Chapter 45: 44: Rising From the Ashes

With a push from my legs, I launched myself into the air, my wings beating furiously as I tried to get a good look at the battle around me. Dead and dying molten goats littered the area in front of Taylor’s shield and beyond. Dawn was now amongst them, carving through the confused creatures with a white hot sword that looked more like the iconic blades of the jedi, rather than anything from Cora.

Millie was busy doing what could only be described as playing with her food, the way she was making the bodies flip through the air using her explosives. Rusti could be seen appearing and disappearing among the herd, leaving strategic holes in the skulls of every goat they crossed paths with. Civette appeared to be healing party members at random, regardless of any actual need for it. Better than nothing I guess.

I flew higher and higher, looking for a large grouping of the creatures even as I did so. This was going to hurt really badly, but we needed something dramatic or the creatures were still going to overwhelm us with raw weight of numbers.

As I flew higher, I noticed a notification tick over, congratulating me for reaching level twenty five, but there was a note next to it. “You are going to enjoy this. Break a limb or three. Trust me, winkie face.”

Interesting, what did May have planned for me now? I’d have to figure it out after the battle was over.

Which meant I had to do as May said, and break a limb or three. I was a few hundred meters above the battlefield now, and I figured that was enough. I began dumping stamina into my dash, watching as the bar rapidly depleted. I had potions I could use to regain it, but I needed to be careful not to kill myself on impact. It would suck to make the others wait while I caught up.

Still, when I let myself go like a bolt from a ballista, my vision still blurred. This was the most I’d put into the spell without the aid of one of the Artifisuki cannons, and it showed. Pain shot up my arm even as lightning erupted from the impact zone. The goats nearest my point of impact all but exploded into pieces and the shockwave took out many more as it rippled outwards.

Unfortunately, not all the goats died instantly, and one caught me in the stomach, sending me sprawing and clutching at it with my good hand. I grabbed it by one of its horns and rammed it head first into one of its dead brethren. It didn’t die with the first blow, and I had to repeatedly smash it into the corpse before it died too. Fuck, I think I broke some ribs when it caught me.

“Civette!” I called weakly, my lungs still straining to recover from the blow.

I pushed myself to my knees and looked around for our healer, finding her standing behind Taylor, who’d dropped her shield and was laying into the surviving goats around her with sword, fist and shield.

Civ saw me there, stared even, her expression unreadable as she failed to raise her staff and give me the healing I desperately needed. I should be within range, why wasn’t she doing it? I saw the corner of her mouth quirk up a little, as though she was amused by seeing me there on the ground, and I thought she was about to betray us. But no, she raised her staff and the healing spell I so desperately needed began to collect around her hands.

She was too late.

“You did that stale move of yours again, just as we knew you would,” came an unfamiliar male voice, full of spite as he materialised in front of me.

His sword found a gap in my armour and plunged in, and the game cut me off before it could register. Dead. Shit, the fuckers had been waiting for me to pull that move. Made sense, considering I was basically known for it. I knew I needed more tricks than just smash my fist into things and explode.

Something occurred to me as I berated myself for my fuck up. Where was the death message? I blinked, or tried to, and looked around. My body was on the ground, and I was… above it, hovering as a formless little spark of light. Everything seemed to have a strange, otherworldly blue filter applied to it, and I watched with mounting worry as a group of players surrounded the surviving members of my party.

“I’m sorry!” Civette was saying to an angry Dawn. “I hesitated, I’m sorry!”

“I knew the weak link would be the shitty little healer,” the guy who stabbed me said. “Couldn’t even collect the bounty when there was just two of them, but I’m here now. One down, one to go. Nice to see you again too LipsAndShades, we’ve come better prepared this time.”

“Are you going to keep talking, or can I smash your face in for killing my sister now?” Taylor spat back, fury written large across her face.

As they traded barbs and insults back and forth, I felt something within me, rising and crackling like the air before a storm. Then my body began to spark below me, my sightless eyes heating with dark clouds before lightning erupted within them. There was a sharp disorientation for a second as my consciousness was slammed back into my body.

I burst up off the ground, my wings flared, enormous bolts of lightning radiating out behind me like giant wings, extensions of the ones I already had. My hands were translucent with raw energy, I could see it running through every vein as I though it was my lifeblood.

I looked up, a terrible grin forming across my face as I saw the shock on everyone’s faces, enemy and ally alike. Oh yeah, this was cool, thank you so fucking much May. My stamina and mana were both refilling at a rate of knots, and so before that could end, I began to pour that stamina into another charge.

I hit the guy who’d stabbed me like I was a rocket propelled freight train, obliterating him in a shower of energy and gore, but I wasn’t done. I still had momentum, and I transferred that into the next enemy. They flew backwards, some poor mage woman who broke instantly under my fist, her body ragdolling as it cartwheeled away.

