by David Burke
That seemed to appease many of the girls and Jay began to wonder just what he had gotten himself into with this. He was gonna be being pulled in so many ways by different girls. There was a part of him that was excited by it, another part that was terrified, and another part that felt guilty because of the connections he had made with the girls on his team.
This did bring another thought to his mind. So he called out for everyone. “Hey, there is something I want to do now. I was gonna wait till tonight, but I think now is better. I want to do this in front of all of you so there are no doubts about my intentions.”
If he wasn’t being stared at before, he was absolutely the center of attention now. “Amelia, will you please come over here?”
She sent him a telepathic message, “Are we doing this now?”
Jay replied, “I want to. Are you still saying yes?”
Her words in his head made him strangely happy. He had literal lines of girls wanting to hop into his bed but she had been the one who had first kicked him down the path he needed to be on. Amelia would forever hold a special place in his heart. He knew that things were moving fast, but that was pretty much just the nature of the existence they were living now.
When she came and stood in front of him, he smiled down at her. She really was a lot shorter than him, but it was somehow crazy sexy. It probably didn’t hurt that from this vantage he had a great view of some of the best cleavage a man had ever laid eyes on.
He called out, “Samantha, will you come over here, I want to make a vow and want you to sorta officiate it with your power. Okay?”
“Uh okay,” she replied, clearly unsure what was going on.
While Samantha walked over, Jay continued to stare down at Amelia and heard in his head, “Those aren’t my eyes.” The telepathy conveyed a sense of amusement mixed with an undercurrent of excitement.
“Oops sorry,” he thought back at her.
“Nothing to be sorry about, I like knowing that I drive you to distraction.”
Jay shrugged and smiled, a secret smile for just the two of them in response to a private conversation no one else could hear. Now that Samantha was standing next to them, Jay said, “Can you just use your power to bind my promise to her. Nothing lethal, just a testament of my sincerity.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Samantha said.
Jay dropped down to one knee so that he was at an eye-level with Amelia. “Before all these witnesses and acknowledging that we as a cluster are the only authority that we have to rely upon, I want to pledge myself to Amelia. I name myself your husband and claim you as my first wife. I pledge to love you, protect you, and honor you with all my strength. Given the world that we live in now I can’t say that there will be no others, but I will always be faithful to you and never go behind your back. So, I pledge with all my heart and all my strength.”
Samantha’s hand grew bright but not the same blinding light from before. “I judge your words to be true and said with faithful intent. Should you break this pledge you will suffer in heart and body till it can be made right.”
Amelia then seized Jay’s hands. She squeezed them and spoke with an intensity like a woman possessed. “I name myself your wife and claim you as my one and only husband. I give you my heart, my mind, my body, and my trust. I am completely yours and you can have me in any way or anytime that you want. I will be faithful to you always and as your wife in this new world, I will seek to build up your home with other wives and concubines as they may be found to be fitting. I offer my body to give you children and I will love them all the more because you have given them to me.”
Again the glow developed around Samantha’s hand as she pronounced, “I judge your words to be true and said with faithful intent. Should you break this pledge you will become barren and unable to produce children. Your name will become a pariah to all those who meet you.”
Jay might have worried about such a pronouncement but he was too smitten with Amelia. He picked her up and in front of everyone there, he kissed her deeply and passionately. He wasn’t able to see the looks of envy that Amelia received or sense the rising heart rates of almost every other girl around him. He didn’t need to, because he was willing to admit that he might truly be in love.
Then Jay set her down and said, “I almost forgot this.”
He fished into his pocket and found the ring that he had made with Huong and Mia earlier. They both sighed when they took out the ring for they knew what it had cost him to make that ring. He reached out and took Amelia’s hand that seemed so small in his and placed the ring upon her finger just like a real wedding ring.
The crystal on it pulsed with a faint green light and soon the pulsing was in perfect rhythm with her heartbeat. “This ring is a symbol of not only my love and dedication to you but also of your position within the cluster. It is filled with my power freely given to you. I believe that if you ever find yourself badly injured that this ring will restore you to full health. To activate it all you need to do is think a very specific word into the ring. It is synced to you though now and will only work for you.”
She looked at the ring and then at Jay with a huge grin that was so uncharacteristic for her cynical personality. “What’s the trigger word?”
Jay got a grin to match hers and said, “Dibs.”
Chapter 30- Winning the Race
After all the girls talked and Jay got more than one look, appraising him differently than they had before, they all got down to adding finishing touches to the girls’ armor suits. While they were doing so, it became clear that the ground around them was changing.
