“Um, okay,” the little fairy said as she grew to a little over five feet, roughly the same size as Anahita. “Why?”
As she spoke, I reached out and took both of Stell’s bodies in my arms. The action surprised Anahita completely, but she yielded, looking nervous, but not unwilling.
“Anahita,” I whispered, “I’m sensing a lot of attraction from you, and that while you were acting to pull off a mission, you were also offering something that you intend to follow through with on a later date. Is that right?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I would love to, when we are not in the middle of enemy territory. You are handsome, and strong, and good.”
“That’ll do for now, then,” I said. “Breena, I sense attraction from your body as well, but you’re not nearly ready to begin anything beyond a warm hug. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” she squeaked nervously, “and I’m sorry that I’m so complicated but I promise that I’m trying super-hard and—”
“Then that’ll do for now,” I answered gently. “Let’s go ahead and leave it at that, for now, except that we’ll continue to let each other know when they’ve crossed a line. Sound good?”
“You’ll actually let me know? I won’t just have to figure out through our bond or the mindlink?” she squeaked, though it sounded a little deeper now that she was bigger. “Right. I think we talked about it. I uh, sort of forgot that the whole communication stuff included your end, too.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, giving both of my girlfriend’s bodies a gentle, but firm squeeze, and then letting them go. “Now we need to direct our attention back to dealing with Sejmera. I understand we just took out the Malus leadership here, but I know there’s still plenty of Horde. Just as I know the Horde Pit’s still nearby. And that they have all manner of traps in store for me, should I decide to get personal with them.”
“But that is no longer necessary,” Anahita said with her eyes sparkling. “In fact, you may have given my people, and perhaps all of Avalon’s worlds, the keys to win the war ourselves.”
“I did?” I asked dumbly, before a light clicked on in my brain. “Ohhhhhh. The poison. Right. Sorry.”
She seemed happy I had figured it out on my own. But I wasn’t sure her assessment would be completely accurate.
“I think I see where you’re going with this, but it might be too early to start celebrating,” I cautioned, “unless you have one heck of a distribution scheme in mind.”
“I do.” Anahita’s smile broadened. “That is why Breena and I have pulled hard on our link to our primary body. So that we can draw her to this location, and tell her what we have done. If all goes well, she will hopefully arrive any moment. Ah,” she said, as a large circle of energy crackled in front of us.
And the ever-changing primary body of my alien girlfriend stepped through the portal.
Her appearance had changed again. Her skin had taken on the tone of a light-skinned Latina woman, with ringlets and ringlets of curly hair. Her height looked to be slightly taller than Via was, and just a bit less curvy. She wore her usual jean-like trousers, and a t-shirt that said “Do NOT READ MY SHIRT” in large, bold letters, with a much smaller print underneath that said “you little rebel. I love you.”
“Okay, Breena, Anahita,” the Starsown said as she brushed her dark, curly hair out of face. “I’m here. What’s the emergency? Oh,” she said, blinking as she noticed me. “Hi, Wes. Sorry, I should have expected you’d be here, too. How are—”
“Hey,” I interrupted happily, walking forward and taking the woman up in my arms. “I missed you. Are you alright? How have you been?”
“Oh,” she said, surprised by my forwardness.
But a moment later, her nervousness vanished, and she leaned into me.
“I’m really good, right now,” she mumbled. “A lot has happened, and a lot of it has been bad. But not all of it, and it’s really good to see you.”
I gave my lover a firm, strong hug, and then let her go.
“Alright,” I said, “as much as I’d like more time with you, you’re probably at least as busy as we are. Anahita, go ahead.”
“Alright,” Stell’s dark-haired Satellite began. I saw a smile on her and Breena’s face, as if I had just hugged them as well. “You know of the poison I had made. One that could actually work its way through vital guards.”
“Yeah?” Stell replied, tilting her head. “Do you need more? I meant to tell you that Merada has an incredible contact poison now, but—”
“I do not,” Anahita said happily. “In fact, I have access to almost an infinite amount. Sort of.”
She gave a guilty glance in my direction.
“Rather,” she continued, “I was wondering if you needed any.”
Stell raised an eyebrow at her other body.
“How did you replenish your stockpile?” the beautiful Starsown asked. “You never had much of it, and you were nearly out, the last time I talked with you—” Her eyes widened, and then her head immediately swiveled toward my direction. “Wes. What did you do, and how much did you break doing it?”
“Oh, not much at all this time!” Breena squeaked cheerfully. “Just a handful of natural laws. And a small handful, at that!”
Stell turned her gaze over to her sprite-body, and sighed.
“I think I will go ahead and sit down for the rest of this.”
