Lightfoot

by Joe Kuster

  He blinked a few times, confused.

  She waved a hand dismissively, but her cheeks shifted as if she were smiling under her collar. “Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to understand. Oh, and before I forget, thanks for the food. I already made an offering to Serina, but she told me it wouldn’t count unless I told you. I can’t tell you how much better I feel. My body needs fresh meat or blood. As close to living as possible. I can sustain myself in other ways, but that’s a different thing altogether. I’ll spare you the details, but Mistress Rachel gave me enough money to make sure I’ve got meals squared away.”

  TJ nodded. “She’s a good woman. I’m looking forward to catching up with her father. I’d like to finally get married, rather than this awkward thing we’ve got going on. Besides, Abby is going to need a day off at this rate. I feel like I’m running her into the ground.”

  “She does look a little frazzled. You two are worse than rabbits,” she said with a snort of laughter.

  Taking another series of swallows from the bottle, he winced. He was missing his father’s special stash. He’d picked up a lot of the particulars about distillation when he’d attempted to follow in his father’s footsteps. It hadn’t worked since he didn’t have the eye for details. He’d always forget how much he’d put into the mash and throw off the ratios, but he could spot what was wrong with a batch.

  This had an adequate oak finish to it, but it hadn’t been kept in the barrel long enough, and someone had included some of the tails into the finished product to stretch it. It left what could have been excellent booze overly harsh. The only thing it had going for it was that it was hard-hitting. Having slowly regained a level of buzz that left him squinting, TJ grumbled and swayed, nearly dropping the bottle. It seemed he had quite a bit of alcohol in his stomach, and his body struggled to process it.

  Once he had it placed on the nightstand, he grabbed the leather pouch again. Looking inward, he saw a slightly larger trickle of essence than he’d expected. Not about to complain, he let the spatial magic begin accessing it. It nearly drained him dry again, but there was a pop of pressure, and like that, the spell was complete.

  Giggling to himself, he corked the bottle and thrust it into the pouch. From the outside, he couldn’t feel the bottle at all. Instead, the pocket folded flat like it was empty.

  “Success!” he yelled triumphantly.

  He then tossed the bag to Kallista. She snatched it out of the air and handled it curiously.

  She said softly, “It doesn’t even feel like it added weight to the bag. Something like this would have saved me being picked up more than once.”

  Task complete, he began healing himself with the remainder of his magic. Near instantly, his inebriation faded, and the world snapped into focus with a disorienting slap to the face, cold shower, and strong stamina draft all wrapped up in a single second glow of his magic. He blinked and rubbed at his forehead. Being able to go from being trashed to stone-cold sober was going to take getting used to.

  Kallista handed the pouch back, and TJ picked at the ownership enchantment. Verifying he could no longer open it, he passed it to her.

  “Then, this one is yours. Use it well. Just don’t put a clock in it. I used the instructions that selected a plane where time moves much slower and is on the cooler side. It’ll help preserve food better. Should help with your meat problem,” he said.

  As her hand brushed the case, she closed her dark eyes for a moment. She then reached in and withdrew the bottle.

  She gave an amused huff. “This bag is worth more money than I’ve seen in a year, and you made it in an afternoon. You could get rich just off selling these. Like, really rich. Well, if you weren’t already.” She flipped it idly in her hand, then shifted topics. “I hate to ask so soon, but can we… fix me? Just a bit? I’d like to prepare for tonight. The food helped, but… well, there’s a reason I took the deal.”

  TJ blew out a long breath. “My pool is shot after that. It’s either tap into someone else, or recharge with love, sex, or booze.”

  Sighing, she turned away to leave.

  TJ reached out a hand, signaling her to wait. “Hold up, that wasn’t a no. You’ve got a pool too now. If you’re ok with me using it, I could fix something. Just let me know what you want. Then I’ll probably need a nap afterward to recharge before the raid anyway.”

  “My tail,” she said quickly. “I miss my tail, and if we have time, I’d like toes. I can run, but what is left of them makes climbing hard. If we’re breaking into somewhere, I might need those.”

