Seleroan
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8 - A New Day
🕑 Added 2024-11-18 17:50:12 +0000 UTC
That was the last moment of clarity I had for some while. Perhaps Mia needed privacy to complete her work. Perhaps witnessing her actually craft a skill was some forbidden thing. Whatever the case, the second I agreed to accept the ability she intended—and thus, absorb Xhinn’s influence—I was parted from her and again swept into the maelstrom of debauched chaos that was Transubstantiation Stress Disorder.
I could not say what I experienced during that time beyond occasional glimpses of sweating bodies, unbound pleasures, and a delirious sense of merriment. Yes, it was fun in its own way, but also far… far too intense. And it lasted much longer than even the devoutest Maenad could have tolerated.
It was a bit like being stuck for days on end at the wildest party you have ever heard of. Once the initial burst of adrenaline is spent, you start to feel sick at your stomach from too much alcohol and not enough water, and your head can no longer resist the temptation to pound along with the constant thumping of the music. So you decide you would very much like to go home… except someone has stolen your wallet… and your car. You cannot find any of your friends. You think you might have been drugged.
Whose house is this, anyway?
In any event, I must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was bouncing along, strapped to someone’s back, and staring down at a cloud bank over the side of a cliff.
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I might still be dreaming, but it did not help. When I focused again, the clouds were still there. As was the rocky, snow-laden cliffside. And way… way in the distance, I could see the sun gleaming over what I assumed must be the twin rivers Isafel as they flowed into the now-misshapen Lake Elisaf. The tent city that had sprung up around it was all but invisible from this altitude.
Well, that’s new! I’ve always wanted my own what-did-I-do-last-night story. All that was missing was the live chicken.
<ding!>
For the second time in as many minutes, I was forced to blink what must have been residual sleep from my eyes, and for the second time, it did nothing to help. Never mind the passive-ability thing—I had not even known that was a thing… though now that I thought about it, some of my conversations with Mia had hinted at the restriction—but Tempered Toughness?!
That meant I would never have to spend another Ability Point on Toughness again. It would improve every Layer all on its own—a huge upgrade, considering the exponential cost to improving Ability Scores.
Hold on. Greater Human… question mark?
My eyes wandered up to the again-translucent Mia, who was holding the placard with an exultant grin stretching from ear to ear. Someone was pleased with themselves.
I glanced significantly at the question mark.
With a gasp of realization, she swapped to a new sign.
A ball of lead settled into my stomach, and with some difficulty, I lifted my hand to stare at it. My fingers were still thick and manly—to my relief—but my nails were definitely showing signs of sharpening into points. Not so long ago, I might have torn at my hair in denial and made furious plans to stop this, or even expressed some sorrow over the revelation. But as the sign said, I had known this was coming.
It would not be long until I was sporting a set of out-and-out claws, just like my Dolilim. And I was sure more changes were on their way.
Oh, well… I guess there are worse things than being the same species as your girlfriends.
“How you holding out back there, Jax?” Arx’s voice drifted to my ears over the wind. “Do you need to rest?”
“Better than ye, ye clarted chugger!” the person carrying me shouted back.
I might have known it was her sooner, but the wind was carrying Jax’s scent away before it ever reached my nose. And my cheek was pressed into the meat of her shoulder such that I was facing away from her shock of red hair. For some reason, I was having trouble convincing my muscles to cooperate with simple commands like: ‘lift head up’ or ‘stop drooling.’
“I’ll rest when I’m dead or them’uns back there give it up, and not before.”
“You dying is what got us into this mess,” another voice called. Lynnria, it sounded like.
Jax halted for a moment to catch her breath. “Aye… I know it,” she admitted, her voice dropping to a level that made it clear her next words were meant only for her own ears. “More’s the fool, be I. But that one’ll not catch me like that again.”
I opened my mouth—both to moan an announcement of my recovery and, if I could manage it, ask what they were talking about—but then something caught my attention. An odd glow was peeking out from behind the edge of Jax’s dress, just beneath my nose. I closed one eye to focus on it better, but Jax soon shrugged me higher onto her back and marshaled on.