She wound up taking the information very well. Well, with one exception…
“You poisoned him?” Stell shouted, rising from the pillow as she began to yell. “You poisoned my new boyfriend? I poisoned my boyfriend?” Her eye widened in horrified realization at that last sentence.
“Don’t worry!” Breena said quickly. “He told us to!”
Stell’s head swiveled back to Breena.
“It’s true,” Anahita said quietly. “I was a tad reluctant, at first.” No you weren’t, I thought. “But thanks to his unique nature and Breena’s magic, we have a tool that could perhaps change the entire fate of this war. On every world.”
The Starsown’s primary body blinked again.
“You poisoned Wes, and now you can win the entire war.” She looked around. “Is there anything to drink?”
“Um, no,” I said quickly. “Definitely not.”
“Yeah, Wes bled into all the cups.” Breena explained.
Stell blinked again.
“Breena,” Anahita admonished. “We’re confusing her, and she was already tired to begin with. Stell, Wes is a powerful Blood Practitioner, with perhaps the most robust body I have ever seen, and who has made Magic itself his Science and walks the Path of the Archmage. This extremely fortunate combination, combined with his bond with Breena as well as her own Wood magic, allowed his blood to absorb my most potent poisons—”
“All of them,” the Starsown asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” Anahita admitted reluctantly. “He insisted he could handle it, and after monitoring him the entire time, we found that he was right.”
“Of course he was.” Stell sighed. “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“He then used his Blood magic to break down and modify the poisons further. After some successful testing, and a few assassination attempts later, we found that as long as he is able to bleed, he can create more poison.”
“So his blood is permanently poisoned now?” Stell asked wearily.
“No no no,” I said hurriedly. “My blood’s still normal. It can just act as a carrier for poisons. I have to cast a spell to actually make it poisonous.”
“Ohhhkaaaay,” Stell said slowly, blinking yet a few more times as she tried to process this information. “And you say you’ve tested it? Wait,” she interrupted herself. “This looks like Sejmera. That’s in the south. This should still be Malus Member territory.”
“The Malus Members are all in their rooms, unconscious and slowly dying,” I explained. “I styled the poison that way so that they couldn’t resurrect immediately, and inform their buddies back on Earth. I a
lso figured out how to steal their memories and appearances, so that I can disguise myself as them and pretend that nothing’s wrong when the Horde show up.”
“And then you can poison the Hordebeasts, when they show up to get supplies,” Stell realized. Her eyes grew wide. “And you say you can make a near infinite supply?”
“Well, it costs at least one drop of blood per dosage,” I amended cautiously, “I don’t have the exact measurements yet. I uh, hadn’t exactly considered mass production until a few minutes ago.”
“But the poison works even on someone with multiple Descents?” Stell persisted, her own eyes shining now. “You were able to poison all their champions here?”
“From what their memories say, yes,” I replied cautiously. Anahita nodded in confirmation.
Stell ran a hand through her curly hair.
“This changes everything, then,” the Starsown said to herself. “If you’re this deep in the enemy supply lines, and can maintain a disguise. Forget that.” The woman snapped her fingers. “If you can give me any amount in vials, I can distribute it among the resistance…I can even distribute it myself. I look like a different person every week, so it’s not like they can put out a wanted poster for me. As long as Cavus doesn’t catch me, I can teleport behind enemy lines, disguise myself as one of the locals, and start poisoning their food or water or whatever. You said it’s not fast acting?”
“No,” I replied. “I could probably make it fast acting, but then it would get discovered faster, and it might not even be strong enough to kill them in one go.”
“That is correct.” Anahita nodded.
“Right,” Stell continued. “Let’s say you use it here. You disguise yourself as the leader. The Malus Earthborn ignore the Horde as much as possible, so it won’t be too weird if they don’t see you for a day or so. You could get a supply chain set up for the arriving army, and when it stops by here to resupply, you could give them and the Horde the poisoned food at the same time. Then, when they leave to attack the cities you’ve liberated in the far north, they’ll die off in the desert. Or at least, they’ll be weak enough for your guerrilla fighters to finish them off. That’s perfect. We’ll have finished off a large portion of their invading force before they even leave their own territory. And if you do it right, they may not even realize what happened. Not for a few days, anyway.” She brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. “They’ll figure it out eventually though. And then they’ll probably make an antidote or some other counter to it. And then, even if you alter the poison, they’ll probably set up a system to test their food or water for poison.” She turned her gaze to me. “Um, so, you have to bleed to make it, right?”
“For now.” I nodded. “I cast the spell to create the poisons, then I have to get the blood out of my body. I could probably make a spell for that, too, but that would be spending mana to do the exact same thing a sharp object could.”
“In that case, um…”
My new girlfriend hesitated.
“How much am I willing to bleed?” I finished for her.
“Yeah,” she finished awkwardly.