  Wiping at his face, he gently tugged on her pool of essence. He couldn’t help but be a little nervous. Her request wasn’t going to be easy—especially not the tail since he didn’t have anything to compare it to.

  He offered, “The slower I go, the more I can do. It’s also easier if I can touch you.”

  She pressed against their bond and picked up on his anxiety.

  “Uhm… are you sure about this? I don’t want to end up with things backward,” she said.

  He shook his head, then patted the bed. “It’ll be fine, just lie still. I’ll do the rest.” He blushed as he realized how that sounded. “Uhhhh, I didn’t mean it that way. You can leave all your clothes on; it just helps if you aren’t moving. Your body is different than what I’ve worked on, so I’ll have to focus.”

  There was a moment of conflict in her inky black eyes, but after tugging on their bond to verify his intent, she nodded slowly. She took several deep breaths then lay next to him on the bed. Gently placing his hand on her waist, he pulled at her bond and wrapped her magic into his.

  Kallista gave a sharp inhale as she felt the warm tingling sensation roam inside her. At first, he could feel her trying to pull away, but her soul timidly stepped out over the bond. It reached out and touched his directly then pulled back again. After a few seconds to make sure she was still safe, she leaned into him, then left it there as she exhaled slowly. It was easy to tell that trust didn’t come to her quickly, but the bond’s reassurance helped.

  Gently, he reached into her magical pool and began redirecting it. He started by killing off the infection from her collection of spider bites. The inflammation was going to interfere with creating new tissue. Looking deeper into her body than he’d ever done before, he tried to find hints of what should be in that angry void above her hips.

  He had a bit of knowledge about Faith’s tail, but the cat had a very different type of appendage than Kallista’s body suggested. He sensed in her blood something closer to a rat, or perhaps a reptile of some sort. Leaning into that feeling, he began forming bone, then connective tissue, blood vessels, and skin. Listening to her body’s desire to be whole again, he focused hard on his task and entirely lost track of time.

  He pushed with every piece of concentration he had to offer until exhaustion of both her pool and his mind became overwhelming. With little more than a disoriented wobble of his head, his blinking slowed, and he slipped into the ether.

  He woke from his nap, feeling something constrictive wrapped around his thigh. He smacked at dehydrated lips and grimaced at the taste of his own mouth.

  Glancing down, he saw a whip-cord appendage wrapped around his thigh. It had creeped out of Kallista’s cloak and into his robes and seemed content to loop around his leg.

  Seeing it made his heart swell with a craftsman’s pride. He’d done good work, and the black tail looked flawless. At the end was a small, flared spade with a sharp bone point. He knew it had a venom gland inside it, but the barb was retracted, and it felt soft against his skin.

  Shifting his eyes toward his companion, he noticed that Kallista’s hood had slipped back, revealing an ebony horn streaked with gold. Her purple hair spilled out and onto the bed between them. With a flicker of magic, a strand shifted and slowly became blood red. Moving like a slow-burning fire, strands next to that section shimmered and changed as well.

  TJ couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the way her body danced a
nd shifted to an unheard tune. Something within it called to him. Watching it change was like sitting around a crackling fire and watching the flames twist and move.

  As though sensing his attention, she woke with a sharp intake of breath, and he saw the moment she tensed, realizing her hood had fallen.

  She started to cover herself again, but he whispered, “Don’t. Please? Your magic is beautiful. I think I could watch it for hours.”

  “You don’t even know what I am, do you?” she said with a bitter edge behind her words.

  He replied, “Do I need to? I just think your hair and horns are pretty to look at.”

  She gave an annoyed huff and shifted, scooping her hood back into place.

  “You have unbelievably low standards for entertainment.” Her hand reached down to touch her rear end, then followed the base of her tail. “But thank you for returning part of my honor.” As she spoke, her tail uncoiled from around his leg.

