Heretic Spellblade

by K D Robertson

There were a few possible causes that came to mind in Nathan’s head, none of them pleasant. Most of them made little sense given the time period. He had yet to confirm the precise date that he had been transported to, but the fact that this was Jafeila’s first assignment as Champion told him that the invasion of Gharrick Pass was imminent. So that meant many of his theories were out by default.

  He resorted to voicing his thoughts aloud to Jafeila. “Demonic energy builds up in portals the same way that magical energy builds up in the binding stones. Demons then use it to expand the portal or invade. They clearly haven’t done either, as this portal is one of the smallest I’ve seen, and they haven’t invaded, because the seal was intact.”

  “That means…”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. I thought you knew everything.” Jafeila bit her lip. She didn’t mean it as a jab, but it sounded like one anyway.

  He sighed. “I can speculate, but knowing something is different to guessing. Something or someone has likely bled the demonic energy off. Maybe a major invasion took place nearby and used this portal’s energy.” He shrugged. Too many possibilities. Too little evidence.

  The portal was inactive and tiny. Nathan turned and made to re-enter the fortress. A squeak of surprise caused him to stop.

  Jafeila blushed as he looked at her.

  “Um, shouldn’t we get rid of these demons?” she asked, fiddling with her sword hilt.

  “A few demons won’t cause any problems.”

  “But… but…” she mumbled. Her ears flattened against her head, and her tail ran against the ground, picking up dust.

  Somebody was going to need to give her tail a proper clean after today. It was filthy, and her black fur had lost its sheen.

  “Fine. You can have your fun,” he said. She perked up and spun around. Before she leaped away, he grabbed her by the shoulder. “But we have something important to do first, Champion.”

  “Eh?”

  “Did you forget the most important part of being a Champion?” Nathan pointed at himself, then at her. “There’s one last step, then you’ll be a true Champion.”

  A moment passed. Then two. Jafeila stared at Nathan in visible confusion. Then her eyes widened.

  “Wait, you mean—” she cut herself off and gulped. “You’re going to grant me a gem?”

  Nathan blinked. “No. Not yet.”

  “Aww.”

  “In time,” he said. Her tail perked back up. “There are four stages to being a Champion. You should remember this.”

  “Enhancement, monogem, duogem, trigem. I know. But I hoped you would skip straight to monogem,” she muttered.

  “Impossible. A gem won’t take unless a Champion has enough experience with the power of a binding stone. To get that experience, I must enhance you first. Trust me, this is a significant step.” He smiled at her.

  “I know, I know. We get enhanced during training.” She scowled at him.

  Nathan’s eyes gleamed. Jafeila had gone from nervous and adorable to pouty and adorable, all because he had disappointed her. She was so openly emotional now, compared to the Jafeila he knew. Maybe he enjoyed this too much, but this felt like being able to pig out on a buffet after a lifetime of only ever eating food a single plate at a time.

  “Like I said, trust me. Now, what type of enhancement do you prefer?”

  “Type?”

  “The typical ones are strength, speed, or endurance. They’re self-explanatory. Or you can mix and match. More advanced stuff includes focusing enhancements on particular facets of your body, like your legs, or enhanced senses.” Nathan paused, noticing that Jafeila was staring at him with very wide eyes. “You can also increase the magical side of things, but I don’t think you know any sorcery, so best to stick to physically enhancing your body with the binding stone.”

  “This is permanent?” she asked.

  “More or less. Your training enhancements are to prevent you from dying when you fight demons, not to help you slay them. If they gave you a full enhancement straight away, you’d probably get a little overconfident and not train properly. But you’re a full-fledged Champion now. I need you to be a one-woman army, Jafeila.”

  She mouthed her name after he said it. He realized that was the first time he had spoken her name aloud after the initial greetings.

  “So? Strength, speed, or endurance?” he asked.

  “Wait, now I can only pick those three?” she squeaked. Her ears flattened. “I was thinking about what I’d mix and match, too.”