And of course, Mia was not finished. She was waving her next sign with so much excitement I feared she might just vibrate out of her own skin.
“Lord Master, look! We did it!”
I could not help but smile at her enthusiasm. Delivered as promised.
Though, I would hardly call what we had done supernatural. It was a bit cheaty, sure, but not that. And whether the skill turned out to be the coup Mia anticipated remained to be seen. Sure, the potential was huge, but I still needed to find some actual Words to study, figure out a way to translate them, and—because the act of writing them down was itself a working of magic that could cause any number of random effects if left unguided—commit them to memory.
It would also be nice if I could find a reliable method of using them without resorting to performance theater, but one step at a time.
I was just surprised I could remember my dream well enough to know Mia had been cooking this up. Certain parts were kind of fuzzy and everything before and after we had joined had faded to an emotional afterimage, but I vividly recalled our time together. Had we been under less pressure, I might have even enjoyed the experience.
My groin pulsed as the memory of the event presaging our actual joining came flooding back. Mia could be so hot when she was in the mood. Terrifyingly hot. The shadows, the horns, those gleaming eyes… Just the burning passion of the moment! Woof. It was like having sex with a living nightmare. And I was into it!
My eyes flicked from the card to Mia, and my smile morphed into the best approximation of a sultry grin I could manage under the circumstances. Look at her. Pretending to be all prim and proper. And innocent. But I knew better now. She was every bit the demon the rest of my girls could be. For a long moment, we simply stared at one another, and I relished her look of confusion slowly dawning into realization… followed by the faint traces of pink crawling up her cheeks.
Flustered, she put the card away, and I noticed the fur-lined top from my dream had returned to support her ample bosom. Or one similar, anyway. If I had more control over the state of my own mind, I would have liked to have given her dresses back, but I really did enjoy this look on her. From the outside.
Being trapped inside, forced to have yet not touch a single acre of those feminine delights… Argh! What absolute torture!
Mia had relished my discomfit, too. The tease.
Hmm… she said we’ve been practicing this merging thing for a while now. If that were true, it was probable she would want to continue, so the opportunity to experiment was not yet off the table. It might even be fun to let her take my own body for a spin. The idea of someone else controlling my hands while they roamed over my flesh, of having moans of appreciation emerging unbidden from my lips…
The possibilities were more than a little intriguing, provided I could actually remember it afterward.
Hold on. If we’ve been merging… Does that mean we’ve been having sex every night? Damn it! Mia, you absolute succubus!
…good for you.
I wished I had been a more conscious participant in her evening sojourns, but she more than had my permission. It was not like I had any other way of meaningfully satisfying her. Or myself upon her.
But it was high time I wrenched my mind from the gutter. Now, if I could just convince my anatomy to cooperate…
Good grief, I am absolutely throbbing today.
I was no stranger to the occasional morning glory, but it was rare for my soldier to be so ready for action that I could feel my heartbeat through it. More surprising was how little attention Jax was paying it. She was usually so attuned to my moods that the slightest twitch from me down there was enough to draw her ardor, and here I was, literally grinding into her back with her every step. She had not even realized I was awake!
Then again, considering the dreams I had been having, I had probably been like this for a while, so she would have to be consciously ignoring it in order to function. Which would provide a lot of context to that earlier conversation. The burden I represented was more than just physical weight. For a lilim, anyway.
And what is that light? Every other step she took pulled her dress back just enough for it to flash me, and I got another look at the golden brand apparently adorning her skin. Except I knew every inch of my First’s body. Her skin was not decorated with so much as a freckle, never mind some magical glowing tattoo. There was no way I could have missed something like this.
It was hard to make my eyes focus on the thing from so close up, but the nearest I could make out was… something like a leaf?
Mia cleared her throat, cutting into my thoughts. “Would you like to see your Stat Page now?”
With a nod that was more a distracted twitch of my eyebrows than anything, I agreed.
Man, what a cluttered mess.
It was an inevitable consequence of any menu-based system that the more one leveled up—the more stats, abilities, and unique quirks you added to your character—the more everything had to balloon outward in order to keep track of it all. Doubly so if the system was at all interesting. Customization was simultaneously the friend of every gamer and the bane of every game-designer’s existence.
