and that is what is important.”
“I wish some of my living harem thought more along those lines.” He took her hand. “I wish to go to your complex.”
She nodded. “Yes, my lord. We go now.” The shadows stretched from the wall and swallowed them up.
Iain found himself on a plain that extended flatly in all directions while overhead a triangle of suns split his shadow into three parts that extended away from him. He remembered this place and his blood chilled at the thought of what was here. He looked around and saw there were new additions since the first time he’d been here. A young girl watched him anxiously while behind her a burly male dwarf glared in fury at the interloper before beginning to move in his direction. Off from them he could see over a hundred orcs, most of whom had damage on their bodies from melee weapons. A solitary elf watched him with hate filled eyes.
Iain found he wasn’t paralyzed this time and stepped towards Kelly. The Demoness snarled soundlessly, blowing bloody bubbles through the holes in her torso and moved to meet him. He deliberately stepped into her shadow when it got close and slipped away into it.
“My lord!”
Iain’s mind focused and he realized that Beryl was shaking him gently. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around her to keep from falling to his knees. “How long?”
“You were standing there for ten minutes, my lord.”
He shivered and slowly pushed away from her. “It’s not getting better.”
“We have done some research, my lord. Unless a living being is exposed to the effect of our travel at an early age, it will not ever be easy. However, it will eventually reach a level which varies by individual and no longer get worse.”
“While knowing that is good, it still sucks for me.”
She nodded. “Eirian will again suggest that you allow us to sterilize the Pendragon stronghold so you can travel by ley line.”
He shivered again and moved to the fire. “If she catches me at the right time, I may not care about them very much.”
“If you tell me when that is, I will let her know so she can.” When he blinked she gave him a savage grin. “I have no love for the Pendragons.”
“I gathered. I want to see the library. I’ve got some work to do there.”
“Do you wish to know what is happening with the Cheetit and the human?” Eirian stalked into the room. “They are currently not available for viewing or I would ask if you would like to see them.”
Iain hesitated. “What’s going on with them right now?”
“They have been bound into their bodies and right now they have been placed in a cave in the Noir League. The cave has a large bat population and the beetles that eat the feces are also excellent at stripping flesh from bone.”
“I remember those beetles from my college days. Will Ling and Julia be part of my dead harem?”
“Eventually, my lord, if they are not destroyed, they will. However, I do not intend to give them free will until after we have dealt with the new Eoghan and Germanicus. Unless you insist that I do, my lord.”
He shook his head. “No, I think I’m fine with not having to deal with their personalities for a while yet.”
“Then Beryl will take you to the library. Will you require my assistance, my lord?”
“If I do, I’ll call you.”
She bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”
***
Iain proceeded across the room and stopped at the table that lined the far wall from the stairs. He put the small box he was carrying on top of the table and then took firm hold of the table’s edges. He winced at the screech as he shoved the table to the side but kept pushing until he’d freed up enough room for what he intended to do.
He stiffened when the silkily angry voice sounded behind him. “Would you like to explain what the hell you are doing before I break all of the bones in your hands or should we wait until after I’m done?” Iain turned to see Dominique standing with her arms folded as she glared at him. “Of all the people in this house, I would have expected you to know better than anyone else not to touch anything in my laboratory, Iain.”
“All that was on the table was a salt and a pepper cellar and you don’t have any active experiments for the vibrations of the moving table to disrupt.”
The Archmage turned and pointed at a Bunsen burner that was heating a flask. “What about that?”
“I don’t know what it is, but there is no active magic there.” He opened the box. “In fact, I suspect that’s just some kind of display to impress the rubes.”
Dominique blinked and spoke in a normal tone. “I have no idea what you’re insinuating, but I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t.” He fished a purple crayon out of the box. “Ah, this’ll do.”
The Archmage sighed and joined him. “What are you doing with Irena’s old toys?”
“I’m giving you a present.” He knelt and began drawing a line running up the wall. He extended the line until it was over his head before turning it and running it parallel to the floor for two feet before bringing it back to the floor, making a large rectangle. Then he stood and, at waist height, drew three small circles inside the rectangle along the right side before putting the crayon back in the box.