  “You can change your enhancement at any time until you get your first gem. I recommend you change it up regularly until you know what suits you best,” Nathan explained. “So stick with the basics at first.”

  “Oh. Then speed. I wanna chop up those demons into ten pieces before they can even blink. Like in the stories of the trigem Champion Tarako, and her Nine-Tail Slash.” Jafeila grinned at Nathan and bounced up and down on the spot.

  He grimaced at the mention of the fictional trigem Champion. Or at least, every mystic fox he had ever met insisted that she was fictional, despite the statues and countless stories talking about the nine-tailed fox Tarako and her centuries of exploits.

  Speed was a predictable choice by Jafeila. It had been her enhancement in his timeline. He was hardly surprised that she chose it this time. Somehow, her predictability comforted him.

  “Stand still and don’t move. This will only take a moment,” he said. “It might feel a little funny, but you can’t move from that spot. Also, don’t try to resist in any way.”

  “I trained for this. I’m ready, Nathan,” Jafeila breathed out, her voice husky.

  The pair fell silent. Not even a wind blew past them, as there was no wind in this world. The faint sound of the keep rebuilding itself could be heard from the other side of the gate. As could the distant grunting of the demons farther down the valley.

  Nathan gave Jafeila one last look. She stood still, her muscles tensed and eyes closed. Both her ears and tail stood bolt upright. Her fingers tapped against her leggings.

  She seemed ready, so Nathan decided to proceed. He dove into his newly activated binding stone, exploring his mental world. There wasn’t much to see. In his old timeline, he had connected himself to countless binding stones over his life. Here, he only had the one.

  His mental world only contained the one binding stone, the tether to his own mind, and the leylines directly connected to that stone.

  Plus that strange tether that Nathan still couldn’t detect, but that he knew was there.

  Shrugging off that odd feeling, he concentrated on his existing binding stone. He plucked a spare bit of magic from it and left his mental world. Time resumed. Jafeila continued to tap her leg.

  Her magical presence hovered in front of him, faint but still there. Ordinary people barely existed with regard to magical detection. Nathan suspected the only reason he could detect Jafeila so quickly was because she had trained as a Champion. That process had increased the magic within her body.

  Most ordinary humans and beastkin were practically invisible to Nathan when it came to magical detection, unless he cast a dedicated ritual to detect them with his magic or used the binding stone to detect them.

  Now that he had found her magical presence, Nathan connected his own essence to hers. The moment he made the connection, he felt her mind push back against him. He mentally grasped the magic of binding stone, just in case he needed it to force the connection.

  Then she stopped resisting him. Her body relaxed, and a sigh escaped her lips. Over the next few seconds, a sweet scent drifted through Nathan’s nose. Jafeila hummed lightly.

  He pushed onward into her essence. Her power surrounded him. It seemed to caress him, welcome him in.

  In reality, it was a threat. If he misstepped, her power would try to crush him in defense. The binding stone could protect him, but he was still in danger.

  Eventually, he reached her core. Slowly, he drew on the piece of magic tha
t he had brought with him from the binding stone. Then he cast the enhancement ritual on Jafeila.

  How many times had he done this? Never to Jafeila. But dozens to other Champions.

  But in this timeline, this enhancement ritual was his first. That made it special.

  After a minute, the ritual was done, and Nathan withdrew from Jafeila’s essence.

  She stood in the same place as before, but her body was noticeably looser. A cheerful grin spread across her face, her palms were open, and she swayed from side to side. A light moan leaked from her lips.

  “How are you doing, Jafeila?” Nathan asked, trying to bring her back to reality.

  “Fei,” she mumbled, staring at him with glazed eyes. “Call me Fei. I don’t like being called Jafeila.”

  She didn’t? That was news to him. In his timeline, it had been the opposite. Everybody else called her Fei, and he called her Jafeila at her request.

  He hid a frown at the deviation from his memories and nodded. That sweet scent lingered in his mind, slowly fading away.

