Descend- Coming Together

by David Burke

  Tears filled her eyes and the lip quiver she had been fighting so hard gave way to the biggest, most genuine grin he had ever seen upon her beautiful face. She threw herself upon him and if it weren’t for his superhuman strength would have bowled him over. As it was, he caught her in his arms and stood up in one smooth motion. Then he whirled them around and she squealed for joy until he covered her mouth with hot kisses and tasted the salt of her tears.

  Jay held her close while she trembled. This moment of his life felt like an old John Hughes movie. He telepathically sent to her, “You had me all along, you know that right?”

  She responded in kind, “I hoped, but I didn’t know.”

  He had found that emotion could be conveyed along with the words in telepathy so he projected reassurance to her as he said, “No, you knew.”

  As he set her down, he looked at Huong and Meikiyo and then Jessie. He stepped forward and pulled them all in for a hug. He projected into each of their minds privately one after another. “You know I love you too, but she was first. It would cheapen her moment if I went around declaring my love for you all.”

  Jay was pretty sure that they all knew he was speaking to them one at a time telepathically, but everyone had the good grace not to reveal it. Either way after the hug, he said, “So I want to try a couple of combinations and see what Mia can do with the rest of you, but I also have a hardcore training exercise that I want to do with the three of you. I am trying to push to break the next threshold as soon as possible.”

  Ever the scientist, Huong said, “What kind of combinations can Mia do? You have only talked a little bit about her powers.”

  With that they first ran some drills with her combining their physical attributes. Each of the girls marveled at what it felt like to have even a portion of Jay’s strength. After a solid hour of that they were all covered in sweat and Jay decided to move onto her more cerebral powers.

  They all got to experience the empathetic bonds. At one point, Mia pushed herself and for a few minutes was able to form a bond between all six of them. It was fairly overwhelming for Jay to feel the emotions of five different women. He would have equated the sensation to becoming sea sick because it was so topsy turvy.

  The problem was that having tasted that they all started asking Mia if she could form a permanent bond between them and Jay like she had for her. Jay didn’t know whether he should be flattered or terrified about the thought of all five of them tucked away in the back corner of his mind all the time. The permanent bond definitely seemed more passive than the active bond and easier for him to partition off, but that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t always aware of Mia even if it felt more distant.

  After that they explored some options for using her Tactical Probability skill but she didn’t have enough true experience in the dungeon to utilize it so they shelved that one till later. They all got a kick out of watching her borrow powers from different ones of them and then struggle to control them. Right in the middle of it she burst out, “Just think what kind of fun we could have had back home with that shroud of yours, Amelia?”

  Amelia gave her a wicked grin. “Oh I have fun with it now. I can sneak around and almost no one is able to detect me. But for sure, I think about what it would have been like back on Earth. I would have gotten into so much trouble though.”

  This prompted several suggestions from the other girls about what they could have done with that power back on Earth. Jay kept quiet during that time. It wasn’t that he didn’t have thoughts about how it could have been used. Nor was it that he didn’t like joining in with them in their laughs. Rather, he wanted to encourage any opportunity for the girls to bond outside of combat.

  They might all say they were okay with him having other girls. They might even really accept that it was necessary in this new world. That didn’t mean that they stopped being female, and every movie or TV show that Jay had ever watched told him that women could be very jealous. He was far from an expert but even he knew them bonding was a good thing.

  Finally after Mia had regenerated all of her PSI, he asked her to try sharing potential with him to gain access to his larger pool of PSI and then doing something she had never tried. She agreed even if it was reluctant, but he thought it would be a good experience. So she braced herself and he could see the tension build in her as she forced the skill to work in a different way.

  Suddenly all of them felt her Expanded Mind skill force their minds open. She had said it was usually easier to expand it into an area she had already worked on and that each time she did a small portion of the residual knowledge remained with her.

  Once they all finished staggering, she gasped from the strain and said, “I can only keep this active for about one minute.”

  Jay said, “That will be long enough. Now all the rest of you, come at me!”

  The next sixty seconds were filled with a kung fu battle that would have made the masters of the old movies jealous with envy. Even the physically weakest of them was by this time at least four times as capable as they had been before. So flying kicks gave way to complex spinning combinations and joint locks turned into throws, which were in turn countered by ground fighting maneuvers.

  The last 15 seconds of it was down to just Jay and a transformed Jessie. She went full-out beast mode against him but with the skills of a thousand generations of kung fu masters. The sparring match between the two of them was filled with kicks that could shatter trees and moves so fast that the naked eye could barely follow. It only came to an end when Mia had to rest and deactivated the power.

  While everyone was catching their breath, Jay who just recovered that much faster said, “Now, I’d like to work on a couple of crafting projects with Huong and Mia if you don’t mind. Then I have one more thing that I want to do with the rest of you. If the rest of you could work on trying to find ways to combine your powers, then I will be with you in about an hour.”

