by David Burke
“Well, if they want to meet with me, perhaps we should arrange a team meeting.”
“As you wish. Do you need anything else before I go, M’lord?”
“Just one thing, Nyda. I’ve agreed to let you all call me things other than Kyle if it seems appropriate to you. I’m going along with you treating me differently now. But please tell me that somewhere inside of you that cute elven girl who tutored me in language skills is still there. You know, the one who spoke with me late into the night and shared stories of her village with me? That is the girl that I fell for and the one that I still want in my life,” Kyle said.
A smile and then a gulp later Nyda replied, “I am becoming what I need to be. I won’t be the one that keeps you from your destiny.”
Kyle was man enough to admit he had never been great at reading women, but he got the feeling now wasn’t the time to push the issue. “Very well, will you please arrange for a meeting for all the team leaders, in an hour.”
She nodded and then left. He could only hope that this wasn’t going to become a real issue. For now, though, he just wanted to leave heavy thoughts behind and enjoy some coffee.
An hour later he was meeting in the furbished guild common room. Their jobs had been very lucrative and Meeka apparently had been able to gain access to some of her family wealth even here. She was a wizard when it came to finding workmen and getting projects expedited. He would not argue with any of it, though. It all made life easier for him and the rest of the team.
Seated around the table were Meeka, Saber, Selma, Hilde, Gilthan, Skrug, Kierra, Lash, Nyda, and surprisingly Maevis, the guild’s chapter head. The woman was shorter than he had expected but had an aura of experience and command around her. She was likely thirty-five, but then again adventurers probably didn’t have the longest lifespan, so maybe that meant she was seasoned.
At least that was true of mortal adventurers. If Kyle had anything to say about it, both he and his entire team would live much longer than a few decades or even a few centuries. On Earth, even with improvements in medical technology, such a thing would have been beyond imagining. Now, though, it was something he looked forward to.
Taking everything in spoke once again to Meeka’s preparations. She had ordered custom made chairs for each of the team. The humans other than Lash all sat in regular generic chairs, but all the rest had custom marked chairs. The noblewoman must have co-opted half the carpenters in a city this size to complete this much work so quickly.
“So, what do we need to talk about and to what do we owe the honor of a visit from the chapter head?” Kyle asked.
All eyes in the room turned to look at Maevis. She blanched, awkwardly.
“The way I hear it, it is I who should be honored to meet you. Your team has accomplished more missions in a few short weeks than the entire chapter has in the past two years.” She shook her head. “I am ashamed to admit that I was a failure.”
“I don’t really care about the past. Or perhaps I should say that I don’t want to be bound by the past,” Kyle said as he interrupted her. “It is the future that matters here.”
She bowed her head. “That is kind, but I have spoken to your followers. Saber and Meeka have convinced me that the guild would be in much better hands, if you were to head it. Each chapter chooses its own leader. As there are only a few active chapter members outside of your party, you all can choose the current leader. Saber convinced me it should be you. Honestly, if only half the stories I'm hearing about your crew are true, then I wouldn’t mind joining your team.”
Kyle was no stranger to being thrust into a leadership position. It had been happening since he was in little league. Somehow though, it felt different when people’s lives were on the line. A part of him wondered about this. Would accepting this mean that he was binding himself to be a hero for these people?
Sure, he was willing to right wrongs where he found them. And yes, he thought he could do a better job than the squabbling gods they now had. But maybe that was hubris speaking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do more at this point than simply consolidate his strength. Then, he would be free of burdens and able to settle down with his women.
He chuckled at the plural, but he wasn’t gonna fight it anymore.
Then, the image from his vision popped into his head. The horror that had chased the former champions become gods out of one universe and into another was still out there. Kyle had seen it. He had felt Krig’s horror when he fought against the being’s minions. That thing, whatever it was, wasn’t gonna stop.
Consolidating his power might buy him some time—years, decades… who knew, maybe centuries. But he had the lifespan of a god now and he couldn’t afford to be short sighted. He had never been one to hide from a problem, and he wasn’t about to start now. Verden stood a better chance if they were united, and he was the one to unite them.
His next words carried more meaning for him, than for everyone else. He knew the decision he had reached. “I will accept. But know this, if you join the team, we are all gonna be working hard. There are much bigger threats out there than the monsters we’ve been facing.”
He gave each of them a hard look, his gaze traveling slowly around the table. “That’s all I will say for now, but we have a lot of planning and a lot of growing to do. First, we need to consolidate and grow our hold in Nargossa.”
Meeka cut in then. “I’m glad you said that. I have arranged meetings for you with the Governor and some other influential figures here in town.”
