by Leo Hull
And Nessa’s, Tristan realized with a start. Her heart beat with his, a dull throbbing that pressed on him from all directions. The very floor of the room seemed to respond to them, and when Tristan opened his eyes the dark metal ring in the chamber flickered with faint sparks timed to their shared rhythm. The hair on his arms rippled, standing up and dancing with the room’s current.
He looked down at Nessa, her own head moving as if drawn by the same magnetic pull. Sparks danced in her eyes, twisting and jumping across her violet irises. Their lips met, Tristan pulling Nessa into his arms, heedless of his previous concerns about their precarious position.
Nothing mattered but Nessa.
She fumbled between them, bolts flickering across the gap to Tristan’s skin. He gasped at the tingling contact, like the touch of a desperate lover there was an urgency to the sensation as if Nessa were barely holding herself back.
Tristan plunged into her and reached for Nessa with his body and soul. Light exploded between them, the air crackling as Nessa abandoned restraint. Shimmering sheets of heaven’s fury sheathed them from head to toe, arcing to connect any gap between their physical forms. Tristan’s back arched in pleasure, Nessa clinging as she rode him, her body bathed in ephemeral light.
It was all Tristan could do not to collapse to the ground as Nessa enveloped his body with her Gift and his cock with her pussy. He accepted her power, opening himself to the twinned stimulations and rising to meet her. He bared his soul to her, trusting her with his very existence.
“Fuck,” Nessa gasped, her eyes wide as the pair lifted off the ground. Bolts of twisting energy thicker than a ship’s mast linked them to the chamber’s metal ring, the number growing with every thrust inside Nessa. Small tendrils began splitting off, reaching out to the dark metal dome as the pair reached the center of the room and their ascent stalled.
Nessa rode him, Tristan’s body stretched out as if on a bed of air. She moved aggressively, her hips slamming down as she raced to match the intensity of the building storm.
Tristan could feel a pressure building inside him as Nessa’s essence flowed into his, following paths that he widened as he welcomed her. Her hair was sparking now, standing on end with bits of energy dancing between strands and disappearing into the void. She gasped, her pussy clenching as she strained to give him everything.
“You’re eyes! They’re like mine!” Nessa quivered, spasming as she forced herself hard onto Tristan and locked into place. Power built in her, growing with every rhythmic contraction of pleasure and desperate for an outlet.
Nessa’s cry grew and Tristan answered her.
Tristan roared, his body going rigid as he released his pent-up need and Nessa’s power. Lightning shot from him, a single bluish bolt arcing upwards to the distant peak of the domed room. The chamber absorbed it, the entirety of the dark metal walls and floor shimmering with shrouds of pulsing energy.
Tristan filled Nessa, her back arching as her own purple-white lightning arched upwards, spiraling around his then merging into a single stream of brilliant white that vanished in a sudden burst of darkness that left Tristan night-blind. There was a clap of thunder, so deep and powerful that it sucked what little air Tristan had in his lungs right out.
The room went dark and they fell to the hard metal floor. Tristan groaned, blinking away the streaks through his vision and trying to recover his breath. The fall had not been a short one and they were lucky it had been Nessa on top, both because she was far smaller and because he could summon his Gift to ease the aches of the fall.
When he could see again, the glowing bars that adorned the walls no longer flickered, their light strong and steady. Nessa slumped against him, her breath ragged in his ears and her chest heaving against his own.
“What was that?” Tristan finally gasped. Nessa panted on him, still quivering around him in the aftershocks of her pleasure. She looked helplessly at him, as unsure about what had happened as he was. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” Nessa’s eyes were wide. “I think I just gave myself to you.”
“What?” Tristan swallowed hard. He’d felt something too, almost a bonding but so much more. To compare what he and Nessa had done to the ritual with Slivers was to compare a mighty tree to its seed. Yet Nessa was right, there had been some union between them, though ‘giving’ might be the wrong word. He had made himself vulnerable at an existential level that made the trust the Corp tried to instill between recruits seem nothing.
