by Erik Reid
She nodded and swallowed. “I just wanted to exist.”
I sat on her bed and held her hand, forcing myself to look her in the eye without letting my attention wander toward her naked chest. “You exist. And you matter.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, falling quickly into a candy-induced slumber.
I stood and cursed my luck. For the second time in one night, my libido got all excited for nothing.
Then I realized, I could have gone for it. Probably both times. A little gentle coaxing with Kaylee, maybe making up a game to get her feeling competitive. And Dani — she would have done anything I wanted tonight. Even filthy, dirty things only girls in pornos do. Or girls on drugs.
As I headed back to my room, my pants tight and my hormones raging, I had one thought and I ‘thunk’ it as loud as I could.
Oscar, what the left hand does, the right hand shall not watch. Or help. Please don’t try to help.
CHAPTER 23
Waking up in an underground bedroom meant not having a clue what time of day it was. My bladder was full, so I figured my sleeping time had run long enough, and I tossed my bedsheets aside to find out what a bunker morning was like.
Turns out, it wasn’t half bad. Benoch’s compound had running water, and it was nice and hot. A long steamy shower helped set my mind right for the day ahead, and a sizeable breakfast of unidentified salted meats and weirdly substantial breads left me feeling energized and strong.
Benoch had woken early that day, not only to cook — something he assured me he would never do again — but also to plan how best to help us all. He meant to live up to his promises, and my waking up first meant I got a preview of what he had planned.
“Run,” he said. “Far and fast and hard.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “I paid for the week.”
“The Oscar suit is biometric,” he said. “You haven’t synced with the fist of Oscar enough to access most of its useful abilities. The faster your biologic process runs, the faster Oscar bonds with your physical body and integrates his skills with your own.
“Unless you plan to have a nonstop orgy with those girls you brought here, I don’t see how else you plan to keep your heart rate up long enough to speed up the bonding process.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go for a jog.”
“A run,” he said. “And when you get tired, run some more. Your life, the lives of these girls, and the spatial-temporal existence of an entire race depends on it.”
“Cool beans. Next?”
“Kaylee is in dire shape,” Benoch said. “Curses like hers are nearly unbreakable, but with enough internal strength, she can ward off the effects by tempering the trigger. I will teach her meditative practices and martial arts.”
“I don’t think she needs help fighting,” I said.
“She needs to train her instincts so that when she fights, she fights well,” he said. “A berserker’s rage cannot win battles alone. The moment she loses control, all she has to protect her are the memories she has taught her muscles.”
“Okay,” I said. “And Clara?”
“She is a very special case,” Benoch said. “Do you recall the wound Kaylee arrived with?”
“Yes,” I said. “Her arm was torn down the side and she was bleeding profusely.”
“I know why she woke up fully healed,” Benoch said. “According to Dani, one of the candies Kaylee ate was glowing. The simki ate noxyweed candies that Clara held tight in her blessed hands. Your kobold girl has the power to imbue her healing magic into the items she touches! I know she thinks her healing is weak, but imbuing is a powerful skill. And exceptionally rare.”
“She pumped healing mojo into Dani’s little candies, and Kaylee ate them,” I said. “That’s it?”
“To heal is one thing,” he said. “To change the structural qualities of a target item so that it retains healing magic, with the potential to activate spontaneously to the correct effect after held close by a person who needs that specific energy to repair themselves? Most magicians take years of training to do poorly what Clara did perfectly without trying. She is a prodigy.”
“I doubt she’ll heal again anytime soon,” I said. “She’s gotten pretty emo lately.”
“Nonetheless,” Benoch said. “I will teach her how to imbue intentionally, so that she may rely on her strongest skill in the future with intentional effect. It involves tapping into the room inside her mind where the Goddess stored her blessing, which should improve the strength of her healing overall.”
“What about Dani?” I asked.
“Dani fancies herself an artisan,” Benoch said. “Her little candy daydreams are a fool’s errand. I’ve met skilled artisans, and they have a creative spark that this poor draykin lacks. She should spend this time learning to carry the sword she took from Gretna’s hip. Any of that confectioner’s nonsense is the stuff of recreation. There’s no future in it.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Dani has worked too hard for too long. Have you tried her candies? They are next level.”
“Swords,” Benoch said. “They matter in battle. Candy? She might as well take up quilting.”
“What’s this about quilting?” Dani asked at the door to the small dining room. Her warm smile faltered when she saw me sitting there.
“It’s Benoch’s forte,” I said. “His take on the Mennonite double wedding ring pattern is inspired.”
“I should go,” she said. “I forgot my—”
“Dignity?” I asked. “No, you didn’t. Benoch was leaving, and I’m staying. So are you. Come here.”
Benoch grumbled, but walked away. Dani’s head hung low as she walked toward the dining table and sat across from me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you not smiling,” I said.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I had no idea Benoch’s supply of cupid’s tooth would be so strong when his basil was so old and weak. And what the emberstick did to my breath — actual fire! — it’s not safe. I just—”
“Do you remember everything you said last night?” I asked.
