James waited until just the right moment and executed a perfect spinning back kick that made the former martial artist in me glow with pride, his foot catching Bonnie right across her chin. Her head snapped back, her long hair waving with it.
“Oh no,” Nick grunted, a look of panic growing on his face. “He should nae ha’ done tha.’ Lads, a couple o’ ye may wanna get in there, or James is gonna be a scaly pancake in a moment.”
“Is she that bad?” Balmur muttered before a howl of unabashed outrage shattered the air.
My gaze shot over to where the two of them had been sparring, and the woman had left her hammer on the ground and was stomping toward James.
“Tha’ hammer is her crutch, lads. She drops that, she means business.” He shoved Jaken and me forward. “Go, or he may well die.”
I nodded to Jaken, his shield and sword at the ready, and then I cast Aspect of the Ursolon, pulling out Magus Bane as we rushed forward. My body grew larger, and my fur slightly shaggier as I moved, muscles bulging and growing denser as my strength increased ten points temporarily, and my attack power boosted with it.
Bonnie roared as she bolted toward James, who dodged as swiftly as he could, he didn’t have time to go from one martial form to another as he should have to channel his ki to greater effect.
I turned my axe so that the hammer portion was forward and activated Wind Scythe, throwing the weapon forward. It smacked into her back with an audible thud and the sound of a smack, but she just kept moving, and her health only dropped by like, 5%.
She was enraged, similar to my Feral Rage ability when I was in animal form and could take heavy damage.
“She’s taking half damage,” I warned Jaken, who clapped his sword against his shield, glowing red as he did.
“Hey, Bonnie! Come and get the metal guy,” Jaken taunted her, but her attention was on James.
I’ll go run interference, and you get her attention then. I pressed the breath from my body and sprinted forward to my weapon where it laid behind the frightening figure. Her tail flipped back and forth like a cat’s over top of it, and that gave me an idea.
I collected my fallen weapon and yanked on her tail as hard as I could, her left arm came back and I just barely caught it in time to keep it from clocking me in the side of the face. The momentum from her attack helped me to twist my axe and keep the limb pinned, her glowing red eyes turned to me.
“Hey, Bon. How’s thiiings?” She planted her feet beneath her body and threw her left arm forward with me still on it. I scrambled for any kind of purchase I could get but found none.
Get the fuck over here, damn it! I howled to Jaken as I sailed through the air.
Bonnie hopped forward into a crouch and pulled her right arm back into a haymaker where I looked to be falling toward. Her savage grin filled with even more crazed delight as I came closer.
Kong! Jaken’s shield flew into her as if thrown from some kind of Avenger and then lifted itself and began to batter her as Jaken came in with his great sword drawn. He hopped into the air and snatched my body close, and we landed together.
“Thanks.” The sound of fleshy knuckles cracking into the metal shield was all we could hear for a second.
“Got any ideas?” James was suddenly next to us, his lip bloodied, and he looked haggard.
“We could let her go and try to just subdue her.” Jaken shrugged as he peeked over the lip to watch the woman beat on his shield. “How do you come out of your rage ability like that, Zeke?”
“Usually when combat is over.” A fist came up under the shield headed our way, but the metal object cracked her on the back of the wrist, and she was back at it again.
“We could let the shield take the majority of the damage.” James looked hopeful. “Like letting a cat play with a toy until it gets bored or tired.”
“She’s gonna figure ye out, lads,” Nick called. “Gonna have ta not hit her, or let her hit you, for a minute. So like tag, but don’t get whacked. Hahaha!”
I blinked at the hill dwarf and thought of a few colorful things I’d like to say to him before a sound caught my attention. I looked back to see Bonnie grunting and straining as she was dragged around by the shield as it tried to escape her clutches.
Better get a move on. The other two sighed, but an idea occurred to me. Keep her distracted and away from me. I can trap her.
I thought of using Shade’s Prison, but the duration was thirty seconds and the cool down a minute. It wouldn’t work.
But I could possibly enchant something that would. I pulled out a platinum coin; it would serve. On the front of it was a simple design of some figure I didn’t recognize, but on the back was a smooth surface.
I engraved a small birdcage into it, lifting my eyes in time to see my two friends hooting and calling at Bonnie as she tried to get around the shield.
I smiled and turned my attention back to my work. I took my will and intent, then fed shadow-aspected mana into the coin. It took some concentration, but I was rewarded with a nice little prize.
Trickster’s Coin
Holds target (anyone who isn’t the owner) in place with a cage made by their own shadow for a short time.
Duration: 2 minutes, or until the cage is broken.
Coin enchanted by Adept enchanter Zekiel Erebos.
“Okay, guys, I’m read—” A fist that felt like it had been attached to a fifty-caliber machine gun whacked the side of my face, thoroughly ringing my bell. I flew head over tails six feet away and landed on my ass.
Well, that restarted the fucking minute. Shit. I glanced over to see three swimming Bonnies crouching and moving in my direction.
