by Prax Venter
“Do we have to explore her holes now?” Jezebel said, crossing her arms.
Sasha stepped up next to the little droid and inspected her rear.
“She’s got a tight little ass, too. This deadly new toy ought to spice up our essence transfers.”
Mark felt another twinge from the Lunar Power Droid and through him, his Enthralled felt it too. She was excited to be Abby’s sexual plaything, but there was an undeniable concern regarding her place in the group. Her digital eyes locked on Mark as if she could feel him exploring her mind. Did he detect some form of magic scanning antenna inside her helmeted head?
Abby pulled her tentacles away from her intimate explorations.
“I may have miscalculated,” the abyssal horror said. “You are less of a tool of war and more of a companion, and as such, you will need a proper name.”
“To what designation shall I respond?”
“Oh sweety,” Sasha said as she put her hand on the droid’s shoulder. “You and your mistress are a match made in heaven.”
Abby turned away from studying her new artificial Enthralled to face Mark.
“Before we rush off into more chaos, we need to not only recount for everyone’s current capabilities but additionally unlock our new ones.”
“I agree,” Mark said. “I know you all had a day to talk while I was dead, but did Abby tell you that I figured out how to cheat and unlocked Telekinesis for her?”
“I did,” Abby said, her yellow eyes narrowing with recent remembered pain. “We temporarily lost all our abilities when our Collector died, yet that one remained for me. It is still woefully underpowered, but I spent that terrible day focusing on strengthening its impact on reality. Interestingly, I noticed minuscule growth in power from repeated use.”
Jezebel pumped out excitement into their bond.
“Unlocking permanent powers on different Class trees that don’t require essence to upgrade truly is game breaking.” Then the emerald-eyed satyr remembered something, and her excitement turned sour. “Oh, and, I’m pretty sure I did inadvertently cause this Cataclysm the gods keep talking about.”
“What do you mean?” Mark asked.
The cute doe in leather armor dug one of her dainty hooves into the sandy ground.
“When I was, um, working on you, I set some alerts to warn me if the custom game world I seeded from the Crystal Heart files got bizarre or too out of hand. Two times, I had to erase everything and start over when things became unstable, but the third time I received the alert, I remember being frustrated by the continual interruptions, so I initiated a quick system purge of all data beyond a certain tolerance. To me, it was a simple string of commands hastily applied to the running game-state. I barely spared 5% of my resources on the task. But to a conscious entity in here… it would probably be perceived as apocalyptic.”
Mark rubbed his chin as he considered what she meant but Abby was one step ahead of him.
“It was you who dislocated the World Anchor and the Lagomorph people.”
Jezebel nodded. “Among other things. I also might have caused the technologically advanced ancestors of the Awysai to become trapped in the void between worlds as well. I was so careless. With this world, with Maliah, with everything.”
The strawberry-blonde Druid began to bite her lower lip as guilt and sadness began to saturate her being.
“Enough,” Mark said quietly. “The Awysai are happy- well, they were until Maliah gave everyone in the game world a reason to hunt us down. Either way, this is all in the past. I heard you tell the top-dog AIs that control everything here you would usher in a new era once we regain system-level access. Focus on that promise, and let’s get shit done.”
Jezebel lifted her chin and nodded. “You’re damn right. What we do going forward is what really matters.”
A mental blip from their new party member caught his attention, and he turned to see her staring at them with wide digital eyes. Then an uncomfortable notion hit him. Was she here to spy on them from those top-dog AIs he just mentioned? Was she even understanding any of this?
The concept didn’t survive very long as he realized the gods of this existence were probably watching them all now anyway. Whatever. Let them watch. Mark didn’t care anymore about hiding what they were from the NPCs. Especially if this one was going to be along for the ride.
All his bonded Enthralled picked up on the nature of his thoughts and as one they turned to face the little robot. Jezebel continued.
“Before we get into allotting our points, we need to know what she is capable of.”
The ancient lunar droid looked to Abby for guidance.
She was quick to provide it. “In addition to obeying your mistress, you also will obey commands from Jezebel, Mark, and Sasha. Now, list your functionality.”
Mark could tell Abby was trying to hide how giddy she was at having her own little minion.
“Affirmative.” The bot nodded her larger helmeted head once. “Although many physical and ethereal systems return as inoperable due to unknown previous damage, I am currently proficient in martial combat, local gravity hindrance, adversary and environmental scanning, and microfracture repair in outer molded shielding. Additionally, my history cache currently holds several techniques for sexually stimulating both female and male erogenous organs for multiple species’ configurations, yet I am aware that much of what I once knew has been… fragmented. Damaged. Erased.”
“No death rays from your fists?” Mark asked with a frown.
The half-nude droid turned her digital eyes to his. “Correct. Due to the damage I sustained assaulting Detrious, my temporal singularity jets are not functional due to compromised Petzaltotal gems in my aether-focus emitters.”
The small droid held up hands that appeared to be covered in black gauntlets, and then she surprised everyone when both bent backward on invisible hinges to expose cracked purple crystals in her wrists. They all got a glimpse into her inner workings below the armor and it looked like a mix between hyper-advanced circuit boards and glowing magic runes.
