by Jamie Hawke
“Not that kind of learning,” he replied with a wink.
137
While I was anxious to see what sort of training Galahad had in mind, my need to check on my team far outweighed it. However, the recent spat with Moronoe had given me something I could work with, something I was excited to try out.
As we approached Gertrude’s house, I closed my eyes and brought myself back to the first location Moronoe had held me in my mind. Not exactly on my brain, but in the place that was my subconscious. For a brief moment I felt her presence sensing me, attempting to enter again, but I was prepared for that and acted fast.
Quickly visualizing the place and finding myself beside that same rune circle she had originally created, I brought up my screen and found defensive runes, patterns I’d been able to make since last time. Forming those runes into the ground of my mind, I enhanced them with amplification runes. While I was at it, I figured that applying other protective runes would make sense. Outside of the main protective circle, I set up amplification runes and elemental runes.
As I did so, my screen popped up and showed new skills available, related to elemental strikes. My need to say “Elfenol Streic” was no longer necessary, or so I assumed by what the screen was showing me. More than that, it was like I had a magical barrier around me. Shit, if it was this easy I’d apply every rune I could think of.
Halfway through the application of the next rune, however, pain caused me to freeze up. Every muscle in my body cramped, and I fell to the ground, shaking.
“No more,” Mizoa said.
I turned, confused to see her standing there. Fully clothed, this time.
“How did you…?” I glanced over at the runes.
“Because I’m on your side, for one. What you’ve set up are defensive runes, runes that will definitely keep Moronoe from trying one of her tricks again.”
“Oh. And… why are you here?”
“To save you.” She walked closer, careful not to step on the runes, but studying them minutely. “You realize what’s happening, right? Imagine trying to write on the margins of a book, only with the same ink and quill as the original. At some point, the new words have to start covering the old, right? Making it hard to read. Could even get to a point where the book says something different than it originally did.”
“You’re saying I’m rewriting, or writing over, my code, basically?”
She frowned. “Sure, if that works better for you.”
I nodded.
“You’ve met Glitonea. You’ve seen the runes on her skin?”
“I have.”
“There you go.” She folded her arms and smiled, as if that answered everything.
“Oh, the runes on her skin!” I exclaimed as the realization hit me. “As in, her brain was full?”
Mizoa chuckled. “You could say that. More than yours, even. Which is part of why she is the way she is.”
“Too much of this and I could go a little crazy.” I scrunched my nose. “Fuck.”
“Precisely.”
With a glance around, she nodded, starting to fade.
“Wait!” I shouted, suddenly at her side, holding her wrist. “Where are you? The progress…?”
She continued to fade but nodded. “Glitonea is with me. We’re still on the search. But, it won’t be easy.”
“Meanwhile, the Order is split,” I pointed out. “You heard of the attack? I was there, and if we can’t bring all of this to a close, fast—”
“Let me stop you right there. You’re not one of them anymore, so don’t talk like them. Don’t think like them.”
“Them?”
“Mortals, Jericho. You have risen above them, and have to think bigger. Yes, there’s a battle ongoing, one it would be best to win. But in the end, it’s just one battle among many in this ongoing war. When this one is done, you will find more beyond it. What matters isn’t necessarily that you win, but that you don’t give up, that you keep on fighting.”
“And the final battle? When is that?”
She cocked her head. “There will always be another battle, Jericho.”
For a moment, I tried to grasp what she was saying. But no, I couldn’t accept that. “Maybe what you say is true, about not quitting, about being the last one standing—but we’ve lost men and women. Some, permanently. I refuse to lose any more than I have to, and for me, that’s the end result. Each time one of them dies and is gone, we’ve lost a little more. Even if we win the final battle, which I insist there has to be, we will have still lost in that way.”
“Well then…” She offered a smile, almost gone, mostly just that smile, actually, and a gleam of eyes.
“What are you looking for?” I asked. “Before you go, tell me.”
“Stones.”
“Stones?” I frowned, shaking my head in confusion.
“There used to be several stones that worked with the Liahona in specific ways. In truth, it fit into a larger statue that was part of a temple in Avalon. While the Liahona is the key, there is so much more to this puzzle that you don’t understand.”
“And if you find the stones, what then?”
“A better chance of victory.” It was only her voice then, the rest gone, and then she said no more.
Knowing I didn’t want to do any more damage to myself, and looking forward to telling my team about this interaction, I exited this land of my subconscious and saw that no more than a couple of seconds had passed in real time.
We arrived at the house, then moved through the secret entrance, glancing back over my shoulder to ensure I wasn’t followed. Pausing to take in the orange streaks across the yellow sky, I had to take a breath and take stock of where I was in life. Able to alter myself with runes, like brands both physical and mental. Magic at my fingertips, a spellbook copied over—albeit partially—into a digital screen I had created with the same transmutation powers that most of my life I had misinterpreted, thinking I was a freak, or delusional.
Twelve-year-old me would be standing on his tippy toes fist-pumping at the thought of this, whooping and hollering with joy. Sometimes I thought I would do so now, if not for the anxiety related to feeling like saving the world was up to me.