  “So, how are you doing, Fei?” he repeated.

  “Umm, getting there?” Fei said. She shook herself out, her tail waving back and forth out of sync from the rest of her body. “Wow. I can’t imagine what that must be like if you enhanced a guy. I thought my books exaggerated things.” A blush crossed her face, but she grinned at him regardless.

  “There’s a reason Champions are almost always the opposite gender to the Bastion, or at least a matching gender preference,” Nathan said drily.

  “Gender preference?”

  “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  She scowled at him. “I’m an adult.”

  That he knew, in more ways than one. And he was very thankful for it, given the way his body was reacting to the sweet scent she had let off during the ritual.

  “Of course you are,” he said with a grin. He reached out to ruffle her hair.

  She darted back in a blur, taking several steps faster than he could blink. Then she froze and looked down at the ground.

  “Oh. Oh my goddess,” she said. She ran forward and nearly bowled Nathan over with her speed. “I’m so faaaaaaaast!” With those last words, Fei became a black blur charging across the valley toward the demons.

  Nathan pumped some magic into his eyes so he could keep up with her movements.

  The demons looked up, their massive eyes narrowing and focusing in on the strange blur charging right at them. One of them bellowed, leaping up and hefting an axe the size of a man.

  Too late. Fei whirled behind him. The hand gripping the axe began to fall, almost in slow motion. The demon’s eyes widened. He shouted.

  Fei’s scimitar ripped right into his groin, then tore upward. The demon screeched. Nathan looked away for a second, not wanting to watch what came next.

  Except the demons kept bellowing, and Fei let out a shriek. Looking back, Nathan saw that Fei’s sword was stuck. She rolled back, leaving her scimitar buried halfway up the torso of one demon, who had keeled over in the dirt.

  The other demon slammed a two-handed hammer into the ground. Each strike left small craters in the rock. A single hit from that would cave open Fei’s skull. As a Champion, she would survive it, and Nathan had access to basic healing from the binding stone, but he didn’t want her to take that much damage in her first fight.

  He reached for the longsword at his hip. Before he could draw it, Fei pulled a dagger from her belt. She darted in, dodged the demon’s blow, and slashed open its neck twice. Blood fountained out, but the demon only staggered.

  Too shallow.

  Fei noticed. She spun around. The demon turned, hefting its hammer into the air.

  A human warrior, and even a Champion, would have been slowed by a major wound like that. Not a demon. They felt pain, but wounds didn’t slow them. Nobody understood why they even had internal organs, given they didn’t use them. Puncture a demon’s heart and it fought on, as if it had been tickled.

  The only way to kill a demon was through sheer bodily damage. Cut them open, slash off their limbs, smash them, blow them up, pelt them with magic. Anything worked, so long as she physically damaged their body enough that they eventually died.

  Fei hurled her dagger at the demon. It slammed right into its eye and the demon froze. Then it shouted and charged forward. She scowled, grabbed another dagger, and met its charge.

  Three charges. That’s what it took. Each time, she slashed its chest open and darted aside before it crushed her with its hammer. Eventually, the demon collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

  After retrieving her scimitar from the gory mess she had made of the first demon, Fei waited for Nathan to walk up to her.

  “I know. I messed up,” she mumbled.

  Nathan ruffled her hair. She let out a squeak, her ears pricking up around his hand, before flattening under his attention.

  “This is normal for your first battle. Demons are the primary threat to the world for a reason. If they were easy to defeat, we wouldn’t need so many Bastions and Champions, would we?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Take out the three in the clearing, and you’ll feel better,” he suggested.

  This fight went more smoothly. Fei didn’t lose her scimitar and kept her attacks more reserved. She struck at their limbs, slipping in and out of the demons’ reach with her superior speed before they could react. By the end of the fight, she had collected a hand from each one, and was sawing off the head of another.

  “Do you need the head?” Nathan asked as he approached.

