by Prax Venter
Mark sent out his augmented perception to pull more information from the other man’s mind, but all he could access was a jumble of fevered elation and madness. With nothing more to gain, he turned again to regroup with the others. He shot a glance up to the strawberry-blonde satyr with glowing wings and she read his intent to move out. She deftly landed next to him as he requisitioned the soldier’s sword.
“I can target him with Vines from the air well before he reaches the dormant Power Droid.”
“Good,” Mark responded as his mind worked through possible scenarios. If she could pull that off and drop below the twisted wooden wreckage, the flying Druid might be able to avoid immediate retaliation.
His thoughts were derailed as they passed Meegon and Chorra crouching near the river on the “heathen” side of the canyon. Both of their minds were locked up with terror and despair at the loss of their familiar repeating nine-hour cycle. They sought comfort in each other’s arms as they followed him with their eyes. Could he trust them? Could he ever trust in his Truth Seeing ability again?
Mark turned away from the two Visitors and left them to figure out their new place locked in this micro-universe with a mad man. Maybe tomorrow he would try and convince them to help in some way- perhaps as meat shields. He shrugged to himself. If they died, they’d just respawn the next day… but so would Detrious.
Unless his death popped this time-bubble.
Mark stopped abruptly and Jezebel stopped with him, ready for anything.
“You two,” he said, turning back to the balding man and bird-woman. “Have either of you ever seen Detrious die and respawn in here?”
Meegon darted his eyes around looking for possible retribution and his fear kept his jaw clenched tight. But Mark didn’t need words. Despite his misgivings, his blind eye was more focused than it had ever been. Within Meegon’s mind, Mark saw a distant time when the dark-haired prisoner of Sanctuary hit patches of depression and took running leaps off the canyon’s edge in a manner very similar to the way Mark himself did accidentally not too long ago. Meegon had thought it was strange behavior at the time but brushed it off as living forever leading to extreme boredom.
Killing Detrious didn’t seem to break the curse, and it made a twisted type of sense. The act would be a simple way to escape his eternal prison.
Mark gave them a swift nod before turning away and proceeding to their meet-up point.
“Nice job,” Jezebel said as she kept pace next to him. “Every bit of information could be extremely valuable to us. If his death broke this loop and one of us had fallen during the attack… Now we know we can throw everything we have at him, over and over, until we succeed with no losses.”
He reached out and took her hand in his as they walked. She squeezed it in return, and they slowed their frantic pace. This was not the time to panic, and Mark felt his own ability to stay focused enhanced by his link to this doe-like research AI.
System Host Jezebel S3K had never been more connected to his heart and mind than at this moment, and the change in their bond must have manifested when he confronted her about his memories. As if her saying their virtually meaningless names shattered an unperceived filter.
For Jezebel, it was this deep-rooted fear that he’d remember these other Enthralled and leave her to be alone again. For him, he didn’t even know the memory fragments were there until he had names for them. Now that he could see these disjoined parts, he could collect them and store them in a dark corner.
They’d each cleared their channels at both ends by talking about it like adults. She had only just begun to see the dimensional crossover points through his magic eye along with Abby and Sasha, but she was now also picking up some of the deep dives he experienced when he probed other people’s minds.
Without a word, they channeled their love and gratitude for the other’s existence and reliability along their widened connection. With all of them together humming like this, he felt they could solve any problem.
They found Sasha and Abby waiting for them under the rocky overhang and both he and Jezebel took their turns wrapping up their previously erased teammate in their arms.
Mark lifted her off her feet, squeezing her close and nuzzling his face into her silky black hair.
“Sasha has apprised me of the current situation as I have no memory after Detrious approached us on the last cycle.”
“Glad it didn’t hurt,” Mark said after he put her down, but he kept one of her tentacle tips held in his fingers. He thought he might not let her go until the next restart.
“To reiterate,” Jezebel said, getting right to business. “Our current goals are to prevent Detrious from reaching the Lunar Power Droid and then we all need to reach the exit portal. Either we take his life or restrict his ability to prevent us from leaving.”
“Assuming the exit portal works as intended,” Abby added.
Sasha crossed her arms. “If he’s stopping us from getting to it, then there is a high chance that it works. Either way, we’ll deal with that problem if it becomes one. We are taking that piece of shit down no matter what.”
Jezebel dug into her pack as she gave her report.
“I learned that I can target him with Vines from over the top of the wreck. If Abby comes along for the ride, she might be able to do some substantial damage.”
The abyssal horror’s yellow eyes unfocused as she checked her interface. “I don’t know what his defenses are, but if I allocate only 50% my points into Imaginary Lacerations, there is a sub-specialization labeled Joint Mitigation. I should be able to reliably remove both of his legs at the knee.”
Sasha clenched one of her fists. “That’ll slow him down long enough for me to cross the river and fry his brain to charcoal.” A small flash of blue spectral light drew Mark’s blind eye toward her hand, and he noticed the Techno Succubus was subconsciously channeling a small portion of her stored electric charge.
Her blue eyes snapped to his and their direct bond expanded past anything either had experienced before.
