Rebirth

by Darkbringer

  Feeling Crystal’s energy, she was unsurprisingly the one with the least amount of ‘slime’ clinging to her. Heartblade had a wonderful effect pushing the dead back, and it never left her side. Part of me was tempted to try and skip the spirit manipulation and to simply borrow the blade from her until we could escape from here, but I pushed that thought aside. Were such doubts my own natural caution and reluctance, or was it the darkness trying to stop me from dealing with it?

  I honestly didn’t know; therefore, I chose to ignore my own gut warnings and proceed ahead anyway.

  I was going to wait until after I’d finished manipulating Crystal’s spirit, before asking the girls to help numb me for my own ordeal, but I was already past that state. Slowly, I tried to match my breathing to Crystal’s, and I increased the flows of air magic between us. Moment by moment, I used what little I had learned merging Mongo and Tiffany, and I let the magic drift between us and into us. It slowly connected our lungs, and then our airways, and finally we were connected through the oxygen in our blood.

  I could feel the air as it moved and circulated from Crystal to me, and then from me back to Crystal. Her exhale was my inhale; my exhale became her inhale. I had gotten this far with Mongo and Tiffany with no problem, but it was after this that things turned rather rough. While taking a few moments to match breathing, I slowly began to swap the magic of life for the magic of air.

  Last time, I’d forcibly skinned Mongo layer by layer and then infused those layers of life into Tiffany. It worked, but it hadn’t been pleasant to perform, nor to watch according to the others. I didn’t want to torment neither Crystal nor myself in such a manner, so I decided to try a different route.

  Whereas before I’d removed pieces of Mongo and inserted them into Tiffany, this time, I maintained the slow circular rhythm that we’d established with our breathing. Slowly, gently, I eased the barest trickle of life out of Crystal. Like a wisp of candle smoke, a thin white trail of light gently drifted from her mouth and nostrils and over to mine. Patiently, I circulated the life energy throughout my body, and a sense of warmth tingled from my top to bottom.

  As embarrassing at is was, I found myself growing erect as pleasure and energy flowed throughout my body. Trying to ignore the giggles which I had to assume were Tiffany’s, I continued to slowly circulate the life throughout my core, until it peacefully eased out of my own nostrils and throat and worked its way over to Crystal. Whereas Mongo had experienced an unmeasurable agony, I was experiencing untold ecstasy. I could feel Crystal from top to bottom; all her parts, with no exception, were connected, caressing, and reaching out to accept and embrace me.

  Sex could not be as powerful, nor as intimate. We were connected. We were one. My heartbeat matched hers. My breath matched hers. My ecstasy matched hers. I found myself reaching a climax of undescribed power, and Crystal joined me in it. There’s truly no words to describe the experience.

  For how long I was lost in this state of ultimate bliss, I can’t say. I was trapped in an endless cycle of passionate orgasm until my body simply had nothing left for me to release; it was the pain of an empty explosion which finally snapped a sliver of my mind back into focus.

  Pulling the tattered remains of my will together, I figured that we had shared and circulated more than enough life between us. At the moment, it was impossible to tell where one life began and where the other ended. We had truly merged our life forces together.

  Slowly, I began to force the magic which controlled the connection to switch from the magic of life to the magic of death. Just as before, I gently tugged and pulled a small piece of Crystal’s soul and circulated it through my own, before peacefully letting it pull itself back to her and take a section of my own spirit with it.

  In and out, like a patient on a dialysis machine, her spirit flowed, circulated throughout my body, and then back into herself once again.

  Once again, the feeling is…

  … There are no words to describe it. I won’t even try. If sharing life is the ultimate ecstasy, then sharing souls is an experience a thousand times more intimate and powerful. By the time I managed to finally sever the connection, I couldn’t tell where Crystal stopped and when Mik’Hail began anymore.

  Blinking once, I could see Tiffany and Jess standing over us, eyes wide in wonder. Blinking a second time, I could see them from a slightly different angle. Blinking again, I could see them once more from the first view.

