“Damn right it was,” the Messenger growled, sitting up. Then she laid back down and sighed. “Well, you’ve definitely wised up. I can trust you not to accept shady blowjobs from dumb succubi. So, why are you here today?”
Nathan frowned at her. He felt that Kadria had dodged a fairly obvious avenue that this conversation should have gone down.
Her earlier mention of how Nathan controlled the Twins through the binding stone reminded him of something.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the binding stones and ascended magic,” he said. “Why is it called ascended magic? Some call it the ascended elements, but there aren’t any elements. Is it ascended because it’s beyond the scope of the world?”
Kadria didn’t say anything, so he continued.
“I can control magic directly using it. Mental magic allows me to perceive and manipulate connections and things that exist, but are otherwise intangible and imperceptible. Spatial magic allows me to manipulate the physical laws of the world. The binding stones can reshape reality, creating physical matter from nothing. The gems of Champions can do all of these things, but only through an active connection to a binding stone.”
“All of that is true,” Kadria said slowly. She sat up.
“Is it? Because what does that mean life magic is?” He stared at her. “You mentioned a secret last time. The more I’ve learned about mental magic, the more I’ve realized how each aspect of ascended magic is completely independent of the others. Learning mental magic doesn’t help me with spatial magic.”
“Does knowing how to be a blacksmith help you become a carpenter?” Kadria asked rhetorically.
“It does for the natural elements. Elemental affinities are just that—affinities. If I can cast a sixth rank fire spell, I can cast a sixth rank water spell. But that’s not true with ascended magic.” He sighed.
“When I was trained as a Bastion, I was told that confidence and conviction separated the talented from the truly great,” he continued. “I had three trigems because I was naïve enough to believe Omria gave a damn about us.”
Kadria looked around when he said Omria’s name, and he raised an eyebrow at her. She gestured for him to continue, her expression returning to normal.
“Now, I still believe I can fix everything. Despite all the bullshit you’ve put me through and your refusal to be honest with me after calling me your partner.” He glared at her, and she winced. “Leopold’s too cynical and jaded, which is why he can’t create a trigem Champion. But if that’s the case, what does that mean for the binding stones? If the only thing that matters is my perception of reality, what am I actually doing with them?”
A smirk crossed her face.
Nathan realized he was on the right path. He looked away from her.
Every time he had tried to create food, he had failed. Magic couldn’t create anything living or that came from something that had lived. Magically created food contained nutrients, but was bland, flavorless, and horrendous stuff that everyone hated. Mages restricted themselves to creating inert matter, such as metal and stone.
Nathan reached out and drew on the power of his binding stone. But instead of creating an apple, he defined an apple.
After several moments, a plump, green apple sat on the table. Its skin had the typical sheen of a freshly picked apple. When Nathan picked it up, the fruit maintained its shape. The skin felt smooth. The apple had heft. It even smelled like a juicy apple.
“The secret to life magic is that I’m imposing my own version of reality on the world, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you told me it was a bad thing to learn it when angry. Because it implies that the world might not be real. That powerful beings can create anything they like with magic.”
Then he bit into the apple.
A moment later, he frowned.
“I feel like I’m eating my memories of an apple,” he choked out around the fruit in his mouth. “It almost tastes good.”
Kadria laughed. Her hands held her belly and she bent over. Then she toppled off the bed and slammed head first into the floor with a scream, before continuing to laugh.
Nathan grimaced, before swallowing the almost-apple in his mouth. “So maybe I haven’t worked it out yet.”
A hand waved in the air, as if to tell him to stop.
Minutes passed before Kadria recovered enough to join him at the table. She bit into his apple, chewed slowly for almost a minute, then swallowed.
“Sometimes I forget just how fucking talented you are,” she said, her gaze distant. “I chose you because you knew things I didn’t expect and had a strong conviction. Both made you a great candidate. But you’ve outperformed all of my expectations.”
“So I was right?” he asked.
“Yes. Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step to… Huh, I don’t know what to call this. I’d call it godhood, but that’s too cheesy and a certain bitch stole the title.” Kadria banished his apple and summoned a plate full of custard tarts in its place. “Try these. They’re egg tarts.”
“You mean custard tarts,” he corrected.
“That’s what they’re based on, but these are a regional variation.”
“What region?”
“Really? You’re asking me that? I could tell you that the region is Uranus and you’d have no choice but to believe me.” She glared at him.
“I’m not that stupid, you know,” he snapped.
“You say that, but that’s the name of a planet where I’m from.”
Nathan was lost for words. He chose to eat some delicious egg tarts instead.
“Anyway, yeah, you’re working out the basics. But it’s more complicated than that. Ascended magic in general is about enforcing your will on reality. Each of those classes of magic: mental, spatial etcetera—those are just facets of your mind. Humans like us view the world in a specific way, so we need to break down the world into those components. Other races don’t.”
“Like your boss?” he asked.
“He’s something else entirely. But yes, the way he uses ascended magic is entirely different. His existence is incompatible with ordinary life, for one thing.” She munched on an egg tart for a few seconds.
