Pandora grimaced. “If I had more time to reconnect with my mysticism skills, I’d be able to help,” she said. “But as it stands, attempting to cast a teleportation spell would likely knock me unconscious for a day or so.”
Corvus agreed with her. “That’s quite true, my dear,” he responded. “Aye, there’s a reason why most mystics, even highly skilled ones, choose to teleport via enchantment. Anyway, you two make yourselves comfortable. I’ve got to lock myself away and figure out this obstacle for you.”
I took a moment to create a save point. Though I would have preferred to go rumbling through space-time to find Lord Ephemera at once, just like before, I wasn’t going to let my downtime go to waste.
While Pandora went outside with a bucket of water to water the horse, I went upstairs to the guest bedroom in the cottage. I peeled off my armor and my boots then fell into the small bed, pulling up my skill tree in the process.
I had plenty of skill points to spare, so I had quite a wide selection of perks and attribute boosts to choose from. The problem was, I’d decided to become a bit more stingy regarding how I spent my points.
Yeah, it was tempting to blow a bunch of points on random perks, but I wanted to save more of them for the Necromancer. Once we rescued Bella then made our way to the Imperial City, we’d meet up with the head librarian. The librarian would give us intel on the Dark King – his strengths and, more importantly, his weaknesses – and once I had a better idea of his abilities, I’d spend my skill points accordingly.
Still, I had more than enough that I’d earned the right to spend at least one of them.
I grinned to myself, because now that I’d unlocked mysticism magic, there were lots of corresponding perks and attribute boosts.
TK BOOST
EFFECT: TELEKINESIS +10 FOR 5 MINUTES
COSTS NO MANA
An interesting one, for sure, but I kept scrolling.
MULTIPLY SPELL ABSORPTION
EFFECT: SPELL ABSORPTION +5 FOR 2 MINUTES
COSTS NO MANA
That one was tempting, but my Soulguard could absorb spells quite efficiently, and my spell absorption skills were coming along well.
But then my eyes lit up. Bingo!
DETECT LIFE SPELL
EFFECT: SINGLE-USE ONCE PER DAY, DETECT LIFE FOR 30 MINUTES
COSTS NO MANA
Because this was a spell learned from the skill tree, it cost me no mana, just like my single-use invisibility spell. Though it wasn’t the flashiest perk, I figured it would come in handy in Lord Ephemera’s citadel, because I was sure there’s be no shortage of creatures he’d created from illusion magic that would give off no life aura. If he created an illusion of Bella, I’d be able to tell that one from the real Bella with the detect life spell.
I spent the skill point, content with my choice, and then I heard the guestroom door creak open.
It was Pandora. She shut the door, locked it, crossed her arms, then leaned against the wall. “Earthman, I have a question for you,” she said.
“What, you want to know how I got so handsome?” I said.
She shook her head, grinning, but there was a curious, yet almost sad look in her eyes. “No,” she said. “I was wondering how you knew that Marcus was an Imperial spy. He’d given no indication. And just like me and Sephara, you seemed convinced that he was a good young man before he turned on you.”
I sighed. Though it was ultimately irrelevant because I’d reverted to a previous save point, Marcus had gotten the better of me. Admitting it was still painful. More and more, I was unaccustomed to defeat.
“In another timeline,” I began, “he took me off-guard with his paralyze enchantment.” I jerked my thumb toward my throat. “The sneaky fucker stuck his blade through my neck.”
Pandora paused for a moment and her face tightened. In her eyes, I saw something like fear, frustration, and sadness, all mixed together with a healthy dose of confusion. “So you died,” she said.
“In that timeline, which no longer exists,” I answered. “I can sort of…rewind events to a certain degree. It’s a nice little perk that the Soulguard gives me.”
“You’ve hinted at this before,” Pandora said. “Do all who wield the Soulguard have this power?”
I knew why she was asking. If I had the ability to make save points, then the False Champion must have had that ability, as well. And if that was the case, why hadn’t that brave woman reverted to a save point after she died from her wounds from battling the Dark King?