  ‘Crystal; you’ll never be free from me now, I don’t think.’ I didn’t have to say the words. Thinking them was more than enough. She was me. I was her.

  ‘I don’t want to be, My Lord. I’m happy where I’m at.’

  She didn’t need to say it. I could already feel the truth of her words in my very spirt.

  The Birth of Darkness?

  Looking and moving around took a little adjusting to do once again. Everything felt new. Different. I was getting physical sensations from both my own body and from Crystal’s as well. Perhaps the oddest sensation was feeling that she was feeling me, as I was feeling her. It reminded me of placing one mirror in front of another mirror, and letting them reflect something endlessly back and forth; that’s how the emotions felt.

  “Are you guys Okay?” Tiffany was leaning anxiously over me, checking me with her magics for any obvious defects or problems.

  “I’m…” Shrugging, I was at a loss for how to explain it. “Confused by the results,” I finally said, honestly, “but I think I’ll be fine with just a little time to get used to things. At least I don’t think I’m going to need several days of sleep for my spirit to heal like Mongo did. I was worried about that since we’re on a time limit now.”

  “I feel the same,” Crystal told Jess, smiling slightly. “It’s an unusual feeling, but nothing that I can’t adapt to, I think.”

  Standing slowly, I wobbled from the new, unusual sensations coming to my legs and body. I hear losing a limb can disorient and confuse someone mercilessly. It seems that gaining a whole second body does much the same. I was finding it hard to focus on my balance and wobbled like a newborn fawn. I didn’t need to glance over to see that Crystal was having the same difficulties.

  “You two aren’t going to be in shape to do anything for a while,” Jess muttered in irritation. “It’s like the two of you are stupid drunk.”

  “We’ll work it out,” I promised and Crystal nodded. “For now, Dino needs to start blasting and clearing the dead back from those bars and thinning their numbers. When using my magic, I could sense the crypts around us, and Megan has moved on deeper into the depths of the earth. I can follow her for part of the way, so it’s a clue for where we need to be next.

  “But, before that,” I warned, “Dino needs to help us reclaim those other rooms so we can gather up what’s left of our gear in them, and you girls need to sit and recover the magic you used to help us.”

  ‘You need to recover your strength and magics as well, My Lord,’ Crystal told me mentally. It was quite odd how easily sending or reading her thoughts was now. All it took was a simple desire for her to understand a message, and she knew what I wanted to say. Keeping secrets from the two of us seems like it’ll be something impossible to do from now on. What one knows, the other can know with just a little gentle probing of memories. It won’t be long before Crystal realizes exactly how odd I am, and that this is actually my second attempt at life.

  ‘I already realize it, My Lord,’ Crystal told me, already buried deep in my mind. As I became aware of the concern, she did as well. ‘We’ll have a lot to discuss between the two of us later,’ she promised, ‘but for now simply learning to control our bodies as we used to must take top concern.’ She was right, of course. Explaining my world and my previous life was something that I’d have to do later. For now, I needed to simply rest, master my own body once again, and regain my energy.

  With a gentle probe, I felt the magics around me and then channeled the power of water to quickly wash myself and Crystal. Merging in
the manner we had, was a completely orgasmic experience; and my own manly fluids were thick across my middle. Crystal was about in the same condition, with her legs drenched and covered with her own womanly excretions. Washing and cleaning ourselves was something that I felt was quite important, and it was a simple enough test of my ability to manipulate my magic.

  Luckily the flows of water, which I used to clean us; and the flows of air, which were used to dry us off afterward, obeyed my will and worked as easily as ever. I was half-afraid that bonding with Crystal would’ve affected my ability to control magic, but thankfully that wasn’t one of the side effects. Being disorientated, feeling drunk, and having problems moving and dealing with my physical self was more than enough to handle. I’m grateful that issues with my magic weren’t included in the changes.