Nessa pushed herself upright, still astride Tristan, and reached an arm tentatively to the sky. Tristan felt her will and some part of him responded, reaching down from where she aimed in a chaotic bifurcation until their desire met in the middle. A small bolt shot from her finger, briefly connecting her to the distant dome.
“I think you’re a Ground! There’s no other way I could do that,” Nessa said excitedly. “Did you feel that?”
“I felt something but it’s strange. I knew where you wanted it to go, and that’s where my…” Tristan broke off, struggling to describe the sensation and comprehend what had happened. Maybe Nessa was right, and he’d somehow gained another Gift, but that only felt like half of what had happened. The Sliver at his neck felt dead yet his bond with Nessa felt as wide and strong as the storms he’d weathered on his voyage to this land.
“Awareness?” Nessa giggled. “Perran struggled to explain it as well.”
The mention of Nessa’s former vulta and captor was timed well, as the sound of a door slamming open echoed into the hall. Footsteps quickly followed.
“Damn it, we’re going to be trapped!” Tristan cursed, pushing Nessa off of him regretfully. He longed for nothing more than to take her again, this time with their connection wide open. “Do you think there’s another way out of here?”
“Why run?” Nessa asked with a smirk. Her top and skirt were still displaced, and she wore an eager grin. Not for more sex, Tristan realized as he felt her anger along their bond. He resonated with her need to fight, to take back control from her pathetic former vulta. She leaned her head back, heedless to her nudity and sighed as she let bolts twist out of her. “Fallen, you’re powerful.”
She sighed pleasurably as their shared energy spread outwards and started to move on his cock again. The touch of their minds multiplied the physical sensations of their union, and Tristan grabbed her hips and started to slide into her from below.
The lightning vanished and Nessa coyly smiled as she stood and started to put herself together.
“You’re sure?” He was warming to the idea of ending this here and now. They likely had no other choice at this stage. Nessa grinned like they were about to engage in a daring dive off a cliff and not face down a small army of armed men intent on capturing or killing them. “We should at least move to the door so they can’t surround us.”
Nessa shrugged but followed. Tristan wondered at her confidence. She’d brutally taken down several men when they’d ambushed Perran, but the Ground had stepped in and quelled her power quickly. If Perran repeated that here, they’d be overwhelmed by sheer numbers and he’d be hacked to pieces, regenerative powers or not. Tristan quickened his steps and decided that this was a fight they couldn’t risk.
He turned to tell Nessa his decision, but stopped as men filled the doorway, all with weapons in hand. Most had swords, but a few had bows that came up swiftly. Tristan cursed and tried to step in front of Nessa, but she dodged away, and Tristan felt his awareness reaching back towards her from the guards. It was almost unconscious, like reflexively wrapping an arm around a lover in sleep.
Lightning exploded from Nessa, ripping through the growing mass of men with barely controlled fury. Those that had arrows knocked loosed them indiscriminately, a few lodging in the writhing bodies of their compatriots. Nessa pressed forward, bolts arcing between the men and out of sight into the hallway.
Tristan followed, stunned at the display of raw power that carved into their attackers. Men fell, bodies rigid from t
he current flowing through them and still Nessa reached for more. Tristan gave it to her. She was the captured power of a storm and her fury battered Perran’s force like a ship caught near shore.
A wedge of men appeared among the bodies, pressing forward and protected by some subtle force that Tristan struggled to grasp hold off. Above the cries of dying men, Perran called out orders and threatened to withhold his protection if the men did not advance to face Nessa’s beautiful wrath.
Tristan frowned at the feeling of Perran’s Gift pressing back against him, but unlike Perran, Tristan had more to him than just the one trick. With a roar, Tristan charged the mass of men, leaping the pipe and slamming into the front of the wedge even as lightning crackled around him. Nessa’s power wrapped around his arms, caressing his sword with the gentleness of a lover’s touch.