I took the coin in my hand and just fell onto my back, and as soon as she was on top of me, my vision cleared, and her mouth was wide open, a snarl of feral anger escaping her lips. I grunted and acted as though I was going to hit her in the face, and she grabbed my open hand and the coin.
She froze then, the red glow in her eyes deepening markedly, and I heard her grunt. The muscles in her body bulging and the veins popping against the skin as she struggled and failed to move.
For an item that had cost me 569 MP, that should hold her for at least a little bit.
I slid myself out from beneath her crouched form and dusted myself off, casting Heal on myself. Jaken was taking care of James, so I wasn’t too worried about him.
After a minute and forty-five seconds, Bonnie burst the cage, then fell to the ground unmoving as all of us watched her.
“Shit,” Jaken grunted, and I moved with him a heartbeat later. We were casting heals on her so fast that we barely noticed she was snoring. I picked up the saliva-covered coin that had fallen from her mouth and put it into my pocket. That was a good item to hold onto.
“She gets like this when she comes out of her rage without killing people,” Nick explained as he lifted her from the ground carefully. “Poor thing loses control for the first bit ‘til someone dies, then regains herself a bit more at a time.”
“Hitting her in the face does that?” James asked with concern.
“Aye.” Nick nodded and carried her into the back of the cart. Appearing again a few minutes later. “She’ll be out least an hour.”
“Where the fuck was the warning on that!” I rolled my eyes and Nick looked at me bashfully. “Some friend you are, almost getting us killed and shit. Dinner better be fucking amazing.”
We ate dinner, which was pretty damn awesome, Nick taking food to Bonnie when it was done. She was a little embarrassed by her outburst and didn’t want to come out right yet, he had informed us. Couldn’t blame her, but damn she had been strong.
A shiver raced down my spine as the sun fell from the sky for the day, the shadows taking the land in their umber embrace.
Then her smooth voice greeted me, “I am here.”
I smiled, Maebe had returned to this realm, and as I turned to the voice, I saw a more perfect shadowed representation of her as she stood in the moon and starlight.
“No need.” She held her shadowed hand out to mine, and I took it, reveling in how soft the shadows felt against my skin.
“What do you mean, ‘no need?’ How will you get here?” I blinked at her, and the shadows around her dissipated and left the real one standing there. “How?”
“Teaching you has given me a better understanding of these things myself.” She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling in the little light we had. “I have missed you.”
“I missed you too.” I took human form and kissed her greedily. She laughed against my lips and pulled me closer still. “Sorry about the lack of communication over the last couple days.”
She shook her head. “I needed time to myself to find something, and I have it now.”
I tried to pull back to look at her, but she stopped me with a tighter hug. “I have something for you,” she whispered against my neck; her voice wavering with uncertainty.
“What’s that?” I lifted her chin to look at me, and her features were uncertain too. “What’s wrong?”
“I am nervous.” She frowned, her nose crinkled, and her brow furrowed in thought. “I do not like it.”
“I can’t imagine that you would.” I hugged her shoulders tightly and kissed the top of her head. “What is it you wanted to give me?”
She glanced around the camp, most of the people there not having noticed us, except for Kayda, who watched attentively.
“Can we go somewhere we can be alone together?” Her hand was in mine and pulling before I even said anything.
Going for a walk, I’ll be okay. Nearby, and what not. I broadcast to the others, and they all grunted back. Muu was asleep, so nothing from him.
We walked for a little bit, well out of sight of the camp, but still close enough that we could sprint back to help if anything happened.
“Let’s have a seat.” I offered as we slowed our pace.
We sat together, staring up at the dark expanse above us.
“Do you remember much about how things had gone with Samir in my realm?” She was quiet after that, and I had to think on it for a minute, until she added, “Specifically with the Blood Rite?”
“Oh!” I frowned as I tried to recall. “That I would never be able to be your successor, right?”
“Exactly.” Maebe nodded. “You will never come to power should anything happen to me because you survived the rite.”
“I don’t know that I would do well leading the Unseelie without you around anyway.” I laughed nervously, uncertain as to why she was bringing that up after so long.
“You cannot lead my people without me,” she insisted.
“Yeah, Mae, I get it.” I frowned, a little hurt that she would just be shoving this in my face like that. I had never wanted to rule her people. I just wanted her.
I wanted her.
I turned to see her radiant face in the moonlight, she held a small box in her hand that she held out in front of her as if presenting it to me before kneeling beside me.
“I can’t have you forever,” she began softly, her sad voice wavered a little as she continued, “but what I have with you, I want to be properly had. I love you, Zekiel Erebos, will you be my king?”
To say that I was shocked would be the understatement of the century.
What do I say? All I could do was let my mouth open and close as I stared at the item she had presented to me. The small ring held a line of black stones with smaller bright white, red, green, sapphire, and other colored stones inside.
“It was my grandmother’s,” Maebe spoke, likely filling the silence so that I would have time to come to grips with her question, though a contemplative and slightly concerned look filled her eyes.
“It’s beautiful.” The emotion ripping through my heart at that moment was unreal. Did I deserve this? Knowing I’d be leaving? Did she deserve that? I had to know. “Why?”
