by D. Levesque
“Yes. You would use me as a conduit. Though, there is a problem with that,” Bridget says.
“What’s that?” I ask her, sighing. Of course there would be a roadblock.
“If you use that much magic it will open your fourth Chakra, and I am not sure what will happen to you,” she says worriedly. “You are saying you need to push a lot of your power into that thing. How much is a lot? How much power do you have now?
I think about how much I have, and as I expected, I get the information I need.
Power Remaining: 979,000 /995,000
Divine Energy Remaining: 5,000/5,000
“It says I have 979,000 points of power and 5,000 of that Divine Energy,” I tell them. “I guess all the spell casting used up a good amount. I would say that16,000 was used in the last 24 hours, and I have not regained it back yet. I have no clue what my regeneration rate is.”
“Have you figured out what you can use that Divine Energy for?” Leeha asks me.
“No,” I tell her, annoyed but not at her. I had been trying different commands to see if something would come up, but nothing. Bridget tried and said even she could not access it. It’s there, but it’s like looking through a hard glass window. She said she even tried repeatedly to slam into the barrier, but nothing.
“All right, so what can we do to mitigate my fourth Chakra opening?” I ask Bridget.
“I am not sure,” she says hesitantly. “We have no clue what will happen. I couldn’t have predicted what happened last time with your bones. You were out for days. This next one might be worse, and I used a lot of energy healing you when that thing came out of your throat and you gained that odd voice thing you have now.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t do anything,” I tell her, putting my hand to my throat and remembering the intense pain. The bones were worse, but made me pass out quickly. “Can we force it to open? Maybe if I have it open, I will have more power?”
“Well, you would need to call up a pretty powerful spell as I doubt shooting off hundreds of magical arrows would do it,” Bridget says, her hand on her chin.
“What about that fog thing again?” I say. “There’s no one here that will be affected by it if I do it over the water. I would honestly like to get this done now rather than later.”
“The sun is up, which means we would need to wait a day. And once you open your Chakra, you are going to be out for days, possibly even a week based on how strong it knocked you out last time,” Bridget says.
“What if he was to use a spell command to say, carve a hole through the hill?” Leeha suggests.
Bridget and I both turn to her with astonished looks. “You want me to blow a hole through that?” I ask her in amazement, pointing to the hill we just came down from.
“Why not? Even if you can’t, it will use up a lot of your power, which is what you want, right?”
“Well, sure,” I tell her slowly. “But I don’t want to drain myself of power.”
“Alex,” Leeha says, walking up to me and patting my chest. “You have more power than a City of Mages. You can do this.”
I look down at her and see her faith in me. Nodding, I kiss her and look at Bridget. “Shall we go try that?”
“Sure, but what about her?” Bridget says, pointing down at Sara.
Sighing, I answer, “Normally, I would say leave her. She will wake up within the hour. But I don’t want her near the Portal.”
Reaching down, I grab her and hoist her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, with her head hanging over my shoulder and my hand on her ass to hold her. That’s when I get to feel the fur on her skin for the first time. It’s silky to the touch. She isn’t very heavy, or maybe I am just stronger than I was on Earth, as I can barely feel her on my shoulder.
“Can’t you just wake her?” Leeha says to me with a grin.
“Hmm. Sure I guess, but this way, I can touch her ass without her killing me,” I say with a returning grin.
Both Bridget and Leeha laugh at me, and we head back up the beach to the point where it meets the hill.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I hear a groaning sound coming from behind me, and I look back in time to see Sara sits up quickly and look around. Bridget and Leeha are on either side of me, and we are facing the hill that I want to blow a hole through. We are sitting on the ground because I have been trying to think of a good Spell Command to use for the last 40 minutes. My guess is this will end up being a Complex Spell Command.
We also talked about what will happen to the Dungeon if I blow a hole through the hill. The truth is, we have no clue. But after spending a week in there, or thereabouts, we aren’t really interested in going back in, anyway. Not without tons of gear. That was annoying as Hell having to call up water just to drink.