It looked like what they’d seen within the giant black sphere in the Lagos dimension.
She snapped her hands back on and flexed each of her plastic fingers.
“Fascinating,” Jezebel said. “Do you know where we can find replacement gems?”
Her digital eyes seemed to focus inward for a moment then shifted back to the satyr.
“Other than their name and function, my history cache is empty or corrupted on the subject.”
“What about that gravity ability?” Sasha asked. “Something like Telekinesis?”
The tips of the little droid’s tapered feet began to glow blue from some source under her plastic-like exterior and then she smoothly lifted off the ground.
“Answer is mixed,” the glossy robot said as she widened her stance in midair to maintain balance. From this angle it was hard not to stare into the smooth slit in the center of her pink, exposed crotch.
“I was wondering if I’d need to carry all four of us,” Jezebel said. “Is there a limit to your altitude?”
“No,” she answered, still hovering. “I retain several records of traversing the firmament between this planet and its moon- though the data is truncated. I should know the names of these celestial bodies…”
Mark felt a vibrant flash of frustration from the Lunar Power Droid, and he saw a fragment of the bright, happy mind that used to reside in this mostly empty machine. They locked eyes again, and he could see Detrious had taken it all away from her at the height of his anger, fresh from being trapped. Painfully, bit by bit, so she knew exactly what he’d removed. Everything that made her who she was had been ripped away and all that was left was a hollow echo of that unfathomable suffering.
Mark clenched his fists. He considered ditching the Awysai and heading back into Sanctuary to punch that vile piece of shit in his smug face for a few hundred cycles.
All the women tethered to his heart shifted their gaze from
the flying military drone to him and each echoed back his sentiment, even if they knew it wasn’t really going to happen.
“Come back down, little angel,” Sasha said, holding her hand out to her. “We’re going to kick a lot of ass together.”
“Angel,” Abby repeated as the sleek construct gracefully landed on one tapered leg. “She is touched by a goddess and has traversed the heavens. Tell me, do you approve of the designation?”
“I approve if my Mistress approves,” she answered, her expressive pixilated eyebrows raised high.
Abby reached out a long tentacle to caress the glossy droid’s pink plastic cheek.
“I approve, Angel.”
- 13 -
No gut-impaling worms came to attack them as they stood within the ring of stones that surrounded the gate to Sanctuary, so Mark and his three Enthralled had remained where they stood as they discussed options for spending their unprecedented stockpile of ability points.
The group decided that Angel’s main role would be to protect Abby from harm, so the Mind Melting abyssal horror upgraded her offensive Imaginary Lacerations and Mind Crush abilities. She assured everyone that her instant-cast spell would now completely incapacitate anything they fought with even the most primitive levels of consciousness and that Imaginary Lacerations would now ignore most magical barriers.
Jezebel’s Doppelganger shapeshifting ability seemed like the best choice since she’d spent almost everything she’d received up until now on Vines and defensive options. It would diversify her abilities and be extremely useful for non-combat situations. She also informed everyone that much later down that off-shoot branch, she would be able to retain some of her target’s abilities after assuming their form.
Sasha upgraded her Static Escape to give her more freedom with the escape side of the ability and went from shifting backward only a few feet to being able to choose the direction and the distance- now teleporting up to ten yards. She also had enough points to upgrade her Side Kick to include a node on its tree called Charged Strike. The synergy skill would allow her to utilize Arc Bolt’s cooldown to infuse her hoof with a powerful enchantment capable of dealing more damage than either ability could on their own.
“Historical caches regarding team capabilities and dynamics have been updated,” Angel said in her lightly digitized voice after everyone locked in their new skills.
“Awesome,” Mark said, rubbing his hands together. “I’ve got this Charm ability from that goddess of pleasure I can’t wait to try out.”
“Don’t forget that you adopted my Mind Cloud’s invisibility,” Abby added.
“Shit, you’re right,” he said, rubbing his chin. “With dying and all the insanity with gods and goddess getting involved, I totally forgot about that.”
Jezebel put a hand on her armored hip. “You are due for another Lover ability. The last one that we know of was your shielding bubble. Can you now copy our skills?”
He’d thought his temporary invisibility was part of their experiment to unlock new magic powers through his cheating magic eye, but Jezebel did make a good point. Mark turned his mind inward to search for unexplored pools of energy among the many that now existed in that imaginary place behind his eyes.
He paused to gaze at the pink cloud that had to be his new Charm skill then turned to see that even standing outside of Sanctuary his ethereal weapon summoning was still sealed off, but that was no surprise. The dried-up pool of his favorite ability reminded him that they should really get moving, but if they were about to jump into an occupying force of who-knows-what waiting for them at the Awysai dome, they’d need everything at their disposal. And he was still lacking any means of offense.
Not willing to give up, Mark willed his truth-seeking powers to aid him in finding his untapped potential, and a strange flicker caught his attention in the distance. Instead of a pool or a whirlwind like everything else, this representation was almost invisible. Whatever it was took the form of a black mirror reflecting nothing.
Mark opened his eyes and turned his attention on Sasha.
“What did you find?” she asked, sensing his thoughts.
