Chapter 7: Power Leveling IV

“So I guess it's my turn, then?” Abigail asked.

“Please, go ahead,” Elaine said.

Abigail was about to push the button to share her displays, but then hesitated. Elaine had seen this before. The girl was embarrassed by how far she was lagging behind Alexis, Ophelia and Evelyn. Before she could make herself upset again Elaine said:

“Get out of your own head, Abigail. We've talked about this.”

The singer let out a fluttery breath and said:

“Right.”

 

“Vibration magic?” Alexis asked dubiously. “What's that supposed to be?”

“Sounds kind of dirty,” Cassie muttered.

“There's debate on what to call it,” Prudence said. “In short, it's the power to manipulate molecular movement.”

“That's a bit weird,” Elaine said. “There's lots of ways to manipulate molecular movement, like ice magic or even fire magic.”

“Kind of,” Prudence said. “While ice and fire and even air magic can manipulate molecular movement they do so as a byproduct of their actual usage. Vibration magic cuts out the middle-man, so to speak. It's much more versatile but in that it's also more limited.”

“That doesn't make much sense,” Abigail said.

“Think of it this way,” Prudence said. “Both a fire mage and a vibration mage can create areas of super-heated air but only the fire mage can throw a fireball. Both an ice mage and a vibration mage can freeze a body of water in the blink of an eye but only the ice mage can send a hail of icicles at the enemy.”

“Okay, that makes more sense,” Abigail said. “So between that and this new sunlight magic...”

“You'd be a terrifying mage if you learn to harness your powers properly, yes,” Prudence said.

“Well, I guess there's nothing to it but to do it, right?”, Abigail said and then started buying abilities.

“There we go,” Elaine said. “Spectacular magic and agility, just like I promised you.”

“You did, didn't you?” Abigail said. “I have to admit, I am a little curious about these new magic types. Is there a place here like our training grounds?”

“There should be,” Prudence said and fiddled with her AR displays. “I'll ask Jude. They've been here longer than us so he might know.”

“Thank you,” Abigail said, then turned to Elaine. “What did you get?”

Elaine smiled and shared her screen.

“I can't help thinking your stats balloon a bit too fast,” Prudence said.

“Honestly, I have to agree,” Elaine said. “And this is just me with five party members. Some of the other Awakeners have seven, eight or nine teammates. I'm not sure I want to know what their stats are like.”

“Lower than yours,” Prudence said. “None of them swore the Oath, remember. A big part of your progress was thanks to that. I do wonder if the Professor anticipated the Awakeners becoming so strong though.”

“I'm not sure,” Elaine said. “I really can't read him at all and half the time I have no idea what he's thinking.”

“He's mad,” Prudence said. “I don't even mean that as an insult. It's just a fact. Stollos is a madman. And we can count ourselves lucky that he's on our side. Because if he wasn't... well, you've all seen Caulder's work.”

**

After the battle the members of Project Divinity had been assigned temporary housing within the refugee camp and Ophelia was trying her damndest not to think about why they had free rooms left because all the possibilities she could come up with were horribly depressing.

Either way, right now she was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling with tears welling up in her eyes. She knew that if she blinked they would fall and so she just stared until her eyes began to burn.

The meeting with her parents had gone much better than she had expected. No matter their differences, they had been happy about Ophelia visiting them. They had even been proud of the fact that their daughter had helped keep them safe. They hadn't even called her a witch for the fact that she could do magic now. To her utter surprise, even when she had told them that she had a girlfriend now they hadn't freaked out. They had been nonplussed, sure, but they hadn't hurled the slew of bigoted rhetoric at her she'd been expecting.

Apparently the apocalypse did bring out the best in people after all.

But despite that Ophelia couldn't bring herself to be truly happy. Years and years and years of her lifestyle choices, her behavior and her looks being criticized and now that she was finally strong enough to stand up to them, now that she was finally doing something worthy that nobody could attribute anything bad to, now her parents were suddenly accepting of her and what she did. And the worst part was that she hadn't even called them out on their behavior.

“I'm such a pushover,” she muttered.

And now she was lying on a bed, moping. She could be with Elaine and the others right now. She could be teasing them and making jokes and seducing Elaine into her bed. Hell, she would love to watch what Elaine got up to with Evelyn or Cassie. It had been so adorable to watch her as she let Alexis take the lead. But no. She should be happy, or at least content, with how the meeting with her parents had gone but instead she was angry at the universe for not giving her the chance to stand up for herself. She couldn't even return to the others after having heroically defended her life choices because she hadn't had to defend anything. But if she didn't go meet up with them they might worry that something bad had happened, wouldn't they?

Eh. She could afford to wallow in self-pity a little longer, right?

**

The more Francis Hayworth thought about what he'd just done with Rachel the more hollow it felt. Oh, he didn't regret what he'd done with her. It had easily been some of the best sex he'd ever had and in the moment it had been amazing but now that the haze of lust had faded he realized how shallow it had all been.