“I’m more of a fighter than a talker,” Kyle replied.
“There is more than one kind of power, and if you really want to secure your place in Nargossa, you are going to have to let me guide you.” Meeka’s words oozed with suggestive intent.
Kyle had noticed that lately she could say the word ‘puppy’ and make it sound sexy. He didn’t know exactly when it was that she’d changed, but there was more to it than she was letting on.
Still, it was hard to fault her results. She was definitely making his life easier.
“Okay, but we also need to plan our next missions. I…”
Kyle stopped speaking as Hilde suddenly flared so hot that those sitting next to her had to scramble away from her. An instant later, she flared again and the chair she had been sitting in turned to ash.
Her face turned as red as her hair and she mumbled, “I’m so sorry.” Then she streaked for the stairs and headed up to her room.
All eyes followed her, then looked to Kyle. He shrugged and said, “I’ll go talk to her. The rest of you keep the meeting going. Hopefully, you’ll have all the issues sorted out by the time I get back.”
After that, he bounded up the stairs after Hilde. He found her in the room that she’d claimed for her own. It was right next to his own massive chamber. She was sitting on the floor, shuddering, her flaming wings draped around her body like a blanket.
Before he said a word, he let his senses reach out to her. A moment of looking deeper confirmed what he had suspected. Up until now his senses hadn’t been heightened enough to pierce through her aura, but there was no mistaking it now. Still, Kyle wanted to let her tell him in her own time. He just hoped she would trust him now.
“You know, you didn’t have to take your own room. I have plenty of space in mine. I sorta thought you were gonna stay with me.”
She didn’t respond immediately, but Kyle was patient. Eventually, she lifted up her head. The mop of her fiery red hair was in disarray, and she’d clearly been crying. The drops sizzled as they ran down her skin. The heat she was putting off didn’t bother him, but it still was enough that it was starting to slowly blacken the wooden floorboards.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Her voice was almost pleading.
“I’m not upset with you, Hilde. Why do I get the feeling you are worried I will be upset?”
Again, she repeated, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Look, I’ve
been letting you keep your secret. I had my suspicions, but I know now. Even still, I wanted you to be the one to tell me,” Kyle said as he kneeled down in front of her, taking her face in his hands.
“Please don’t kill my baby.”
Those were not the words he had been expecting to hear. He had heard all the lectures about women who would try to get pregnant by an athlete to trap them. Those women apparently often regretted it afterwards, but of all the things he might have been concerned about with finding out he was going to be a father, this had not been on his list.
“Why would you even think that? I would never hurt you or our baby.” He frowned, stroking her cheek. “It isn’t just your baby. I can see the divine energy flowing inside of you. That baby is as much mine as he, no…”
He paused and then smiled. “ As she can be.”
Hilde looked up. Her tears faded as her expression got serious. She searched his face as though trying to find some duplicity. “It’s just that… well… Most gods don’t take well to this. They destroy the child, if they didn’t intend for it to happen. Or worse, if they intended for it to happen, the mother becomes just an incubator. I suppose in the case of female gods, the father is little more than a sperm donor. Then, they take the child and raise them for whatever purpose they have in mind.”
“You were inside my head for months, Hilde. Do you really think I could do that to a child? Let alone my own child?”
“I know you are different, but the more of your power you access, the more I keep expecting you to become like him. He never wanted children. The relationship between gods and demi-gods is strained at best. That is part of why he always made sure his seven divine splinters were used to create his battle maidens.”
That realization struck Kyle and his heart clenched, but not for the reasons Hilde had said. He wasn’t looking for a big family, but a part of him had always figured that he’d settle down and have kids someday. When he wasn’t fighting dragons or being sucked into the sea, he was actually more excited about settling down with Hilde and the other girls more than anything he’d actually had on Earth.
Now though, he realized that every divine splinter he gave out meant one less child he could have. Apparently, divinity came with some serious limits. Already, Gilthan, Nyda, and Kierra had his splinters. That meant, including the one growing inside of his child in Hilde, he only had three left. And based upon the direction the wind was blowing, one would go soon to Lash.
That left him with only two other children he could father.
He could work with that. Three kids would be plenty. Of course, now he was gonna be in a real predicament—who would get to be the mother of his children? He assumed all of his bonds, excepting Gilthan of course, would want to be a mother.
Still, that was a problem for another day.
“I’m not Krig. I’ve proven that time and time again. I will be happy for you to give birth to our child. In some ways, that is the best news I’ve gotten since coming to Verden. But now we need to talk about what happened to you downstairs.” He pulled her onto his lap, which could take the heat better than the floorboards.