Jessie’s new ability to grow bird wings was able to give them an aerial view. The desert was shifting into a sort of spoked wheel. There were forty-four spokes that were each about a half mile wide and five miles long. They all led from a section where there was a group of humans toward the center where the end of the race was.
No matter how she tried, she couldn’t see the very center of the race. It was covered in some kind of thick clouds. After a bit she stopped trying. The armor was finished and none of the girls could think of anything more to add to it in the limited time, of which they were down to less than ten minutes.
“Everyone needs to get into positions. Me and the team up front. The rest of you be sure to stay at least 300 feet behind us. Leave extra room to be sure.”
Charlotte responded, “Don’t worry, Samantha and I will make sure that they stay back.”
Jay nodded but then put the rest of them out of his mind. He looked at his teammates. Even all decked out for battle, it was impossible for him not to get caught up in their beauty.
Amelia, his wife… wow was all he could think. He had a wife, at 22. With his past and his luck with girlfriends, he wasn’t sure he would ever get married. Then again, all it took was being transported from Earth by magic or science so advanced that it seemed like magic. There she was though.
He took in every inch of her with his eyes. From her bouncy blond curls to, well, other bouncy assets, she was simply gorgeous. And she had pledged herself to him, body and mind. He loved her mind as much as he loved her body, but one was just easier to admire.
Then he looked at the others. Each held his attention in their own way. Huong, with her inquisitive mind and adventurous attitude in the bedroom was amazing. She was a petite beauty, and he loved every inch of her subtle curves.
Next to her, Meikiyo who could be so demure at times and yet as fiery as her pyrokinesis at other times. She would never back down and insisted he give his best just as she gave her best for all of them. Her tenacity was incredibly cute coming out of her tiny doll-like frame. Her pristine skin and those dark eyes he could lose himself in. He shuddered just thinking about it.
Then there was Jessie. Not counting Mia, she was the newest to the team. Yet, he had felt that she had brought back some fun to the team. She could be reckless and wild in training but she gave it her all. And looking up and down those shapely legs, toned tummy, and
breasts to give Amelia a run for her money he had to admire her all.
“How does the armor feel?” Huong asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.
The other girls all started to respond that it felt great or how powerful they felt in it. Jay simply said, “You all look amazing in it.”
The girls looked at each other and then giggled at his statement.
Amelia said, “Well hopefully, the beetles all feel the same way you do and decide not to bother us.”
Jay just shrugged. He wasn’t nearly so easy to embarrass anymore.
“Does everyone understand how the armor functions?” Huong asked. She was definitely in her scientist mode.
“Yes, you have explained it three times already. I know exactly how to channel my PSI into the various crystals to make them work. I already feel five times stronger than I was before,” Meikiyo said.
“Only five times? I had calculated that it should be more like six or seven times,” Huong said with concern in her voice.
Amelia laughed. “She was just generalizing. Give it a rest, slut.”
Jay watched to see if Huong would get angry but apparently the insulting term was one that Huong had come to recognize as friendly banter from Amelia and she visibly relaxed. “Ten seconds on the timer. Remember, I go first. Jessie brings up the rear. Call out any targets you see. If the attack is small enough, I will handle it myself while the rest of you keep going. The main thing here is speed, well and surviving.”
With that the countdown reached zero and they took off into the dunes of sand. Moving across them still wasn’t easy, but it was far more so than it had been. The training had paid off as well as the extra stats Jay had gained. The fusion as unplanned as it was had made him remarkably more powerful than before.
Jessie took up a position flying behind them. The wings were fairly draining on her but the advantages both in movement speed and scouting were too great to give up. The other girls were moving like they were kids in a snowsuit for the first time. They seemed awkward but were quickly getting the hang of it.
The armor plates added a fair amount of bulk but through some crafting genius that Jay didn’t need to understand, Huong had made it so the armor was powered by a combination of Mia’s PSI crystals and stored Stamina-fueling crystals with the stat of Durability. The armor was not only made to provide protection but even more so to ease their movement.
It was working too, as Jay found they were able to keep up with him. He wasn’t boosting his speed, but this was a first. Meikiyo especially had an easy time of it as she could channel PSI into the crystals that were synced to her fire abilities and lift off the ground on thermal currents. So much so that she was actually pushing Jay to move faster.
Amelia called out, “Not fair,” but then she triggered her own crystals and gained a shadowy property so that the sand produced little to no drag against her and she was able to move even faster than the pyrokinetic.
Only Huong couldn’t keep the pace so they were all forced to slow down. When they did she said, “You really should be saving those crystals for combat.”
“Yes, teacher,” Amelia replied.
Jay was about to say something when he felt a tremor in his Life Sense. The beetles were very hard to detect when they were burrowed in the sand. Something about the sand seemed to refract his senses if he pushed too deep into it. Only when they were about to erupt from the sand did he sense them.