Dominique’s eyebrows rose as she watched him. “You going to put stick people in there too?”
Iain ignored her and placed his palms flat against the wall inside the rectangle. He closed his eyes and concentrated. There was a small surge of magic and the lines of wax shifted to become perfectly straight. At the same time, the rock inside the circles sank into the wall to become depressions a centimeter deep. He relaxed and opened his eyes. “All done.” Dominique opened her mouth only to freeze as he slipped his fingertips inside the holes and pulled sideways. The section of wall outlined by the crayon slid silently open to reveal a room beyond.
The Archmage put a hand on his arm. “Iain, Eve said you told her you were gone for ten days. There’s no way you learned this in that time.”
“Eve asked me how long I’d been gone. I didn’t want to tell her and she insisted. I finally said ten, which she took to mean ten days.” He opened his hands helplessly. “I was gone for ten days.”
“You weren’t gone only ten days, were you? It was longer.”
He nodded. “It was longer. Admitting that to Eve would have either hurt her feelings for no reason I can understand or it would have somehow made her mad.”
“Do I want to know how long you were gone?”
He turned and slipped his arm around her waist. “Does it really matter? I have an eidetic memory, remember? The best blessing of that is I can’t forget. No matter how long I am away I can’t forget how you feel.” He sniffed her hair. “I can’t forget how you smell.” He kissed her ear and she smiled. “I can’t forget how you taste and I can’t ever forget how much I love you.”
“I like hearing the way you say that.” She frowned. “That does beg a question. Do you remember things perfectly from before you made your memory eidetic?”
“I do. I remember everything from the instant my mind became aware.”
“That means you also remember everything about being tortured, every hurt and every slight.”
“It does. I don’t have to think about specific things if I don’t want to, but the memories of what happened as just as fresh as if I’m there right now, if I wish.” He squeezed her waist and let her go. “But I know they’re memories and I can tell the difference between them and the present, even if it does help me to understand something my instructor said.”
“What was that?”
“Time is an illusion.” He motioned towards the doorway. “Want to see my present?”
“One question: what happens when that door is shut?”
“The hyperdimensional realm on the other side ceases to be accessible from this universe until the door is reopened.”
“What happens if I accidentally wipe off some crayon?”
“Nothing. Only I can remove it and cut the connection.” He watched her examining it with her eyes. “I can teach you how to do this.”
She shot him a skeptical glance. “You can?”
“Well, I can teach you the principles involved and maybe I can help you work out how to do it with the magic style you use. But I do not doubt that with the principles in hand that you won’t figure out how to do it yourself.”
Dominique blinked and her eyes lit up. “Iain Grey, with those sentences you just stopped being a dabbler. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, but let’s keep in mind that of all the things I did learn from my teacher, how to do nasty things to people at a distance was not yet on the agenda and wasn’t going to be until after I mastered a whole host of other things. I can do more but I can’t throw fireballs yet, so my place in a fight is still going to be support.”
“Knowing your limitations is the smartest thing a mage can learn, Iain. When the time comes, I’m sure you’ll throw fireballs with the best of them, if you can learn how to escape from the handcuffs Eve is going to try to put on you to keep you out of the fighting.” She peeked in the doorway and squealed in pleasure before darting in. “Oh, Iain!” He joined her and watched as she ran her finger down the spine of one of the books that lined the walls. She didn’t look at him. “What are they?”
“These are the ones that my instructor had me copy as part of my studies.” He nodded towards a section where the shelves became a deep blue. “The books on the blue shelves are the ones from the Stanford collection that the Dragonesses stole. There’s a door over there that goes to a second room. In there is Eoghan’s library. It’s segregated because I am fairly certain that some of the books in it are trapped. All of these are safe. I need to warn you that none of the books from my studies are in English, but I intend to teach anyone who is interested all of the languages in them.”
Dominique straightened and gave him a serious look. “You did a terrible thing, but I think I can find it in my heart to forgive you for moving my table.”
He sighed and nodded solemnly. “I need to know, Dominique. If you can’t, I’ll have no choice but to get rid of this and push the table back where it belongs.”
