Chapter 53: Chapter 53 – A Powerful Thing

Chapter 53 - A Powerful Thing

In life, one often runs across situations unprepared for. Questions unasked. Answers unquestioned.

One of those is the query: Is it possible to have a threesome in a tree?

The answer to that is, yes. It is. Just. And to elaborate, I will say that rope helps. Recommended, potentially, for the thrill seeker, but not to my taste. And if I did not have a skill, at Mark II no less, to help keep things going, then I would never have even attempted it. Nor, after having finished, was I keen on repeating the experience.

Bark chafes. And that is all that I will say on the matter.

Safely on the ground, I began going over my Status page while the others were collecting the rope. It was sturdy, lightweight, and we had spent quite a while in making it. One way or another, it was coming with us. There is a reason it is part of the standard kit, after all.

I nodded sagely, stroking my scraggly beard. At first glance, everything seemed in order. Or at least, nothing seemed particularly unexpected.

My Class had changed, of course, and my stats were proceeding as normal. Both of the Manic attributes were steadily increasing, apparently at a rate of one per Layer, though there had to be more to them than that. Otherwise, they would both be the same.

Then, there was my newest slot. It had been a long time in coming. Seemingly ages. And now that it was here, I began sporting a little smile of self-satisfaction. The one that I always got when I achieved something particularly difficult.

The only thing now was to fill it with Hess. I could practically feel her pulling at me. Her name needed to be there. She wanted it.

With an effort, I pulled my eyes away from that word. Unfilled. And I took a calming breath.

Just be patient.

We needed to find the exit first. Then we could gamble with potentially disrupting her Core. I was not sure what that implied, of course, but I knew that my lilim could not have a greater Layer than my own. And Hess certainly had that problem. At a minimum, she would be rendered unconscious until I caught up with her, and that would be disastrous to say the least.

Speaking of Layers, mine was currently listed as S1:1. I assumed that meant ‘First Layer of the First Stratum’, but then… wait…

“Hess?” I called questioningly.

She and Jax had finished detaching the rope from the tree and were wrapping it into a tight coil over her shoulder. The two of them glanced over at me.

“Yes?”

“Didn’t you say that there are ten Layers to the Stratum?” I asked.

“Uh… Sort of,” she returned. “There’s nine and then the Boundary is considered the tenth.”

“Okay… but, I thought I was at the Boundary now? Why is my Core Layer in the First Stratum?”

“Because you’ve passed it, already,” she replied. “In that dream of yours, I assume.”

I blinked in confusion, “So… wait. Are you saying that I don’t have to eat any Gems to get though it? And do I not get any stats for that? Because I’m only seeing what I should have for the one Layer.”

She stared at me for a moment before nodding, “Right. I forgot that you ‘see’ the Lady’s words. I wonder if that’s a human thing… Mm… but to answer your question, no. No Gems. Once you pass the trial, you are through it. And the reward varies. You should have gotten something for crossing the Boundary, right?”

My mouth twitched. “Technically.”

She shrugged, “There you go.”

I sighed. I supposed, if pressed, that I would have to agree that obtaining a few skill upgrades and some new abilities made up for the stat increases. It was just the way things had gone down that was so irksome. If I did not know better, I would have said that it was a bug. But how do goddesses have bugs? Unless… maybe she had not been paying attention?

Heh… that would be just precisely my luck. And much like my old world, there was no complaint department.

<bing!>

Oh, yeah…

I had almost forgotten about that thing. Scanning through the message quickly, it appeared to be the same as I remembered, save for the time limit. I was pretty sure that there had not been one before, but the last time I had looked at this, my memory had not been quite as robust. Still, technically, ‘at your earliest possible convenience’ was not a time limit. More a suggestion to be quick about things.

Someone is getting impatient.

It was not as if I were being intentionally slow about things, though. I had been trying to complete the quest when I had been ceremoniously tossed into this place, and the Dungeon took time to work through. Although, I supposed that, if pressed, I might concede that things had bogged down recently. For various reasons.

