Chapter 27: Chapter Twenty-Six – Spoils for the Winner

It quickly became routine to spend my mornings with Eurycelia in the library, and my afternoons with Kyra playing games in her bedroom. At night both girls would share my bed for a moment, though Kyra would wander off after I’d fallen to sleep. She had no need for rest after all.

Plus if Kyra remained too long, she’d leave Adelita in an awkward position. Which I was certain she didn’t want to do, though the longer this ritual stretched on the more I realized I had a problem on my hands. I didn’t want Adelita to be the only girl I wasn’t spending time with, so I began to formulate a plan to pull her out of her shell.

Or baring that, to climb into her shell with her.

“Hey Kyra,” I gazed up at the undead girl. Placing a wood-carving of a knight onto a homemade gameboard. “I’d like to spend time with Adelita tomorrow. Do you mind?”

“Are you trying to ask her if she’d like to spend time with you through me? Or are you trying to ask me to stay out of the way?” Kyra replied lifted a mage piece, placing it three-squares in front of the knight. “I’m going to burn a magic token to increase my mage’s range. Your knight is defeated.”

“I’ll discard my magic shield to negate the damage,” I smiled showing off a little shield token I’d been saving. “So your attack is nullified. As for Adelita, yeah I’m just asking you to let me spend time with her. I’ll ask her out myself.”

Kyra frowned as she gazed about the board. “That’s fine, I’ll take a day off tomorrow. I can always take over when you want me, so just call my name and I’ll appear.” With a sigh, Kyra gently knocked over the flag on her side of the board. “I’m out of defenders, and out of magic. You win Master Bernice.”

“Huzzah!” I shouted lifting both hands above my head. “If I hadn’t rolled that shield for treasure I’d have been toast. You’re too good Kyra.”

“I did make the game myself,” Kyra blushed rubbing at her cheek.

“Yeah, it is really something else to do battle with a game’s creator. Though I like how you integrated random chance into this one. Rolling a percentage dice for treasure really gives weaker players a bit of luck. Plus I like how you have some chests in the middle of the board to encourage aggressive play. Games like this aren’t very fun if both players start to pillowfort.”

“Pillowfort?”

“Ah… well I guess, you didn’t really have a childhood huh?”

“I had a period of time when I was extremely uninformed of the world. Master Otrea spent years teaching me what I needed to know to survive, with frequent input from Adelita as well.”

“Well children tend to make forts out of pillows, or at least they did in my world. It’s probably something more common amongst boys but I remember doing it too. Collecting all the pillows in the house to…”

Was I really about to admit to crafting a castle out of pillows so I could pretend to be a princess for the masses of teddy bears?

“Nevermind,” I continued. “Anyways it became a term to describe a player who focuses on absolute defense. When you stay on your side of the board and create a fortress your enemies cannot penetrate, you are pillowforting. Depending on the game it can be a very viable strategy. With your game, however, not so much. Which I think is a good thing.”

“Ah,” Kyra smiled. “Thank you, Lady Bernice. I’ll make sure to consider pillowforting possibilities with future games.”

“I think what you have here is already close to perfect.”

“It’ll get stale eventually.” Kyra chewed her lip, tracing the edge of the board with her finger. “I never want to run out of new games to play.”

“That has to be a hard wish to fulfill, seeing how long we will all live.”

“That’s why I make them myself. You can’t run out of new games if you’re always making new games.”

“For someone whose primary class is so based on emotion, you have a lot of intelligence Kyra. I don’t think I’d ever be able to make a game this complete on my own.”

“Intelligence and emotion are not incompatible with one another. You can be really smart and still let anger or sadness get the better of you.”

“True,” I smiled and reached over the gameboard to pet Kyra’s cheek. “I didn’t mean to give you a backhanded compliment. You’re far smarter than me Kyra.”

“I don’t do this for praise,” Kyra looked away from me as her cheeks became flushed with pink. “I just like to play games with people. It’s fun.”

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“Did Lady Otrea ever play games with you?”

“She tried, but it was obvious she wasn’t having fun. I didn’t want her to be forcing herself on my behalf, so I stopped asking.”

“What does she like?” I asked, laying down and stretching out on the floor.

“She likes women, preferably undressed.”

Chuckling I gazed at Kyra, “We all like cuties without clothes, what else though?”

“Knowledge,” Kyra sighed. “Master Otrea wants to know everything there is to know. She dislikes not knowing something. I believe I was created simply so she could see the effects of the Ritual of Unlife firsthand. In the two-hundred and eighty-nine years I’ve been alive, she’s never had a use for me.”

“Not even as company in her bed? I guess she did say the two of you are kind of like children to her, but she says that about her spiders too. So I don’t really know what she means.”

“Her children are any spirits or creatures she’s either created or been pivotal in giving a form. As for sharing her bed, no. Undead cannot refuse an order from their master, and she tends to like women whom she can break in so to speak. She wants to make you an addict for her love, and I came into the world already addicted.”

“You can’t disobey me?”

“You’re different.”

“How so?” I asked, my voice quivering in concern. The last thing I wanted was to make Kyra and Adelita do something they didn’t want to, just because I’d said something wrong.

“You’re not our creator,” Kyra noted before pointing to my bracelet. “And without that, you’re not even powerful enough to sustain us. Maybe someday it’ll be a problem, but today I think I could disobey anything you say. Not that I would. You give me the warm fuzzy feelings, you enjoy playing games with me, I don’t want to give you a reason to push me away.”

“So…” I hesitated, trying to think of something Kyra probably wouldn’t want to do. “If I said, ‘I order you to kiss me’ you’d disobey?”

Carefully moving her gameboard and piece out of the way, Kyra crawled across the space between us. My cheeks heated as she brought her face close to mine, close enough that the tips of our noses were nearly touching.

“I could,” Kyra replied. “But you deserve to be showered in kisses, and I’m going to take this as permission.”

Before I could reply Kyra closed the remaining distance between us and pressed her lips against my own. The soft pillow-y coolness of her lips causing my brain to melt.

Kyra held the kiss for a moment before pulling away, licking my lower lip as part of her retreat. “I’m not going to hold myself back the way small-horns does.”

“W-What does that mean?”

“I want a lot more kisses,” Kyra smiled devilishly. “May I?”

“Yes.” I squeaked.

Then Kyra was atop me again, kissing me until I was a shivering mess. With a very dangerous and uncomfortable heat gathering below my waist.

And I thought Euri was dangerous… Kyra is going to melt my reason away entirely.