Chapter 16: 16: Spikes of Shadow

 

The first thing I was aware of when I slowly rose back to consciousness, was the gentle laughter of a woman. Quiet as a mouse’s thoughts she chuckled away, until my eyes finally fluttered open and focused groggily on Bassi.

Several seconds of uncomprehending staring from me later, and I’d successfully figured out where I was. I was in the big pillow nest with Bassi, cuddled up against her side with my head in the crook of her shoulder. Both of us were naked, covered in blankets and furs. It felt so deliciously decadent that I had to close my eyes again to savour it a little.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked in a husky grumble.

Warm lips came down on my forehead, and my eyes snapped open to stare up at her. “You’re not letting me get up,” she giggled, and I noticed something that felt staggeringly important. She was smiling, her whole face was smiling, from the corners of her eyes to the little dimple just peeking out on her left cheek. I’d never seen her smile so wholly like that before. I guess sex agreed with her.

“You can get up if you want,” I replied, closing my eyes and not at all moving.

Now there was a hand in my hair, Bassi using her fingers to gently comb it out. “You were growling at me every time I tried to move. In your sleep, I might add.”

“Really?” I mumbled, nuzzling into her shoulder. “Doesn’t sound like me.”

A sharp pain in my shoulder had me squeaking, eyes wide and alarmed. Bassi had… she’d just bitten me! “You just bit me!” I complained, giving her my sternest frown.

“Oh, you’re awake now, huh?” she asked in a slow, teasing voice. “You are so hard to get moving in the morning, by the goddess. We have monsters to kill and skills to learn. Are you ready?”

“I like friend Bassi more than boss Bassi,” I grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at my eyes with a yawn.

“Do you want me to teach you how to use your fae powers or not?” she asked, standing over me now with a hand on her hip. Oh that was a whole lot of really hot naked woman.

“Geez, you are so gorgeous,” I blurted, mouth moving before I could stop it. Once I realised what I’d said, I grinned, then surprised myself with that reaction. Not a blush? Mist, that’s not very in character!

She gave a snort of amusement, her cheeks dusting slightly with pink. She didn’t back down though. “Well?”

“I thought you couldn’t teach me? I thought it was all instincts and stuff, personal to me and no one else,” I asked, standing up with her. Gosh it was odd to have a conversation with her while we both just stood here naked.

She made a so-so motion with her hand and began to pick up her clothing from where it had ended up, bundled haphazardly in the corner. “It’s been a long time, and we’re working with different facilities and shit, but I know the gist of how to draw out your powers. The basic idea is that if you can’t train the powers themselves, you put the person in a position where they utilise it using those instincts.”

“Right… I see,” I nodded slowly, following her lead and gathering my clothing. “Hey, is it safe to bathe in that pool out there?”

“Yeah, it is,” she told me absently, fishing around in her pack. Then, with a triumphant flourish, she produced a small white square from within. “Aha! Soap!”

God she was so cute sometimes. I was going to need that soap though, I felt kinda icky after last night, even if it had been absolutely amazing. Sex, apparently, was kinda gross too.

“So when you came at me with that knife, you were forcing me to react using my subconscious, the instincts that are like, in my blood or whatever,” I said, puzzling out everything in my head.

“Exactly. Back when… I trained, we had specially designed arenas and such that would bring out the desired traits and skills, while keeping the trainee fairly safe,” she explained as we left the little nook and headed for the pool. Really hoped it was warm, my muscles could use a warm bath right then. “Sadly, we have none of that on hand, so you are unfortunately going to have to learn to be rather fearless.”

Intriguing though. Bassi had just sort of admitted that she had grown up or at least trained in a fae community. Whether there was one here in the city, or it had been out in the wastelands, where those small pockets of fae magic held the dark at bay.

I didn’t pressure her for more information though. That would come when she wanted to offer it. For now I’d just follow her lead, do as I was told and learn how to be a badass shadow chick… or guy… or… whatever the other options were. Something.

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What followed were three days of fighting during the day, and then amazing sex during the night. Not that I knew what amazing sex was or wasn’t, since I only had sex with Bassi to go by, but whatever. I was having a whole ton of fun.

We didn’t venture any further down that the third level, opting to stay within range of our little nest in the wall. I kinda wanted to stay down here forever. Bassi was good company, even without the multiple orgasms, which by the way… holy moly. There’s something incredibly wild about giving yourself to a woman who then fucks you into a puddle. I was a hot mess every time she was done with me.

