Benjamin Vryce

Looking down at Nyx’s now unconscious body, Benjamin couldn’t help but sigh, again. She had technically done exactly as he had asked, but he had intended for her to wake him up when enemies got close. Instead, she had fought off what looked like wave after wave of enemies, single handedly. With a thought, he pulled the essence from her connection line to dismiss her back to his void space.

Then right afterwards, he summoned her again. She appeared before him, fresh as if she had slept all night in a comfortable bed. Sometimes that made him a little envious, he didn’t really need sleep anymore unless he overextended himself. Still, instant recovery was a nice quality for anyone.

“Thank you Master,” she said with another bow. “I am afraid I pushed it closer than I intended. If your female kobold hadn’t arrived, I might have been forced to interrupt your important work because of my failure to keep you safe.”

Benjamin wanted to sigh again, but refrained. He didn’t have a reason to be angry after all, she did what he wanted her to do and even gave him a present.

“Thank you, Nyx, though in future please wake me when the first wave of enemies arrives ok?” he said before lifting the slime pattern. “And, thank you for the slime pattern as well. Now I’ve got two of them, perhaps I will introduce them into my world after all. This is Kali by the way, she is going to be helping you keep us safe while she can. Kali, this is Nyx.” He introduced the six-armed, red scaled kobold to the red skinned and winged demoness.

They nodded to one another, neither seemed too inclined to chatter but they weren’t openly hostile either, He supposed it would have to work. He looked from one to the other, kali hadn’t had red scales when he first encountered her. In fact, he couldn’t remember what color they had been. Now, they matched Nyx’s skin tone exactly. He wondered if he had done that subconsciously, or if it was because he didn’t know what color her scales had been.

Other than the color of the two, they were of a height as well. Each stood approximately six feet tall, and had ample muscle mass. Kali did differ in a few key ways however, she had a long thickly muscled tail, and her face held a short muzzle filled with sharp teeth. Whereas Nyx, could have passed for human if not for the horns and skin color.

With a shrug, he decided it didn’t really matter. Kali was expendable, as much as he hated admitting that to himself. There wasn’t any getting around it though, she wasn’t tied to his soul so if she died, that was likely it for her. He wouldn’t throw her away, but if it was a choice between her and the mission, or her and himself. Well, he just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“I think it’s time we got moving again ladies.” He said, stooping down to pick up Jade’s still sleeping form. “I’ll carry Jade, Nyx you take point and Kali you be rear guard. I want to close this rift as quickly as possible, so let’s not waste time.”

Without further delay, he deposited the slime pattern into his case, and picked up Jade’s body. He hoped she woke up soon, because when they got to the rift, he was going to need her help to close it again. Nodding his readiness to Nyx, he followed as she led the way into the service tunnel.

* * *

Jade Benz

Jade was trapped in her void space, again. she wasn’t sure why she was stuck here this time though; her core was filled again and the patterns had stabilized into one new form. She looked at her core, now two interconnected rings spinning around each other, one the radiance of starlight, the other the darkness between stars. The space where they overlapped was thickening and forming a solid core of blended grey essence. It was different than what she had before, but it had worked the few times she had tried to draw in essence.

Next, she looked at the creation that stood alone in her void space. Checking the mostly invisible dome of her soul, Jade could tell that it didn’t take up as much space as Tok and the gargoyle had combined, but it was bigger then either of them had been alone. Getting up from her meditation chair, she walked around the new guy, checking him out from all angles.

She had to admit, she liked how he looked. The best qualities each of the three possessed were now at home on his frame. The gargoyle’s wings, the kobold’s thick muscular tail, the ogres’ impressive musculature. Each had blended together into, what Jade might be willing to call a work of art. Well, if she went in for that kind of thing.

He really did look sweet; grey scales covered his entire body and the black stone hide of the gargoyle had seemed to have transformed into a suit of obsidian armor that covered his chest, forearms, thighs and shins. His hands and feet were both huge and clawed, and she wasn’t sure if he had a second knee joint bending backwards, or if his feet were just really long and he was standing on their balls.

He even had a hold over from Tok’s weapons, in the form of a black leather quiver across his back between his wings. It held a handful of equally black javelins, that looked to be tipped with obsidian blades. Other then the throwing weapons, she had to assume he would fight with his claws. Since, there were no other weapons visible.

She moved right up in front of his statue like form and stared into his dragon’s face, because that’s exactly what it reminded her of, a dragon. She was sure that it was just the blended features of the kobold, who resembled a lizard man, mixed with the other monster’s features but damn it was cool. Looking up she put his height at about seven feet. though, his legs were bent and he stood hunched over. If he were to stand up straight, he could be closer to nine feet tall.

