Chapter 16: Chapter 16 – Victory

Zidanya screams.

I honestly don’t know if it’s the volume of mana, if it’s tainted in some way, or if it’s something else entirely. I’ve eaten backlash before and it was definitely painful enough that I don’t intend to again, but this… this seems different.

The realm decoheres around us. I’ve seen this twice before, but it’s not any less disturbing seeing it a third time. It’s surreal, and Amber seems to be fascinated by it, but I mostly find it too close to unravelling, to unmaking, for it to be entirely comfortable. The people, the pillars, the grass, the sun; all of it fades, asymmetrically but probably according to some pattern I can’t divine, as the mana that fueled it all funnels into the jump-glyph and past it into the near-bottomless pit of Zidanya’s starved soul.

She’s integrating it. I’m a little worried, was more than a little worried until I saw that she was, but even so I’m a little worried. It’s not just that it’s a huge amount of mana; I’m fairly confident that most of the mana, maybe all of the mana came from her in the first place. It’s more that I took a guess, an educated guess but still just a guess, that the oath goes both ways, among other things.

See, my giving the oath is part of how she was able to start pulling the mana out of me and into her, feeding off of me like some kind of mana-vampire. The analogy doesn’t break down as soon as you look at it, either, if you consider the glyphwork to be like the tap cables, but the point is this: if I’ll bind you and take you out of the Temple triggers the mana flow, then completing the mana flow ought to make binding her possible.

It’s not fast, but it’s logarithmic, at least. Not long before she’s whimpering instead of screaming, which is in its way even more disturbing because of how much more fragile it makes her seem.

“I think we won that one.”

Amber looks at me like I’m crazy. Now, I want to be absolutely clear, I’m not much for reading peoples’ social implications, and I have a Trait, whatever that means, to show it. But I’ve had a lifetime of people looking at me like I’m crazy, like when I’m talking about the patterns of what we colloquially call hyperspace or wormspace depending on who you want to make twitch.

Amber looks at me like I’m crazy, and I’m no longer stuck to a pillar, so I kiss her, and she kisses me back. “Yes, my lord.” Amber’s voice is dry. It’s been less than an hour since I last heard her do the dry-voice-honorific thing and I had already missed it, somehow. “We won that one.”

“Are you okay? I know I didn’t get to clear the strategy with you or anything, and I didn’t check in once you found us the marks.”

Amber has a weird look on her face, but she’s also hugging me hard enough that the links of her chainmail are digging into me through my shirt. “Yes, Adam.” She’s smiling faintly at me. “You might ask, next time, before you take your first dance at a party with another woman, or the last one. There are social implications.”

I blink at her. “Really?”

She’s laughing, which probably means there’s something I missed. Usually in this kind of situation it’s time for me to extricate myself, but it’s Amber, so I just relax and enjoy it. “I’m fine,” she eventually says. “I’m glad you’re well, that it turned out well.”

“Eh.” I shrug uncomfortably, or try to, but I’ve still got an arm around her, and it’s trapped under her arm, so it’s an uncomfortable one-shoulder shrug that she probably can’t even see. “I wasn’t in any danger. Always had a couple aces I could have pulled.”

“And yet, my lord.” Her voice is quiet and serious. “You will have to accept that when you act, when you move in the line of fire, even if we have faith in you, we will still worry.”

“We?” I know the surprise shows in my voice. “Where’s this ‘we’ coming from?”

“Traditionally, a Temple- or dungeon-clearing party is at least four people for a reason.”

My eyes close briefly. “That might have to wait until we get out of here.”

“Adam.” She turns me to face her, pushing me back with her hands on my shoulders until I’m at arms reach. My hands come up to grip her arms; something in me can’t bear not to be touching her right now, and that’s all I can reach. “You have a curse that entirely prevents your growth, or even to properly know what ailments you bear. You lack the ability to see your Status that a child has!”

“It’s not that bad! I still get the icons!”

“Icons that you know not the meaning of, and which look nothing like anything I know! It is unconscionable that you would even consider passing the rest of your time within this Temple so locked, that you would put yourself… put yourself at such unnecessary risk as to take the Temple floor that remains with only the two of us!”

“Just because I’m glad you exist doesn’t mean I’m willing to condone making a person just so that I can be cured of a curse!”

“She would find it mete and proper, and be joyous, as I do and am!”

There are tears in her eyes, there are tears blurring my vision, and we’re yelling at each other suddenly, and something sort of stops inside me, breaks a little. “I’m sorry.” I whisper it from the ground-gone-notional, where there was once grass and now is a featureless plane, black and purple and dark greens spreading out into infinity with no horizon.