Glancing up again, I noticed one of those reasons padding her way toward me now. Jax had begun to adopt a sway to her step that I found quite appealing, though I was not sure if it was natural or if she was only doing it because I was watching. Not that it mattered.

Stopping just in front of me, she reached up and gently cupped my cheeks, “Be not so displeased, Master. If only ye could see with mine eyes, ye’d know what ye’ve gained.”

I blinked. Oh, right. I had been upset about the Boundary trial going bonkers on me, and now she was consoling me. Like a girlfriend… The thought came with a slight fuzzy warmth in my chest.

Chuckling ruefully, I reached up to encircle her hand in mine, “Thank you for saying so, but that’s just a Class feature, Jax. I’m…” Pausing, I cast an uncomfortable glance at Hess, loathe to confess such an embarrassing detail. Lowering my voice to a whisper, I admitted, “I’m supposed to ‘embody the ideal’ now. For my lilim, anyway.”

“Aye,” she agreed, her new eyes shining a bit even in the faint starlight of the predawn. “I’d agree to that. Heartily. Be that such a bad thing?”

“I mean… sort of?” I argued. “Everyone’s ideal should be a very personal thing, right? I wouldn’t want it imposed on me.”

“It ain’t so bad as that,” she shot back. “Look at it like this. Consider that the one ye… ye cared for. That she weren’t yer ideal. Then, one day, ye went to sleep, and the next morning she were! Would that nay be grand?”

“Well… I suppose so,” I relented.

I had caught that little hesitation. There had been a lot of unspoken emotion there, between what she had said. And what she had not. I might not have been an empath, but I could see her eyes. Feel the little tremors in our connection. I was not certain what it was, but I felt like she needed something from me. And somehow I was supposed to intuit what that was supposed to be? Unfortunately, that sort of intuition had always been my greatest weakness. I was just lucky to have gotten that far. So, with no path forward, I pretended I had not noticed.

“In that specific case, it would be okay.” Then smiling a bit, I added, “You know… you’ve been steadily working on that, yourself.”

“Really?”

That one word contained such hopeful energy. It was almost like saying the word ‘walkies’ to a pet dog, but that was a terrible analogy. There was far too much sex appeal involved.

She sucked in a breath, “Oh, Master… Already? We just finished not a handful of minutes ago.” She licked her lips enticingly, her body language clearly at odds with her words.

I cleared my throat, “Sorry. When my skill evolved, I think it affected my recovery time.”

“Nay be sorry for that,” she grinned. “Ne’er be sorry for that!”

---

A few minutes later, the three of us had convened atop the fungal steps ringing the central tree, staring at the black doorway.

And a doorway it was. From below, it had seemed like a large hole in the tree, as if from a rotted out branch, but now that we were here, it was clearly a pitch black and quite solid door. Unfortunately, there was no doorknob nor even any hinges in sight. The only thing that stood out was a knot off to one side with what looked like a vertical coin slot set in it.

“What now?” Jax asked.

Shrugging, I did the natural thing and took a piece of silver from my pouch. But it was too wide to fit.

“Why did you think that would work?” Hess asked with a perplexed look.

“Well, I mean… it looked like a…” I stammered before giving up. Sighing, I said, “Never mind. What do we have that’s thinner than a coin?”

“There’s this,” Hess offered, pulling her knife from the sheath she had nestled in the hollow her wrap made between her breasts. Stepping around me, she slipped the blade smoothly into the slot. It fit perfectly.

The corner of my lip twitched. Naturally. We had gotten the knife from the chest on the Thumper’s back, after all. It was proof that we had killed it. Very clear and obvious Dungeon logic.

And as soon as the hilt of it sank home, there was a click, and the door creaked open… to a very familiar looking field.

“No way,” I breathed.

Poking my head through, I could faintly see the burned town off in the distance and the graveyard off to the right. From the looks of things, we were coming out on the opposite side of where we had entered, but it was very definitely the same field we had left just a few days ago.

“How is this possible?” I asked.

Hess shrugged, “It’s a common enough maze design. You have to go in to get out.”

