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(Vol 5) Chapter 56: Relationship Infinities
🕑 Added 2024-06-30 14:48:11 +0000 UTCI probably overreacted.
As she aggressively flew at Ludicrous Speed through a cloudy, endless sky — entirely intended to cool off from her encounter with Ba Ra — the thought came to her rather soon after she was away from the Horned and Horny crew.
Zadkiel always finds some way of getting to me, even seems to enjoy getting to me, but I should’ve been more cautious. Less trusting. I’m a big, dumb, easy mark. I need to admit that and get over it. Not everyone is really my friend. Most probably aren’t. Even a lot of my closest friends are eternal fucking rivals.
While she was at it and for the brief distraction, she went ahead and picked her two sub-classes for the recent quest. [Magineer] and [Saboteur], gaining 5 and 4 exp, respectively.
[Saboteur] is now 4 exp away from level 3. Nice.
Attaining more or less a satisfactory calm and proud of herself for not ‘crying over spilled milk,’ Sammy shifted herself back to actual Heaven, and over to the lake where she’d left with Zadkiel. Her target was sitting on a low pier with her feet dangling in the water: Azure.
Sammy landed at the base of the pier and walked down. She paused at Azure’s back. “Mind if I join you?”
“Sure,” Azure replied. “The water is a bit cool, so you know.”
“That’s how I like it.” Sammy removed her shoes and sat down, dipping her feet into the… lukewarm water. Sammy immediately glared at Azure. “Hey, this isn’t cool!”
“To you! I prefer my water hot!”
They both glared for half a moment, then Sammy snorted in amusement and they both burst out laughing. Sammy added, “I’m tempted to make the water cold by my godly decree.”
Azure squinted her eyes in warning, fighting down her smile. “Don’t you dare, Samantha!” She took a breath, shook her head, and looked back out on the lake. “You were very angry for a bit with him.”
“Yeah. Well, you know how much of a trial he is.”
“There was someone else, too, hmm?”
“Sure, but it isn’t important, Azure. Just more of his nonsense.”
“Nonsense I appear to be even more responsible for than I thought.”
“But that was-”
“Yes, yes, I know — the past life. It doesn’t mean I can shed the sense of responsibility. Or my growing need to recompense.”
Sammy sucked in a breath and opened her mouth to reply, but closed it and let it out through her nose. She put a hand on Azure’s back. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this, babe.”
Azure raised an eyebrow and studied her girlfriend. “You’re not going to try talking me out of this thinking?”
“It strikes me as a bit hypocritical, for one. For another, I understand it's a guilt you can’t control and I can’t talk it away. I don’t know if it can be resolved yet, but I’ll support you regardless.”
Azure gave her a small smile. “That’s probably the right call. I think our relationship affinity went up.”
“It’s at maximum already.”
“I’ll just make my own tally, then. You’re at maximum plus one. The sky remains the limit!”
Sammy mock gasped. “Oh no, a running total! My greatest weakness! I’m enslaved!”
Azure smirked. “We’ll fit you for a collar later. But more seriously… I appreciate the support. At this point, all I can hope for in terms of resolution is being able to help the Land of Naug and improve it as a civilization. You’re planning on this already. I hope to be instrumental in your efforts, Goddess.”
“And so you will be. And what about this weird realm?”
Azure frowned as her eyes dropped. “Living shadow reflections within some facet of us my predecessor found. It is now connected to Zadkiel, who connected to it at all by means of the fragment he holds in his genus and soul. I feel strongly that I should not go there, that it is bad.” She met Sammy’s eyes and shook her head. “The disruption to both me and him might be profound.”
Swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, Sammy nodded. “We are tied so intimately, almost fused in a way, that — if you’re right — it wouldn’t just disrupt you.”
“Correct.” She paused as she mused thoughtfully, like she was trying to decide how to articulate something internal. “When that incident with the archer was happening… I felt a soul echo. Among the weirdest sensations I’ve ever had. Never have I felt more like a construct, like a crystal than when you seemed to be… within a distant part of me, struggling and shaking its foundations.”
Azure took a deep breath. “Beyond the horror of what I felt at your near-death, your escape and your repair of that place was like a balm for an itch I didn’t even know I had. So tiny. So tiny, yet branching into everything…”
“And it’s us, right? Those spaces are our connection.”
Azure nodded very slightly, noteworthy for its lack of emphasis. She chewed her lip as she reached and took Sammy’s hand to interlace their fingers. “Like what this is symbolic of.”
Sammy smirked with mild amusement. “Not girly hand-holding, right?”
Azure huffed and rolled her eyes, though with her own lop-sided grin. “No. The intimate interconnectivity. The interlacing. Our souls — the higher beings — are twisted together, and this is an anchorage into all of reality. The Hall touches everything, remember. And Ozra modified everything through it. Maybe you could say… you’re the spider, I’m the web.”