“You said the first step. Am I becoming a Messenger?” Nathan asked, deciding to take the leap.
Kadria gave him an odd look. “Wait, you’re serious? Hah. No. If you were being recruited, it would be way different. You don’t fit my boss’s profile. He likes women, and especially women who are suffering. That’s why he’s messing with your beloved goddess so much. It’s a big, long love story about a dumb boy bullying the girl he likes. Except the bullying ends with my boss consuming her existence for all eternity, across an infinite number of universes, instead of a happy marriage.”
“That’s, uh, fucked up.”
“Welcome to my life.” She laughed bitterly. “Anyway, the real step is that you’re way past humanity now. Ascended magic changes you. The binding stone protects Bastions, but you pulled a huge stunt when you took control of that dark elf. I’m certain you’ve stopped aging.”
A chill ran down his spine. “Did I miss some fine print somewhere?”
“Could be,” she teased. “Don’t worry too much about it. If I offered you the choice between humanity and being strong enough to fight off Messengers like me, would you even hesitate before making the decision?”
“No,” he said instantly. “Thank you. That helps a lot.”
“We are partners,” she said, then grimaced at her own words. “Look, I’m helping you right now. I can’t tell you what I’m doing because it’s dangerous. You’re being watched. I missed the signs, which was a fuckup.”
“You’re not talking about conventional watchers,” he said.
“No. That sort of watcher.” Her eyes flashed, as she pointed at the ceiling.
Suddenly, that part of Omria’s name made sense.
The Watcher Omria. It was always justified as her omniscience, and the fact she was always with humanity
.
“That’s why you won’t say her name.”
“And you shouldn’t either. Not anymore. You are way past the level of power where it’s safe to say the names of beings of immense strength. Hell, if you knew any of my bosses ten million names, he’d probably appear and ruin everything if you muttered one,” Kadria explained.
“What about the Twins?” he asked.
“Do whatever you want with them. Just don’t let them gain leverage over you. I’m trying to… Hmm. Let’s say that I’m untangling a twisted web, and inserting myself into it, before retangling it.” Kadria’s grin was outright malicious.
Given she had just jumped topics from a certain goddess to this, Nathan had a feeling that the web wasn’t something he was familiar with.
“I’d say that I have no choice but to trust you, but that’s not true anymore, is it,” he said. “But I’ll trust you. I haven’t regretted it yet, even if you haven’t been honest with me.”
“I haven’t lied to you,” Kadria said around a pastry. “I’m not like the Twins. I understand all of this. This is the chance of a lifetime. No, that’s too small. The chance of an infinite number of lifetimes. If I screw this up for us, then I don’t think we’ll get another.”
Nathan drummed his fingers on the table while staring at her. Her demonic eyes looked back at him. After all this time, he had become accustomed to her appearance. He had always found her attractive, but now he genuinely found her beautiful.
Well, he was a heretic. Might as well enjoy it.
“Us,” he said.
“Yeah, us. I didn’t really think you’d be that useful at first. But I needed a Bastion competent enough to hold down the fort without letting the world burn down. Messengers can’t do anything until everything is messed up, and my plan requires a world that isn’t a wasteland ripe for consumption.”
“And what is that plan?”
“I told you ages ago. To live in a world that isn’t overrun by monsters or threatened by a nightmarish horror that haunts the edges of reality,” she teased. “There’s a little more to it than that, but we’ll get to it.”
They lapsed into silence. Nathan tried his hand at creating tea. It took him several attempts to create something that didn’t taste like he was drinking tea poured into his mouth from several centuries ago.
Afterward, nothing. Kadria’s feet massaged his thighs and crotch, but she did that so often he barely even noticed anymore. She was always playful.
“You’ve taken to this far better than I expected,” she said suddenly, breaking the silence. “I expected a lot more anger. Especially after last time.”
He spun one of the tarts on a finger, staring at it. His thoughts raced.
“I’ve thought about yelling at you a few times,” Nathan admitted. “Especially when I come in here several times in a row, only to find nothing.”
“But you haven’t accepted Maura’s offer to be her eternal dildo,” Kadria noted.
“No.” He paused. “Until recently, my entire adult life was spent in a dying world. People came together because everything was falling apart. Destruction was an everyday fact of life. Every battle was horrific. There are no victories during the end of the world. You changed that.”
“If I knew you were going to make things sappy, I would have offered you the same thing that Maura did,” Kadria joked.
Or at least, he hoped she was joking.
“Why didn’t you make an offer like that?” he asked her.
“Err, technically I did.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I know you’ve seen my mental tethers to you. That night, you lowered your defenses. I used your connections to power my magic and bring us here, among other things. I needed the binding stone, which you were about to blow up.”
“Oh. Then, why don’t you use the tethers?”
Somehow, he felt that he was asking a very dangerous question.
“Because they’re not in your head, idiot.” Her foot dug into his crotch, and along his painfully erect cock. “I already told you that I’m not very good at the mental intrusion crap. Hell, you’re probably better than me at it now.”