“Enough to where I won’t die, either directly from the loss or from a situation where the blood loss makes me vulnerable.”
“The citizens and I will keep him hidden,” Anahita promised. “He will be safe.”
“Addendum,” I said, “enough to where I won’t die, and someone else won’t die, because I was too weak from blood loss.”
“The citizens will be protected as well,” Anahita insisted. “I will ensure that they come to no harm. The few involved with our plan will throw their support behind it wholeheartedly.” She looked over at me. “The false Challengers have always demanded that the locals rise up, fight, and bleed on their behalf. Now, they will see Avalon’s true champion bleed to keep them safe, without asking them to risk their own lives.”
“They will be risking their own lives, if they are found to be helping me in any fashion,” I argued.
“They will not see it that way,” Anahita said simply. “The few I will involve have always been at risk, simply for associating with me. And the rest of the citizens know that any day, their enemies could decide to no longer appear civilized, and inflict whatever atrocities among my people that they wish.”
“Fine,” I said, deciding that Anahita knew what she talking about. “In that case, we need to seize this opportunity to make as much poison as possible, and inflict it on as many supply lines as we can, all at once. So,” I sighed, “I need to produce as much blood as possible. After we make sure we know when the army’s coming and that the Horde won’t grow suspicious, we should get started on bleeding me as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, Wes.” Stell sighed. “I realize that you have already committed to aiding my worlds and myself, but this has been the most uncomfortable request I have ever had to make of you.”
“Meh,” I shrugged, giving her a grin, “if you want to make it up to me, just make sure I don’t die, and take me somewhere nice on our next date.”
She rolled her eyes at me, smiling at the same time.
“Actually…you know what?” she decided, still smiling. “Via’s right. You’ve earned a number of dates by now. I can live with that. In the meantime, I can stay just long enough to help with the magical side of things. Make sure your deceptions will work properly on the Horde and Malus Men.”
“Wait, really?” I said, excited. “You’re staying for a while? Like, longer than it takes to just get a bit of rest?”
The beautiful Starsown beamed at me with that gorgeous smile of hers.
“That’s the bit of really good news,” she answered me. “It’s why I’m also able to help with the supply lines. I’ll tell you the details after we’ve gotten things moving but…I gave Cavus the slip, Wes.”
She sounded excited.
“Guineve had to help, or he would have caught me…” she continued, “but it was enough. He came as close as he ever did, but I got away completely on my own power. It happened before Vinclum even had a chance to help. Which means maybe…nevermind,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ll talk about it later. But for now, I can spare a bit of power to help make your ruse work.”
And with that, she closed her eyes and began concentrating.
Tendrils of mist wafted out from the Steward of Avalon, coalescing into ethereal figures. They were indistinct, but clearly humanoid, and clearly the same number of Malus operatives that we had poisoned.
“There,” Stell said as her shoulders slumped. “If you inject a bit of DNA into them, they’ll look like whoever you wish. And you’ll be able to control them, too, if you don’t make them do too much. They won’t be able to fight at all, but walking around and talking is fine.”
“What are they?” I asked, as I walked over to the nearest translucent figure.
“Proto-Satellites,” Stell answered me. “They’re the first thing a Starsown’s really able to produce. And for the longest time, they were the only kind of body I could produce,” she muttered.
Then she blinked, as if she was trying to remember something.
“But anyway, I used a bit of Guineve’s Mist magic to make them stable. And since they don’t have any genetic material yet, you can form your own link with them using Blood magic. Wood magic might work, too, come to think of it,” she added thoughtfully. “But this is no time to experiment, so just throw some non-poisoned blood at them to make them look like the other people you’ve poisoned and stolen DNA from. If you keep their use to an absolute minimum, they’ll last for about a week, long after the Malus army gets here.”
“That’s amazing, Stell,” I said, reaching out with my own limited magical senses to the phantoms, and confirming that I could alter them as I wished. “I didn’t even know you could do something like this.”
“I know,” she answered, and I turned to see a proud smile on her lips—the kind she hadn’t really made since Cavus and the Malus invasion happened. “Most Star
sown never bothered; they just put all of their focus on making and enhancing their Satellites. But for the longest time, these were all I could make. So I just kept experimenting with them, learning to do different things, and then one day on Avalon, I had an epiphany and finally made Guineve.” She made a sad smile, and I remembered Guineve’s own story behind the creation of Stell’s first Satellite.
Which meant that Stell had already been doing magical experiments with her powers at the Starsown equivalent of a five or six-year-old Earthborn girl.
And although she apparently still couldn’t recognize just how big a deal that was, she was at least showing a bit of pride in her discoveries.
“This is perfect,” I said, “this is a huge help. Thank you, Stell. How often can you do something like this?”
Knives in the Night Page 52