“What the Hell happened?” Sara says, looking around in confusion. “One moment we were talking on the beach, and then the next, I’m here.”
“You passed out,” I tell her. “Must have been the exhaustion from being captured and all that.”
Sara looks over, and her eyes squint at me with distrust. “Who carried me?”
“I did,” I answer her with a smile.
“Did you touch me inappropriately? I see how you are with those two,” she says, glaring at me now.
“I was a boy scout.”
“What’s a boy scout?” she asks me, perplexed.
“Sorry, I mean to say I was honorable. I did not touch you inappropriately,” I reassure her.
Okay, yes, I touched her ass, but she had pants on. I admit, after touching her arms and shoulders in order to lift her, I kind of wished she wasn’t wearing any. Her furred skin felt lovely and her ass felt tight through her pants. I would have loved to have my hand directly on it.
She looks at me for a couple more seconds, but then glances at the hill. “What are you all looking at?” she asks.
“The hill,” I tell her.
“Why?” she says, tilting her head, which causes her black hair to fall sideways and partly hide her face, but she reaches up and brushes it over one of her cat ears, which is just as black as her hair.
“Because I am trying to figure out a way to blow a hole through it,” I say, as if stating something obvious.
She looks at me and laughs, which actually sounds very cute. “Right. How many Earth Mages do you have in your pocket?”
“Just the one,” I tell her, not going into detail about Bridget. “Now I need to focus. I am trying to figure this out,” I finish, with a finger to my lips for the universal sign of shushing someone. It’s even used here on Boromour.
If I had a drill bit, I could do it that way, but that would be loud and long. Though, I do want to use a lot of magic. But I don’t want to end up going out of commission and stopping the job halfway, when Bridget is inside the hill, away from me. If I am going to do this, I need to do it right. What else is used to drill holes? Lasers. But how am I going to create a laser beam? I can summon Fire, not light. Hold on. Fire is light—just on a different wavelength. Tapping my chin, I look up at the sun beating down on us, and I grin. Let’s see if Bridget will have context for this.
“Bridget,” I call her name, the grin still on my face.
“Yes?” she says, turning to me. She had been leaning on her elbows with her head back, enjoying the sun on her face.
“Laser beams,” I tell her. Ah, so the word laser is English here. Makes sense.
She frowns at first, but then suddenly, a look of awe appears on her pretty Elven face.
“Holy Hell!” she blurts out. “Is that even real?”
“Yep. I mean, it’s not Deathstar kind of real, but they are real on Terra,” I tell her with a chuckle.
“So,” she says, looking down at her feet in concentration as she begins to talk to herself. “Light. With a lens. But how would I create light that powerful? I would need a mini sun. Oh, wait. What if I use a metal bowl? No, that would melt it, just from the heat alone. There isn’t any metal here that would handle
that.”
“What is she talking about?” Leeha whispers from my other side.
“It’s something from my world. If Bridget can figure it out, it will use a lot of my power, and it will carve a hole through this hill like a hot knife through butter,” I whisper back, trying not to interrupt Bridget as she is still talking to herself.
“…can just do the light through my eyes, can’t I? I can create Fire, and my eyes can focus it. For a lens, I can use water. I would need to test it, but I think it would work. With sustained power from Alex, I can keep it up till the laser beam goes through the hill. Or I can do it in one intense beam. Alex will need me right away after that, I am sure, since he will open his Fourth Chakra.”
Bridget looks at me excitedly and then jumps on me and wraps her arms around my neck, kissing me. “My Gods, it might work! I need to test it, though. I will go do it where it’s safe.” Without even a displacement of air, Bridget is gone.
“What the fuck! Where did she go!” cries Sara in shock, staring at the spot where Bridget had just been standing.