“Incoming,” he shouted and all the playful bickering stopped. He instantly conjured a PSI blade and watched as two of the creatures burst forth. He sped forward into the first one and the sword sliced through its carapace like warm butter, ending its assault.
The second one was a few feet from him but he hit it with the most focused Kinetic Bolt he could muster. With his new levels it punched straight through the beast’s head even. In the same instant a ball of black flames struck it head on and disappeared. It was as though the creature’s carapace had simply absorbed the attack. Jay looked back at the girls to see Amelia and Meikiyo standing side by side with huge grins on their faces.
He whipped his head back to look at the beetle. It was already dead from his attack but they clearly thought their attack had done something so he wanted to see. Sure enough less than a second later, gouts of flame burst out of every orifice and even consumed its legs from the inside out. All that was left was a hollowed-out carapace.
“That’s how you do it,” Amelia shouted.
Jay whistled and said, “Wow, cooked from the inside out. Remind me not to get on your bad sides.”
“Oh do I have a bad side?” Amelia asked as she then pushed out her chest showing off her breasts which were impressive even covered in armor. “Is it this side?” Then she turned around and bent over partially jutting out her butt. “Or is it this side?”
Jay grinned and shrugged but Huong said, “You need to be careful not to waste more power than necessary.”
“What are you complaining about?” Meikiyo asked. “Now you don’t have to clean the guts out of the carapace before using it.”
“Oh, good point,” Huong admitted.
“Not to break up the fun, but this is a race,” Jessie called down from above. “I can see some of the other teams. We’ve made it about one-fifth of the way to the center and only one of the other teams that I can see seems to be even close to as far as we are, but we don’t wanna lose.”
“Right, back to it,” Jay replied. Then they were off racing again.
Jay thought that someday when he was telling this story to his children, he might have to embellish the story. They were attacked multiple times, but the girls almost never had to lift a finger and even when five of the barbed beetles came at once, the fight only lasted a few seconds. The simple truth was that they out-leveled the challenge of this floor.
From the shadow fireballs to shadowy claws or even shadow seeds that could burst forth from inside a creature, Amelia’s power combined magnificently with all the others. Even Meikiyo and Jessie had learned to combo up, with Jessie manifesting different animal powers from a gaseous cloud that could be exploded to a giant scorpion tail that Meikiyo outlined in fire. Jay would have been jealous of how well they could combo together if he hadn’t been so proud of them.
When they reached the fog cloud that covered the center of the spoked wheel they had been racing down, Jessie informed them that there was one team about a mile behind them and three others about 1 ½ miles away, but the rest were at least two and mostly three miles behind them. Their speed had been truly impressive.
The third and fourth-place teams were both led by guys with one team having a second guy on it too. The closest team strangely enough was composed of five women. Whenever she was giving status updates on the progress of their competition, she took to calling the leader of that team the Amazon, because apparently she was at least as tall as Mia.
As they stepped into the fog, visibility dropped to nothing. Jessie stopped the wings and was down on the ground with the others. They all drew in instinctively closer. Jessie must have enhanced her senses because she said the air smelled coppery like blood.
The further they walked into the fog, the more they came across the ruined and still-bleeding bodies of the dozens of the barbed beetles. Huong said. “If the entire center is covered this densely, then there must be hundreds maybe even thousands of dead beetles. I’m glad we didn’t have to fight all of them.”
Never one to be an optimist, Amelia said, “Yeah but we probably have to fight whatever is killing all of them.”
Jay couldn’t see Huong’s face but since their communication was telepathic, he could feel her uneasiness as she said, “Good point.”
From some distance away they heard screeching as beetles were being killed. That didn’t seem to matter though as a few minutes later they found the silver pole in the middle. Jay touched it and immediately a terminal came up from the ground.
Congratulations! All prizes have been assigned to your group and a do
or to the third floor has been opened up where the rest of your cluster is waiting at the edge of the fog.
Fortune has shone on you and you did not encounter the kinslayer. Will all your kind be so lucky?
You have won the race. Now will you save your race?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jessie asked when Jay read them the message.
“Unfortunately, I think it is fairly obvious. There is a creature, probably a beetle of some kind out here killing all the other beetles. It must be considerably stronger and so if another of the race teams runs into it they could easily be slain by it. So do we just abandon them, or do we go out hunting for it?” Jay replied.
“You know, I’m always up for a good hunt, but something that killed a thousand beetles is maybe something we should just be glad to have avoided,” Jessie said.
“I keep telling you that you can’t save everyone, just be glad that you saved our cluster,” Amelia said.