The Archmage laughed and hugged him. “Iain, it’s wonderful.” She frowned. “Can you make the door without connecting it to a hyperdimensional space?”
“I learned how to do that first. Why?”
“Does it matter what the wall is made of or how thick it is?”
“No.”
“Then it’s a good thing Eve is the maharani or we’d have a new career as bank robbers.”
He chuckled. “We’d be robbing museums instead of banks, I think. Banks are just so pedestrian.”
***
“There you are.” April dropped into his lap and stretched to make herself comfortable there.
Iain wrapped his arms around her. “Here I am,” he agreed.
She gave him a peck on the lips. “Dominique talked to us. We know you were gone for longer than ten days. So, what was it, ten weeks?”
He nodded.
She cocked her head. “Are you going to make me guess?”
“Do you really think you need to?”
“Was it ten decades?”
“No.”
“Was it ten months?”
“Yes.”
She grinned. “Ten years!”
“Yes.”
April blinked in shock. “You were there for ten years?”
Iain sighed and his response was almost inaudible. “Yes.”
She sighed and kissed him gently. “I’m sorry for teasing you, but we do need to know. We love you.”
“I love you too. I missed you so much.” He hugged her until she squeaked.
April frowned slightly and wriggled a bit in his lap. “So what was she like?”
“Who?”
“Your teacher, of course.”
Iain suppressed the unease that was starting in his stomach. “Who said my instructor was a woman?”
“Iain, we compared notes. You’ve been very careful not to refer to your instructor with any gender, so it has to be a woman. You’re worried we’d be upset that you slept with her.”
His mouth dropped. “I did not sleep with Nightraven.”
“So that’s her name? You didn’t have sex with her?” When he shook his head she paled slightly. “Please tell me you didn’t go ten years without getting laid. It’s not healthy.”
He couldn’t keep from smiling. “No, I didn’t. The first year I was way too busy, but after that I was sent into a nearby town on a regular basis for some lessons that she didn’t want to give me. There were a couple of prossies in town that I became familiar with on a regular basis.”
“That’s good. I think.” She frowned. “What is a prossie?”
“It’s a prostitute.”
“I’m not familiar with that term.”
“A prostitute is someone who trades sexual favors for payment. Usually the payment is money, but barter sometimes happens, too.”
April looked shocked. “Money for sex? How did they do that? It’s not like sex isn’t easy to find wherever you happen to be.”
“There weren’t any pokegirls there, April.”
She began to look unhappy. “Did you pay for sex with these women?”
“Why do I have this feeling that I’m now standing on a landmine?”
“Answer, me, Iain. Did you pay for sex?”
“I did.”
Anger appeared in her eyes. “Weren’t there women you could have sex with that you didn’t have to pay?”
“First of all, the village was all elves, so none of the regular girls wanted anything to do with me. Second, I wasn’t looking for a wife, even if I could have found one there.”
“You don’t know how to seduce an Elf? What have you been doing with Ninhursag?”
He shook his head and tried to get control of the conversation back. “April, they were not pokegirls. I was on a world with not a single pokegirl on it. The elves of that world do not go feral. They do not form bonds and they have their own males to marry and breed with. I was lucky to find a couple of prostitutes who would have sex with me, or I would have had to go without.”
Her eyes were big and she looked stunned. “Go. Without. You? Iain, you’re good in bed.”
He chuckled. “Thank you for the objective evaluation, but I have to have the chance to prove that to someone, don’t I?” He thought for a few seconds. “Imagine a village full of Neo Iczels. They have Neo men to have kids with. One day along comes a human looking for a sex partner. What do you think they would say?”
“Is that what it was like there?”
“That’s pretty much what it was like. The men didn’t want me around, either.” He shook his head. “If they hadn’t known I was Nighraven’s student, they might have killed me to keep me out of the village.” He grimaced. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they gave one of the girls who would deal with me a hard time because of it. Eventually she disappeared. I was told she’d left the village.”
“That left you with one, um, prostitute?”