That did not even begin to make sense, her blase attitude not withstanding. Of course, I could just wave my hand and put it off to ‘magic’, or some other horse shit. That was not a real explanation, though. ‘Magic’ was just a word people said when what they really meant was ‘fuck if I know’. Then again, that was literally the case, so… magic?

Experimentally, Hess pulled the knife free, and we watched as the door slowly closed again.

“Looks like this is one-way,” she pronounced. “Unless I leave the knife.”

“I don’t think we be needing to come to this place again,” Jax opined. Then glancing up at me, she asked, “Lest ye think there be aught we missed?”

I shook my head, “Nah. If we really need to, we can get back in from the other side, right? No reason to leave a perfectly good weapon if we don’t have to.”

“Good enough for me,” Hess said, opening the door again. Then gesturing to the portal, she said, “After you. I’ll follow behind.”

Nodding, we stepped through. I do not know why, but for some reason I felt that the moment should have had a touch of gravitas. Like passing through a Stargate or something. But no. It was just like walking through any door would be. You know… if it were a common thing for a door set in the upper branches of an isolated tree in the middle of a maze to lead to a field. At ground level.

“I feel like we be getting close, Master,” Jax said excitedly, completely missing the mood. “Don’t ye think?”

I tilted my head consideringly, “Maybe.” Turning to face the town, we could see the rooftops there, just beginning to be highlighted by the rays of the rising sun. “There’s the monster to contend with, still. Assuming it didn’t die in the fire. After that, I couldn’t say.”

Then what I had just seen clicked. The sun was coming up.

Spinning around, I saw Hess jerk to a stop, taken aback by my sudden attention, just as the door settled closed behind her.

“Chebs…” I growled. Then, without a second of hesitation, I took off toward the town, sprinting for all I was worth. “Run! Scarecrows coming! Run now!”

“Ah, boil me!” Jax shouted, quickly catching up to me. “I forgot about them blighters!”

“Less talking!” Hess said a moment later, snatching the pair of us up and tucking us under her arms. “Donum! Speed!”

“Right!” Slapping my hand to her flesh, I channeled raw pleasure into her.

“Oh, ‘Stits… Donum!” she shouted as she began to tear through the tall grass like a rocket.

“Ha ha!” Jax hooted with joy, as streamers of shadow began to bleed off of her, lightening the load even further. “Hess, ya roast! I nay can believe ye’d ever be caught blubbering in self-pity when ye can do shite like this!”

She did not reply beyond her exultations of delight. But she was smiling.

Of course, then the scarecrows started popping up…

---

Fortunately, they did not all appear in unison, or else we would have been toast. It was more of a haphazard, random sprouting that afforded Hess the dubious luxury of charting a circuitous path through them. Which is not to say that we made it through unscathed.

By the time we made it to the perimeter wall, the three of us were bleeding from a multitude of small cuts and heavily bruised from the pummeling we had taken. Every time one of the lasers fired, the ground would erupt like we had stepped on a land mine, throwing small rocks and debris everywhere. However, we had managed to avoid any direct hits.

I did not waste any time in casting a minor healing spell on myself and Jax, but Hess waived me off.

“Save it. I still have enough to heal on my own.” Then, risking a quick glance over the wall, she said, “Wait here. I’m going to scout things out a bit first.”

So saying, she scooted away, silently crouch-walking around the outside of the wall until she was out of sight.

Jax, meanwhile, began worriedly checking me over, fretting that I might have taken some unseen injury, or that the regeneration might have somehow missed something. I was about to get annoyed with her when another pop-up obscured my vision.

“Finally!” I exclaimed happily.

“What?” Jax paused in her ministrations. “Yer feeling relieved, now?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I just ranked my heal up to Low Intermediate!”

“What?! How?” she squawked out, dismayed. “I know y’ain’t been healing so much as to get it so high on two a day! And that on a hard day of fighting! ‘Less me counting be wrong again…”

“Wh—? Two points a day? I get five!”

“The hoot? Five? That ain’t fair!” She almost looked like she was going to start crying. “I ain’t even got me Dance up so high as that!”

