Chapter 89

Always Read the Divine Print

Jess and I were a well-oiled team, in that we were so over oiled that we slid over, past and could never align properly to form what we were supposed to. You know, like well-oiled things tend to get. That isn’t how things are supposed to go? The oil is just meant to be applied enough to make the pieces move slightly, until they get proper alignment? OH! Yeah, that didn’t happen at all.

Jess would fire erratically, moving in front of me, dodging and weaving from monsters that were already dying due to my Psionic attacks. I even tried to hold back a bit, to allow here time to grow into her role. Apparently, this caused more tension between us, as she thought I was either pandering to her, coddling her, or completely ignoring her.

Yeah, in case you missed it, like I did. She was still mad at me. But she was willing to put all of that behind her for the mission. A mission that was apparently to be as much of a handicap for our team, as possible. She moved, rolled, and spun about randomly. Often just moving her feet for the idea that she needed to be doing something. I wanted to tell her that you only need to move your feet if you are retreating or advancing.

As it was, we were doing neither. If we retreated, then Rayquel’s team would swarm in and gain all the kills. If we charged forward, then we would be placing ourselves in direct line of fire from Rayquel’s team. Well Rayquel’s team and Jess.

This time Jess made sure to take the front line. At first, I was confused on this, until I saw her taking quick glances back at me. I was in my new combat suit, the liner at least that would help protect me from intense heat and cold while piloting. It took me longer than I’d like to realize that she found me attractive in this suit, just as she had earlier in my Heal Boy costume. The Heal Boy costume that I knew blew my cover of my being deceased. In fact, I was almost surprised that no attempts on my life had been made to this point. Though it was only a matter of time.

I know, I’m a perpetual pessimist, I get it. But really, when life goes like this, I can’t help but feel that things are about to change. Or increase in tempo, almost like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. That is an odd expression, shoes dropping? Who came up with that one? Oh yeah, things were going fine with just the one shoe, but then it dropped as well. I don’t know. There is likely a holo-net documentary on it, depicting the life and times of some man who cared about relating shoes to prophecies or something.

Anyways, as for me, I was still bored. I was killing more than Rayquel’s team, despite my handicap. Not that I would ever call Jess a handicap, especially not while she was already mad at me. But I did have to wonder what she was still mad at? I had tried to back her up, which was why we were in this predicament as teammates. We had a few breaks in between some of the major swarms.

It was clear from the flow that the General could kill the exercise whenever she wanted to, she just wanted to push us as far as possible. This was good for me, as I wanted to give all of my certs to Jess so she could continue to unlock Magical abilities.

Still, I could not for the life of me figure out why she was insisting on being angry with me. Then she would turn and stare at me with her lust filled eyes, only to turn away disgusted with herself. Well not really disgusted with herself but disgusted that she got caught staring. It was her fault for constantly placing herself as the lead, anyways. This meant that any time she looked back at me, it would be really obvious.

During one of the breaks, I almost broke down and asked, why she was angry. But I just knew that would cause yet more anger on her part. She was clearly fuming about something, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand.

“Last round. Let’s make this one count. We are going to pull the summoning circles up to max. I hope you all can keep up.” General Fellina shouted from the safety of her broadcast booth.

That is when the most Prolaxians I had ever seen came to life. I changed tactics, going for Air-X and mixing that with Pyrokinesis-X to create a burning inferno of flames. Flames that were then fanned by air currents and given the ability to take on any form I wished.

Again, normally the world should fight against such blatant use, but I could swear I felt the consciousness of the world turn a fraction of its consciousness to me. A consciousness that almost made me shudder for a second. But then, just as quickly as I felt the extra attention, the increased force just disappeared as if it never existed at all.

That was when, I felt my connection to the very planet increase.

Planetary Synergy: 13%

At that, I felt my air currents take on just a little more control, as I was able to create a boundary that killed everything.

Everything was going fine, until a sudden flash in my mind sparked. As soon as I felt the flash of recognition fire off in my mind, my son, or daughter? Yeah, daughter tree spoke to me.

“Father, stop! You must save her.” My rebel tree prime spoke.

Fortunately, I was already stopping my flames. Just as quickly as the currents began, they vanished and dispersed, back to the control of the planet. That was when I realized some members of Rayquel’s team either didn’t hear the tree, see the glimmer of light, or were too caught up in their own battle frenzy to care.

Regardless of the reason, I took charge. “Cease fire!” I shout.

Badump.

There on the pile, it couldn’t have been? But it was? Wasn’t it?

I am moving forward, despite my giving the cease fire order. Unfortunately, monsters are still being summoned. That, or they can’t stop the summoning portals that quickly.

Looking forward, I thought I saw a glint of light on metallic energy infused wings.

I am laying down wave after wave of Mind Rend-X, wave after wave of power is being fired out towards the oncoming monsters. But still I am charging forward, trusting that Rayquel has enough control over her team to not let them shoot me in the back. Even if they did, my wings should deflect most of their shots, it would just be annoying.

Plop, clop.

The Prolaxian monsters that we had killed to this point made little more than slogging slushing sounds as I charged forward through the piles of bodies. There at the top, I see the bright green and blue wing of a Guardian. Their butterfly wings are unmistakable in this light.

“Someone is here?!” I shout out.

Seeing the downed Guardian’s form, I immediately cast Healing-X on her. The form is female, that much is for certain, though her face remains somewhat of a mystery.

I reach down to grab her, and instantly hoist her frame that is lighter than it should have any right to be up out of the mound of Prolaxian corpses.

As I pick her up, I feel her breathing within my arms.