“Oops,” I say with a chuckle. “Bridget isn’t an Elf.”
“If she isn’t an Elf, what the Hell is she?” asks Sara in an incredulous voice.
I look at Leeha for help, and she shakes her head. “Don’t look at me. She’s yours. She disappeared. You decide.” But she is grinning at me as she says it.
Sighing, I turn back to Sara, who is watching the play-by-play between me and Leeha with wary eyes. I look at her and try to decide how much I should say. I mean, I could tell her everything, but I don’t know her very well. I want to eventually, but I don’t yet. So I decide to give her some truths, with some white lies interspersed.
“I am a powerful Mage, and Bridget is really my Elemental,” I begin.
“Bullshit,” Sara growls in anger. “No Elemental does that.”
“Yours won’t. Even Leeha’s won’t. But show me your Fire Elemental,” I say to her.
She sits there and looks at me at first, not doing as I asked. Then slowly she lifts her left hand, and a tiny ball of fire is sitting in her palm, rotating slowly.
“Leeha, show her yours, please,” I ask her.
Leeha sticks her left hand out, just like Sara did, and her Water Elemental appears. But where Sara’s was a ball of fire, Leeha’s isn’t a ball of rotating water, but a small female, made of water. The Water Elemental looks up, sees Leeha, and waves at her, and Leeha waves back with her free hand. It turns to me next and waves at me and I, of course, wave back at it.
Sara’s Fire Elemental disappears as she stares at Leeha’s Elemental in shock.
“That’s impossible,” Sara whispers in astonishment.
“No, it’s not,” I tell her. “Leeha thought the same thing when I first met her. Hers looked like yours back then. You saw me when I had all my arrows out?”
Sara turns to me slowly, her eyes still jerking to Leeha’s Water Elemental, who had also waved to her, but Sara had not returned it. Finally, she focuses on me and nods.
Sara’s gaze quickly flicks to Leeha again. “Show me,” she demands. But then her manners kick in and she blushes and says “please.”
Leeha nods to her with a smile, and her Water Elemental disappears, as four large Water Arrows appear beside her. She looks around, sees a tree close to us, and all four arrows zip off and slam into the tree, before Leeha makes them disappear.
Sara is sitting there with her mouth agape in shock. She is about to say something, when suddenly we hear a loud explosion coming from down the beach, and we see smoke rising into the air.
“Was that you?” I ask Bridget quickly.
“Yes. Sorry! I am fine-tuning it. I think I am close, though. Let me test it a couple more times. Can I use some of your power, just a tiny bit more?”
“Of course,” I tell her with a smile over our link. “Use what you need.”
“Not too much. I don’t want to open your Chakra yet,” she says, but I can tell that she is distracted, so I don’t respond back.
“That was Bridget. She is testing my idea. That was the result so far,” I tell both of the girls. Leeha visibly relaxes. Sara, on the other hand, is still looking at the smoke in alarm.
“Done,” Bridget cries from next to me in joy.
Sara screams and throws herself backward, and her dagger is suddenly in her hand. Bridget looks at her and blushes.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have left as I did, should I have?” Bridget says to me.
“Too late, but I explained a bit to Sara here. I think she is still in shock, that’s all. You can put that away, Sara. If we wanted to kill you, you would already be dead,” I say with a smile, which I hope is disarming.
“Just what are you?” Sara says, still standing in a fighting crouch, clearly ready to flee if need be.
“I am just a Mage who happens to be more powerful than most,” I tell her with a shrug, not ready to tell her that I am an Elemental Summoner, the most feared being in her world, it seems. Oh, and a human to boot.
“Here, I know you honor vows. What if I vow not to kill you unless you provoke me? Fair?” I ask her.
She looks at me, gauging my sincerity, I am sure. Then she says, “Swear it on the five Gods of Boromour.”
“Sure, I can do that. I, Alex, do swear that I shall not kill you unless provoked. I swear on the five Gods of Boromour,” I say, even holding my hand to my chest as if that will have more of an impact.