  “I figure a huge demonic goat head makes for a better trophy than some hands. And this guy is the biggest of the lot.” Fei grinned up at Nathan. Her face, fur, and hair were liberally covered in blood from the battle.

  Not that it bothered him. Blood-covered Champions were a common sight. If anything, this was a nostalgic sight. He had first met Fei in the aftermath of her slaughtering countless demons.

  She hadn’t been so cheerful about killing demons back then, however.

  “We’ll find somewhere for you to put it. For now, let’s head back and clean up,” he said.

  Fei looked at him in confusion. Then at herself. “Oh. Right. Clean would be good.”

  Then she followed his gaze and her eyes landed on her tail.

  Her scream echoed throughout the empty valley.

  Chapter 5

  “Ah, right there! Mmm! I want to feel your hands,” Fei moaned. Her voice was sweet and breathy. She let out a low moan during the next stroke from Nathan. “Where did you learn to brush tails like this?”

  “I’ve had some practice,” Nathan muttered.

  Years on this tail in particular, in fact. Fei might be over a decade younger, but her tail was unchanged.

  Fei arched her back and let out another moan as he moved his hands down her tail to the next segment he needed to brush. Her eyes glistened as she stared back at him, her tongue sticking out, and strings of saliva still connecting her lips.

  Her reactions were far more exaggerated now, however. Nathan swallowed and looked away from her in a vain attempt to quell his hardening erection. How many times had he seen her like this when she was older, back in his old fortress? How many times had he lain with her, then enjoyed her playfulness afterward?

  Never again, an icy voice in the back of his head said. He remembered that night. The feeling of reaching out for Jafeila and the rest of his Champions and finding nothing but emptiness.

  “Nathan, are you alright?” Fei asked.

  Snapping out of his thoughts, Nathan gave her a soft smile. “It’s fine. Just lost in thought.”

  “They didn’t seem to be nice thoughts,” she said. Her hand drifted over his, but didn’t touch it.

  True enough. He didn’t have to worry about his erection anymore. At least for the next five seconds, before Fei let out another sweet moan.

  “Just relax, Fei. This will be over soon,” he said, changing the subject.

&nb
sp; She pouted. “I don’t want it to be over soon.”

  The plan had never been to brush her tail, but she had been so pathetic that he had foolishly offered to help. She likely thought he would simply help her comb out the worst knots, or maybe she wanted some companionship.

  Instead, she got the treatment of a tail-grooming master, if Nathan didn’t say so himself. He pushed her into the shower, given she wouldn’t stop marveling at the sight of her newly constructed and furnished bedroom suite.

  Now she was sitting on a thick velvet cushion in her underwear while he brushed out her hair and tail. He had never expected to get so close to her so quickly, let alone like this, but beastkin desired physical intimacy more than other races.

  Once he finished, Fei threw herself on her bed. She sank into the soft mattress with a groan of pleasure.

  “I’ve never had a bed this soft,” she said, eyes closed. “Nobody said Bastions could create such amazing furnishings. Everywhere else I go is so plain by comparison.”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow. This was one of the few things his master had taught him in Falmir. He had little positive to say about his training as an apprentice Bastion, but he had learned to craft some very impressive furniture. Being able to conjure up whatever expensive materials and objects he wanted was freeing for Nathan.

  Perhaps that meant he had wasted a little bit—or perhaps a lot—of energy from the binding stone on luxuries and aesthetics in the keep. But he planned to live here and use Gharrick Pass as a base of operations for some time. Why not make it a pleasurable experience?

  Therefore, he filled the hallways and open spaces with ostentatious statues, gilded decorations, and decorative suits of armor. Nathan had set aside a small chapel for the Watcher Omria, even if he couldn’t bring himself to enter it. He’d even used his power to help Fei mount her demon’s head on the wall. The bedroom suites contained massive beds, bathrooms using plumbing technology that Nathan wasn’t certain had been invented yet, and ornate rosewood furniture.

  “Enjoy it as much as you like,” he said. “Use today to explore or settle in. I need to spend some time with the binding stone.”