“She’s alive. She’s alive!” I call out.

That is when she opened her blue eyes, and my body froze in place.

The abrupt stop in movement so much that I nearly slide and end up gliding down the pile of corpses before I manage to regain my footing.

There looking into her eyes, I see it is Jess. Well not my Jess, but a Jess. The wings and wickedly smoking hot body, all but prove that she is the future Jess from my dreams. The ones that I had somehow managed to push to the back of my subconscious while I tried to work things out with my Jess.

Then in a somewhat daze, she reaches up to caress my face.

“You fool. You messed it all up.” Sexy-hot Guardian Jess said, as her eyes rolled back in the back of her head and her hand fell limply to her side. Seeing her state, I continue to run forward, through the pile of corpses.

Once I get back, I realize there are blessedly no more Prolaxians coming. This is good, as I was more than a little distracted.

“What in the Abyss is that?” General Fellina yelled as she came running onto the training field. The fact that she was able to enter the field at all meant that the protective barriers had been taken down, and the summoning portals had been stopped, at least for the moment.

“I don’t know. She just sort of appeared.” I say, while leaving out the fact that I might or might not have had a nap about this very woman. See, learning already. I make a quick glance at my Jess, only to see that she is glowering at me.

To distract myself, I move her well out of the combat area and place her down on a long bench that had been set up for observers to watch the proceedings.

“Well shit. You know what this means?” The General asked.

“We need to take care of her?” I ask, not quite certain.

“No, well yes, we clearly need to take care of her, she is a Guardian after all. But no, what I mean is we now have to fill out paperwork.”

“Ohh!”

Groans and sighs escaped the other Endarians. I wasn’t quite certain why everyone was complaining, until Rayquel saw my confusion and answered.

“Our Incident Responses are linked to protective rituals that are meant to bind away future Prolaxian incursions from forming, at least around the sacred trees.”

Hmm?” I managed, oh so eloquently.

“Yes, it is a long warding ritual that drains you of energy and makes it so you can barely walk around the next day while you wait for your magical resonance to refill.” Another of Rayquel’s elite team members spoke.

“Ah.” I said, in understanding. The perfect wind down to a long training session, intense paperwork, followed by a warding ritual that drained you of all your magical resonance. What more could any aspiring soldier with beer money and free time want to ruin a perfectly good night.

***

“This form is a joke, right?” I ask when speaking about the incident response report, for Butterfly Jess randomly dropping in on our training session. I have no problem filling out the form, I don’t even see a problem with me first signing it with my signature, then filling out my full name. I do have a bit of an issue with the binding of the incident report with a bit of my blood magical essences. My hackles were further raised when I noticed the fine print of the document stating.

Once thirteen of these forms are filled out by senior leadership, a warding ritual will be conducted to prevent such tasks from occurring again.

That had led me to first notice the seemingly dormant rune etchings on the binding document. These etchings would of course become active once a person’s personal essence was applied.

The only problem? Well, the runes that were there had certain limiters removed. This might not seem like much, but when a warding schema is being enacted, you want a limiter to be established. Logically one could make a limiter one fifth of the magical essence they had on hand. That, or they could require a bit of blood to help draw the warding into the material world.

Honestly it was such an old practice that I didn’t even realize it was being observed. But what shocked me the most was that this was not a warding spell, at least not anymore. No, the runes had been subtly flipped and then reattached to the background of the document. This took it from being an externally facing anchor point to an internally facing one. Meaning, a spell that was meant to banish evil, would now draw that evil even closer. Worse, without limiters, the summoning would continue onward, until all of those who signed their names and willingly applied their essences were drained completely.

With all that, one can hopefully see why I would ask if this was a joke or not. For if this was a joke, I would expect them to stop me and the other officials around us from signing.

But everyone just looked at me like I was crazy.

“What? This is the standard form that we have been using for years?” Rayquel says, gesturing to her filled out form. She is about to apply her essence to the contract when I yell out.

“Stop!”

“What?” She asks, as if she has better things to do than not die when this summoning spell goes incredibly wrong. Then she proceeds to apply her own essence to the form regardless.

With a stare I realize that she is not the only one who has done so. Everyone has signed them, even Jess, well my Jess. Since these incident reports were about the butterfly Jess, she didn’t get to fill out a form.

Still, that meant that if I refused to sign this, then someone else likely would. Also, it looked like my form was the final form. The final one needed to create this mass summoning ritual.

Now the problem with mass summoning rituals, something you don’t realize until Cthulhu is being summoned right on your neighbor’s house, is that they are tough to take over. While using my Willpower, Precision, and Power are more than enough to take out most magic attempts. To take over a summoning circle would take far more Power, Control, and Willpower than everyone who was assisting with the summoning. This meant that my normal method of taking over this summoning ritual when it went live was nearly impossible.

This meant, I only had but one real option. With a few quick taps on the screen, I filled out my form, adjusted a few runes. Then I am focusing on summoning forth a lot of mana in my left hand, after which I pulled out a Leatherman and made a slight cut into my thumb. Then taking a deep breath, I calmed my mind as I let my drop fall towards the electronic form.

Time seemed to slow down, as the drop of mana infused blood plummeted towards the tablet. All I could do was think to myself, this might not be the most incredibly stupid decision I made. Though the bar is awfully low to go over.

Then with that the drop hit the tablet. There was a flash and pulse of energy, as I felt the thirteen different forms all begin to come together in an ethereal linking chain. At this point I quickly adjusted my thoughts and realized I might have been wrong about this not being the most incredibly stupid decision I ever made. WAY, WAY WRONG!