  While Jessie, Meikiyo, and Amelia all walked off to the far end of the training area so as not to interfere with the crafting stuff, Jay sent a telepathic message to Amelia.

  “Is tonight too soon?”

  Jay could swear that he felt a smile come through with her response. “Not at all. I would have been ready right away.”

  “Well it will have to wait for tonight. I want to make my vow to you in front of the entire cluster and I need to get a gift I have for you finished up first.”

  “You don’t have to get me anything. I don’t need any more of the trinkets from the Shop.”

  Jay projected a sense of mystery as he said, “No, I have something more personal in mind.”

  “That isn’t really fair. You aren’t giving me enough time to get you anything.”

  “I’m getting you and that will make me the happiest man alive.”

  Laughter echoed through his mind as she projected a sense of overflowing sensuality. “Well you will feel that way when I get done with you on our wedding night.”

  After that he had to refocus his thoughts back to crafting. He let Huong show him and Mia the various efforts they had made. The carapace apparently was very tough stuff to work with and Mia had after significant efforts found a couple girls who could help her. Nalani could weave a type of organic steel fibers and Sofia had a kind of molecular separation ability that allowed her to easily cut the shells up into pieces that could be crafted into armor.

  She was still working on ways to make it fit the best as well as ways to harden it further. One of the things about Huong that Jay loved the best was her curious mind. To her a failed experiment was never bad as long as she learned something in the process.

  Once Jay and Mia explained about her PSI crystals, Huong had about a thousand questions and was speaking a million miles per hour. Eventually though they were able to take filaments of organic metal fibers that Nalani had left. Then through a creative use of Huong’s cellular regeneration power and Mia’s crystals they finished crafting the item that Jay needed for the ceremony tonight.


  Both girls had tears in their eyes but he swore them to secrecy as he didn’t want Amelia to find out before he gave it to her. He didn’t need to worry though as both of them were super inquisitive and seemed to feel comfortable with each other right away. When he left them, they were already talking about how to use powers and her crystals to charge the armor and weapons that they could make.

  Jay was happy about it because he truly believed that they would be able to make items that would empower the entire cluster. With that in mind he joined the other girls to see what kind of combos they had come up with. Their powers didn’t meld so easily as when he had been working with Madison and Charlotte, but not every power lent itself so well to a combo.

  He was still impressed with what they had come up with. They made him feel that their chances of finishing the race quest tomorrow were much better. “So, the thing that I wanted to do with you all is two part. First, you know that Huong will do her best but especially in an environment without her plants, she will be largely limited to healing. Outside of the dungeon may actually end up being where her real strength lies as she is coming up with some great options for gear that will change everything I hope. That means though that each of you are going to be on the front line and need to be as strong as possible. I am hoping you can each break past the second threshold at the reset in the morning.”

  “We are all working for that,” Jessie replied.

  “Yes but now we are going to try to pick one skill and push it to its limits and beyond. I want each of us to push ourselves hard enough to try to reach the point that we feel like we are gonna pass out. Experience shows us that breaking these threshold levels takes more than minimal effort.”

  “Okay so what do you have in mind?” Amelia asked.

  “Simple, I want Meikiyo and you to go all out on your most powerful ranged attack. Most piercing shadow bolt and most intense flame. Then hold it for as long as you can and keep pushing yourself every time you feel like you have the least bit of PSI available.”

  “Okay but what about me?” Jessie asked.

  Jay just grinned at her. She stared at him until he could see the realization dawn in her eyes. There were two things that Jessie liked doing better than anything else with him. Maybe it was because of the way the bestial traits she incorporated into her body affected her, or maybe she had always been on the aggressive side. He couldn’t really say, but either way they were about to do her second favorite activity.

  Jay saw Amelia and Meikiyo smirk at one another as he and Jessie stripped off their clothes until they were only in undergarments. He could only imagine the telepathic conversation they were having, but he was sure it was spicy.

  As soon as she was down to her bra and panties, Jessie started transforming. Her skin took on the toughness of a crocodile while still remaining feminine-looking. Her nails grew into claws and her face took on a more feral look while still being beautiful. She sprouted a long monkey-like tail. Jay noted that was new and he would have to ask her about it later. Whereas a moment before she had been a petite, sexy woman with a toned tummy and just the right amount of curves now she was leaner, more muscular and clearly deadly.

  Jay had to rush to activate his Hardened Body and Regeneration to maximum while also triggering lower levels of his Enhanced Strength and Speed. To push his efforts to the maximum he also activated his Precognition to level three. He had been distracted by watching her transformation, and if he was honest with himself, just plain admiring her figure.