“The Failed Champion…” I began, before promptly cutting myself off. “Actually, I prefer calling her the False Champion. She didn’t fail at anything, if you ask me. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t the Champion of all Mananymphs. Anyway, I’m sure she had this ability. The difference is, something must have somehow made her lose that power at some point.”
She frowned. “So that means that you could die permanently as well,” Pandora said. “If you somehow lose that ability.”
“Yeah,” I said after thinking about it for a moment. “I suppose I could.”
Pandora had been looking away from me, like she couldn’t bring herself to look me in the eye, but suddenly her intense gaze settled on mine. All that confusion and melancholy were now replaced with an intense, almost desperate sort of longing.
Though she looked like she was on the brink of tears, her eyes began to crackle with bright mysticism magic, as if she were about to cast a spell.
“Hey…are you alright?” I asked as the air cracked and rippled around her, as that bright mysticism light flared at her fingertips.
She wiggled the doorknob to make sure it was locked.
Suddenly, she grinned an aggressive sort of grin.
I was just about to ask her what the hell she was doing, but that was when her eyes crackled brightly.
That was when my belt suddenly became undone, when my pants were promptly tugged down, and I realized exactly what Pandora was planning.
Chapter Seven
In that moment, nothing else mattered. Not the battles that we’d already fought. Not the countless more we’d have to fight in the future.
Life and death didn’t even matter.
I ripped my shirt off as Pandora rushed toward the bed. She wrapped her arms around my neck and I pulled her onto the bed with me. Our lips came together, warm and wet, and our tongues pushed back and forth against one another.
Pandora whimpered lightly as I ran my fingers over her pointed fairy ears, then down over her wings, until I found the buttons to undo her leather assassin’s outfit.
She gasped as I pulled it down to her waist, revealing her firm porcelain body, her firm breasts, then tangled my fingers in her hair as I pulled her against my bare chest.
Suddenly, Pandora pushed me down onto the mattress, onto my back, and she was straddling me. She dug her fingertips into my chest, bent down, and kissed my neck.
As I felt her lips suck lightly on my neck, she slipped her hand down between us and grabbed me tight.
I grunted as I felt her small hand tighten around my erection. I pulled her mouth from my neck, kissed her, then felt the animal inside me rise up in passion.
I grabbed Pandora by the hips and flipped her onto her back. She shimmed the rest of the way out of her leather assassin’s outfit. Grabbing it, I tossed it aside, onto the floor, then took a moment to admire the perfection of her naked form.
“Earthman…” she whispered, that word rolling delicately off her pouty lips as the desire grew in her dark, midnight eyes.
As much as I wanted to be inside her, I wanted to please her first.
Pushing her thighs apart, I licked my lips before descending to the treasure between her thighs.
“Oh!” she cried out.
I ran my tongue across the length of her blossoming flower, slowly and patiently tasting every inch of it.
A shiver ran through me as I felt her shudder in pleasure, as she dug her fingertips hard into my shoulders, pulling me t
ighter to her welcoming nook.
I looked up at her from her mound as she trembled and shuddered, as she convulsed from the sensations of my tongue.
Then, taking her by surprise, I suddenly varied the motion of my tongue. When I flicked it across her swollen cherry, she clamped her hand over her mouth and screamed into her palm as she came.
For a moment, I just remained there, quiet and still between her thighs, watching her tremble, watching her honey drip from her sex.
Then she looked down at me, and I saw that white magical light crackling in her eyes once more.
She curled her forefinger, wordlessly beckoning for me to enter her, and I was more than ready to push myself inside her.
Mounting her, I stared into her dark eyes as I guided my erection into her welcoming folds.
“Earthman, take me,” Pandora whispered. Her body writhed and wriggled beneath me, and she gasped as I pushed the length of me into her tight confines.
She wrapped her thighs around my waist. She had her right hand tangled in my hair. Her left hand was clamped onto my arm.