He tapped her on the nose. “Even now, you are slowly burning a hole in the floor,” Kyle said.
She smiled at his words and then blushed as red as her wings. “Fire celestials don’t have children easily. It strains our control over our powers and makes our essence go out of whack. Even more so given that this child will be a demi-god. I have started to lose control faster than I expected, though.”
Kyle nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”
Then, he began to delve into Hilde. He began first, though, by looking at himself. He focused on the spinning of his essence wheel. The power built within him. He stretched his essence channels as he felt his body flood with his power. Finally, he started inspecting the flows of essence within Hilde.
The strands of war, justice, and air essence flowed through her. Both war and air were at a Spirit Tier of power, while her justice essence must have been near the peak of Monster Tier. She also possessed a much smaller strand of deceit essence. It couldn’t have been beyond the Mortal Tier.
For all of those abilities, the most impressive aspect was how much raw essence flowed through her. No other creature that he had observed had so much raw essence in them. Most mortals didn’t have more than a tiny spark of it. Even Kierra only had a tiny stream.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t been paying much attention to it at the time, but he was pretty sure that Barak, the dragon demi-god, had possessed a much higher flow of raw essence.
What the significance of that meant, was beyond him.
Then, Kyle thought about the other types of essence he had observed the night before while cultivating his energy. Watching, he saw that there were different strands within her raw essence. He tried separating out the power within her. Then he caught a glimpse of purple in the stream of raw essence.
He reached in with his power and tried to separate the purple from the other types of essence. At first, he thought to use Hilde as a sieve, just as he had with Kierra. But when he started to unwind it all, he saw that a portion of the power he moved was drawn to the child.
Kyle paused for a moment and looked at his child. With his new senses, he could see her with far more clarity than any sonogram. He was startled to see that she only had a wisp of energy to her, instead of an actual physical body.
He didn’t understand how that worked, but then he relaxed. A deep sigh escaped his lips. He was going to be a father. He felt at peace with the universe.
As he relaxed, a deeper understanding filled his mind. This wasn’t his child’s body being formed. That would only come much later. This wisp of energy was her soul. It was all there and being nurtured by her mother’s essence.
Kyle instinctively stroked his child with a wave of his mana. Ping. It was so subtle that he almost missed it. But it had been something, he just knew it.
He reached out against with his essence. He sent a blend of all the essence types he controlled, even a tiny fragment of deceit. It was almost like a fingerprint, but so much more detailed. He was sharing his being with his unborn child, and she resonated an echo of himself right back. The first ping had been weak, barely noticeable, even for a god. But each successive ping echoed back at him with more force.
She was learning. A rush of colors struck him. Her identity was still in flux. A thought filled his mind. If he wanted to, he could shape her. Not just her physical form. No, he could shape the very soul of his child, make her a kind person. He could give her a bit of her mother’s fiery spirit, some of his drive for success. But no. He knew that the other gods likely did this to their children. They shaped them to be tools.
Not his child. She wouldn’t be shaped in this way. Her destiny would not be taken by anyone, including him. He wanted her to be free, to find her own way. So instead of stroking her with only his own essences, he plucked and pulled apart even the raw essence. He broke it down into multiple strands. The largest portion of the raw essence was still a gray that he couldn’t seem to pull apart any further. But the other strands all made themselves known to him.
The purple was the first he could pull out. His familiarity was greater with it after working with Kierra. Then there was white, yellow, and green. Each one was coaxed out of the general flow of raw essence, and he could see their distinctness. It was almost like he had been blind before, but now he could see them all. Then there flashed another. It was a brilliant orange and just touching it made him feel warm inside. A small tear ran down his face from memories which were not his own.
Ping. His daughter resonated with the depth of feeling he had in that moment, and suddenly the orange essence began to be swept into the tiny wisp of her soul. Kyle had only meant to separate all the strands to run them over his daughter. He wanted to expose her to all of them so that she would have the ability to become what she wanted to.
Instead, tha
t moment of emotion had somehow drawn her attention to the orange essence. He knew at that moment it was the fire essence which had belonged to Brann. Kyle worried he had inadvertently steered his daughter to that essence. But now, if he pulled it back from her, he would definitely be making a decision for her.
So, he sat back and simply moved the energy through her mother. He was careful to be gentle and not overwhelm the little unborn soul, but she seemed to be able to absorb as much of the fire essence as she was exposed to. What that meant, Kyle didn’t know. Then a word formed in his mind. Glitendre. He didn’t know what it meant at first, but then grasped it. His daughter had just shared the name of her soul with him.