I sat back and groaned. The pressure around my feet ebbed and I started to regain feeling in my toes. As I lifted my leg, the pins and needles increased before sloughing off and returning peace to my muscles.
Pulling up my status, I gave it a quick once over just in case something new and unwanted had appeared.
STATUS
Name: Cyrus
Race: Reborn (Felkin)
Age: ??
Tier: 1
Active Skills:
(T:1 R:2) Summon Familiar: Verdant Healer: (áine)
(T:1 R:2) Summon Familiar: Resplendent Inferno: (Zharia)
(T:1 R:1) Racial Skill: Dimensional Storage: (Chomperz)
(T:1 R:2) Spirit Lord's Invocation
(T:1 R:2) Summon Familiar: The Dead Will Provide (Erebus)
(T:1 R:1) Summon Familiar: Reflective Coat of the Mirror Beast (Magnus)
(T:1 R:2) Summon Familiar: Storm King's Tempest (Sturmrorex)
(T:1 R:2) Summon Familiar: Shroud of the Astral Archon (Galarion)
(T:1 R:2) Roar of the Spirit Lord
(T:1 R:2) Absolute Authority
(T:1 R:1) Summon Familiar: Felblood Sanguinarch (Zagreus)
Passive Skills:
(T:1 R:2) Etherious Blood
(T:1 R:2) Sovereign-Threaded Soul
(T:1 R:2) Chaotic Resonance
(T:1 R:1) Spirit's Lord's Echo
(T:1 R:2) Split-Mind Cultivation
Perks:
Legacy of the Obsidian Crown
Scion of Calstrax
Demonic Blood
Child of Mana
Dread Guardian's Apology
Crystal Synthesis
Devourer of the Deep
Whisper of the Tempest
False Dungeon Core
Unleashed Soul
Astral Lotion
Blood Pact (Stage One)
I frowned, Not much had changed but there was something off. It wasn't visually represented but more akin to a feeling deep inside my gut. Instinctual. I couldn't pin where but I knew something off.
Before I could dive further, Isaac's tendril retracted from my foot and twisted.
“That should do it. You’re lucky I’ve done this before yah bastard,” Isaac grumbled.
I was too tired to to return the snark, so I summoned candy into my palm and started flicking them at the man.
“Will you cut it out? This is how you repay me?”
I rubbed my temples and channeled mana into Shroud of the Astral Archon. Galarion appeared and slid into my ear with a wet squelch. Once he was inside my head he drove his tentacles into my brain and started sucking away the migraine.
“Ugh, that sucked,” I coughed.
“Are you ignoring me asshole?”
I cracked open an eye and glared at Isaac. “Yes. And I know you saw the wrapper. If you'd rather I feed your favorite candy to someone else, I’m sure Celenae would love to-”
Like a feral cat, he hissed and clutched the peach-flavored gummies to his chest.
That’s what I thought.
Pushing the living abrasive out of my mind, I closed my eyes and focused on the world underneath me. My feet were back to normal–no longer feeling like cold icepicks digging away at my tender flesh–and I could feel the floor solidly once more.
A couple of hours had passed since the incident at the arena. We managed to escape unscathed and retreated to the mansion where Teddy’s parents waited. They lacked a lot of their usual jovialness and started pressing for answers. Once we explained the situation and had traitorous fingers thrown my way, they calmed down. They left citing a few complaints about having to talk to some important official.
In truth, I didn’t pay much attention to what they said. Shortly before nearing the manor, the shadows underneath my feet started to wisp and the ground turned soft. One of the others started to freak out–who I didn’t know as my foot dipped into the ground–and Isaac wrapped me in his tendrils and dragged me across the gate.
Teddy tried healing me again, but there seemed to be a hard cap to what his skill could do concerning shadow integrity or whatever nonsense Isaac called it. And now four hours later, he finished shoving and melding my shadow back together.
áine slid out of my hoodie and cupped my cheek. Her joy filtered through the link replacing her earlier frustration. Sending a thread of mana into my leg and tapping the floor, I confirmed that it maintained solidity and opened my eyes to smile warmly at my familiar.
“Sorry áine, but at least we learned another limitation,” I said.
Her wings drooped and patted my chin, anger starting to well up. “Not good.”