Every time I thrust into her, her eyes glowed brighter, brighter, and more brilliant.
Her tight walls snapped greedily around my mass the harder I went, the faster I swung my hips, and beneath us the bedsprings squealed in unison to my movements.
As I took her, the moment of my death flashed through my thoughts again, the biting cold tip of Marcus’ blade driving into my throat.
I thought of the False Champion, falling dead once and for all, with no way to revert to a save point.
As I drove deeper into Pandora, I realized that at some point I could very well die and never see her again.
“Pandora,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”
“And I’ve never loved as I’ve loved you,” she said, then suddenly bit down hard onto my shoulder as I brought her to a second orgasm.
As she stifled her screams of bliss with my flesh, I felt her mysticism energies buzzing all around us.
Flashes of white light emerged from her fingers, from her eyes, and suddenly I felt both of our bodies levitating up over the bed.
Still, the sweet slickness between her legs was too amazing for me to get distracted.
I drove into her harder, feeling myself tingling within her depths, and she paused from biting my shoulder so she could look deep into my eyes.
“Inside me,” she gasped. “Finish inside me…”
I clenched my teeth, did what I could to stifle my own loud explosion as I spent myself inside of the Mananymph.
She wrapped herself around me as we slowly drifted back down to the mattress, until we were laying back on the blankets, completely tangled up with one another. I pressed my forehead against hers. With our chests pressed together, I could even feel her heart beating beneath her chest.
“Please, don’t ever leave me,” Pandora said.
I kissed her lightly on the lips. “I don’t plan on it, Pandora,” I said. “You can trust me when I say that.”
*****
With hours to kill until Corvus Gavrus finished with the coordinates, we both fell asleep, exhausted by the force of our lovemaking.
Worries filled my slumbering mind. I dreamt of death, Marcus’ blade. I dreamt of the False Champion falling dead, unable to use her Second Sight to revert to a previous save point.
I dreamt of being gone forever.
The scene kept playing out in my mind. The False Champion, looking powerful and confident, with the Soulguard glowing with magical light.
Then, soon after, the False Champion was fighting the Necromancer in the crypt. She’d been bleeding, weak, with the Soulguard’s light having faded…
My eyes opened wide.
I shot up in bed, with the realization hitting me in the face so hard that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put it all together earlier.
It was so obvious!
When the Soulguard was glowing on the False Champion’s arm, she’d had a Gaia Stone or a Gaia Gem inside the gauntlet, on that circular groove below the knuckles.
Then, later, the gauntlet wasn’t glowing at all. It had looked weaker, scuffed and dented.
“She must have lost the ability to revert to old save points after using the Gaia Stone on the Soulguard,” I whispered to myself.
Pandora stirred beside me. She was wiping the sleep from her eyes. “Earthman? Are you okay?”
“The day the False Champion died,” I began. “She’d placed a Gaia Stone on the Soulguard,” I pointed to the empty groove on the gauntlet. “Pandora, did you see her use the Gaia Stone on the Necromancer?”
Pandora sat up, confused but definitely curious as to what I was thinking. “No,” she said. “At some point, when the Dark King’s forces fell upon the crypt, we’d gotten separated.”
“So before you got separated, the Soulguard was charged with magic from the Gaia Stone,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes. And when I saw her next, just before she died, the gauntlet had gone dark.”
So that was what happened. The False Champion had unleashed the power of a Gaia Stone to weaken the Necromancer. But, in doing so, she’d also weakened herself. She was so weakened that she’d lost her ability to load save points.
This was a grim idea. I assumed the only way the False Champion could have weakened the Necromancer enough to match him in one-on-one combat was by employing the power of a Gaia Stone.
However, it was a catch twenty-two. Weakening the Necromancer enough to kill him also left the door open for me to die permanently.
I didn’t have to say a word of this to Pandora. One look at her and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t make the same mistakes. I’ll find a way to survive that battle, Pandora.”