I grimaced. That tracked. She would have needed ten solid days of fighting to hit those numbers, and while we had certainly had our fair share of scrapes, they were not quite so numerous as that. And I doubted that it was a racial thing. That would be indescribably unfair… unless it was balanced other ways. Jax did have her advantages, after all.

“Maybe it’s to do with stats?” I hedged. “I have been focusing on my mental attributes, after all.”

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She sat back on her heels, frowning, “I hope not. I ain’t got so many points to spare on such.”

“Well… we know it can’t be Charisma. Yours is pretty close to mine, after all. What are the other two at?” I asked.

“I got six in Wisdom,” she reported, proudly. “A-and… four in Intelligence. But that be natural, mind!”

“That’s pretty close to what I started with,” I confessed, although mine were the other way around. “But right now, my Wisdom is thirteen and Intelligence is ten.”

“Yer working Wisdom as yer main?” she asked curiously. “That be as high as me Toughness.”

I shrugged, “Not really. It just worked out that way.” To be honest, I did not have a particularly good reason to keep working on it, other than a simple desire to see where it led. Then again, I was supposed to be some kind of ‘leader’ type, so maybe a high Wisdom would help me make better decisions. “But there is one correlation. Two is half your Intelligence. And five is half of mine.”

She frowned, “I don’t know what a core-lay-shun be… unless ye mean about how both is half?”

“Correlation,” I corrected gently. “And that’s a good guess. It just means that there’s a pattern. I could still be wrong though.” I held off on explaining why. Jax was pretty good with tactics and strategy, but statistics were out of the question. We had not even gotten to subtraction yet.

“But ye could be right,” she argued back. “Maybe I should put a point or two in it? And see?”

“If you want to,” I replied. “They’re your stats. It just depends on whether you think leveling your skills up is more important than… uh… Well, what are you focusing on? Strength? Agility?”

“I were doing Strength,” she reported. “I did nay like it when me blows skipped off of them beetles… A-and I know that yer impressed by how strong Hess be…”

I tsked. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling self-conscious now.”

She shrugged slightly with one shoulder. Instead of answering, she asked, “Would ye like it if I were smarter?”

“Jax…” I sighed. Lightly, I began to run my fingers over the length of one of her horns, long enough now to start curling back and out towards her ear, and her breath caught, “I like you plenty, already. And I will continue to like you. No matter how you decide to develop yourself.”

Reaching up, she rested her hand on my chest and leaned against me, “But would ye like me more?”

My lip curled to one side, “I don’t see how I could possibly like you more.”

She groaned high in her throat, “Master—”

Just then, Hess’ head popped over the wall, “The field is clear. Come on.”

“The monster died?” I asked, craning my head up to look at her.

“No…” she said slowly before a helpless grin crossed her face. Reaching down, she helped me to my feet, “Were you two about to go at it again?”

“No!” Jax shouted, before jumping to her feet. Then, screaming, she began violently smashing her horns against the stone wall. As she straightened, I caught a faint trickle of blood running between her eyebrows. Taking a deep breath, she plastered a smile across her face, shook her head, and pleasantly said, “No, we was just talking.” Then, lightly hopping over the wall, she began to saunter away, pausing just long enough to add, “Come on, Master. Let’s see what be what.”

I just stood there, stunned. At least until the wall collapsed.

Hess stared at the settling rocks for a moment before looking back up at me, “What exactly where the two of you talking about?”

“Whether the skill points you gain in a day are limited by Intelligence or not?” I hedged.

There was a long beat of silence.

“They are,” she confirmed. “But I think we both know better.”

I nodded slowly, the conversation replaying itself out in my head on repeat. There was a subtext at play here. There had to be. But I could only see things from my own point of view. I needed an outside look.

Meeting Hess’ eyes once more, I said, “The last thing I said to her, before you showed up, was ‘I don’t see how I could possibly like you more.’ But I get the impression that was the wrong thing to say?” How that would have upset her was beyond me, though. I would have been thrilled to hear that.