  That had cost him the initiative, and she was going to get the first attack in their sparring match. These matches were less about who won and more about pushing their skills. They both would end up taking an awful beating but that was how they had been growing their durability and regeneration so much.

  In a surprise move, Jessie chose a distraction tactic. Normally, when she went full transformation like this, she tended to be feral and all aggression. They had been working on her fighting smarter, not just harder. So when her first move was to unfasten her bra, allowing it to fall to the ground, Jay’s sight was immediately caught up by her perky breasts.

  Even precognition couldn’t save Jay with his mind stuck for that one critical second in a more primal state. So when Jessie’s claws sliced across his chest and cut bloody furrows, he was shocked enough to jump back twenty feet. He smiled, she was improving at making her claws stronger. She had been able to pierce his skin which was essentially as hard as the barbed beetles’ carapaces when he maxed out Hardened Body.

  Regeneration was already doing its thing, but Jay could tell this was gonna hurt.

  Chapter 21- Race Day Preparations

  Last night had been the first night that Jay had slept by himself in weeks. It was strangely refreshing, not just because he actually slept the entire night but because as much as he enjoyed time spent with the women in his life, in and out of the bedroom, a little space to clear his head was never a bad thing.

  He couldn’t help but think that he needed to come up with a better term for the girls. Teammates was accurate to an extent, but it was obvious that they were becoming so much more than that. If he expanded Team Jay dramatically, like they were suggesting, then he would have to come up with some sort of tiered system for how the women related to him. He didn’t think the term concubine would be overly popular.

  The thought made him shrug his shoulders and laugh out loud, even with no one around to hear him. Jay now felt strangely akin to the princesses he had read about in history who had to commit to arranged marriages with men that they barely knew or perhaps didn’t even like at all to stabilize the political landscape or empower their kingdom. As a modern-day American that kind of thinking had seemed foreign to him, perhaps even barbaric.

  Yet now he found himself in a similar position. Again though he laughed to himself. Who was he kidding? There were probably millions of men on Earth who would have lined up to trade places with him, dungeon terrors and all. Yes he was probably going to have to give in and forge some kind of alliance with as many of the girls as he could. Yes he was likely going to have to sleep with most if not all of them. Yes he was going to have to probably father children with many of them. That last part was still a bit jarring.

  Yet for all that, why was it that he felt trapped by the situation? Shouldn’t he be jumping for joy? He had girlfriends in his life that he was coming to admit he truly loved. They completed him in so many ways and they were pushing him into bed with other beautiful women. He shook his head but couldn’t shake that feeling of being trapped.

  Maybe that was it. He wanted to feel in control. The voice in the dream had repeatedly told him to focus and to take control. Was this a way of taking control or giving up control? Either way, the question reminded him of what he was going to be doing with Amelia tonight after the dungeon run.

  It was a big step. So how could he feel at peace about this but not about sleeping with a laundry list of beautiful and even eager women? There was a part of him that wanted to embrace his role here. This new life had been forced upon all of them. Maybe that was how he needed to think about it. This was just the way it had to be. Now, though it was time to get back to the others.

  He had slept in the first floor of the dungeon and now needed to make it back to rendezvous with the rest of the team. He wanted to be with them when the reset happened. Jay was also curious about what Huong and Mia had managed to accomplish last night.

  When he had left them, they were so caught up in their inventing that they hadn’t even noticed him leaving. He had high hopes that given enough time they would create tools that would allow the humans to turn the tides on their captors. Never underestimate necessity as the mother of inventions. Buying them that time fell to him, though.

  As he ran through the jungle at full speed, he thought about what he could do to push his own leveling. He knew he would be very close to breaking the 3rd threshold after this morning’s reset, but wondered if he had been slowing his own deve
lopment in his desire to strengthen the cluster as a whole. It was a tightrope that he would need to learn to balance on.

  Moments later he burst out of the dungeon and cleared the stairs in a single leap. From there he ran straight out and leapt from the top of the ziggurat. He both hardened his body and slowed his descent with his kinetic dampening field so that he landed smoothly. After that it only took him another thirty seconds to reach the training spot that he had left the girls at the night before.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were all eating breakfast together. Once again, Jay wasn’t sure that it was a blessing how well they were all starting to get along or a terrifying sign of how outvoted he was going to be in the future. Even Mia was being included in the circle.

  He noticed that they weren’t speaking out loud. It became clear that they were practicing their telepathy. That suspicion was confirmed as a moment later, four voices echoed inside his head, with various greetings. A second afterward he got a shy, bashful good morning from Mia.

  Despite knowing that telepathy was more efficient, Jay still preferred to speak out loud. Maybe it was the level of emotional connection that was forged through telepathy that made him uncomfortable. “So how are all of you lovely ladies this morning?”