Having rather abruptly ended their little chat, everyone rushed to get their attacks in first. I saw Taylor take several hits, which Civette actually healed, and Dawn was almost immediately teleporting into the face of some rogue with her sword burning bright.

My wings were still spewing lighting out behind me, so I decided to use that to my advantage, sweeping the deathly energy over another one of the assholes, watching them fry like they had just hugged a power transformer. Holy shit how much damage was I doing right now? My resource bars were still filling faster than I could hope to deplete them too. This was wild, my race was exceedingly overpowered.

Of course, the seeming god mode state ran out, and I was back to being mortal. Didn’t matter for our enemies though, because we took the bastards apart like my dad took apart chinese food.

As soon as it was over, Dawn was there, wrapping me up in a hug. “Fuck me, that was incredible! I didn’t know you could do that!”

“Neither did I!” I laughed as the others gathered around.

Dipping down, my girlfriend pressed a long, loving kiss to my lips, and I felt a giddy little giggle bubble up within me. We were just about to introduce tongues to the mix in front of everyone, when my twin had to go and clear her throat.

“Chat’s enjoying the show you two,” she said sarcastically.

We parted slowly, I personally didn’t care too much what they saw right now, although yeah I would prefer to keep our make out sessions private. I’d set my recording settings that way for a reason after all.

“My badass lightning phoenix,” Dawn said with a possessive light in her eyes.

“That’s me,” I grinned, wiggling my eyebrows.

She laughed and smiled back, pulling me into a more chaste embrace. I hummed happily as her arms went around me again, quickly unequipping all my armour so I could feel her properly. She was so damn strong and warm.

“I love you,” she murmured into my ear, and I repeated the same back to her.

My eyes landed on Civ across Dawn’s shoulder, and this time she was trying not to look at us. She looked a little upset, but she seemed unharmed, so that was good. She was going to get hit eventually, but I hoped we could build her confidence up a little first. I might take a little enjoyment out of seeing that, after the way she’d acted just now.

“I’m going to shut the stream down,” Taylor said to her audience. “We need to find a place to set up our little house, and it’s fairly evident that you lot can’t be trusted with where we camp.”

I could only imagine the protests in chat about that, and the thought gave me a chuckle.

“Okay, I’ll shut mine down too,” Millie said with a smile, waving up at her camera. “Bye bye everyone, see you tomorrow! Oh, and don’t forget you’re all awesome!”

When the girls had shut their stream down I felt Dawn relax slightly, her arms around me holding me closer, more casually. My poor girlfriend.

What I didn’t expect to see was Civ doing the same. She ran a hand through her hair and let out an exhausted sigh, then rubbed at her eyes. That was interesting, did she dislike the watching people too?

“I am so ready to stop for the day!” Rusti exclaimed as they bounced over to join us after they were finished chasing down the last enemy player. Rusti was ruthless as fuck, they hadn’t let any escape.

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“Not until we’ve looted this mess,” Taylor grinned, and everyone except Rusti groaned.

****

I was the only other person in the main room as I made dinner for everyone. I’d been told to go through the small bath first so that I could prepare dinner, since I was apparently the best cook in the party. I was still figuring out this kitchen arrangement, it was odd to say the least. I’d found a kind of oven above the fireplace, hidden behind a neat little facade in the stone wall. It raised questions about where the smoke went, but I just assumed it disappeared into the void like everything that went down the toilet did.

I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to see an exhausted looking and casually dressed Civette dump herself onto a couch nearby.

“Are you okay?” I asked warily, going back to preparing the meal. I’d seen the way she’d looked at me in the fight, and I wasn’t ready to play entirely nice anymore.

She didn’t reply for several seconds, and I thought she was going to ignore me entirely, until she said, “You know, there’s one large positive to being in this game.”

“What’s that?” I prompted.

“I don’t have my Mum and Dad standing over everything I do, controlling everything. Although they try. I just got off the phone with mummy dearest,” she said, then gave an amused snort. “It’s strange, telling you this shit. You uh, don’t know me, at least not yet, and it’s like that takes a weight off it all. I can tell you whatever and you can’t go telling them.”

“I wouldn’t tell them even if I did know your parents,” I said, putting the knife down to get a proper look at her. “I had a friend with parents like that once. Dawn’s were like that as well, but this girl… she fell prey to them.”

She pursed her lips in reply, but nodded for me to continue.

“She was great, back in the day. A genuinely kind friend,” I said sadly, remembering again what had happened to Kristina. “But then she drifted away, her parents controlled her through and through. They warped her, turned her into this monster.”

“A monster,” she repeated, staring down into her lap.

“I wasn’t entirely sure she was, until we started dating. I had problems of my own, and I should never have agreed to date her in the first place, but we did. I began to see things about her though, despite how good she was to me at the start. I mean, it’s hard to date someone if they don’t have likable traits, and she had them. But… well I don’t know where I’m going with this. Venting I guess,” I shrugged, realising I was over sharing pretty dramatically.