He nodded. “She was a retired adventurer and just wanted some fun and a bit of spending money. Since she could beat up any seven people in the village, she was given a wide berth. That’s why she took up with me in the first place. I wasn’t afraid of her.”
April nodded. “I’m sure she recognized that you were a superior male to the sad ones in the village.”
Iain just looked at her for a second and shrugged. “I’m not going to even try to debate that one.”
April looked down and felt under her, grabbing his erection through his pants. “You didn’t get laid nearly as often as you do here.” She gave him a suspicious look. “You’ll still want to do it as much as you have, right?”
He chuckled. “I got conditioned to lots of sex and then spent ten years pretty much horny the whole fucking time, April. I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
“That’s good.” Her head canted thoughtfully. “You said you went to the village for lessons. What kind of lessons?”
He smiled. “Swordsmanship. I wanted to keep up on my training so I wouldn’t be embarrassed when I returned and Pandora kicked my ass without working up a sweat.”
***
The air was chill and wet and the breeze was filled with leaves falling from trees preparing for winter. As the two bodies circled, the air was filled with the clangor of steel on steel and the occasional grunt. The battle continued until Eve disengaged, raising her sword to signal a break. Her voice was filled with approval. “I’ve never seen that style before, but I am pleased to have to admit that you have improved a great deal.”
Iain sucked air and blinked the sweat out of his eyes. “I’m glad you think so. My teacher there had a simple way to make sure I worked as hard as I could to learn what he was willing to teach me.” He smiled slightly. “When I didn’t, he stabbed me.”
Eve looked surprised. “That’s the same way they teach the trainees at the Sisterhood boot camp. I’m glad he didn’t injure you too severely.”
Iain wiped at his face with his shirt so his wife couldn’t see his expression. Once he’d found out that Iain was much harder to kill than any normal human, his teacher had left him for dead more than once as an object lesson. “Me too.”
“I put his skill level at more than sufficient to defeat just about any human he might face.” Pandora got up from where she’d been observing the duel. “His speed outstrips that of a human and I think he’s stronger than one now. I’ll find out for sure later, but I’d treat him in a fight as if he were blood gifted with enhanced speed and strength.” She handed him a towel. “I noticed that you don’t block squarely and instead deflect blows. Where did you learn to do that?”
“My instructor had a magic item a lot like the one Dominique has and it gave him a lot more strength than I have. He would cheerfully use it to club me to ground if I tried to meet him squarely and I quickly learned to deflect blows like a martial artist instead of trying to block.” He began wiping off the sweat.
Eve smiled suddenly. “That’ll serve you well against pokegirls, Iain.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too. I don’t intend to get into melee with anyone, but as we all know I can’t tell our opponents that it’s not fair to attack me. If I tried it would just let them know I’m easy prey.”
Pandora eyed him speculatively. “What about your unarmed skills?”
He shrugged. “My teacher there thought being unarmed was the result of stupidity and should be punished. I looked, but I couldn’t find anyone who would teach any sort of unarmed style, so I’m woefully out of practice.”
“At least you know where you’re weak. That’s a good start and we’ll start training on that in addition to your regular work tomorrow.”
“Please forgive me if I’m not thrilled to hear that.” Both ladies laughed at him in response.
***
Iain moved his glass of water from his desk to the shelf where the candles lit with Pandora’s hellfire sat. He started at the black flames for several seconds before closing his eyes and returning to his chair.
Pulling a box from the bottom drawer of his desk, he opened it and retrieved his collection of dueling cards. April liked to play him whenever they got the chance. He’d won exactly one of the hundreds of games they’d played, but he figured that having something in his life that was almost impossible for him to win helped to keep him humble.
But it wasn’t his decks he wanted today and he put them aside to pull out his collection of spare cards. Mindful of how upset April would be if he trashed any of the individual cards she’d gotten for him, he built a pile of weak common cards from the booster packs she regularly gave him. The rest of the cards went back in the box and then back in the drawer where they belonged.
Iain retrieved a sheet of paper from the top drawer of the desk and looked down the list written on it. Then he counted the cards he’d gotten out. “Crap.” He retrieved the box and counted out several more common cards that went onto the pile.