  Once we were cleaned and dried, I wobbled over and sat down, my back against the wall. Stretching forward, I reached for first my left toes and then my right. These were basic stretching exercises which they’d taught us in Kindergarten oh so many years ago, but I thought they might help me feel and reconnect with my own body. Crystal stared at me curiously for a few moments and then sat down at the bottom of my legs and joined me.

  Dino blasted his flames back and forth from one set of bars to the other, and Jess and Tiffany both rested and nuzzled against Mongo as he leaned up against the door. Several hours of quiet passed as everyone did their own thing – Dino melting the dead, the girls resting and recovering their magic while Mongo guarded them and the entrance, and Crystal and I practiced our sit-ups, push-ups, toe-touches, jumping jacks, and other common exercises. Slowly, we regained the control over our own movements. Things were still a little awkward, but they were manageable for now, and that was all that was required at the moment.

  As the hours wore by, it was Jess who finally got up and broke our restful routine first. Walking over, she channeled a little magic and created a few pieces of fresh fruit and began to distribute them to everyone. “Eat,” she warned us. “Everyone needs to keep their strength up.”

  “Thanks.” Taking a few different things from her, I took the time to eat and share what I’d taken with Crystal. “Guys, we don’t know day from night down here. We don’t know what time it is, or how much time we have to achieve our goals. With that said, though,” I stressed, “we can’t afford to just rush out and get ourselves in trouble. We need a plan of some sort for surviving and stopping the revival of this evil.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Mongo asked, sounding like he didn’t care one way or another. He truly was broken, I feared.

  “First thing to do is to get up after we all eat and finish what Dino’s spent all morning starting for us. I’ll get rid of the bars leading to the left and we’ll blast our way into the next room and secure it.”

  “Why that way first?” Dino muttered. “My stuff and Jess’s is to the right.”

  “I realize that Dino.” Much to my credit, I didn’t even sigh this time at his interruption. I suppose I’m learning to accept his whiny outbursts. “The reason we’re going to the left first is for Mongo. He’s one of the shields that people like me and you end up hiding behind, and it’d be nice if he had his armor, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, whatever…” Dino mumbled something else, but I just tuned it out. When we get back to town, I’m going to reevaluate whether I even bother attending the school or not. I think if I stay, I’m definitely going to find someplace different to stay so I won’t have to be around him any more than is necessary.

  ‘There’s always the house which I bought with your money, My Lord. You’re welcome to come stay with me anytime,’ Crystal told me, having read my mind again.

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,’ I thought back to her. First, we needed to survive and get out of here. Worrying about where to stay back in town was something that could come later.

  “Once we’ve cleared that room and sealed the door again, we’ll surge forward and on into the room Crystal and I was sleeping in,” I continued aloud, so everyone could follow along with the plan.

  “I don’t think we’ll have much problem,” I offered, optimistically, “as I’ve got my magic back and can lead the way forward by picking up where Dino left off. When you guys are ready, I’m going to blast a wave of heat and fire into the next room that’ll be hot enough to melt those stone bars and anything behind them. I imagine that the corruption will fight back almost instantly and freeze the ground and walls, so Dino you stand prepared to warm the air and keep us all from turning into popsicles...”

  “Wouldn’t it just be easier to open the door and clear the hallway?” Mongo asked, while half shrugging. Maybe there’s hope for him yet!

  “Maybe,” I agreed, cautiously. “What makes you think so?” I was hoping to draw him out of his shell a little more by encouraging him to offer insights into a better plan. He’d led the other team, and he’s led other tasks in the past. His experience in these matters is much better than mine.

  “I dunno.” Mongo just shrugged his massive shoulders and kept his head down. “If there’s problem with the crypt fighting back if the walls get hot, why worry about heating the stone to melt those bars? Let’s just open the door and fight to the other room and then close them behind us.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me, boss!” Enthusiastically, I offered an encouraging thumb up to Mongo. “I’m not a boss,” was his only gloom-filled reply. Honestly, I don’t think either way will prove a problem at this point; I have enough power to vaporize my way through the dead for the next several hallways. It’s what I did previously after all when Crystal and I secretly cleared their numbers somewhat last night.