And in that moment, for the first time since this all began, I really wanted to reach out to my parents and make sure they were okay. A thought hit me, making me wonder if it were possible. Mizoa had entered my subconscious just now in a non-aggressive way. Was it only because I used magic, or was it bigger than that?
I took another step and closed the entrance behind me. Enclosed in darkness, I let my mind focus on my parents, linking in through my DNA and sending out a sort of signal in search of them in that sense. An odd sensation came over me as I felt the world around me, sensed numerous people with shared DNA, so many relatives out there that I had never known about… and then a match.
Suddenly, I was there with my mom and dad, standing at the edge of a mountain range. Wait, in a cabin, looking out at a line of tree-covered hills, a rusty old cannon nearby. Maybe something from the Civil War? They were holding hands, both in silence, watching. At first, I wasn’t sure what they were looking at, but after a moment there was a flicker of light. Then another.
Fireflies!
I laughed, taking a step closer to get a better view. Growing up on the West Cost, I’d never seen the things. Well, unless you count the fake ones in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. The sight was stunning, watching them flicker in and out like little pieces of magic, yet not really magical at all. I think that’s what was most stunning about them—the fact that they could elicit that sort of response, reminding me that nature and the world had its own beauty, its own sense of awe.
My cheeks were warm, ears itching, both at once, causing me to turn to my parents and see them staring at me in shock.
“It’s happening, then,” my mom said, simply.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“The fight. The battle, or whatever.”
“Magic,” my dad said. “That’s what this is, right?”
“Yes,” I replied, slowly, uncertainly. “But… why aren’t you freaking out?”
“My sister—I mean, Gertrude, came to us,” my mom explained. “She explained that she was dying, and what had happened, including about how we’d become estranged and why it was necessary. It was like this, but in a shared dream. You know us, being spiritual, when we both realized it was shared, we were on board.”
“Hard to believe, but… you’re here.” My dad cocked his head. “Sort of.”
“Right, sort of.” I chuckled. “I’m still in D.C., technically. And all that prep-work you two had me do? Kind of useless in my current predicament, I gotta say.”
My mom laughed and tried to playfully hit my arm, but her hand went through me. “The point is to always be ready.”
“Always be ready,” I said, repeating the words she had often used as an excuse for getting me to try all manner of sports, chess camps, and programming classes growing up. “Why couldn’t you have had me ready with survival training, or hand-to-hand combat? Stuff like that?”
She scrunched her nose. “Too violent.”
My dad grunted. “Ironic, we know.”
“I came to check on you, that’s all. See that you’re safe, and well.”
“And you?”
“Safe?” I grunted in a ‘safe as can be’ sort of way.
“Well, stay that way. We might not have been the best parents while you were growing up, but we’ve been talking a lot on this trip… and someday, when this is over and you’re ready, we’d like to try to make up for that.”
“Really?” I asked, shaking my head. “A dollar short, or something like that.”
“You’re still breathing, and so are we,” my mom countered.
“As long as neither of us gives up, we win,” I said, remembering what Mizoa had said. With that, I nodded. “I’d like us to spend some time together. Like you said, when this is over.”
“Stay safe,” my dad said as I felt myself starting to fade.
“You too,” I replied, and then I was back in the tunnel, ready to find my team and get the next stage of this battle moving.
138
I rarely lingered around Aerona when she was stone, maybe because I hadn’t, until very recently, been as intimate with her. Now that I had, I paused, gazing up at her, and realized her stone form had the same gold tint to it that her skin had when she was mobile. Running the back of my fingers along her cheek, it felt smooth, more like actual gold or some other sort of metal with a golden gleam.
“There you are,” Steph said as she entered the room.
“Hey. You ever notice—”
“How she’s different?” Steph nodded. “My guess is it’s because she was there longer, in Avalon. The magic affected the stone.”
I nodded, rubbing my chin. I could buy that, but still would have liked more of the picture. That could be a conversation for another time, though, so I went over to Steph, kissed her, and glanced around at the other two stone gargoyles. Shisa was sleeping at Kordelia’s feet—which was ironic, because the lion-dog didn’t need sleep, as far as I knew. Maybe he was becoming more ‘real’ the longer he was alive, or maybe he just liked the idea of sleep and was pretending.
“Where’s Megha?” I asked, glancing around.
“Went to get supplies,” Steph replied. “Groceries and whatnot, I think? Should be back soon.”
“Smart,” I noted. “We should probably have a system for that.”
“Details. I think that, at the Senator’s house, it won’t be a problem.”
I chuckled at that, thinking about the style of life people like senators likely had, a level above anything I had ever been exposed to.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye and I turned to see Shisa there, watching us.
“Waking time for some,” Steph said. “Good boy.”
“Oh, you’ve decided Shisa’s male, too?”
She laughed. “Of course, he is!”
The magic of watching the waking gargoyles was never lost on me, and I was certain it never would be. First Ebrill broke free, the blue magic of it lingering in her eyes a moment before fading to reveal the loving look she often graced me with when she awoke. Then came Kordelia, who broke free as if escaping a prison—throwing her stone aside and roaring. Aerona was last.