This deeper link allowed her to not only see into her own mind but also back into Mark’s, creating what they both could only sense as an exceedingly pleasant hall of mirrors.
As they brushed the cores of their very beings against each other, Mark couldn’t help but fully understand why she was manifesting a “custom use” for her ability. This repeating day situation had hurt her in many ways, and she had grown to hate its very existence. She now hated the man at its center, and to her, he had become a tangible, killable, darkness that once destroyed, would allow her twisted and self-tormented mind to finally leave the trauma of the past somewhere where it could never find her again.
Pulling this personal understanding up into her conscious mind disturbed their link as if there was a frequency they need to actively maintain.
As the experience began to dim, Sasha’s thoughts turned from looking inward to probing his mind. Along with the sensation came what he could only think of as a video file.
It was of Succubus Sasha standing under the shadow of the bleachers from his high school. She pulled aside her tight black shorts and flashed her protruding pussy lips at him.
“I’ve shown you mine,” the image of Sasha said, “now show me yours.”
With the twisted smile that Mark had come to find impossible to resist, the virtual Sasha reached out and cupped his balls.
Mark’s mind sighed with mild pleasure as he felt her mental fingers fondling his sensitive genitals.
Then she too saw what he’d noticed about her subconscious creative control over an ability she believed only had one function: an all-or-nothing blast of electricity.
The realization that she broke an unbreakable rule by channeling only a fraction of her power began to crumble their upgraded mental connection further, and in those last few moments, Mark gained complete understanding of Sasha’s Arc Bolt ability. All she did was store a negative charge and expel it by psychically altering the magnetic polarity of the t
arget location. It all made absolute sense. It was so simple that-
They both blinked and they snapped back into their own heads. The wisdom of electrical charge manipulation was fading fast, and he clung to it tightly, but the spell was broken. What little remained was wiped clean when Jezebel started speaking.
“It’s a longshot,” she said, pulling out one of their remaining Thomellia Recall Charms. “But if we use it, and it works, there has to be a trap waiting for us there too.”
“Hold on…” Sasha said as she put a hand to her head.
“Did a unique event just transpire?” Abby said, her brows coming down. They could all feel an intense aftershock reverberate through their four-way bond.
“Well,” Mark said after taking a deep breath. “Something is going on with my connection to you stunning monster-women. It must have only lasted an instant, but Sasha and I were just… I don’t know.”
She finished for him. “We have never been more intimate.”
They locked eyes again, and Mark did feel an elusive dry snap behind his eyes. But it was as if he’d blown his load, and his mental genitals needed a moment before they were ready for more intimacy. Was he breaking in some new, unknown Lover ability?
“That’s certainly saying something,” Jezebel said with a grin. “Considering all the times his cock was down your throat, or his tongue up your ass.”
The Techno Succubus ignored her and focused on the tips of her fingers. “And I might have…” She stopped speaking as her deep blue eyes narrowed. The effect was small, but tiny sparks began to fly out from her hands. It only lasted a few seconds before she seemed to lose whatever mental state had allowed her to pull it off.
“Did you spend any of your points?” Jezebel asked.
Sasha shot her a fang-toothed grin. “Not one, Momma Bear.” Then her face dropped and her eyes crossed as she accessed her Enthralled ability list to make absolutely sure.
“Okay…” she said as her tail made a complicated weave behind her. Mark couldn’t see what she was perceiving, but by her spade tail alone, she was both excited and confused.
The succubus remained quiet as she puzzled over what she was seeing.
“Enough silence,” Abby said, losing her patience.
Sasha seemed to close her interface and then looked down at the green woman.
“My ability tree has a new branch from my Arc Bolt path, but it… goes into a cloud of darkness. I think I can see words and numbers, and a few bizarre special characters, but most of it is in shadow and I can’t make sense of any of it. Oh, and I still have all my points.”
Mark gave her a grin.
“Don’t try to understand it using your Enthralled game menus. I think you’ve just seen, through me, how you can directly affect magic abilities in this digital universe. If Detrious has done anything good, it was teaching us more about Aether Theory. Combine that with what you said, Jez, about allowing the systems to rewrite themselves based on the whims of the simulation’s inhabitants, and we may be on to something big here.”
Sasha looked down on her fingers and tried to force the small sparks to appear again. Mark felt a thunderstorm in his True Sight eye as an incoming attack, and he swiftly reached out to roughly shove her arm aside.
An instant later, a blinding Arc Bolt exploded one of the nearby tree trunks instead of his torso. The massive indigo-leafed birch toppled over and crashed into the canyon wall before coming to rest at an angle.
“Shit!” Sasha yelled as she clenched her fist and brought it to her chest. “I need some fucking practice.”
“Yeah,” Mark said with a chuckle. “Try not to point those things at people when you do, but we should run experiments later. Let’s focus on planning for next cycle. Are we going with Abby and Jez attacking from above while Sasha and I circle around toward the Power Droid?”
Jezebel nodded and stuffed the untested recall charm back into her bag.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” she said. “If Abby can mitigate his joints at a distance, Sasha and I wouldn’t be forced to spend any ability points.”
“I must mention,” Abby began, “this potent form of Imaginary Lacerations will take ten seconds to cast.”