  I was really just trying to draw Mongo out of his depression a bit by stressing what wasn’t a real concern. The bars had been melted and cleansed from the taint previously when I’d first shaped the loose stone into the shower, and the corruption hadn’t spread to them yet. Melting them wouldn’t trigger any response from the darkness around us; I simply stressed that it might so Mongo’s leader instincts would kick back in.

  It’s too bad they just twitched their muscles there a few times and didn’t spring back to life fully. I’d love to let him deal with managing all the people in the group – especially Dino – so all I’d have to focus on was my fighting and watching my energy levels. At least there still seems to be hope for him! I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

  “Grab that door, boss,” I ignored his refusal to accept such a title. People often become what they’re expected to be. If he’s called boss and treated like one, Mongo just might become one again. “You open it when you’re ready, and then stand back and I’ll blast our way out to the hall.”

  Crystal clutched Heartblade tightly in her hand, and I pulled a large amount of fire and air energy to my command. Mongo slowly rose and then waited for Jess and Tiffany to move to the back of the room with Dino. “Mif, you start blasting the dead through those bars again.” Even though it was a command, it didn’t seem to have any real strength of conviction behind it. “When you start, I’ll yank these open and Michael can blast his way out and then help clear them from the hall’s side. Trapped between two wizard’s flames, they should go down quickly.”

  Dino glared at me as if he wanted to say something to argue, and then he slowly shook his head from side to side. I wasn’t the one who gave the order, and it didn’t seem like he was going to complain back to Mongo about being told what to do. If Mongo would only snap out of it, things could go so much easier for us! At least he could handle Dino without a fight over the simplest things.

  “I’m ready, boss! Whenever you are Dino!”

  “I’m not a boss,” came back Mongo’s sullen reply as Dino blasted fire through the left set of stone bars. Taking his time, not in a rush to make any mistakes, Mongo glanced left and right at me and Crystal and then slowly nodded his head. Reaching forward, he grabbed the handle and tugged open the door.

  KABOOOM!!

  Fire a
nd thunder erupted from outside the doorway as a massive wave of fire and death exploded inwards. Instinctively, I lashed back out at the opposing energy with my own prepared might. The resulting concussion was one that shattered the door, cracked the walls, and sent Mongo and Crystal flying to slam into the far walls opposite each other.

  That bitch Megan had trapped the doors somehow!

  Fighting the raging magic which tried to rush in and consume us all, I grabbed ahold of the tainted weaves of fire with my own and twisted them around in a cyclone of energy. The death magics followed along, and intermingled with the maelstrom of energy fighting to destroy everything in its path, and with an effort of will, I forced it backward, out of the room, and into the hall.

  “Release such magics on me, you bitch!” I howled with anger, as the magics howled and battled with each other. Had Megan stayed behind to help control her magics, things may have been more difficult; but as the energy was just shaped to explode when the door was opened, it wasn’t that difficult to take control of the swirling power and make it my own.

  Stomping out into the hallway, I split the firestorm to either side, evaporating everything left and right of the door. Glancing down the hall, four dark and ominous runes glowed brightly against the floor and doors of the other rooms on this side of the hall. Megan had trapped every door and not just this one!

  Snarling, I refocused my will, grabbed the maelstrom of power tightly under my control, and then I slowly moved it down the hall. The moment it hit the first rune, there was a dark explosion of power – which I quickly wrapped up and channeled into the massive swirl of energy I already had control of. Like a firework exploding in a tornado, the runes power was quickly smothered and absorbed into my own.

  The dark feeling of the greasy taint oozed around and along my own magics, trying to get to me, but I was expecting such and keep my own flows of purifying fire between me and the corruption. Without a will to guide it, the taint was easy enough to fight off when one was expecting it.