She quirked an eyebrow, “Correct… and before you ask, no. I cannot say more. I promised her I wouldn’t.”

I took a breath, “Ah…” Stepping through the rubble, I made to follow, “It’s to do with that?”

Falling into step beside me, she simply hummed in reply.

“Why am I not getting this, Hess?” I asked. “I’ve got all these points in Intelligence and Wisdom, and I still feel like a moron. Especially when it comes to reading people.”

“Intelligence helps you learn. Wisdom helps you act,” she explained. “Both take experience and knowledge.”

“I see…” Taking a few moments, I worked my jaw back and forth. “So, you’re saying that I lack the experience to arrive at the answer on my own?”

“From what I know of you, yes. Most definitely,” she replied. “That’s why I think this is so stupid. But… I gave my word.”

I frowned in consternation.

Okay, Donum… You can do this. Work it out. It’s to do with something you don’t have any experience with. And from the conversation, it had to be something to do with my relationship with Jax. Somehow, I was saying something wrong. But what?

“You said before,” Hess said suddenly, “Back in the maze, that you were worried that I might have died. Right? How did that make you feel?”

I glanced up at her, hesitating for a moment, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“There you go,” she nodded. Then smiling, she added, “And we… feel… the same.”

I stopped, my eyes wide.

She kept walking for a few paces before spinning around. Winking at me, she put a finger to her lips, “I said nothing.”

---

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jax peering suspiciously at me, and I swallowed. It was all I could do to keep a cool head, but internally, I was a nervous wreck.

I could not say exactly what it was about Hess’ little ‘hint’ that had triggered my realization, but it had. Something about the pain of loss, perhaps. Of… of severing…

I took a calming breath.

Regardless, Jax had been waiting for me to proclaim my feelings. Verbally. But that was crazy! She knew my feelings better that even I did. Why did she need me to say them out loud? Some kind of… ritual thing, I had to suppose. And it was just a word…

It was an important one, though. And I needed to make sure that I said it right. There needed to be a certain mood. Over dinner? Or no… she would hate that… Something, anyway.

And then there was Hess. She had made her own feelings loud and clear, well enough. Several times, I now realized. And I had no idea how I was supposed to handle that with multiple partners. Was I even allowed to say that to more than one person at a time? Was I allowed to feel that way at all? I had to suppose so… They had made their expectations well known, but back home, I would have been skinned alive for something like this.

But it was not my fault, I reasoned. Things had just… sort of… happened. And here I was.

Honestly, there was no need to get worked up about this. It was not like anything had changed. It was just… a next step. And it really did help to know that everything was very… mutual.

I just needed to say the right words in the right way at the right time. I swallowed again.

Maybe some flowers?

In the meantime, the three of us were standing in the center of town just in front of an enormous dome of crackling red light, very similar in appearance to those Jax and I had encountered down in the tunnels below. This one, however, was substantially bigger. And for good reason. The ‘creature’ within was much larger than either of us.

Honestly, I could hardly believe it. It was exactly as Hess had described it. Skinny legs. Spindly looking. Tall. She had left out a few very important details, though.

“It’s a giraffe?”

“You’ve seen one of these before?” Hess asked, surprised. “Hideous looking thing, isn’t it? With that neck?” She shuddered.

I stared at her incredulously. The animal in question was ignoring us completely, curled up and apparently sleeping contentedly with its head resting on its hind end. They were weird critters, I would grant, but hideous was about the last word I would use to describe it.

“Being that ye know of these… Master…” Jax drawled, “What might ye say of how to fight one?”

…was what she said aloud. But that was not at all what she was talking about.

“Uh… Well…” I twitched my head to the side, “I’ve never fought one myself, of course.” Glancing at her, I flinched slightly. The daggers she was staring at me were sharp enough to cut. “…As I’m sure you’re aware. But when they fight, they club one another by swinging that huge neck around.”

“Mmm… I’m sure those horns will be a problem, too,” Hess opined.