One of these days, I was going to have a talk with Mia about separating out my stat page into subsections. But not today.
I scanned the sheet quickly for changes, noting immediately that my race had been updated. As had its label. I assumed Mia had changed it to ‘kind’ in order to align with my current understanding.
Xhinn’s Gift was a recent addition to my list of signs, though I still had no idea why any of them were called that. They had always seemed more like titles to me. Although the Demon Queen had mentioned there being a scent component associated with the individuals on that list, so perhaps they were more akin to olfactory signatures?
Let’s see… Class is the same, Layer is the same, Stats…
None of the numbers had improved, of course, though Strength was currently taking quite the hit—not that I needed a number on a stat page to tell me how weak I was feeling. From the formatting, I assumed this would be temporary, likely a consequence of having been unconscious for so long.
There were also some alterations to the formatting. Again. Toughness had been marked in bold and gained a permanent plus-sign next to its number, I assumed, to indicate the tempering. Though the underline under its first letter was still there.
Does that mean I can still invest in it? Get double the stat increases? And how would that interact with what Ahnbe did to my Charisma?
That stat had been grayed out, I noticed, but that made sense. I had not been able to put points into my final Ability Score ever since the Shepherdess had stabbed me with her Glowing Groper of Goddess Goring. It was a working title.
And it appeared Lynnria and Xyn had been clumped together as ‘other’ in my list of followers. Which suited me fine. Lynnria was technically an unbound lesser Dolilim who had agreed to allow Mia access to her Core, solidifying her membership within my Clan. And Xyn’s status was… equally complicated. ‘Other’ summed it up nicely.
The only additional object of note was that my available Stat Points had been reduced from 4 to 3, a known drawback to gaining a Tempered Ability Score. But I was not about to complain. My stats were getting a little nuts with all these goddess interactions.
It was a shame all I could do was buff and heal people. Otherwise, I may have eventually become a force to be reckoned with. But if this Pierce the Veil business panned out like Mia seemed to believe it would, there might yet come a day when chucking the odd fireball was back in the cards.
Fingers crossed…
That was all well and good, but for now, I needed to figure out just what the hell had been going on while I was out. And I was sure my resident Faen could have used a rest after struggling for so long to revive me.
So, in a voice that sounded like a recovering anesthesia patient, I drawled, “Mmmthang you, Miiiia…”
Jax gasped on hearing me and whirled. “Master?!”
However, being that I was strapped to her back, she accomplished nothing beyond flinging my limp body about.
“Ow…”
“Fool!” Mia shouted. “I just woke him up. If you break his neck after all this, I’ll make sure your next skill will be to belch fire out of a brand new set of chin warts!”
“There ye be, bloody doo-headed Faen!” Jax grumbled as she scrabbled to undo my harness. From the looks of it, it had been made of the same bright green material as our old clothes had been. “Been near on a week now, and ye couldn’t so much as pop by for a… for a—somebody come help me with these blasted knots!”
“A weeg?” The pins and needles shooting through my everything was still making basic muscular control a tad difficult, so it took a moment for my face to contort itself into an appropriate level of shock. “I thaw it was only three days…”
“That was only how long it took to get to our Core. Did you think setting us to rights again would be as simple as snapping my fingers?”
“What’s the matter, Jax?” Arx called, and when my steed turned, I saw the spiraling horns of my tallest Dolilim just rounding the bend ahead of us. “Did I actually hear our almighty First call for help? ‘stits, with how far behind you’ve been lagging, I half thought you were taking a minute to rub one—”
“Cram it!” Jax barked, then hiked a thumb toward me. “Maybe look with yer eyes afore ye flap yer gums.”
Arx stumbled to a halt, her breath catching. “Master? Dearest Master?”
“Hi, Args.” I gave her my best lopsided grin, but that was more to do with the left side of my face refusing to cooperate than an attempt at rakishness.
I doubted Arx noticed.
The next few moments of my life were lost to such a rush of hugs, kisses, and tearful histrionics that you might have thought I was returning home from an overseas war, not recovering from a dubious sample of the holy sacrament. And then Jax finally persuaded Arx to listen long enough to cut me down, and I got to enjoy a second round of two gorgeous women fawning over me.