  She took a moment as she stared at her boots. She sucked in a sharp breath as she felt her toes wiggle. It had taken nearly everything TJ could access, but he’d put all of them back to rights.

  Her hand then slowly rose to her head as she felt around in her hair. The sharp deposits of jagged bone had been smoothed out where someone had hacked away at her horns. That’d been as far as he’d gotten, but it seemed like he should ask for permission before touching the rest of her damaged flesh. He could already tell that her clothes wouldn’t fit the moment he fixed other things.

  Her mouth moved as she felt the restored areas, but no words came.

  “What did you mean about prophecy earlier?” he asked.

  Her shoulders slumped as she deflated. “TJ, for this, I’ll answer just about anything, but not that. I’m bound to you, and you’ve shared your power, but I’ll die before I betray a grand foretelling before the verse is completed.”

  With that, her form turned hazy as she slipped out of the room.

  Chapter 30

  “I can sneak up behind him, use my venom, and he’ll be out for at least three hours. If I do it right, he won’t know what happened,” Kallista said.

  TJ suggested, “I’ve got a charm spell. I could have him hand over the magical key, maybe even tell us if there are any other protections.”

  “When he came out of it, he’d know he was charmed and call for reinforcements. The same thing applies to venom,” Rachel complained.

  Abby pouted, looking down at her shiny new lute. “But… I wanted to use my sleep spell.”

  “What if someone wakes him up? He’d notice his key was gone, but we’ll probably need to be in there for hours. Probably days. We can’t have anyone calling in reinforcements. So… should I just blow him up?” TJ asked.

  Rachel cringed. “He’s a city guard, betrothed. He’s just doing his job. His replacement would also notice him gone and assume something is amiss.”

  Amateurs.

  Watch.

  Everyone’s eyes fixed on Faith as she leaped off the roof. She glided silently behind the man in armor with a sash that denoted him as working for the castle. As she approached, her wings merged and shifted into a thin tendril of shadow. She carefully lifted what appeared to be a small wooden block the size of a pinky finger from the handrail he was leaning against.

  She eased it into her mouth, then let her shadow collapse, taking on the appearance of a housecat. She moved directly under the soft golden glow of the nearby flickering magical streetlamp and dropped the key. She then let out a very loud meow.

  The guard turned to see the black cat batting at the magical item like it was a toy.

  His hand jerked to his pocket, then to the rail where he’d left it. Seeing that he’d somehow dropped it in the street, he laughed as he approached the playful cat that was pouncing on the little piece of wood, sending it clattering along the cobblestones. Faith let him get incredibly close before she closed her jaws on it and bolted down a dark alley.

  The man cursed at the top of his lungs and sprinted after her.

  Calls of “Cat! Wait! Damn it, get back here!” and “Here, kitty, kitty!” rang out as the man dashed into the darkened alleyways.

  Five minutes later, Faith flapped in from the west after having sent him on a merry chase.

  Dropping the wooden talisman in front of TJ, she butted her head into his leg, demanding scritches.

  Chuckling, TJ patted the little terror’s head and scratched behind her ears. “He’ll probably search for her all night.”

  “That and no one will believe him when he tells them what happened. He might not even fess up since he’ll take the blame for dropping it. I can see him getting teased for months over this otherwise,” Rachel said.

  Seeing their opening, TJ cast concealing shadows on the group in a rapid series of casts. A gloomy haze settled over them. While a far cry from invisibility, it would block anyone from recognizing them. Kallista nodded and grabbed the magical lantern before she dropped off the roof. She caught her hand on the window ledge below, then the next before dropping to the street.

  Knowing Abby and Rachel couldn’t follow her acrobatics, he scooped up Rachel first, then dropped off the ledge. She had newly acquired layers of hybrid armor. It was mostly composite layers of hardened leather with solid plates of enchanted metal in bits and hidden layers of chainmail. The lack of give made her harder to hang onto, and the excess gear she’d strapped all over her body made her quite a bit heavier as well, but he managed. Her armored gloves clawed into his back, but she didn’t scream as they glided down.