“What happened?” Civ asked, still not meeting my eyes. “I ask because… well, I guess I don’t want to make the same mistakes that this person made.”

I gave her a long look after that. What did she mean by that? Was she in a relationship with someone, didn’t want to drive them away as Kristina had with me when she’d been pigeon holing me into an overly masculine role. A role that I was most definitely not suited to fill.

“I had problems. Big ones, issues laying dormant and deep within me. The way she acted, it tore at those issues, made them more and more prominent, until it began to affect the relationship as a whole. I fell apart in the end, I wasn’t able to be the person she needed, and I guess she dumped me for that,” I shrugged.

That was as much as I was comfortable saying. Admitting that I was the Big Trans wouldn’t do me any good here. Somehow I knew that she wouldn’t take it well.

Pulling her legs up to her chest, she hugged them and buried her face there. Then she began to cry, it started quiet, but she was already sobbing by the time I made it onto the couch next to her.

“What’s wrong? I’m sorry, did my story go too far?” I asked, unsure how to handle this situation.

“I did something awful,” she mumbled wetly through the tears. “I went along with something my parents told me to do, or forced me to do really. Not that I put up much of a fight, I wanted to do it. But… not afterwards. I’m like that girl you’re talking about, except now I realise I’m a fucking monster too, like you said.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” I replied quietly. She didn’t seem like she had the heart to be like Kristina had been.

Giving me a strangled, bitter laugh, she shook her head. “You don’t know enough to make that call, but thanks for the pep talk I guess. I’m going to read.”

She pulled herself off the couch and walked over to one of the book shelves, taking a book from it at random. One of Dawn’s I noticed, I wonder if that was intentional. I considered trying to pursue the matter, but I just didn’t have the emotional energy in me to try. She could brood all she wanted I guess.

The others eventually came down, and dinner was begun in earnest. I recruited Dawn to help me, which she took as an opportunity to give me constant little kisses. Each one did wonders for my depleted mood, and pretty soon I was ignoring Civ in her corner and focusing on my girlfriend.

I did notice Millie and Taylor though, snuggling up together on one of the couches and murmuring to each other. Millie was small enough to sit in Taylor’s lap, their legs tangled together as they stretched out. It made me happy, seeing them like that. It was also pretty funny how quickly they were moving too, Dawn and I had moved pretty fast, sure, but those two were blistering.

When dinner was finished, Rusti, Millie and Taylor all went to their rooms, leaving just Dawn, Civette and I in the common room. Civette was studiously ignoring us, so that allowed Dawn and I to murmur quietly to each other with relative privacy.

"Finally we’re alone," I sighed quietly, my hands going to Dawn's face, cupping each cheek with gentle care. "Or close to it. I hate sharing you like this, especially after the last few days outside Cora we had alone together."

"I know," she murmured, her warm hands pulling me closer as we cuddled on the couch. "It was so hard not to just grab you and kiss you until you go weak every five minutes."

"I want longer with you," I murmured, letting my hands slip down and around her neck as I leaned forward to press my forehead to her collarbone. "Three days wasn't enough. I want weeks, months with you alone, just learning you again, letting myself settle into this relationship."

"Nothing's stopping us from doing just that," she replied calmly, wrapping her arms tightly around me. Safe in her arms. So warm and safe.

I made a sound that was halfway between frustration and disappointment. "My sister would never let that happen, you know that. We have friends and shit, we can't just abandon them like we all abandoned each other in high school."

“We didn’t abandon each other,” she whispered, her thumb stroking gently across my shoulder. “We drifted apart, but we were all there for each other if we needed it.”

I shook my head slightly against her chest. “You know what I mean.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she told me decisively.

I wanted to protest, but she pushed me off her a little, but only enough so that she could kiss me. Silenced again by a kiss. I didn’t care though, her lips were soft and warm. Welcoming me with the slow, loving cadence of lip and tongue that I didn’t care much about anything. Just her, just this girl who was fast becoming the love of my life.

Her hair was soft under my questing fingers, her hands were firm and sure on my waist. I needed her alone, I was already beginning to feel something rising within me, a need that only she could fill. How was she so soft and yet so sure and decisive at the same time?

Gosh I needed more. I pushed her back down further into the couch, and pressed myself against the whole length of her, my thigh running up between her legs. I got a moan for my efforts, the sound bubbling up out of my girlfriend in that way that tells you it was entirely involuntary.

The loud snap of a book closing too harshly sounded behind us, and we jerked apart to find Civette leaving the room, her face a mask even as her eyes boiled with emotion. Oops… probably shouldn’t have made out in front of the straight like that.

“Bed time?” Dawn chuckled, drawing my attention back to her.

“Oh yes, definitely bed time,” I grinned wickedly.

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