What can I say? It was good to be loved.
Eventually, Lynnria came to investigate what the commotion was all about, and though she was overjoyed to see me awake, her reaction was not to rush to my side. Instead, she only dropped to her knees as tears streamed down her face.
I felt for her. These last few days could not have been kind to the lesser Dolilim. Setting aside the emotional toll of seeing someone you cared about so completely laid out, I was her preferred source of food. The others would have been more than willing to help her out, I was sure, but Lynnria was not the type to suffer such breaches to her boundaries lightly.
Regardless, once I stretched my arms wide, she shuffled forward and commenced to bawling into my chest like a good girl.
While I was in the process of stroking her hair, I noticed a couple of things. One, she was wearing it unbound today, allowing her wavy, yet somewhat bedraggled purple locks to spill over her shoulders. But more importantly, there were two sharp protrusions coming in along her scalp.
“Hey! Loogie here…” I slurred. “Someone’s got a pair of imm-porns.”
Still sniffling, she pulled away to cover them self-consciously. “Yeah. After that creature licked me… well, I don’t remember much; they tell me I went a little nuts for a while there. The next thing I knew, I had these things sticking out of my head.”
“The wean can feed proper now, too,” Jax added.
That was a surprising bit of news. I glanced to Lynnria quickly for confirmation.
“It’s not quite the same,” she admitted. “I don’t get any flavor from people, so I can’t tell what emotions they’re feeling. Best I can do is sense what direction it’s coming from.”
I nodded thoughtfully. It seemed unlikely these developments were unrelated, though why the goddess would have wanted to further Lynnria’s evolution was anyone’s guess. Who knew such a random act could have led to something like this? Xhinn may have fucked us over pretty hard, but as often happened with the Demon Queen, surviving her shenanigans came with certain blessings.
“Sthill. Thad’s better’n… nnnothing! ‘Nnn… ‘n—I think they look nnnice!” I forced out, panting. I tried to pull off an encouraging smile, but it felt more like a grimace. “You wan’ me to sdroke ‘em?”
“Do I want you to what?” She managed a chuckle through her tears. “Donum, why are you talking like that?”
“He’s suffering from sleep sickness.”
The four of us turned at the sound of Xyn’s voice. I could not speak for the others—in more ways than one—but what with all the emotional outpourings, I had not heard her approach. And I probably should have.
For some reason, the only true lilim among us had been loaded down with every scrap of gear we had. The coil of old rope we had spun together out of beetle-webs was draped diagonally over one shoulder; the leather pack containing our sewing supplies, other miscellaneous knick-knacks, and what looked to be a brand new tent was strapped to her back; and she was even carrying that stupid rabbit monster in its cage. Goodness knows what they had been feeding that thing while I was out.
Her pronouncement was met with a chorus of hissing.
“There is no need for that.” Sighing tiredly, she settled the cage next to a rock behind her. The rabbit sniffed it once before going back to grooming its backside. “Haven’t I proved myself your ally these last days? I mean none of you any harm, least of all him. I have yet to even touch my—” she winced a bit before amending, “—your… precious master.”
“That so? Seems to me ye’ve touched ‘im plenty enough.” Jax’s voice was icy.
“I’ve told you I had nothing to do with that.” She spread her hands pleadingly. “Mother can use my body as she wills. I cannot fight her when she controls me.”
“And yet it was you who removed the patch,” Arx accused.
“It… was easier than explaining,” Xyn admitted. “I thought it would be funny to see all of your expressions when she overcame me. And it was… at first. But I didn’t know she would do that to him.”
Her eye found mine for a fleeting moment. Xyn was a proud creature, capricious as she was wise. Yet there was a fragility in her expression. A guilt. She had never truly earned the relationship between us, but it was clear she feared its loss.
“Are you alright?” I could barely hear the question over the wind.
An unwilling huff escaped my lungs. It was no apology, but it was obvious she cared about the answer. That was good enough for me.
