Lightfoot

by Joe Kuster

  She turned her back to the crowd and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “TJ, do you trust me?”

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  She cupped her hand around the stone and pressed it against his cheek. She began mouthing words that he couldn’t hear. Her magic drifted under his skin, collecting in his chest. It radiated warmth and continued building. He recognized it as her accumulating the essence necessary for some of her more potent spells. Only when he thought he could hold no more and that it might rip him apart at the seams did she stop. She panted with effort but kept her hand to his cheek as she pressed the stone into his skin.

  “Do you trust me?” Serina asked again.

  TJ replied, “Of course.”

  His eyes found hers, and she looked to be on the verge of tears. “Then swear to me. Swear you’ll be mine. Swear your life and soul to me. If you don’t, they are going to kill you once they find out what I did. I broke a few rules. Big ones.”

  TJ started to ask what she’d done, then gazed into her loving face and made his decision. “I… I swear…”

  There was a powerful thrum of magic that shook the earth.

  Shouts started from the back of the room. “Stop, what are you…”

  TJ tried again, his words loud and clear, “I swear my life and soul to you, Serina.”

  A tumult of yells started up as everyone in the room scrambled to their feet, and the room seemed to be vibrating.

  Serina whispered her words, but they were like a hurricane of force that blocked out all else, “I swear to you, on my gifts, the power to do as I command.”

  She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I’m so sorry, TJ.”

  A crackling portal opened behind him with a wave of her hand. His lover whispered more words of power that caused the place in his chest where her magic resided to begin heating up. Somewhere, bells chimed, and the sound seemed to shake the very heavens as TJ’s skin began to glow gold.

  Saphinium shoved her way forward, lit in a blazing aura of magic, but Serina stopped her with a flick of her fingers.

  Calls for TJ’s death lit the air as someone tried to throw Serina to the side only to smash into something unseen. They didn’t know what was going on, but they wanted it stopped the best way they knew how. TJ would have been dead in an instant, but they hadn’t noticed Serina silently erect a massive barrier spell around them. A sword flashed out, rebounding off the transparent shield. A spell followed, then another.

  TJ could only look on confused as Serina pivoted to him.

  Her words thundered through his very soul as she said, “I command you to live on and enjoy your life as much as you can. Drink a lot, find people to love, have lots of sex, and remember me fondly. I love you. I’ll try to find you, just listen to your dreams.”

  Tears dripped free as the celestial being in front of him smashed one final kiss into his lips, then shoved him backward.

  Chapter 4

  TJ was falling.

  Falling and screaming.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  The screaming was correct.

  But not falling.

  Falling would imply that he was only going in one direction. He tumbled into the darkness, only able to make out vague shapes, then was slurped into something on his right, then he continued down, then left. A few times, he was even pulled straight upward.

  Was he flying?

  He checked his wings but found them still flat against his back.

  He was swallowed from below and spat out at high velocity in a different direction. His screaming abated as he realized nothing was changing.

  Should he open his wings?

  He thought about that and wasn’t sure. It might slow him down, but he wasn’t sure he wanted that. The thought of whatever this was taking longer seemed like a terrible idea.

  A black tendril lashed around his ankle and slowed him for a moment. He felt an electric shock as the magic in his core flared. It connected with a deafening boom as it began trying to carve the thing in two. As if deciding it really didn’t want him after all, the tentacle reared back and cracked forward like a whip as it sent him back the way he’d come, screaming as he went.

  TJ’s mind flailed wildly for the first few minutes of the ride, but the chaos showed no signs of slowing. As the minutes stretched and finally gave way, any sense of panic did as well. After a bit, he realized that whatever was happening, it still had a touch of Serina’s divine magic to it.

  “Surely, she wouldn’t have flung me in here just so I’d die,” he thought aloud.

  Seemingly in response to his words, his momentum seemed to tilt to the side, adding a strange spin. All the blood in his body rushed to his head as he rotated wildly. Feeling like he was going to vomit, he tried a test.

  “This is a portal?” he said, half as a question.

  His direction of movement rebounded like he was a rubber ball and had been smacked against a wall.

  “And Serina swore upon her power. She’s not really a god, or… maybe she is, or was going to be one day. She’s got a touch of the divine, whatever that is.” He paused, parsing that tidbit. “The binding would make me a follower, and that’d what? Make her an ascended before she was supposed to? Shit, did that oath make her a full goddess?”

  He was whacked downward with a startling force. He then shot forward with a twist that seemed to favor moving left more than anything else.

  Even if he felt like he was flying through a tornado, the experience had lost any real threat. It didn’t seem like anything could really hurt him here. As he spoke, the feeling of Serina’s magic at work only became stronger. It settled around him like a comfy blanket.

  Thinking on that, he realized this really wasn’t any worse than when she’d yanked his soul free. This time, it felt like she’d had a plan in mind rather than blind experimentation. He thought back to what she’d said…

  “Uh… drinking and love? Or…” TJ mumbled.

  His momentum didn’t shift this time, but instead, he was surrounded by a strange glittering light that ebbed and flowed.