I gently tapped her head. “No, it’s a good thing. It means we can try working on it in the future. You observed my body during the process, how about we ask the nice gentle-jerk over there and acquire his memories? That way we can experiment later.”
She cocked her head and spun around. Taking flight, she hovered before Isaac and pressed in close, turning him cross-eyed.
“I’m not letting you root inside my head!” Isaac huffed.
The little fairy grabbed both sides of his nose and tapped it twice. I saw a faint blip of green light spread over his cheeks and he turned away.
I give him fifteen seconds before he caves.
“No. Not doing it. I don’t care that you are asking nicely.” His ears twitched and he scowled at áine but the tough front he presented started to crack. “No. Not even if Cyrus had a bucket of the stuff.”
Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four…
Stolen novel; please report.
He threw his hands up in the air and snarled. It was half-hearted and lacked bite. áine spread her arms in a hug and pressed into his face. As she flew away she landed on my shoulder and tapped my cheek.
“Yes?”
“Viper’s Kiss.”
I frowned. “That’s the special stuff. You can’t bargain that away.”
She crossed her arms. Annoyance rushed through the mental link followed by images of just about every time I’ve ever been injured. Each of those images was packaged with mini bursts of frustrated emotions.
Wilting, I summoned the crate to my hand and sighed. Isaac’s glee-filled cackle filled the room as he tore it from my grasp.
“Alright. Get it over with. I give you permission to copy the memories. Copy only! And no peeking through anything else! You hear that Galarion? I’m serious!” Isaac shouted.
Galarion retracted his tentacles. He pushed out of my forehead, turning into a bubbling ball of spinning slime before he tossed himself at Isaac. The rogue flinched, but Galarion splatted against an invisible barrier of his own making and instead lightly pressed his tentacles across Isaac’s head.
He shuttered as Galarion retracted and slid off, bouncing off the floor once before he flew toward my shoulder. My familiars exchanged handshakes before they both retreated into my chest.
“As much as I despise the idea of anything touching my mind, that was surprisingly smooth,” Isaac said.
“Oh? That’s good to hear. Syrreisha would appreciate a gentler touch,” I replied, sitting back and enjoying the seat’s cloud-like comfort.
Isaac sat forward and glared. “Speaking of the head healer. Go talk to her.”
“Why?”
“You know why!”
I sighed and clicked my fangs. “I will. I promised you I would.”
“You should do it now.”
“Not a chance.”
“Cyrus. I'm serious. Cut the dragonshit.”
“And I’m serious,” I growled. “You want a peak? Do you want to see what I’ve been avoiding? There’s a reason I’m avoiding it asshole. And I don’t need that right now, not today, not tomorrow either.”
His anger dropped, mixing with confusion. “You know what the issue is? I thought you locked it away.”
“I did. But I’ve seen snippets of it. It leaked out and I took a peek before the last match.”
“That’s why your sleeve was torn,” he said, eyes narrowing.
“Yep. Big mistake. Lots of trauma. So did you want to take a peek? Maybe learn some sympathy?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Possibly. But I’ve survived so far by learned avoidance. We all have to cope somehow.”
“Until it doesn’t!” He slammed his fist against the armrest. “You’ll implode. The nightmares, the anger, everything. You don’t really think you’re okay. I know you’re not that dumb. Think, Cyrus. Remember when you first joined us? You’re no longer some tier zero weakling flailing around. You have power, you have skills, mana, and the strength to seriously harm someone. What happens when your mind cracks and you turn murderous! Huh? What then?”
“That won’t happen.”
He pointed an accusing tendril at my chest. “Sure about that? You don’t even understand how fucking dangerous you are. Let’s ignore the gods, the bullshit with fate, your reborn status, everything. Let’s focus solely on that rage and the skills you have. I’m a special case, you’re a minefield of explosions in my head, and a twisting dagger with five interchangeable blades on any given day. But you have an aura, an unrefined, untested aura skill and the mental trauma combined with a racial fury running through your veins. You. Are. A. Bomb.”
My fingers gripped the chair, and my tail lashed the air behind me. The gremlin rattled its cage smiling its heart out as it invaded my thoughts.
“That! That’s what I mean.”
“Fuck. You.”
I crushed the anger and tossed it into the void. Mentally separating the fury was a process I was long accustomed to. And the gremlin snarled under the pressure but I locked it away and forced my body to calm. After the evolution, regulating my body processes was easier, faster.