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Amber sits next to me, and I look over to see her head in her hands, elbows on her legs as she doubles over with her fingers gripping her hair. “I am… not okay,” she says softly, not a whisper but quiet and carrying.

“Talk to me?”

“I don’t think I -” She hiccups. “I don’t think I should. My lord. I am your sword and shield, to be drawn or sheathed as… as you wish, not as makes me comfortable.”

I’m confused. I’m blinking at her in confusion, and I think she can tell. “Let’s try this,” I say slowly. “If I’m your lord, and I want you to tell me, where does that put us?”

“Mercy, lord, mercy.” She’s crying, and I give her space and time. I’m not about to make another suggestion, like how about I walk behind you and you say it to the infinite expanse, not without giving her space and time. She’s not a child, even if - no, I tell myself, not a productive hypothetical, thread terminated.

I wait. Eventually, she talks.

When she does, it doesn’t particularly help, not initially. It takes her a while to find the right words, the right descriptions. I take her hand while she struggles and searches for what to say, marveling at her strength and kindness, her beauty and grace.

Once she starts talking, once she starts opening up, it’s like a capacitor discharging, all of the emotion pouring out all at the same time. I listen; I’ve always been good at listening, I think, at least when the person talking to me wants to be understood and heard, not just attended to.

Amber stops herself suddenly after a bit. She’s probably noticing that she’s already said what she’s saying twice before, and she almost physically hauls herself back upright and looks at me, trying for a look of serenity.

She’s about to say something, but I beat her to the punch. “Stop me if I’m wrong, okay?” I start counting off with my fingers. “There’s four main things that are bothering you.

“One, there’s a social expectation, you dance with the woman you brought, first dance and last dance, and you wanted to dance with me.” I’m blushing when I say it, because the sheer emotion she’d been displaying, the hurt and desire and jealousy, that isn’t something I’m used to. “Two, you know I treat you like a person, probably because you are a person, but it still hurts when other people don’t, and the Ranger guy wasn’t… wasn’t behaving even remotely properly, because he didn’t see you as a person.” I have to stop after saying that because of the anger welling up inside me. I don’t want to make the moment about me, about my anger, so I try to just let it flow out, and Amber’s hand is on my knee, which helps. “Where was I? Right, three.

“Three, you’re, um. Worried I’ll find someone I see more as a person than you, and you’ve already seen that I’m, um.” I flush. “Easy to get the attention of, and this is sort of related to number two.” I can’t meet her eyes, except I can, it just makes me blush harder. “Those are all, um. Personal, not that they’re not real problems, but they’re personal, they’re about me and you on a level of two people who are in…” My face is flaming red. “In a relationship.”

“In a relationship,” she repeats after me, slowly.

“A romantic one. Probably? Definitely a sexual one. Also, I would like to be friends, and I am almost definitely going to fall very much in love with you, which is supremely awkward given my reservations that you can’t talk me out of about how you were created.”

“In a relationship,” she says again, less tentatively.

She’s smiling, which I take as a good sign. “I know I’ve only known you for, well, a day and a bit, but.” I shrug uncomfortably, and can’t help but smile a little. “I mean, you’re…”

She’s smiling wider, quirking an eyebrow. There’s still a bit of unsteadiness in her voice, but it’s more like how it should be. “Yes, my lord?”

“You’re not going to leave me.” It slips out of me, honesty unprompted, unlooked for, and almost immediately regretted. It leaves a silence in its wake, and in the silence I scrabble for emotional ground and slide, and I keep talking because that’s what I do when there’s an expectant silence and I’m sliding. “They always left me, and I never understood why, and now that I understand I wish I didn’t. But you won’t; not through death, because I won’t survive anything that kills you, not through…” I take a deep breath. She’s being quiet, back straight, eyes on me, like her body language is yelling you have my full attention. “You’ll stay.”

“A Magelord,” Amber says slowly, like she’s working her way through a thorny optimization problem, “does not generally engage in a relationship with anyone, much less a Reca.”

“Is that a problem for you, Paladin Amber Ashborn, specifically?”

She looks at me, shaking her head and sighing. I don’t take it too seriously, since there’s a smile on her lips, and I’m ready when she bends over to kiss me, and not particularly ready for it to end when she breaks off. “And the fourth?”

“Oh, the fourth.” I turn around and rest my head against her leg, looking up into the absent sky. There should be stars there, but instead it’s the void of broken sensors, and I distract myself with that. “The fourth is that you have trouble dealing with me being in danger, but, you know… I somehow think you know me better than to think it’ll ever change.”

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