  Feeling like he was onto something, he tried again, “Drink a lot, find love, have lots of sex, and… shit, what was it?”

  He was fired into a void much faster this time as the light began to coalesce around him. The junction nodes became a blur as they ripped by. Whatever was happening seemed to respond to the hurried oaths they’d taken.

  Without much else to go on, he tried putting it all together. “I swore my life and soul to Serina.”

  A loud screeching noise flared to life, and it almost sounded like a combination of a crowd of people clapping and passing gas at the same time.

  “And in return, she granted me the power to do as she commands.”

  Explosions of color detonated around him as he coursed through the unknown. He could see the blobs he was landing in better now. Each one was connected in a massive array, like knots in a tangled fishing net or some elaborate tapestry. It was a mostly dark void, but each sphere flicked by his face and then shot him down one of the connected branches.

  “She commanded that… well, she wants me to have fun, I guess. Enjoy life, drink, find love, have sex, and remember her fondly. Since this was her portal and she didn’t have time to scry a destination, maybe it’s trying to find a place for that.”

  Brilliant beams of light swirled around him, and he could suddenly see thousands of possible connections from where he floated. His momentum chose fork after fork at random.

  He slapped his forehead as he put it together. “Seriously? That’s her grand enlightenment? I swore myself into her service, and…” He paused in thought.

  “She said she loves me. She said it in front of everyone.”

  That thought took nearly an hour to properly process. TJ had wanted to hear those words more than anything but had never dared to tell her how he felt. The newly displaced consort silently swore to himself that he’d never admit to anyone if he cried or not when he realized the sco
pe of what had just been lost.

  Any sense of time had long since disappeared as he was tugged along. After pulling himself together, he nodded solemnly to himself.

  He didn’t know much about how the oaths worked, but he knew that commandments in such arrangements would change the bonded. A patron’s will forced compulsions on those tied to them. Although, she’d basically ordered him to be himself, or at least the borderline degenerate courtesan version of himself that he had presented to her. The man willing to do whatever it took to stroke her ego, make her feel special, and land in her bed. That he was content to drink and screw for days on end.

  It hadn’t really been such a callous arrangement, even if it had a kernel of truth to it. In reality, he was self-aware enough to know that he enjoyed her company, wanted a meal more filling than porridge or rice, and needed to feel special every bit as much as she did.

  “She had to exile me to protect me, but she wanted me happy. Those are my commandments.”

  He suddenly felt like he owed her much more than his life. She could have done any number of things with him once he’d taken his part of the oath. Like an absolute idiot, TJ hadn’t even asked for anything in return. He’d given her everything, and she’d asked nothing from him. Or at least nothing he wasn’t willing to give freely.

  Turning his attention to the small spheres, he realized he could see inside them if he focused.

  He caught glimpses of sunlit pastures and of cities made of strange materials. People of every shape and color flickered into view. He flashed by humans in bright clothing he didn’t recognize. Cat-folk running in a field. He saw centaurs steering what looked like floating cities. Scaled men and women perused a market. A universe of possibilities lay at his fingertips.

  They were smiling. Some were holding up tankards of beer. Others were dancing, and a few, unless he was reading the situation wrong, were fucking and magnificently so. Couples, triads, quartets, and outright orgies as far as the eye could see. Something told him that all he had to do was pick his version of paradise and jump in.

  TJ shifted his head to the side and caught a glimpse of a junction node on another strand, and his mind reeled. It looked like Serina from the side, but her skin had gone pale, and she was covered in blood. She held something in her hand as she lashed out. He could sense something was wrong and didn’t quite add up, but he skidded past the node and lost track of her.

  “Wait!” he shouted.

  The momentum protested but obliged as his pace slowed dramatically. His eyes searched back and forth as he tried to find the scene he’d passed. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her face, but if it were Serina, she’d looked hurt. Maybe she’d been exiled too and was already fighting for her life. He needed to get to her.

  “Go back!” he commanded the ether.

  Sensing what he wanted; he was jolted around. Before he’d had a chance to really think through what was happening, he was hurled at full speed into the sphere.

  He smashed through a hole and into the flat gray sky. The barrier detonated as he collided with it, sending him tumbling. End over end, TJ’s body hurtled toward the ground like he had been fired out of a ballista.

  “Shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiit!” he screamed.

  Trying to flare his wings, they were almost ripped from his body. He was simply moving too fast.

  “Come on, come on!” he yelled, trying to put as much strength into them as he had.

  A thousand feet turned into five hundred, then two hundred. He was going to end up a pancake if he couldn’t slow down.

  A locked door in his mind shattered as a golden light flared around him. Gritting his teeth, he thrust his wings out to their fullest reach. The pain was excruciating as the wind ripping past him threatened to pull the bones from his joints.

  He looked down only to see small dots moving around in what looked like a red clay pit. Then he spotted the woman he’d seen from the portal. She was covered in blood and seemed to be swinging a sword blindly at a giant dog.