A glistening tear fell from her right eye, leaving a slight trail down her cheek. “Why not? I will have little to nothing left when you leave. I do not expect to find this kind of thing again, so instead of never knowing, or asking myself what may have been—I will live in these moments with you, and our friends.”
I blinked, and she was buried in my chest with my arms around her for support. My body had reacted on its own, pulling her close enough to where I could whisper my heart to her.
“I don’t know what it will mean to do this, and we will definitely be discussing that, but yes. I’ll marry you, Mae.”
I lifted the ring from the box, and before I could put it on, Maebe took it from me.
“There’s a process, and I have to be the one to put it on your finger,” she explained as her eyes met mine. “It may be odd, but please, allow me to put it on you. It is enchanted, and when you wear it, it will bind us together. No matter where you are, I will know, and vice versa. Is that alright?”
Thinking about it, that wasn’t too bad at all. It was an insurance policy really, because if we could find each other, that would be good, right?
“Is there anything I have to do?” I asked, not uncertain but nervous, anyway. This was a big thing. “What about a ring for you?”
“We need a witness.” She frowned against the light. “And another ring will not be a worry.”
“I know someone I would trust to see this through.” I closed my eyes and sent a telepathic thought to my friends. Yohsuke, can you come here a minute?
Give me a minute, you needy bastard, he grumbled back.
It was a couple minutes later when he walked over to join us, his angry gaze casting about in the darkness, “Where you at?”
“Oh, forgive me, I forgot.” She squeezed my hand before waving her other one allowing the darkness to fall away from us. “I did not wish for us to be disturbed again; it was vexing not being able to tell you how I felt previously with all the interruptions.”
Ten feet away, still searching for us was Yohsuke. I whistled softly, and he turned around swiftly.
“Oh, there you are, and hi Maebe, how you doin’?” Yohsuke asked as he sat down next to us. “What’s up?”
“We need a witness.” I patted him on the shoulder, and he looked down into Maebe’s hand.
His eyes widened, and he looked to me and then back to her. “Are you sure, man?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
He then looked to Maebe. “And you seem to be as well, but is this really okay?”
Maebe’s suddenly shy smile seemed so cute at that moment before she looked at Yohsuke and nodded her head once, but she held a hand up so that she might have a moment to think before he spoke again.
“As you may have been able to see, I am …in love with your brother.” She hesitated, unsure how to continue. “He is a light to the darkness in me, and in him, his presence, his friendship, and in this relationship, I have known solace. Joy and wonder in ways I was unaware existed or were even open to me. I want to be with him always. And I know that with his duties to this world, his own, and his duty as a father, he will be forced to leave me, eventually.”
Yohsuke no longer looked skeptical, but he listened to her quietly.
“I do not wish to stand in his way of returning home, in fact, that is my desire. That he returns to his son, that all of you return to your home should you wish it and continue to live happily.” Her voice quivered, and she frowned, wiping her eyes before continuing, “But while all of you are here, I wish to experience this love with him in every way that I know how to. This is one of those ways. I wish to bind the two of us in marriage.”
“And we needed a witness, I wanted that to be you, if you’re okay with that?” I raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head.
“Always getting us into some crazy shit,” he muttered half angrily, half exasperatedly. “The others deserve to be here for you too man, we’re all in this together. I’ll go get them, and then we can do t
his.”
Maebe and I sat there as Yoh went and began to gather the others. Even the Braves came to join us, some of them bleary-eyed like Nick and Nic, but they were here. “As witnesses of the Realm,” Maebe had explained, though she watched all of them distrustfully at first.
“Now, I can witness.” Yoh smiled as Maebe and I stood. “You two have vows?”
She looked at me, her eyes wide in a panic. “What are these vows? Is it like a wedding contract?”
“They’re meant to express intent and a promise from one partner to the other as a show of commitment,” Balmur informed her politely, then grinned. “I’ve been working on mine for my fiancée for a long time. I miss her.”
I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get you back there, and it’s going to happen. You’ll get your happily ever after, bud.”
He ducked his head, and then a tug on my hand drew my attention, looking over to see Yoh motioning to my soon-to-be wife.
“I have some thoughts I would be willing to share. If you would all hear them?” Maebe looked at the others uncertain, her stoic demeanor cracking slightly.
“We’re already here, ain’t we?” Manly’s voice only sounded sour as she stood there in her nightgown and a light jacket that covered the rest of her. She was grinning ear to ear as soon as she found out Maebe was here, and she was invited to an impromptu royal wedding.
“You are.” Maebe eyed the little woman a moment, the others remaining respectfully quiet. “Zekiel, I have known you only a short time, but in that time, I have known you to be kind, thoughtful, patient, intelligent, cunning, and ruthless. I have come to know the spectrum of your character and have found that within that essence of you is a light that I wish to have within myself. We may not have long together in this world, in these realms, and your calling is elsewhere, but I would spend what precious time I can with you and our friends. I promise to love you as deeply as I can, and to have no regrets in this life, hoping to see you again.”
Into the Darkness: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Axe Druid Book 4) Page 21