Jade hadn’t been able to bring herself to activatehim yet however, and if she were being honest with herself, she knew that was why she hadn’t been able to wake up yet. She needed to complete the binding; she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Tok had been sucked into this thing, what part of him would be left in there?

Damn was this frustrating, why did Vice have to be right about everything. He told her this might happen but did she listen? Of course, he didn’t tell her before she was all angry about his new toy. Oh no, he waited until her emotions were high and then was all “bad stuff can happen if you try to be cool like me, Jade.” Who wouldn’t think he was just wanting to be special at that point?

She walked around the dragon dude, dragon guy, dragon… maybe she would let Vice name him. She walked around the new guy again, and noticed the outlines of cylinders under the scales on his spine and tail, wings and the backs of his arms. Was this like the hydraulics he had bolted on before, only inside his body now? If so, he was going to be a real powerhouse. The kobold had tossed Vice’s demon girl around like it was nothing, and they had been the same size then.

Maybe she should just do it, Vice was probably out there fighting who knows what, gaining all kinds of new toys while she dithered in here. All she had to do, was pump a little essence into him and bam she could finish this whole thing. She really wished Tok was here, he could have backed her up so she didn’t feel so awkward about waking up a sleeping dragon…wasn’t there a saying about not doing that?

To hell with it. Reaching out to her core, she pulled some creation essence into herself and pushed it to the statue. Nothing happened. Well, it was a mix of creation and chaos, she pulled another strand of the dark energy into herself and pushed it into the statue as well. Again, nothing happened. Now what the hell, she had seen Vice do this several times.

Releasing the essence strands, Jade really looked at the pattern. It wasn’t a mix of creation and chaos so much as a blending of the two. Maybe that meant she had to use blended essence? Looking at her core, she saw the center section where the essence was blending together. There wasn’t much of it there, but if that’s what she needed to do…reaching for the new blended essence she pulled.

It didn’t want to react as easily as the other types. She had to focus all her attention on making it bend to her will. Eventually, she was able to pull a thin thread of the essence into herself and push it into the statue like body before her. Nothing happened for a moment, making her think it had failed, but after a beat she noticed that it was continuing to draw in the grey essence.

Wow, this thing was thirsty. She continued to feed it with essence, watching as the blended essence in her core dwindled away. Hoping that it was part of the activation process and not a sign of things to come, she kept feeding essence into the creature. The energy kept being drawn into the beast, and she got a feeling of needing something else. She couldn’t pin it down exactly for a long time. Finally, she realized that the beast needed a name. well, there went her plans to make Vice do it. She looked him over again and just thought of the first thing that came to mind.

She knew it had worked, when the wings twitched on the beast’s back. Not knowing if it was enough, she continued the essence flow until it opened its eyes and blinked at her a few times. Releasing the grey essence line, she followed its progress back into her now depleted core. maybe Vice could give her a few pointers on how to grow the grey parts. She knew he used a candy cane swirl of light and dark essence, but had noticed lately that they had started blending together. Each time the distinct difference between the twisted strands blurred just a touch more.

She blinked that thought away, returning to the matter at hand. The creation was now looking at itself in wonder. Stretching its wings, flexing its tail and hands. She could hear a faint whirring noise in the silence of void space, that must come from the mechanical implants he sported. Eventually, he looked up at her, and the expression in his eyes shifted. she didn’t know what to expect, but his voice resounded before she had a chance to do anything anyway.

“My lady,” he said with a bow of his head. “I am Drake, your creation to call.” After speaking, he simply stood there and watched her, waiting.

“Yes, well…Hi Drake.” She finally stammered out, sounding silly to her own ears after hearing his deep commanding voice. “I’m…ah…looking forward to seeing you in action big guy. We got a lot of bad guys to fight after all.” She finished, lamely.

“Of course, my lady. Your enemies are my enemies.” He said, before again going quiet and staring at her.

Ok, this could get creepy. The guy seemed nice enough but, apart from the smooth words he didn’t seem to have much going on upstairs. Well, that was to be expected she supposed. She had made Tok’s innocent nature a central part of this guy. The ogre had played rock paper scissors with the same innocent joy that he slaughtered a town full of goblins with. Whatever she wanted him to do, he did happily. She would have to watch that in herself going forward.

“Well, lets get out of here, shall we?” She said, to cover her awkward feelings of guilt. She was pretty sure she could get out of here now that she activated the statue and named him…she hoped.