She looked away from me then sighed. “That’s what the False Champion said, just hours before she fell.”
*****
Corvus Gavrus must have worked tirelessly all night, because at dawn, he came banging on our door, shouting that he’d figured it out.
I let him in. If he was tired from staying up all night, he didn’t show it.
“I’ve got it, lad,” the old mage said. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve figured out exactly how to get you to the lich lord’s citadel. I even sent in a bird – of my own creation, obviously – to do some reconnaissance for you. At such a distance, the bird didn’t last long before vanishing, but I’ve gathered some good intelligence.”
I grinned. “Awesome. What did you see?”
“Well that’s the thing, Earthman,” Corvus said. “I didn’t see much at all. Oh, I saw his tower, just as ugly and tall as any lich lord’s, I imagine. I saw the ephemeral lightning of space-time crackling in the bottomless void of a sky. But as far as troops go? Orcs or goblins or undead?” He shrugged. “Earthman, I saw no movement.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Is it possible that Lord Ephemera has them cloaked in an invisibility spell?”
He shook his head. “It is possible, but highly unlikely,” Corvus said. “Why would that undead bugger go through the trouble of cloaking his forces if he’s sitting nice and snug in his pocket dimension? Aye, it’s not like he thinks an army is coming for him. I’m sure he’s got it in the back of his rotting skull that you might happen along to challenge him, but I doubt he’d go cloaking thousands of rotting corpses just for one man, even if you are a Champion.” He scratched his beard and shook his head. “No, it’d be a waste of mana. Lord Ephemera would never do it.”
“Hmm,” Pandora said. “I wonder if this has anything to do with Lord Ephemera calling off his attack on Homehold.”
Well, that would certainly be interesting, I thought. “Yeah, maybe the Dark King wasn’t so happy about one of his lieutenants chickening out at the last minute,” I said. “But to strip all of Lord Ephemera’s forces away? That seems harsh.”
Pandora looked troubled suddenly. “And if the Necromancer pulled away the lich lord�
�s troops, what if he’s done the same with Bella?”
Corvus Gavrus shook his head promptly. “Oh, I’m quite sure the Lady Bella is still there,” he answered. “Lord Ephemera is one of the most skilled illusionists to ever walk this realm, but even he couldn’t maintain an entire pocket dimension on his own. No, for that, he’d need to amplify his powers by siphoning the Lady Bella’s magic.”
Corvus pulled a scroll from his robe, rolled up and tied with a bit of string. He gave it to me.
“That’s your ticket to Lord Ephemera’s citadel,” he said. “The scroll’s only got two uses. Read it aloud to transport yourself and Lady Pandora to the citadel. Read it aloud a second time for the two of you to return with Lady Bella. The second use will transport you back to Homehold.”
I accepted the scroll and tucked it away. But then I remembered something, and I pulled the Imperial agent ring from my right hand. “Hey, before we go, would you be able to recharge this for me?”
Corvus laughed and took the ring from me. “I can, Earthman,” he said. “But just realize that recharging enchanted items isn’t all that complicated. Which isn’t to say that it’s easy. Just a little focus will go a long way. Let me show you.”
The old mage dropped the ring into his palm then closed his fist around it. He shut his eyes tight, grimaced, clenched his teeth. Suddenly, a shock of blue light shrouded his fist before quickly fading away.
He smiled, though I noted beads of sweat dotting his brow. “All it takes is to transfer your mana to the object in question,” he said. “It doesn’t take a master enchanter, but it will eat up most of your magical strength.”
I took the ring back and inspected it as I put it back on my finger.
IMPERIAL AGENT RING
CHARGE: 2000/2000
EFFECT: PARALYZE TARGET FOR 60 SECONDS
“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll have to try that out once we’re finished with Lord Ephemera. Thanks for all your help, Corvus. I’ll make sure everyone knows how generously you treated us.”
Monstergirl Quest Book Two Page 6