The softness ended when he brought the sword crashing down. The man in the front of the wedge raised a small wooden shield and caught Tristan’s blade on the rim, but lightning exploded from Tristan’s weapon in a cone that scattered men as if the Fallen had crashed into them. Men fell and Tristan’s sword wedged in the charred shield, but he didn’t care.
The first wave of Perran’s force lay dead or dying at Tristan’s feet and the Ground strained to redirect Nessa’s lightning and shelter what remained. Perran stood among perhaps a half-dozen remaining men, pouring sweat and steadying himself on a guard’s shoulder. He pressed on Tristan with his will, and Nessa’s lightning retreated.
But it still clung to Tristan’s skin.
Tristan smirked as he strode forward.
A guard moved for him, his face ashen at the horror of confronting what looked to be the Fallen returned. He chopped down carelessly.
Tristan caught his arm, lightning flowing into the man and turning him to a rigid corpse in the flash of an eye.
Perran screamed in disbelief, his eyes bulging as he faced the impossibility of Tristan’s advance.
“Kill him! Take his Sliver!” Perran spat as if his orders could somehow change the tide of battle. To their credit, these last men obeyed and faced death as if they were the Aeolian Corp’s finest.
Tristan recognized one as the guard that had protected Perran’s retreat from Nessa’s prison, and as in the earlier fight these men moved in concert.
Tristan drew a knife in each hand as the men fanned out, blades at the ready. The hall was wide enough for four or five men to walk abreast, and the guards worked to surround him, one darting in while another moved to cover any counterattack. They were quick about it too, never getting close enough for Tristan to get a hand on them to channel Nessa.
They worked him like this, using the longer reach of their swords to force him back into the room. Tristan cursed as he stumbled on a body. He rolled backwards with his fall and avoided the blades, but two men slipped past him towards Nessa.
This turned out to be a fatal mistake. Tristan felt Perran’s concentration split, his suppressive will spread thin. As Tristan regained his feet, the flanking men entered his awareness. Lightning burst from Nessa and threw the pair back into their compatriots.
Tristan followed, bellowing and burying his daggers in the chest and throat of a guard as he rushed at Perran. Something tugged at his neck and bit into his back, but he had too much momentum to be slowed. A nail might as well try to stop the hammer. He brought his right fist around in a blow that would have broken a normal man’s hand.
Even without Nessa’s lightning gauntlet, Tristan’s punch carried enough force to end the fight for Perran.
Tristan’s blow struck Nessa’s former vulta in the temple and Perran’s head exploded like an overripe pumpkin stepped on by a plow horse, the wet squelch a fitting end to Perran’s rotten existence. Lightning erupted in a nova of destruction that knocked the remaining guards to the ground where they lay lifelessly.
Tristan panted, shocked at the sudden calm.
He turned, drawing another dagger and searching for his next opponent, but there were none. Dozens of corpses lay around him, most killed in Nessa’s initial assault but many by his own reckless charge. Blood dripped from him like sweat. The air stank of burned flesh and hair and Tristan struggled to comprehend what had just happened.
In less than a minute he and Nessa hadn’t just defeated a force many times their number, they’d wiped them away as if they were an annoying fly. Tristan turned to look at Nessa, afraid of what he would find. Her defeat in the woods seemed impossible after what she’d done here and some part of him feared he had bound himself to a demon made flesh.
Yet when he turned his heart opened wide.
Nessa swayed as she stood there, a faint smile on her lips. She hadn’t wrought this slaughter on her own. Each bolt had been him responding to her call, the two of them forming an unbroken chain through which her lightning could flow. They’d fought as one, their purposed joined in an implacable storm of will.
“Fallen,” Tristan finally said. Exhaustion racked his body and he started to shake as he coped with what they’d been through. Not just the killing, though this was something that he hoped to soon forget, but just the relief that he and Nessa weren’t dead or captured.
Nessa looked little better, her legs wobbly as she joined him.
“You want me to pull that dagger out?” Nessa asked, reaching to his back. Tristan twisted, surprised to see a hilt sticking out from his shoulder.
“When did that happen?”