“U-uhm…” Glancing back at the animal, I did a double take. That was not right. As far as I knew, giraffes had a pair a fuzzy-looking, dull lumps on top of their heads. Not… well, the best I could think to describe them was saber tooth… horns. They did not look all that big, but given the size of the animal, I was sure they were a good six inches long apiece. And now that I was looking, there were several other details that were not quite lining up. I just could not put my finger on what they were, what with it sleeping and all.

Frankly, this whole scenario was giving me the strangest sense of déjàvu. But I could not think how that would be. I could list on exactly one finger the number of times that I had stood in the middle of a burned out, former Goblin village with a mutant giraffe sleeping beneath a red forcefield. And frankly, I would question the sanity of anyone who claimed otherwise.

“And what do ye think that might be behind it?” Jax asked, not diverting her attention to the item in question in the slightest.

“I’m hoping it’s the exit,” Hess replied. She twitched ever so slightly.

Jax swung around to stare at her. She was beginning to look furious. “Uh huh… And why do ye think it got that tarp over it then?”

The ‘tarp’ was really more of a drop cloth. Made of some kind of fancy, blue crushed velvet, it was the kind of thing that would be more appropriate for the center of a ballroom than… here. And whatever was under it was quite big, at least twice as tall as myself and as wide as my outstretched arms. It might have been a doorway, as Hess suggested, but it was hard to say for certain.

“Hard to say,” Hess replied lightly, ignoring the obvious mood. “Some kind of puzzle, I’d guess.”

“Hess…” Jax growled, evidently having had enough of the pretense. “Ye fiend… Fiend! Ye promised! Promised me!”

“Oh? Have I been cursed by Law, then? Hmm?” she returned, an eyebrow raised. “My Oath stands, as you can plainly see.”

That took some of the wind out of her sails, and Jax glanced at me quickly, “Then… why…? Ye must have said something to make him too nervous to look at me.”

“Do you think it could be because you knocked the wall over? And after he said something so nice to you?” she suggested.

Jax narrowed her eyes again, “No. I do nay. Nor do ye.”

I sighed. I should have known that there was going to be no getting this by her. Encircling my arms about her from behind, I firmly grasped her by one of her horns.

She gasped, and twitching, she went limp in my arms, “M-master…?”

“Leave it be,” I said in a low voice. “I realized it on my own. She just dropped a little hint. The same as you.”

Her head lolled back onto my shoulder, and she looked up at me. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes. “Then… then ye…”

“Yes.”

She sucked in a breath, “S… say it, then.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You want to hear it now? I was hoping to set a proper mood first. In private.”

“I-I…” she started before glancing over at Hess and then quickly shifting her gaze to the giraffe.

It was watching us, I realized. One of its eyes was cracked open, peering at us even as it pretended to sleep.

Licking her lips, her jaw firmed, “Say it. Lest ye never get the chance.”

I nodded slightly. That was a very good point. Spinning her around, I gathered her head in my palms, and then cast a quick, jittery look at our other companion. She smiled in encouragement. “Jax… what Hess reminded me of was the pain of loss. Suggested what I might feel were I to lose you. And I know that isn’t possible, but still… I can imagine. And… and it made me realize…” I hesitated.

“Yes…?” she breathed, shivering.

“Well… I don’t know… because I’ve never felt anything like it before. But… I think I love you.”

It might not have been the best way to go about saying that precisely, but Jax seemed to take it pretty well.

Seeing her huge, tearful grin, I made to kiss her, but she abruptly pulled away. Much to my shock, she dropped to her knees and prostrated herself on the ground. And spoke.

“By the Words thou hast inscribed upon me, the compact is fulfilled. I am thine. With thee and for thee. Thy will is mine. Thy want is mine. All that thou art, I am for thee. For I love thee, as well. Forever more, and unto the end of time.”

I stared down at her, wide-eyed, for a long few moments after that. I had no idea what to say. What could I say? How do you follow something like that up? And what was Hess going to say? I mean… I had heard some vows before, but… hot damn!

However, before I could open my mouth, the Lady decided to add another layer to my already considerable mountain of ‘what-the-fuck’.

“Uhh…?”

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