So, in an echo of Lynnria’s earlier comment, I admitted, “I wen’ a liddle nuts for a while dere. Bud I survived.”
I had wanted to find out how we came to be on the only mountain even remotely visible from Raialie, but the girls had been worried sick for so long it was the least I could do to set their fears to rest. So, for some time after that, I did my best to slur my way through the tale of my adventures through dreamland and their results.
Lynnria especially was intrigued by my depictions of sharing a body with Mia, though Jax had been unsurprised by the revelation. She did not disclose how she could have come across that information when even I had not known about it, nor apparently did she approve. From her grumbling, she felt it was a perversion of the natural master-servant relationship.
However, once I described how we had merged in the first place—after quite a lot of badgering from Lynnria—everyone got on board with the practice. I tried to explain how volatile my dreams often were, so there was no way I could guarantee a repeat performance. And even if I had that kind of control, I was more than a little confused how they expected me to just pop into their heads to try it. But Mia’s poetic recitations, gloating really, about the ecstasy of being ‘so completely filled with her lord and master’—to the point I was afraid she would soon have her audience frothing at the mouth—eventually forced me to give it up as a lost cause.
Xyn’s reaction was more subdued, if no less intrigued. Apparently, my ‘prowess’ at manipulating the dream fabric had been a topic of much gossip amongst her sisters. There had been an incident, she had said, but refused to go into details. Mia found that hilarious.
Obviously, none of them had the cultural context to understand what an Italian exploitation film was, so I struggled when it came to explaining the dream’s central framing device. But Mia was fortunately there to provide that crucial outsider’s perspective. It was rare, but there were certain nomadic theater troupes who were known for memorizing their lines by rote in the local language, leading to notoriously comical outcomes. For some reason, none of the girls found the idea of being stuck as a performer in such a production as funny as I had, but the story itself had them glued to their seats, particularly the idea of ‘magic explosion wands’ that could be triggered by squeezing them. And war stories were always a sure favorite, no matter the culture.
While we talked, I gradually got used to using my mouth again, so my slurring soon dissipated. But the tingles coursing through my arms and legs were slower to give way. I had the impression from random tidbits I had picked up over the course of my life that a typical coma patient could take weeks or even months of rehabilitation to fully recover, but it did not appear as though I had lost any essential motor functions—something my own stat page had confirmed. That gave me pause until I remembered that my Strength was less a result of constant work and maintenance and more a tally assigned by a magical Core. I could temporarily manipulate that tally based on my actions, but the only way to truly move the bar was through the consumption of Gems of Power. It was an interesting world I had landed in.
In any case, Mia soon brought the conversation around to my supposed people, and our role as heir apparent, which had the girls leaning forward with an intensity that I should have recognized.
“…warriors were all human women of a… decently high, natural Charisma. They were a brave lot, but their state of dress was completely inappropriate for a battle of—”
“What’d they look like?” Jax interrupted.
While Mia stepped away to contain her swearing, I took over.
“Like… individually? I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”
“Nay, human wenches. What do they look like?”
I shrugged. “The same as you all… er, closer to a laoi, actually. But with ears like mine.” I checked quickly to make sure that was still true, but everything seemed fine in that department. For now. Arx gave me a curious look, but we had not yet come to that part of the story. And I was still trying to work out the best way of breaking the news to them. “And they’re not as tall. Most of them are about chest high compared to me.”
“Only because of their legs,” Mia cut back in. “Completely out of proportion. Most of them were so short they were barely even as long as their torsos. Why, they had to wear special shoes to make themselves look taller. Can you imagine? And you should have seen Stevie. Why that woman—”
“Stevie?!” Jax was on her feet in an instant, and the rest of the girls were not far behind. Except for Xyn, who only looked confused. “She’s invading yer dreams now? Shite, I should’ve seen this coming.”
“Right?” Arx agreed. “They’re both human. ‘snails, of course, I assumed she’d be able to manipulate the fabric, too. But well enough to leap minds? And over such distances!”
“But did she find out our location?” Lynnria asked. “Quickly, Donum. What questions did she ask? What did you tell her?”