Dani brought her hands up to cover her face. “Yes. Every last word. Oh, Goddess, I’m such a fool.”
“Did you mean those things?”
“I… did. I still do. Please don’t make me repeat them.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I just want to know if it was the drugs talking.”
“It wasn’t. Now I’m going to eat some breakfast, put last night behind me, and find out what Benoch wants me to get started on.”
“About that,” I said. “He wants you to learn sword fighting. But I want you to perfect your candy making. Don’t let him push you around. He has ingredients and a fully functional kitchen. This is your chance to build new recipes and polish up the ones you have.”
I leaned forward and took her hands in mine, even though she glanced away uncomfortably. “I believe in you, Dani. Not just that you’ll make a living selling sweets. Your craft is important. You’re working with ingredients that pack a stronger punch than pop rocks.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I think. I don’t know what pop rocks are.”
“One day,” I said, “when the veil between realms comes down and the pathway to Earth opens up, it’s the first thing I’ll show you.”
She laughed. “You make pop rocks sound so momentous.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I fucking do.”
And somehow, that was it. Benoch wandered around the compound with his leather-bound books and his judgy scowl instructing each of us on what we were doing wrong and how we could, gradually, become less wrong if we listened very closely to his sage advice.
The first day was pretty easy. I ran as hard as I could, took long breaks to recover my stamina and replenish calories, then went running again. My heart pumped, my legs burned, and Oscar’s sync progress went up a full percentage point. I was treated to this curious update and kept on running:
Sync Progress: 8%
Remote Access: Enabled
On one of my return runs to Chateau Benoch, I found Kaylee sitting cross-legged under the noontime sun, her eyes closed, her hands resting on her knees, and her chest rising high with deep, intentional breaths. Dani and Benoch sparred with wooden swords inside, while Clara sat alone in her room, pushing a few candies around the surface of a desk.
I wasn’t sure she actively tried imbuing them with anything, but her private lessons with Benoch would at least teach her the concepts. Her mother never arranged a magic tutor in her youth, and it would be ages before Dani could have afforded that for her kobold given, but Benoch seemed to know something about everything. I gave Clara what encouragement I could between runs, and kept pushing myself to level Oscar up.
We also settled into a nice evening routine of tying Kaylee to the bedposts, checking on Clara as she slept soundly without pharmacological help, and sampling Dani’s candies in the kitchen after Benoch went to bed and couldn’t tell us how fruitless her experimentation would be.
The second day was harder. The novelty of physical exertion evaporated the second I woke up with stiff, sore legs. Oscar’s next update message was welcome, but underwhelming:
Sync Progress: 9%
New Magnification Strength: 2,000%
Kaylee started practicing a few precise moves Benoch taught her, repeating the same martial arts punches and kicks under the rising sun and keeping at it until late evening. Every high kick threw her off-balance and skidding down the slope of Benoch’s hill.
Dani was running out of sugar to melt down, and had bruises down one leg from sparring too hard with Benoch and his wooden swords. Twice I caught Clara crushing Dani’s candies in the palm of her hand the way Oscar pulverized bloodhound hearts.
The third day, however, was the most interesting. Kaylee practiced her movements with a blindfold across her eyes while Benoch scrutinized her every move. He gave me a half-hearted wave as I set out on my daily regimen.
My morning run was a slow affair, with muscles laden down by exhaustion. As slow as my body felt, my mind was hyperactive. Running was terribly boring, and my eyes darted in every direction, hoping to find some new aspect to this flat, familiar terrain that would give me something interesting to ponder as I plopped one foot in front of the other repeatedly.
My restless gaze found exactly that.
A flash of sunlight caught my eye, reflected off the tilted shard of rock that rose at a diagonal from the mountains’ highest peak. Its ice-covered veneer was like a mirror beneath the rising sun, a flat sheet of brilliant white light.
I jogged to a stop and raised a hand to shield my eyes from the light. That’s when I noticed a pair of small shapes in the distance. They were moving.
“Okay, Oscar. Magnify that with your bad self.”
The outer edge of my vision blurred and receded as my eyes zoomed in on that fast-moving pair of gray dots amidst the grasses between here and the mountain range. At twenty times magnification, it was clear now what they were. Bloodhounds.
“Switch to infrared.”
My vision pulled out again, canceling the magnifying effect while also shifting the color scheme of the world around me. Those fiends were distant specks at this range, but they were dark blue — cold — surrounded by the brighter green of the ground, warmed by the late morning sun.
Scanning around me, I saw other dark blue dots, some closer than others. They came from every direction now, a horde of blood-sucking monsters scattered all around us, and all charging toward Benoch’s hill in unison.
“Off,” I said.
I sprinted the half-mile back toward Benoch and Kaylee, adrenaline washing away the burn of sore muscles working overtime. Up the hill, without pausing to rest, I came to a stop inches from Benoch’s side.
“You’re alarmed,” he said.
“Bloodhounds,” I said, struggling for breath as I hunched over, hands on my knees for support. “They’re… everywhere. Coming fast.”