My fingers relaxed and my tail slowed. “Good enough?”
“Not in the slightest.” He stood up and stepped closer to loom over me. “Hand it over.”
“You sure?”
“Are you?” he asked. “Are you afraid I’ll see it and find out you’re just a coward? Think I can’t handle some bad memories? News flash, I’m the blackhound of a major noble house. You’re not the only one with baggage asshole. Every adventurer has some.”
Mana rushed through my chest and I held up my palm, catching Galarion as he formed. I raised him to Isaac’s head. He didn’t flinch, his eyebrow quirking with his eyes swirling.
I shrugged. If he wanted to inflect himself with pain then fuck it. He was an adult, he’d handle himself.
“Galarion. Can you bring out a copy of that… Memory.”
He bubbled quietly. His tentacles clutched onto my fingers. It was funny, in his evolved form he should be bigger, large enough to surpass my hand and spill onto the floor. But his form was adjustable, he could control it to a degree that he chose. And my hungry, voracious familiar hesitated, making himself small.
He asked a question, thought it, and slid it through the connection with all the emotions that would be impossible to convey through simple words. His skin pulsed with a shimmering light that bled into a kaleidoscope of muted colors in the center of his head. They too showed a pattern, words that he wanted to express without actually voicing them.
I nodded and he acquiesced. From his tentacles, he wove them together and flattened himself as mana flowed between his limbs and formed a marble. It grew and size before condensing down into a solid glass-like material that softened as more mana rushed in.
Isaac remained unbothered but his eyes glanced toward the marble. His face darkened as the brightly colored marble settled on a deep crimson that streaked with cracks of gold.
“Well? Go on,” I said.
He snatched the marble and grabbed it tight. His fingers paled as he squeezed down. It remained intact, the color remaining the solid malevolent red. He snorted and flopped into his chair.
The marble rolled across his fingers and flipped into the air. He caught it and shoved it into his mouth, biting down with a dramatic chomp. But only the clack of his teeth echoed out. His face scrunched in disgust and he closed his eyes.
You’re a cocky idiot, yourself Isaac. I hope you find whatever the fuck you’re looking for.
While the memory represented a cyclone of pain and dark thoughts, I knew from experience that someone else’s trauma could be interpreted differently. Galarion shared plenty, having picked and pruned the memories and emotions from Syrreisha’s patients.
Some of them were hard to stomach, enough so that I had Galarion purge the specific details of the worst memories. Even if my gambit with the trauma training paid off, some things I didn’t need to know.
Some lines wouldn’t be crossed, not that way, not now.
“Master. He’s waking,” Galarion whispered.
I snapped toward Isaac and prepared to stand up. Just in case, I pushed mana together and held áine’s skillwisp at the ready.
“If he asks, remove the memory fragment. Blunt the emotions too,” I ordered.
Galarion rose off my hand and floated at head-height. His body morphed, elongating and growing bigger while his tentacles stretched further out. From bright pink to an abyssal purple, his skin darkened and the prismatic glowing dots along his tentacles ceased.
“Ready.”
Isaac grunted and leaned forward, dropping his hair over his eyes. His fingers clutched onto the armrests as his legs widened, holding him up from falling forward. I kept still, waiting, watching.
“Emotions?” I prodded.
Galarion extended a limb and stopped shy of touching him. “Twisted. Angry, hurt… Sad.”
“Sad?”
“Sad. Sad for you. Sad for…”
“Cyrus,” Isaac whispered.
“Yeah? Do you need help?” I responded.
Slowly, he shook his head and started to sit up. As he did, droplets hit his pants. I watched them soak into the fabric while more joined them, darkening the dark-grey into black. Looking up, I recoiled at the red streaking his eyes.
The swirling black of his pupils stood still, forming a glaring hole in reality.
Gone was the anger, and the cockiness I’ve come to expect. In its place was an emotion that made my skin crawl.
I gritted my teeth and looked away. “Stop looking at me like that.”
He sniffed and raised his sleeve to his eyes in a futile attempt to clean the tears. But as he did, more continued to well before streaming down his cheeks.
“Cyrus. You’re a fool. A damn…” his voice cracked and he sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Favourite kind of Pie