  Barely having time for her feet to touch the ground, he pivoted and repeated the trip with Abby, who didn’t even wait until he’d landed before she leaped off the edge and into his arms. Instead of plates of metal, she’d gone with dozens of magical trinkets on bracelets, belts, and pendants all over her clothes. Her only change in attire for practicality was a set of greaves and reinforced leather pants under her skirt. As he held her, her magical items buzzed in his perception, and her vanilla perfume overwhelmed his senses.

  Everyone clustered around him as he held the key out. Brilliant blue sigils flared to life as they eased down the basement stairs. Despite his ability to see in darkness, he was utterly blind when they passed the glamour’s edge.

  Flipping up the lantern’s brass shutter, Kallista held it overhead. Instantly, they could tell this wasn’t the building they saw from the outside. The bricks were jet black, and an iron door with a heavy lock faced them. Passing off the light to TJ, the others prepared.

  Kallista pulled out a set of lockpicks and went to work. Meanwhile, Rachel drew her sword while Abby softly played an encouraging tune on her lute that caused Kallista’s hands to glow with a general-purpose bolstering spell that could aid someone else to do just about anything.

  With a couple clicks, their rogue had the door unlocked. Stowing her tools, she pulled a short sword from the small leather pouch he’d given her.

  Taking advantage of her bottomless bag, he’d loaded her up with an absurd number of cheap, mass-produced throwing knives that he’d either found in the goblin cave or purchased in bulk. She’d also identified the liquid vials he’d been hanging onto as types of poisons, which she hadn’t hesitated in applying to her blades.

  Compared to everyone else who mostly carried weapons and rations, she had many more gadgets at her disposal. She also planned to maximize the pouch’s abilities by swiping goodies that they might encounter on their journey. Given that Timarat’s followers were aligned against him, he’d encouraged Kallista to steal whatever she felt like as long as it wouldn’t get them caught. She had used that approval to bump into several people as she lightened their pockets on the walk over. If he hadn’t known what to watch for, there was no way he’d have caught her, and no one had noticed a thing. He’d started to protest her abusing the citizenry, but then he’d seen the New Order emblems both of her targets wore on their lapels. Perhaps he was petty, but he suddenly didn’t care so much.

  Once he
had time, he’d create magical bags for each of them, but that’d probably take days or even weeks to complete. As tempting as it was to put his divine mission on hold for an orgy to fuel his magic for projects like the bags and putting Kallista to rights, it seemed like fixing Serina’s issues took priority.

  He grumbled to himself. It would probably be a solid week to track down Rachel’s father. From there, they would have to find an inn. He mentally ran the math in his head and penciled in the orgy for ten days out. He could wait ten days. Probably. Maybe. He glanced at the three women around him and chewed on his lip. That might be pushing his willpower.

  He tried to shake away those stray thoughts and refocus. Rachel and Abby were both wearing newly purchased and heavily enchanted armor that was incredibly distracting. While neither were revealing, they were both wearing rather form-fitting outfits that were supposedly stronger than steel. On the other hand, Kallista was wholly obscured under her dark cloak that helped her blend into shadows.

  Without knowing what to expect, TJ and Abby were relegated to the backline as Rachel and Kallista swung the door open. Peering inside, the entryway only opened into a set of stairs leading down. He cursed as soon as he saw the line inscribed just on the inside of the door. With his detect magic spell pulled up, the sigils etched into the stone shimmered and shifted.

  “Grab ahold of each other as we cross. I think we’ll be sent somewhere else the moment we cross the threshold, and we don’t want to get dropped off in different spots,” he whispered.

  Abby replied, “Why do you think zat is a teleport and not something else?”

  He pointed to the glyphs. “It’s got a little stick figure on the left side of a circle, then on the right side of a circle. I failed my art classes, but I know stick people when I see them.”

  TJ eyed Faith with concern. As much as she seemed like a cat, she wasn’t; she had been conjured. His magic twisted with unease. He knew what he should do, but he didn’t like it.