It took me a fair number of seconds before my brain could sort out the sheer number of false assumptions that had just been flung my way, so it was no wonder I had no idea where to even begin.
Strangely, it was Xyn who came to my rescue. “I wouldn’t worry about these humans if I were you.”
Jax rounded on her. “What do ye know? Ye heard what he just said, same as us. She were in his mind. Imagine a whole people what can do the same.”
“Terrifying, I’m sure.” Xyn chuckled agreeably. “But then… I have existed for over three thousand years. And the only human who has ever entered Mother’s domain in that time,” she pointed at me, “is that one.”
“But surely that’s impossible,” Arx argued. “Unless… could it be that the Floating Isles have some way to repel the Mouths?”
“They’s floating. That’d help some,” Jax put in. “But there’s ones what fly.”
“I couldn’t say,” Xyn admitted. “We lilim only know what Mouths exist, not where they go or what methods the kinds may have devised to ward themselves. I couldn’t even tell you how to track one.”
She glanced at me significantly. For some reason.
“Look,” I began. “You guys need to understand: this was not the actual Stevie in my dream. It was just… a memory—a random face my unconscious mind plucked out to play a role. I mean, wouldn’t you think the real Stevie would have noticed I was in a body she had never seen before? She didn’t even mention it. She thought we were lesbians! For crying out loud, she didn’t even have the right accent!”
That shut them up. Every single one of them was staring at me so hard, I thought their eyes might pop out of their skulls. Even Xyn. Again, no idea why.
“Ye can do that?” Jax choked out.
I glanced from face to face, starting to feel a bit hunted. “Yeah?”
“It’s true then?” Xyn breathed. “They weren’t making it up. You really can force whole other identities onto those who visit you.”
“Yes. He can,” Mia confirmed in a tone that could not have been more serious, “albeit temporarily. But you are making the wrong assumption. That was no visitor. It was an entirely new named entity, complete with a fully fledged personality, that he manufactured and discarded on the spot so naturally that he doesn’t even understand why we should be impressed.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.” I help up a hand quickly to forestall any further questions. “Okay, I’m going to need someone to explain what dreams are like for you people. Like… in detail. Because I’m starting to get a little upset over here.”
“Master…” Jax squatted down to clutch at my knee. I could tell she had about a thousand things racing through her head right then, but she forcefully paired her response down to the question I had asked. “Dreams… for normal folk… be memories. Memories only. Ye ken? People, places… things we done. Some who practice such can pick and choose what ones they live through on a night-to-night, but not like ye. Fer the longest, I thought, when ye’d talk of yer own, that ye was talking of stories ye’d seen. Tales of yer people… what’d been read ye, ken? But they wasn’t… I knowed that fer sure the day ye put me on that mountaintop. The day ye spoke to me on the wind.”
My eyes screwed up into my head. When had that happened?
“For me, it was when he put that giant tree stump in the middle of my—” Arx hesitated, “of a place… I used to know. And then I had to fight all those men to keep hold of a bag of little pink bricks.”
I blinked. “…uh?”
“Master.” Jax leaned forward intently. “Until I met ye, the only types I’d e’er heard tell of who could pop by and maybe change things by their presence were the servants, the Faen. And only them they serve could make things new. But ye kept on like such were a human thing, natural-like to yer people. I figured… the world be wide. What do I know? But this?” She shook her head. “I never heard of nothing like this.”
“It is natural to my people,” I insisted.
“Donum, the only way it could be natural…” Xyn swallowed roughly. “What you’re describing… it’s… it’s how Faen are born. It’s how I was born.”
A long… long moment of silence passed.
And then Lynnria fainted dead away.
Mia sighed. “I knew they wouldn’t be able to handle talking about this sort of thing.”
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I'm still on the fence as to whether this was the appropriate time to drop that revelation. It won't come up for a while, but (spoiler) I have a thing planned. Didn't know if I should set it up a little better here, or just hit you all in the face with it when it comes up.
Comments
Tabitha Mularkey
I loved this chapter. Keep up the good work.
deadeyemax
Great chapter
Nathaniel Bartley Logee
Good :)
Ryan
Really enjoyed this one.
Amelgar
lol, poor Lynnria...