After putting the box away again, he took the card from the top of the pile and laid it on the desk in front of him. He pressed a finger against the card and closed his eyes. The card burst with light and color, before fading back to normalcy. Now the card was blue and the image on the front was different. Iain read it and nodded to himself before putting the card aside. He made a mark next to the first item on the list and pulled another card from the pile.
Eventually he was finished and had two piles of blue cards on his desk. He shuffled through the piles, comparing them to his list one last time before putting the list back in his desk.
Then he reached out with his mind. April, please come to my office.
Let me get this loaf of bread into the oven and I’ll be right there.
Iain had spent the last ten years cooking camp food for himself and he was not going to interfere with April’s fresh bread. Take your time.
A few minutes later she came into the office and settled into her favorite chair, which just happened to be his lap. “What did you want?” Her eyes settled on the cards on his desk and she frowned. “What are those?”
“They’re for you.” He handed her one of the piles of cards. “Duelists are really rare and because of that, there isn’t really a market of items just for them. These are for you.”
She glanced at them and then turned back to him. “They’re blue.”
“That’s because they’re not for use in a regular deck. While you’ve got some cards you can use to augment yourself, they’re really for the monsters in your cards. These, on the other hand, are made specifically for the Duelist using them. That would be you.”
She shuffled through the cards and her eyes widened. “Iain, I know every dueling card ever made and these don’t exist anywhere. Did you make these for me?”
He didn’t see any reason to deny it. “I did. I know you want to be more useful in combat and I want you to be as happy as possible.” He took the cards from her. “There are twenty seven cards here. Twenty of these cards are for each pokegirl element, one for each element. When activated, these cards will allow your next pokegirl technique to be of that element. Note that these cards include the celestial and infernal elements, so you could use regular pokegirl techniques against Zombabes.” He put the elemental cards aside. “The rest are augments for you.” He held up a card. “The armor card lets you create armor around yourself identical to that used by Scheherazade. However, it doesn’t regenerate on its own, so be careful.”
“Wow.”
“The speed and strength cards each give you an enhancement of four times normal for that particular attribute. I’d really recommend getting used to the changes before using these in a fight.”
She nodded. “That sounds like a very good idea.”
He handed her another card. “This is the sharpshooter card. Use it and your next attack will not miss unless your target is phased or teleports away from the battlefield before your attack goes off.”
“Can I use these on other people?”
“You should be able to, but each still costs you life energy, so raising an army of super powered Bimbos might not be a good idea.” Another card. “This is regeneration and will grant you fast regen.”
“That’ll be useful.”
“I certainly hope so.” Another card. “Desensitization makes you immune to dusts, pollens and pheromones. It also partially deadens the nerves in your skin, nose, groin and tongue. That has the side effect of making sex attacks useless on you while it’s in effect.”
“What’s the last card?” April plucked it from his hand and looked it over. “Blend?”
“It acts a lot like the polymerization card in the game, but it allows you to merge with a construct and gain attributes from it. I’m not sure how that will work in a lot of cases and you’re just going to have to experiment to see what happens.”
April’s eyes widened. “These are going to be fun, Iain.” She kissed him soundly and slid out of his lap. “I hope you don’t mind if I rush off to try these out?”
“I know you love me and I know to never come between you and your cards. Go have fun.” He watched her leave and got up to retrieve his water. He paused, watching the black flames dance on their wicks, before slowly reaching out a hand towards them. He pulled back suddenly. “No, I shouldn’t experiment without someone around to keep me from doing something really stupid.” He stretched and ran his fingers through his hair absently. Then he smiled. “Well, if Eve likes my hair short, then I’ll get her and let her take me off for a haircut.”
***
Iain Grey - Tradesman
Eve - Megami-sama (maharani)
Dominique - Blessed Archmage
April - Duelist
Ninhursag - Elfqueen
Zareen - Nightmare
Pandora - Fiendish Fallen Angel
Canaan - G-Splice (Amachamp Hunter - Alaka-Wham)
Dragonesses
Eirian - Silver
Skye - Blue
Emerald - Green
Aurum - Gold
Beryl - Red