“What did we miss?” Ebrill asked.
I filled them in and they shared worried looks, annoyed as always that they had to miss what was happening during the day. Nothing we could do about that yet, though. They agreed we needed to ensure I wasn’t left alone like that too often, and we moved to see if Megha was back so we could eat. On the way, though, I pulled Aerona aside, lingering in the room.
“What is it?” she asked, as a worried expression crossed her face.
I’ve been thinking,” I said, hand pulling Aerona close. “I want to make it up for you.”
“Make wha—oh!” Her smile showed she had caught on. My hand moving down her back and grabbing a handful of ass helped drive the point home. “Now?”
“I’m up for it.”
She licked her lips, hand grabbing my crotch. “Really?”
I laughed. “Not literally, yet, but… that’s a good halfy you’re feeling there, you know. My soldier sometimes waits to commit until he knows there’ll be a true battle to be had.”
“Did you just say your penis was going to battle my vagina?”
“When you say it like that…” I grimaced. “I’ll just show myself to the door.”
Pride hurt, I started to turn and go, but she squeezed a bit firmer on my package, shaking her head. “Oh, no, you don’t. You owe me.”
“I do.”
Our lips met, my hands caressing her golden skin, but I pulled back.
“What?”
“Is it wrong for me to ask…” I started, but curiosity was killing me. “Why is your skin different from the others? Gold, I mean.”
“Ah… Not wrong, but I don’t have an answer.”
I nodded. “Steph thinks it might be some effect from Avalon. Since you were there longer than the others.”
Aerona shrugged, hand now working my pants open, fingers moving along the sides of my pubes, teasing me. “Might be. Or maybe it’s that I have more inherent magic in me.”
“Interesting.”
“Are we going to talk all night, or shut up and fuck?”
I zipped my lips, then pulled out her left breast. Caressing it, I unzipped my lips again, then kissed her neck, moving down to nibble on her nipple. She let out a quick breath and then had my cock out—now fully erect—and pinned me against the wall.
“Stop delaying.”
“Oh, I thought women liked foreplay.” I looked up at her, confused.
“Only when we need it. Right now, I need your cock inside me.”
No arguing with that. I grabbed her leg, grinned as she undid the cloth and belt around her waist, and then bent at the knees to get a better position to slide into her. She reached behind to help guide me, but she was so wet and ready, it was hardly necessary. We were thrusting, moving, clutching, even a bit of biting, and in a matter of what couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, she had her face buried in my neck as she melted into me. Now I was really sliding around in there, so I grabbed her ass and thrust, feeling my full length inside of her, then was about to thrust again when she breathed heavily and pulled off me.
“Wait, wait,” she whispered, and before I knew it she was kneeling and stroking me furiously with both hands.
I put one hand on the wall and gripped one of her horns with the other. Her tail came up to slap me on the hand, but she shrugged.
“Reflex,” she said. “Go ahead. I’ve never… had that done.”
It was odd for me too, of course. Grabbing gargoyle horns during sex or sexual acts wasn’t something they taught in sexual education classes. Then again, the horns were part of these women, and therefor
e I figured something I should caress in tender moments.
Caressing her horns, I felt my cock throbbing, my balls tensing. Her head thrust forward as she put her mouth to the tip and caught all of my cum, even slurping up the last drops as she squeezed my cock dry.
“Fuck, it’s been a long time since I tasted cum,” she said, wiping her chin. “Honestly, it’s a bit salty.”
I laughed. “Not like pineapple or…?”
She shook her head. “Maybe if you drink a bunch of pineapple juice? But no, don’t let anyone lie to you. I’ll gladly swallow your cum over and over, but… it doesn’t exactly taste sweet.”
“Sorry?”
“Shut up.” She flicked her tongue across my tip, playing with the hole, then took my entire cock in her mouth.
Watching her, I had to point out one small detail. “At this point, you’re tasting yourself, too.”
Pulling my cock out of her mouth, she grinned. “I know—I was curious.”
“Oh. And?”
“Sweet, like mango.”
I laughed, motioning her up. “This, I’d like to find out first hand.”
“No, no, no.” She pushed back. “Sorry, ain’t happening. Not without a good wash, first.”
“That’s…” I was going to say not fair, but honestly, I preferred cleanliness to not. Only, now I felt like an ass for not washing up first.
She smiled, likely guessing where my mind was, and then stood, pointing to her mouth. “You can taste these lips, though.”
“Gladly.”
My lips met hers, our tongues caressing each other, and then I pulled back. “You’re right. Salty.”
She laughed. “Told you.”
After quickly dressing, we walked back to join the others. They were waiting, quietly, and all turned to watch us enter.
“Got that taken care of?” Riland asked, more annoyed than the rest of them.
“Um, yes,” I said, smoothing out my shirt.
“Good,” Ebrill said, smiling at Aerona. All the ladies were smiling proudly at her, actually, while Riland kind of glared.