Sara still looks at me for a good ten more seconds before she nods and puts her dagger away. “I shall hold you to that, Alex with no last name.”
“Oh, I have one,” I tell her with a smile. “I just hate it, so I don’t use it.” Yes, I still hate my last name. Boston. Fuck, I would rather be known as Alex of No Last Name than use my actual name.
Turning to Bridget, I ask her, “So, did you figure it out?”
“Yes,” she says excitedly. “I had issues with the lens,” but I hold up my hand to stop her.
“For the lens,” I say to her in English. “You used water?”
“Yes. I was able to make the lens concave enough to focus the power. However, I had to use a string of them, each one smaller and smaller. Then, I used the light of fire coming out of my eyes, almost like the sun, and the beam went out and smashed through the lenses, getting stronger and stronger as it went through each one. Right up until the last one, that was so focused that it burned through a good 30 feet! Down the beach, there is a cave that is smooth and round, and right now super hot, that goes straight in for 30 feet into the hillside!”
I turn to Leeha. “Did you understand all that?”
“Most,” she replies in slow English. “I understood much, not all. Understand reason behind it.”
“Concept, not reason. Good. Because you are about to fake it with your Water Elemental. I don’t want Sara knowing I can use more than one magic, yet. Not until I know if I can trust her.”
“Sounds good. Tell me what to do when the time comes,” Leeha says, nodding.
“Well, shall we get this over with? I am sure I won’t like the pain that is about to come when I open my fourth Chakra.”
Sara had been looking at each of us as we spoke in English earlier, her head bouncing back and forth like watching a ping-pong tournament.
“What are you about to do?” She asks me, hesitantly.
“I’m about to blow a hole through a hill, and in the process knock myself out for days or even a week. So be prepared for something to happen to me. And something tells me it won’t be pretty.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I turn to Bridget and say, “Ready?”
“Yes, though you might want to sit down for this. Just in case,” Bridget answers, and I can see she is tense.
I understand that feeling quite intimately, because knowing that a crapload of pain is about to come with the opening of my fourth Chakra, I am almost tempted to tell her to forget it, and we will look for another way to destroy the Portal.
Nodding, I sit down on the patch of grass we had settled on, halfway between the beach and the rocky area where the hill starts.
“Should we back up some more?” I ask her.
“No, we are good here. The wall of the hill is roughly 30 feet away. I will create a shield if need be, to keep away any flying debris,” Bridget responds.
She takes a deep breath, looks down at me, and says, “Ready?”
I can’t help it a nervous laugh spews out of me. “No! But go ahead.”
Bridget smiles down at me and nods. Then all of a sudden, she changes into a full-sized Fire Elemental.
“By the Gods,” I hear Sara whisper. I look over, and she is staring at Bridget in awe.
Bridget walks closer to the hill and says, “I need you to all stay behind me. The amount of light that will be coming out of my eyes will damage yours. I would suggest, if you can, to look away, or you might have an aftereffect in your vision.”
“Got it,” I tell her.
Bridget lifts her hand and talks to me through our link. “All right, let Leeha know I am ready.”
“Leeha, can you bring up your Water Elemental and create those lenses that Bridget needs?” I ask her.
“Yes. Here you go,” she says, lifting her hand and bringing forth her Water Elemental.
She throws her hand forward as if hurling the Water Elemental, and it disappears. We had a quick whispered conversation about that, and what she was really doing was releasing her Water Elemental and making it look like she’s throwing it, so that Bridget can take over without raising Sara’s suspicions. Suddenly there are six water lenses in front of Bridget, each one smaller than the one before. The first one is the size of a large round dining room table, so about eight feet across. The last one is only about three feet across.
When I asked Bridget if that would make a large enough laser beam, she said yes, as she needs to go far into the cave, therefore she wants a more focused beam that she can control.