“It’s too soon,” he said.
“How?” I asked. “We killed the… only bloodhound that… came here.”
“Yes,” Benoch said, “but it saw with A’zarkin’s eyes. They’re linked somehow, cleaved from his flesh and connected to his senses. That demon has known where we were since the night you captured one of his spawn. It was only a matter of time before he sent a death squad after us.”
He turned toward Kaylee, who had just taken off her blindfold. “Go under. Get the other girls.”
She nodded and ran for the open hatch door, quickly climbing down the ladder to the subterranean complex below.
“I thought we’d be safe here,” I said.
“Why in all hell would you think that?” he asked. “There’s not a safe place on Silura’s green surface anymore. Not until we’re rid of A’zarkin.”
As the old man and I watched those little dots in the distance close in around us, Dani, Clara, and Kaylee climbed up from the underground.
“Kaylee said bloodhounds are coming,” Clara said. “Leave them to me. My touch is their destruction.”
“I’m sure they’d like nothing more than to end your life so they have one less Goddess-touched enemy to worry about,” I said. “We fight together. All four of us.”
Kaylee clutched her blindfold in her hand with a worried look on her face.
“Remember what we talked about,” Benoch said. “Deep breaths, find your center, calm your nerves. You are stronger than the curse is.”
She nodded quickly and swallowed hard.
“Dani, you have your sword?” Benoch asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“And Clara, you hang back,” he said. “You’re the healer. Everyone will make sure you’re safe.”
“No,” she said. “I am the Goddess’s death-bringer. I will fight.”
“Fighting or not,” Dani said, “everyone should take these.”
She tossed us each a few small candies wrapped in paper.
“Synappers?” I asked.
“You know it,” she replied.
I twisted the paper and removed a small oval candy, tucking the other few into my pocket for another time.
Dani’s creation was as sweet and rich as brown sugar melted in warm honey, with a hint of butterscotch and a crisp, bright aftertaste like the lingering oaky bite of a fine whiskey. It had none of the dry, sand-grain texture of the synapper seedpods themselves.
“You beautiful candy siren,” I said. “This is delightful. And as a man, I don’t use that word lightly.”
I breathed in the morning air and waited for my senses to come alive with the reflex-enhancing power of synapper-infused sweets.
“Some bloodhounds are closer than others,” I said. “Our best bet is to pool our efforts and take out each small wave of attackers so they don’t pile up on us. Benoch, what’s your strong suit in a battle like this?”
“Observation and advice,” he said.
“Can you advise the bloodhounds to leave?” I asked. “Because if not, you should go back down. No sense in you getting hurt out here.”
“I give advice, I don’t take it,” he replied. “I’ll stay until I choose not to.”
“Suit yourself, old man,” I said. “Everyone, check the bloodhounds incoming at eleven o’clock. They’re the closest to our little hill, and the first ones we’ll face off with. I want their hearts intact though. That’s how we power up Oscar to keep him fighting fit.”
“No,” Benoch said.
I glared at him. He said nothing else. “Well?” I asked. “You clearly have something to say.”
“Now you want my advice?” he asked. “A second ago you dismissed me as some useless old coot.”
“Your words,” I said. “Accurate though. If you have a useful observation, I want to hear it.”
“The bloodhounds at three o’clock are running much faster. Though further now, they will soon overtake the others and
become the first to arrive. Don’t turn your back on them.”
Somewhere to the east, two tiny specks grew larger faster than the other attackers charging toward us. He was right.
“Fine,” I said. “Everyone pivot. But don’t keep your back to any one direction for too long. If you see something, say something. In the meantime, Oscar, if you’re hiding a mega blaster in there, now’s the time to charge it up.”
Oscar kept quiet, as he liked to do when I asked him to do cool shit. The rest of us kept silent too, watching with nervous apprehension as our attackers closed in on us.
It took them ten minutes to reach the base of our hill, and we stayed at its peak, using the slope to our advantage. The first bloodhound raced uphill on all fours, its spiraled teeth bared. I kicked it in the face and sent it tumbling backward.
“Do not delay direct combat,” Benoch said. “You need to dispatch them quickly before they swarm.”
“Roger that,” I said.
“Who the hell is Roger That?”
“When he says something odd,” Dani said, “just smile and go with it. Those moments pass pretty quickly.”
The next bloodhound jumped over its tumbling comrade and landed in front of me. Oscar and I punched the creature in the face, but then my other hand reached out to grab the monster by its torn gray shirt before it could slip down the hill’s grassy slope. I pulled the monster closer and then threw it onto the ground at Dani’s feet.
She stabbed her sword straight through its torso, forcing a high-pitched squeal to erupt from its throat. I reached down a moment later, plunging my fist into its chest. Oscar curled around the heart and yanked it loose, leaving a trail of oozing black blood behind.
I clenched my fingers tight and cracked the heart down its center, tensing my grip harder until those halves broke apart, then the smaller pieces burst into a cloud of onicite dust. A bright blue light flashed for a moment, then it was gone.
Energy Reserves Up: 1.7%