Jezebel frowned. “Maybe I should upgrade Vines then. It won’t be a waste- we will use them for sure, but I won’t be able to unlock that doppelganger ability for a while.”
Mark crossed his arms. “I don’t know, he’s human-sized and your current level of Vines might be enough to hold him.”
“Since we’re talking it out all right now,” Sasha said, “if I blow most of my points on Shock Bomb I can increase its range, its detonation radius, and nullify any collateral damage to anyone in our little love circle.” She turned to Mark. “How close was he to the bot when you caught sight of him?”
“About twenty yards, give or take.”
Abby squatted down and wrapped her tentacles around her knees before she looked up at them.
“Death here is inconsequential, but once we allot the points, there is still a good chance they will be permanently spent. Perhaps it would be strategically sound to assault Detrious tomorrow without any upgrades and discover what is and is not effective.”
Mark looked over to Jezebel who rubbed the tip of her right horn between her fingers, considering. It was a new tic for her, and the subconscious act made her impossibly cute. Like she was twirling a lock of hair. Well, her spiral horns were technically made of the same stuff, right?
“I like it,” Jezebel said, dropping her hand to her side. “That way, if we do spend the points on new or existing skills, we can still retain that element of surprise.”
“Right,” Mark agreed. “He has to know we’re going to attack him. That itself won’t be a surprise. It would be ideal if we won right away, but if we fail a few times and then come at him with a well-informed plan and several level-ups…”
“Let’s try not to drag this out too long,” Sasha said, her tail hanging limp behind her. “Sanctuary is starting to get under my skin. We won’t find any more shards or essence in here either.”
“I’m with you,” he said, “and we need to find out what’s going on with the Oral Sex Goddess and maybe the Awysai too.”
“And the Lagomorph dimension,” Jezebel added.
They each sat down to join Abby under the shade of the cliffside overhang and quiet contemplation took over for a few minutes. They had a lot to do and a phantom time limit still lingered over it all.
The petite abyssal horror stood abruptly and moved to Jezebel then bent over to kiss her full on her wide lips. Mark couldn’t help but stare at her smooth green ass threaded by her yellow bikini bottoms right in his face. After she was done with Jezebel, she moved to him and pressed her lips to his. He breathed her citrussy scent in as he stroked the silky hair down her back. Then, she pulled away and repeated the process with Sasha.
After she had shown her affection to everyone, she stood straight and activated her Mind Cloud ability.
“You three remain here while I spy on Detrious.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned to creep out into the colorful forest. Mark glanced at the two horned women that remained and noticed their eyes tracking her movements.
“You both can see her now.”
Jezebel smiled. “Yes, but let’s hope he can’t.”
“She’s so damn adorable,” Sasha said, her blue eyes still locked on Abby’s tight green ass.
He hadn’t thought of her invisibility as helping their situation, but if she could get some intel on-
Mark sat bolt upright as a crazy and convoluted plan began to form in his mind.
“What is it?” the green-eyed satyr asked.
He shot her a grin. “This might be stupid, but what if we can get an invisible Abby across the river before he enters the code and learns what he’s typing?”
Both of his Enthralled played out this course of action and then Sasha started laughing.
“You know she’s go
ing to love this idea.”
- 8 -
Abby concluded her espionage and rejoined them a little over an hour later and reported that Detrious had danced through the trees as he sung to himself, on and on, until she got bored and left. There was no information to gain other than he was giddy at the possibility of not only ending his eternal looping day but attaining godhood in the process. She was confident that he could not detect her, but she did not attempt to get close to the patrolling combat machine.
After they talked about their simple plans for the next day within sunny Sanctuary to probe their enemy’s true defenses and response to their full assault, they spent the next few hours solidifying several contingency plans. Sure enough, the stealthy abyssal horror was intrigued by the plan to learn the code and hijack the Lunar Power Droid to fight for their side, but her practical mind quickly conceded that the many unknowns and the two days they’d need to attempt it should push this plan further down on the list of potential strategies.
Despite this, the group of tightly bound lovers and warriors made sure to learn each of their roles for every plan they devised. After all, when the day reset, they wouldn’t really have time to talk this through.
Mark was in the middle of repeating the code names they’d given their plans when the snap in reality blanked out his mind and he sat up in the grass to face the smoking airship wreckage once again.
He immediately put all the other Visitors and Repeaters out of his mind and rolled up to his feet.
To his right, Jezebel shifted into her hornless centaur form and Abby vaulted into her back before lifting them both up over the Gilded Breeze. Mark and Sasha played their part by sprinting around to the front of the splintered wreck to try and cut the cursed prisoner off while he was dealing with their attacks from above.
Through his bond to his tightly knit battle harem, Mark felt Abby attempt her Mind Crush ability the moment she saw Detrious and there was no missing the massive wall of light that appeared in response on the other side of the river. And it was moving.
Sasha was faster on her hooves and reached the spot where she could begin to lob her Shock Bombs. The Techno Succubus hurled one across the river as she ran, and Mark caught up in time to see Jezebel’s ethereal green Vines reach up to bind the black-haired bastard.