She didn’t play any rougher with me though, I think she could sense I was a little delicate under it all. I felt like a woman under her ministrations, and although I… might even enjoy that feeling in the moment, I wasn’t ready to make any decisions on my gender or whatever. It was just too momentous of a choice, a rearranging of my very sense of self, and the weight of it combined with haunted memory to hold me frozen in fear.

Killing things on the other hand, that was way easier to figure out. The first day consisted of Bassi teaching me the conscious skills that I entirely lacked. It was stuff like decision making in the heat of the moment, choosing targets and actually thinking my way through a fight using what my body could do. She spoke about it like it was a dance that you choreographed on the fly, each step changing the beat of combat and presenting new moves for everyone involved. It was kinda fascinating, her approach to fighting.

She had to step in and help me a few times on both the first and the second day, as she threw me into increasingly more dangerous situations in the hopes that a new power would manifest itself. No luck though, which meant no luck for the monsters who got close to me. The friendly snake was mighty protective.

The third day, however, had me staring down a chittering horde of angry monsters. Larger than the goblins had been, but with similar features, they wielded actual weapons and wore makeshift armour. I could see where the broken remnants of human armour had been crudely retooled into something that their larger frames could wear.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked Bassi as upwards of twenty hulking brutish gurg charged at me.

Well… shit. Time to be fearless I guess, like she’d kept telling me. I slipped into my shadows at the last moment, allowing them to embrace me as I twisted and dodged to the side. My confused adversaries crashed past me, but they were smarter than everything else I’d faced before, and they began to hunt for me, sniffing and peering around.

I needed to move fast, cause enough chaos that they wouldn’t be able to follow them as I cut through their numbers. I began by plunging one of my long daggers between the ribs of the nearest gurg, around where the heart would be on a human, although I had no idea about the anatomy of these things.

My shadows left me just as I was slicing open the throat of a second, and my luck down in this dungeon finally ran out. A blow from something big and blunt took me in the back, staggering me forward and into the dying gurg I’d just cut up.

I cried out in pain, distantly aware of Bassi swearing, but I was surrounded. I’d fucked up, making a mistake in my planning, the wrong step in the dance. Another blow came in, hitting me in the back of the knee and I stumbled, falling as the leg gave out, pain lancing up the limb. I was down now, on all fours as a kick came in straight to my stomach. Tears sprung up in my eyes, blow after blow raining down, but they were only tears of pain. My teeth ground together as I weathered it all, my grimace turning slowly, inexorably into a macabre grin.

Why? Because I could feel something rising within me.

As though a dam had burst, I felt shadows rush in to fill me, a torrent of darkness that welled up, and so I followed it. Instinct guiding me, I shucked off my attackers and leapt into the air, spinning as I went.

Time seemed to slow as I was in that spin, some primal part of my mind marking targets, as though my body had been co-opted by a tutorial ai in a video game, showing me how it was done. With each target marked on the first spin, the second spin sent out deathly black spikes of crystalline shadow.

The world slammed back into normal speed as I reached the apex of my leap, and I abruptly became the epicenter of a whirlwind of black crystalline death. Each enemy that my subconscious had targeted was impaled by upwards of five spikes each, large and small. Blood sprayed in all directions, and those that survived were left howling in agony, squirming on the ground.

“Well, damn,” Bassi commented, standing at the edge of the carnage with her blades drawn. She’d cut three down already as she’d tried to make her way towards me, each as dead as the proverbial doornail. She was always so clean… whereas I was… messy.

“I didn’t know I had it in me,” I laughed, then began to wheeze and cough as my bruised chest protested the treatment it had just received.

“Ah, yes… probably time to head back up to the city now,” she said, wiping her blades clean on the bodies of our enemies. That made sense, I guess my silly earlier question was answered.

I wobbled as one of my legs informed me that I was very much done with the ruins for now. “Yup, I think you might have to do most of the fighting for a bit… my body is very upset with me.”

“Shame,” she sighed, giving me a flirtatious smile. “I’ll have to leave you be for a week.”

“Hey, whoa,” I blurted in mock alarm. “I never said that!”

Her answering laugh was every bit as genuine and sweet as I’d hoped.

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