“Let’s find out,” he said with a shrug and tried to harness the reflective pane of glass in his mind. He looked deep into his loyal succubus and focused on borrowing her often-used Arc Bolt ability.
Now that his intention was aligned with the assumed function of this new power, Mark became instantly aware that he was on the right track. He thrust his palm up into the hot, dry air and expelled a powerful bolt of lightning over his head accompanied by a satisfying clap of thunder echoing along the canyon walls.
“No fucking way!” Sasha yelled, her blue eyes lighting up with excitement.
“There has to be restrictions,” Jezebel said stepping toward him, her reddish eyebrows raising to the top of her head. “Can you do it again? Can you copy any of our abilities?”
Mark shook his head. “I’m just figuring this out, Jez, but it feels as if the mirror I saw in my mind is on a cooldown. I have no idea if it’s the same cooldown as Sasha’s current Arc Bolt, but it feels like it’s going to be a while before I can do anything with it again. Like a few hours. And since I’ve mirrored Abby’s Mind Cloud too, I’m going to guess I can copy anything.”
“It isn’t this Enhance we were promised,” Abby said, sounding mildly disappointed. “But the applications of this new ability are considerably vast.”
“Historical caches regarding team capabilities and dynamics have been updated,” Angel repeated.
“Can you still cast Arc Bolt?” Jezebel asked, turning to the team’s Techno Succubus. “He didn’t trigger your-”
She was cut off when Sasha thrust her hand up and echoed Mark’s electrical discharge into the sky.
“Nope,” Sasha said with a playful half-smile.
Mark couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear. “Guys, I’m not sure how much we can abuse this, but things just got a lot more interesting. I cannot wait to fly- or shift into a bear!”
“Mmm,” Sasha purred, flashing out her dirty thoughts into their connected minds. “And I can’t wait to get my crotch mauled by Papa Bear.”
Jezebel rolled her eyes. “It’s non-stop with you. But if he can copy my shapeshifting abilities, both of us can utilize Doppelganger as well. Abby’s right, the potential for this mirror ability is staggering.”
Mark clapped his hands together. “Right, we still have a lot to experiment with. Let’s get to the Awysai and see what’s up there first. We don’t know how bad it is or what we’ll be facing, but with more information, we’ll know how to best proceed.”
“Speaking of experimentation,” Jezebel said, “your new ability from He Who Judges- the one that opens a doorway to anywhere you’ve been is… also staggering in its implications. Have you thought about specifically where we should arrive?”
“It should be somewhere outside their lands,” Abby said. “We need to survey the situation from a distance.”
“Down the road?” Sasha suggested.
Mark felt a little dumb for thinking of just popping in under their mud dome. They were a strong warrior race of ninja salamanders, but if they were being attacked by a large force, who knows what would be going on there.
The airship hub construction site popped into his mind, but that too was probably a bad idea. The road leading west around the lake and into the forest was likely their best bet.
“Okay, I’ll try and target a place between the dome and where the road vanishes into the forest. Then we can creep up from within the trees and see what’s what.”
Turning inward, Mark focused on the whirling black tornado with its new white sparks dancing along the edges and pulled the energy out to coat his left hand as he’d done before. Everything felt right, but when he tried to pull open a portal while imagining somewhere on the dirt road, nothing happened.
It was as if the image in his mind was too fuzzy or too vague to get a lock.
“I don’t think I
can target a random spot on a road,” he said, lowering his hand. “I’m getting this vibe that the location has to be somewhere specific- or maybe where something memorable happened.”
They each tried to think of secluded spots near the Awysai dome that stood out as memorable, but he was coming up blank.
“I know,” Sasha said, her spade tail lifting to sway hypnotically. “How about the hut where you, me, and Jez first fucked?”
Her suggestion immediately sparked an image of both her and the cute doe-woman he’d just met on their hands and knees, wagging their bare asses at him.
He nodded. “That should work. Let’s hope it’s still standing or whatever.”
With the guest hut in mind, Mark coated his hand with the enhanced energy once again and peeled back a flap of reality. It was dark on the other side, but the moonlight spilling through the opening in the roof provided enough illumination to reveal that this was exactly where he wanted to go.
“You did it,” Jezebel whispered as she moved to his side.
“After you,” he said after flashing her a smile, and the doe-legged satyr jumped through the opening with no hesitation. As it was with his interdimensional doorways, he needed to hold it open. After the four others moved through, he hopped from wherever Sanctuary was located to the place where everything started.
It was cramped in the hut with all five of them wedged around the central fire cage, but he was thankful it was still standing and unoccupied. Jezebel was already peeking out through the curtain that hung over the entrance.
Mark heard people talking outside the small wooden structure, but they were distant, and he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was just about to ask Abby to switch on her Mind Cloud and go scouting when a growing buzzing sound held his tongue.
As it grew louder and louder, his brows came down and he tried to place the familiar mechanical noise. It was clear a moment later when Jezebel sent everyone the mental image of an airship.
When the air-chopping sound reached deafening proportions, Mark looked up through the ventilation hole to see one of the flying boats pass overhead in the night sky. Then another. Then at least seven more after that flying in a tight formation.