“Towards the end. Ready?” Nessa tugged it free, and Tristan pulled on what little of his Gift he had left to slow the flow of blood. He reached back to press a hand against it then cursed.
“My chain, we need to find it!” He ran his fingers desperately along his bare neck where his connection to Nessa, Lydia, and Serana should be.
Nessa’s eyes went wide and she gasped then started laughing and shaking her head. She raised a finger and lightning jumped from her to Tristan, tickling his chest then working its way down to his cock. Tristan moaned at the sensation but understood immediately.
He was still bound to Nessa, could still feel her desire and delight and yet his neck stood empty. They were bound in truth, not just through the Sliver of Fallen metal. Nessa’s wonder mirrored his and he knew this was as new and unexpected to her as it was for him.
“You haven’t heard of this before, have you?”
“No, but I guess I’m not surprised. I felt the choice earlier and I took it. We both did.”
Tristan couldn’t argue with that. Somewhere in their coupling he had felt Nessa’s offer and he’d accepted her without hesitation, their bond forged anew without the Sliver conduit. Nessa’s quiet approval of their new bond steadied him as they searched for his chain and the Slivers that bound him to Lydia and Serana. She searched eagerly, as anxious to restore his connection with his other Bound as he was.
When they finally found it, Nessa addressed the unspoken questions in Tristan’s heart before handing over his Slivers.
“I don’t want you to treat me better than your other Bound just because we don’t need this,” Nessa said, fingering the dead Sliver around her neck. “It will breed resentment. Trust me, I’ve already been the favored girl in one harem and I’d rather not have the target painted on me. Better that we’re all friends.”
“They are just with me until you and Annik are rescued.”
Nessa smiled knowingly, tilting her head to show that while she didn’t believe him, she wouldn’t argue. When Tristan placed his chain around his neck, the flash of relief from Lydia and Serana nearly overwhelmed him and Nessa’s smile widened to a toothy grin. She didn’t speak as she led the way from the room, practically skipping with excitement to meet the new Bound that made him so happy.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Are you kidding me?” Tristan hissed in frustration, pushing Nessa back into the small room they’d been hiding in. Another patrol was coming, the fifth they’d run into since leaving Perran’s massacred force behind and trying to make their escape.
/> These weren’t Perran’s hired thugs or even Talek’s trained goons anymore, but Saeli’s own force dedicated to guarding the Fallen site. They moved in trios, one Ground accompanied by two women that Nessa had informed him were likely Sparks like her, though much weaker judging by the varied color of hair. Only a few even had streaks of silver.
Nessa didn’t want to fight them, and Tristan didn’t disagree. The Fallen’s Guard weren’t the enemy and he and Nessa were too exhausted to feel comfortable with any more confrontations. So instead, they hunkered down in the corner, making themselves small and hoping this patrol would pass them by just as the others had.
“We should go back down,” a bright-voiced woman said as the group moved closer. “They’ll notice if we aren’t there with the rest of them.”
“No,” the man grumbled, exasperation clear in his voice.
“We won’t do Talek any good if we get found out.”
“Don’t say his name.”
“Who’s going to hear us here? Fya, you’re with me, right?”
“Well—” a tentative voice started to say.
“Enough, Sora,” the man interjected, the footsteps halting. “This isn’t something you two get a vote on. The Fallen’s Guard finding out about us won’t matter anyways. You heard what he said. We find the foreigner or the silver-haired Spark, we won’t be around in Saeli anymore.”
“I don’t want to leave Saeli. That wasn’t part of our contract.”
“Everything is part of your contract. Or do we need to take a visit to your family’s new fishing boat?” There was a pregnant pause, then, “I thought not.”
“What are we even going to do if we find them? You saw the bodies up there, the three of us won’t stand a chance against them. Neither the Guard nor his promise will mean shit if we die up here, and we all know if Perran couldn’t stop her you have no chance.”
There was a slap followed by a startled cry of pain. Nessa tensed against Tristan, quivering with barely restrained fury.