“Does that mean—”
“Try it and you’ll find out what real mental defenses are like.” Her horns flared deep black and her eyes glowed a demonic red.
“I figured.”
Any further words he wanted to say were cut off by a groan escaping his lips. She grinned as she pressed her foot into his cock. Then she ducked under the table and crawled toward him.
“It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a milkshake,” she purred as she popped his cock out, her hot breath steaming over it.
He didn’t waste any time before gripping her horns and ramming his length down her throat. This had become almost routine for them.
For Nathan, it was a great way to distract himself. Winter had finally ended, and he only had one final year to prepare.
Chapter 31
Winter turned to spring, and the chill finally lifted. The snow melted, the pass through the Gharrick Mountains opened, and travel across the Empire resumed.
But that brought its own problems. A deep winter followed by a quick thaw brought floods. Once again, there was work to do. The portals sent demons through occasionally, but his Champions dealt with them easily. Their main duties focused on managing the chaos caused by the change in seasons.
Once again, Nathan found himself with less work. He almost missed the piles of paperwork.
“Is this what masochism is?” he asked Nurevia over lunch one day, after finishing everything that his administrators had passed to him.
“Doing paperwork?” she asked incredulously, boots up on the table. Her luscious legs were openly visible and she grinned when Nathan looked them up and down. “Do you have a fetish for papercuts?”
“That’s not what I…” He sighed and bit into his burger.
Ever since that visit to the Twins, he had been interested in trying them again. While he hadn’t recreated the same flavor, there was a lot to like about slapping fried meat between baked buns of bread. The real problem was that everybody argued over what part was the burger: the ground meat patty, or putting something between two buns.
He made a note to ask the Twins next time he saw them.
“You get all hot and bothered when I tell you how utterly annoying and useless you are, like the fact you’re stealing half of my food and have wasted my time all morning,” Nathan said.
“Hmm, that’s a bit light. You called me some juicy names last night. What was that last one?” Nurevia placed a finger against her lips. “Something about being a cocksleeve?”
“Don’t repeat things that will cause misunderstandings. You’ll corrupt the beastkin eavesdropping on us.”
A pair of squeaks erupted from outside the open door, and they heard the knights scurrying away.
“I bet they’d love being called those names so long as you stuck it in them,” Nurevia purred, gesturing to the beastkin knights outside. “Why are they all women, anyway? I figured Fei would hire more men.”
“I asked her to prioritize women, so I had a broader selection of Champion candidates.”
“Huh. Fair. Bet your kitty hated that. Anyway, you were saying something about how I was useless except for my ability to bend over and accept your fat cock?” Her eyes lit up.
He refused to take the bait. “Like I was saying, you like it when I insult you. I wondered if I’ve gotten used to doing boring, monotonous paperwork, even though I claim to hate it. Kind of like how I hate politics, but everyone insists otherwise.”
Nurevia’s expression could be used to define doubt. “You hate politics as much as I hate sex, Nathan.”
“Yeah, like that. I wonder if I’m becoming some sort of masochist, and you’re all getting confused because of that.” He polished off his burger and picked up the tankard of light ale he had. “It would explain a lot of things, recently.”
“Masochist?” Astra asked as she entered the
office with an entire bottle of Narime’s sake.
“Nathan wants you to abuse him,” Nurevia said, her face lighting up like a child receiving their first birthday present. “He’s been telling me all about his deepest, darkest fantasies.”
Nathan’s body reacted before his mind caught up to what she was saying. A sensation of dread indistinguishable from a fear of imminent death overcame him. He dropped his tankard, kicked back in his chair, and sank to the ground in a single smooth movement.
The next second, Astra’s opals glowed and she crushed the stonework behind him.
Nurevia’s laughter filled the room.
“Not like that, Astra,” Nathan said from below the table, aware of how close he came to becoming part of Astra’s fun.
“Why not?” she asked.
She stood over him, staring down at him. Had she used her enchantment to run across the room? He didn’t know how else she reached him so fast.
Down this low, it became apparent just how lewdly Astra was dressing these days. Since returning from the Spires after winter, she hadn’t put her armor back on. Instead, she only wore her underclothes.
These consisted of a figure-hugging leotard, boots, and little else. Nathan had a good view of Astra’s plump ass from down here, as well as the sheer size of her tits.
A shame he wasn’t about to enjoy them personally. At least, not anytime soon.
He coughed and got back into his seat.
“Astra, Nurevia was lying,” Nathan said. “Which is why she is trying to leave the room.”
A pair of opals flared, and the fleeing dark elf was bodily dragged back into the room.
“Go easy on me,” Nurevia cried.
“Lying is wrong,” Astra said, before cracking her knuckles.
“Sure. I get it. Now, uh, let me go?” The younger dark elf smiled. “Please?”
“Nathan, punish her?”
“No. Technically, I punished her last night,” he said.
Astra stared at him, then at Nurevia, who winked back.
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