  As she rolled to the side and dodged an attack, he got a better look at her. With a sinking sensation, he realized that it wasn’t Serina. Even in armor, the body shape wasn’t quite right. She was shorter, and it looked like she had a long braid of black hair whipping behind her.

  Not able to control his plummet to earth other than trying to lose as much momentum as possible, TJ did his best to bend his knees and prepare for coming in hot. All he could hope was that he didn’t break so many bones that he’d die before someone could get him to a healer.

  Wings extended and engulfed in a brilliant golden aura, TJ’s body slammed like a thunderclap directly atop the beast the woman was fighting. His feet gave way as he landed his backside into what he could now tell was a two-headed dog’s spine. The animal collapsed with the sound of snapping bones. The force of his landing sent dirt spraying around the pair in a shockwave.

  TJ panted, desperately trying to catch his breath.

  He’d been confident he was going to die in an impact crater, but somehow, he’d been able to shed enough momentum to get the job done. The gold aura around him winked out of existence as he tenderly withdrew his wings. Moving them was pure agony, and he was confident he had sprained them badly. They’d be useless in this condition. He did his best to put the pain aside as they folded up and slid into the intricate folds of his robes.

  The blue-eyed, dark-haired human woman covered in armor took one look at him, then promptly fainted. He was initially worried he was too late, but he could see the woman’s chest armor slowly rising and falling. He started to reach out to touch her, but something stopped him.

  He slowly panned his head and saw low gray clouds that were giving off a steady fine mist. The red clay banks around him looked like they’d been worked as some sort of gathering operation, but weeds had grown up around the walkways.

  Around him, old wooden buckets and various shovels were piled haphazardly. One of the nearby wheelbarrows looked to have been recently smashed into kindling. A big tree stood nearby, but otherwise, the small grassy clearing in the woods was empty.

  TJ rose slowly and wobbled. That fall had taken a lot out of him. He was about to sit down to rest when he heard the growl of a second beast.

  He grumbled, “Well, shit.”

  A dark form emerged from behind a wooden wheelbarrow at the other end of the clay pit. Two heads snarled, revealing large white fangs. Its black fur was matted and liberally coated with red clay. The dog-like creature probably weighed as much as TJ did, and its dark, menacing eyes narrowed as they fell on him.

  A small voice shouted, “Over here!”

  Turning to the nearby tree, he spotted two children up in the branches that he’d missed earlier. Both looked to be human, so he wasn’t quite sure what age to put on them, but they seemed about half grown.

  “Climb up before it gets you!” the other one cried out.

  Realizing that he’d epically screwed the pooch, and this wasn’t one of the worlds meant for him, TJ began cursing. He continued swearing as he scooped up the unresponsive woman. He flung her onto his back as he broke into a sprint.

  He was about to risk looking over his shoulder to see if the other dog was coming or not, but the boy in the tree shouted, “Hurry! It’s right behind you!”

  Finding that as much confirmation as needed, TJ pumped his legs as hard as he could. Nearing the twisted and half-dead tree, he jumped, finding a spot for his foot on its gnarled bark. He then leaped again before he ran out of momentum.

  Snagging the highest branch that he could reach, TJ tried to do a one-armed pull-up, but couldn’t quite do more than tuck his legs under him with the extra weight of the woman.

  One of the dog’s maws managed to snag the bottom hem of his robes and began pulling viciously. Wrapping his left hand over the branch, he grunted out, “Need a little help here! Someone get her off my shoulder before we’re both monster chow!”

  Chapter 5

  There was scurrying amongst the li
mbs above him as two sets of small hands began pulling at the woman in armor. The children heaved and tugged for all they were worth, and the weight slowly rose off his back. Rolling her into place, they managed to get her half balanced on the limb.

  Freed from the dead weight, TJ tugged at his robes until they came free with a tearing sound. Wrapping his arms and legs around the branch, he managed to secure himself and tried to work himself upright. With a bit of grunting, he pulled himself into a sitting position.

  The two children were obviously siblings, looking much alike, the only difference being that one had long braids. Both had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and were absolutely covered in dried layers of red clay.

  TJ gasped out, “Thanks, kids.”

  They both stared at him slack-jawed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You… you fell from the sky,” one said.

  Not really knowing how to explain to the children that he’d goofed up his portal travel, or even acknowledge he wasn’t from this world, he just shrugged. “It happens.”

  TJ grunted as he tried to get the woman into a sitting position against the tree’s trunk. He was pretty sure she’d suffocate with the way they’d left her folded over the limb. He managed to get her flopped into a position with an arm over a branch and get her balanced where she’d have to do a bit of floundering to fall out.

  He then pulled at her empty scabbard. Unbuckling the leather strap that held it in place, he looped it around her arm a few times and got it buckled back to the tree limb.

  He poked and prodded as he tried to check her over for injuries. She had a nasty cut on her forehead and some scratches on her hands, but otherwise, he couldn’t find anything urgent. He assumed most of the blood on her armor wasn’t hers.

  He debated trying to better address the children’s questioning gaze but had a sneaking suspicion that saying a celestial had something to do with it might cause problems.