The relationship between dom and sub was a complicated one. On the one hand the dom was obviously in control but in the end the sub held all the cards. The safeword guaranteed that nothing ever happened without the sub's permission. But this absolute power only existed by the grace of the dom. The safeword was only effective because the dom honored it. Even more, despite this absolute power the sub held a sub was still a person who had a desire to be dominated, to lose control.

But that wasn't what Rachel was.

Rachel had been in control of the entire thing. Oh, she'd done a great job acting like a sexual submissive but now he could clearly see she'd only done it to satisfy his desires. She had let him dominate her, she hadn't actually submitted to him. And how could she, if she could kill him with a snap of her fingers?

No, she had acted the part of a sexual submissive for his benefit. She'd played it to perfection and in the heat of the moment he hadn't been able to tell the difference but with his head cleared he could tell that she wasn't what he desired, nor would she ever be. Even more so, while he had certainly enjoyed his time with her, a perfect body and an encyclopedic knowledge of how to make a man lose all self-control were no replacement for the genuine bond he shared with his loving wife.

He tried to speak up but his throat was far too dry. He swallowed once, twice, before he could speak.

“Please don't take this the wrong way, but while this was amazing I don't think I'll be doing this again.”

To his surprise she didn't seem upset. Her voice was husky with the tones of pillow talk but quite relaxed as she said: “That's good. I agree, tonight was amazing. But I don't really think I need this again, either.”

He chuckled ruefully. Well, at least there weren't going to be any hard feelings.

He could feel himself drifting off to sleep but he had one last thought before his consciousness faded:

I wonder if I can get Charlotte and the girls to move here...

**

Esther Silverspark had expected many things when she'd set out to save the world. She'd expected horrors beyond even her superhuman comprehension. She'd expected grueling fights that would test her like nothing else.

But what she hadn't expected was to be bored out of her skull.

Journeying from Quebec to Buffalo hadn't sounded that bad, until the reality of her situation had hit her in the face. She couldn't use any kind of transportation to speed up the journey. Highways were choked with abandoned cars and even if she found a stretch of road a car could drive along the noise would rouse whatever Outsiders were lurking nearby. Planes were obviously not an option either. And she was too protective of what little dignity she had left after fighting a guerrilla war against the Outsiders for seven months to take a bicycle or a skateboard.

And so Esther had embarked on her six hundred mile journey on foot.

Now, that wasn't as mindbogglingly insane as it sounded. As one of the Lloigor she had an affinity for magic unlike that of normal humans. Where humans with the gift for spellweaving were an exception rather than the norm, the opposite held true for the Lloigor, nearly all of whom possessed an aptitude for magic. And even among those Esther was a prodigy, specializing mostly in air and light magic.

And right now she was using light magic to accelerate herself. It was exhausting work and she would draw too much attention if she used it at night but during the days she could travel ten times as far as a normal human without leaving herself too tired to defend herself if she got attacked. And gods below, did she get attacked. Not a day of this journey had gone by without her having to fight Outsider filth, either true Outsiders or these godsforsaken hybrids they could create out of living creatures.

Her nights, meanwhile, she spent in abandoned buildings, breaking down doors and then barricading herself inside, raiding whatever canned goods the people had left behind and finding comfort in beds that hadn't been made in over half a year. She'd gotten used to casting controlled workings of fire and air to kill whatever bedbugs had made their home under the covers.

And wasn't that a thought? If what the Knight had said was true Prince Dexter was currently residing at the High Priest's temple in Lost Atlantis, a building that was a palace in all but name, enjoying fine dining as he watched the world burn while she, the great-granddaughter of the General of the Atlantean army, had to hide herself away in tiny little houses subsisting on tinned peaches and spam.

In all fairness, after months of scavenging the ruins of human civilization she'd gotten rather apt at picking out houses that had once belonged to doomsday preppers who had evidently not been paranoid enough. Those usually held more amenities, like stacks of MREs or maybe an old diesel generator that could be used to boil some water.

Tonight she was looking forward to some particularly fine dining: A chili mac MRE and some cookies as well as a bottle of beer she was keeping in a tiny cooler in her backpack.

The glamorous life of the storybook hero this was not.

She sighed heavily as she ran along the highway. She'd only just passed Montreal and the city had been a ruin crawling with monsters. She'd been glad the highway had taken her around the city and then she'd spent a few minutes kicking herself for the thought. And then she'd spent a few minutes kicking herself for kicking herself. Avoiding the city was good because it increased her chances of seeing her mission through but it also meant she couldn't help the people still holding out in the city, hiding from the monsters. But if she helped every place she came across she'd never make headway. Thoughts like this made her wonder if her mission was doomed from the start but she refused to give in to despair. Even if everything was futile, her only other option was to just lay down and die and she wasn't going to do that.

Even if she died, even if everything she was doing ended up in vain, at least she would prove that there were still Atlanteans that didn't condone what the Uncrowned King had done, who had fought to their last to oppose his ambition.

All of those grandiose thoughts failed to disguise the way Esther's eyes widened in sheer hunger when she found a house on the side of the road with all the typical signs of being a prepper's place.

Jackpot...