“Whoa. Heavy. You’ve been thinking about this a lot, huh?”
“Mmn. And feeling it, essentially.”
“It’s similar to some of the things Lovie hinted at. Heh. She might be having second thoughts about seeing me again with all the shit I’ll confront her about.”
To Sammy’s surprise, Azure frowned and nodded. “You’re not truly her lover, you see? I’m sure there are a lot of mixed feelings involved.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, there hasn’t seemed to be any rush.”
“Time works differently for her. She probably hasn’t even blinked in the time between, relatively speaking.”
“She’s suffered more than anyone. When you consider that, it would suggest the Director at some point feels this. Or perhaps progressively feels it. That kind of mistake would lead someone who actually loves that person into depression.”
Sammy winced as she considered it. “My higher self seems very shut off, and it doesn’t feel like a good thing. Meanwhile, the Fortuneteller is around to try and fix shit. Damn. You might be right.” As she thought about the few times she felt the ‘other self’ that was distinctly not the Fortuneteller rise up, she had a revelation. “She’s dreaming. Or thinks she is.”
“Hmm?”
“My higher self. She’s not engaged, she’s closed off, but my life is causing flares, for whatever reason. She’s in a torpor but this shit is reaching her. The pattern isn’t the same as what makes the FT pop up, either. Hmm.”
“So, not ‘doing the important quest stuff?’ What, then?”
“Fond stuff. Often… related to her lover.”
Azure raised an eyebrow. Then her eyes ‘roamed’ and a devilish grin began on her face.
I know that look! “Azure, I don’t think-”
“It sounds to me like sex could jar loose some ancient memories and secrets. Am I wrong?”
“I seriously dou-”
Suddenly, Azure’s feet were out of the water and she was pressing Sammy down for a kiss on the pier. She parted from stunned lips to offer briefly, “Shh-shh-shh, I’m trying to make a sacrifice for the sake of the universe, here, Chestnut. Won’t you do your part?”
“R-right, we can’t let everybody down, after all…”
✦•············•✦•···········•✦
The day wore on its way to the evening as Samantha’s realm marched on the path of progress, step by step and hour by hour. Her Resemblants and the likes of Ba Ra (as well as other Schismatists) conferred to begin making inroads in mitigating the damage done by Zadkiel’s absence and the lost battle at Wortboro.
There were multiple fronts, but of course, the war in the West was the most prominent. Massive numbers were still retreating. On the plus side, Naugites just flat-out moved faster on foot en masse, making their retreat much less harried than they’d otherwise be.
Nonetheless, the Dominion was emboldened without Zadkiel’s tactical superiority and use of expendable demon screeners. The sages’ forces utilized well-protected flying magi, and the Naugites were taking casualties from long-range magical ‘bombs,’ essentially. Air superiority had flipped, if such a thing was much more limited on Calrenazzod than the modern Earth concept of it.
Due to this, two clans of Naugites veered south and slightly east, essentially abandoning the war effort that was headed for the route through Twin Wells. Wisely, the Dominion left them alone, effectively trying to encourage more abandoners. This didn’t happen immediately — apparently, those piracy-centric clans were known for their shiftiness and they’d deliberately allocated their ships on some southern coast in anticipation of the potential need.
The rest seemed to be making their way to Merrington, which was heavily defensible, had a sizable defending force already that had been reinforcing it, and had hordes and hordes of their ships waiting. It remained strongly under the control of Zadkiel’s church, specifically headed by the feared and capable Priest-General Klatro Shiningfang, one of the oldest core ‘in the know’ believers.
Merrington was probably another five days' travel for the bulk of the foot marching themselves half to death, but there was no way that the Dominion forces would keep up much longer without stretching dangerously thin. Zadkiel also had surprises still waiting. Not everything he had designed survived to be usable after his Avatar’s death, but some of it did.
Zadkiel was both anxious and cautiously giddy about the imminent ‘surrender’ of Twin Wells. A special arrangement had been made by Glae to alchemically poison the wells, but it was radial and inert until Glae activated it. So… Zaddy wanted her to get Glae on board to still do it. Due to the false sense of security the Dominion was in, along with depleted leadership, the chances of it working had been massively improved.
Not many knew about it, and everyone was still drinking from it, but any of their own people just needed to be five kilometers clear when the effect was triggered.
Sammy just sighed and promised she’d get it done. Not long after, she sighed again from her throne, deciding it was best to get it over with.
“Glae,” she sent, mentally reaching out to him. “I need to check with you about Twin Wells. The Zadkiel Project is a go, by the way.”
A very cool and calm Glae immediately returned, “I’m monitoring the situation, Sam. So Zadkiel is back? In hand?”
“He can’t return for a while.” Giving him a limited amount of information on stuff seemed wise. “But we’re mitigating the damage of what happened together. He’ll be back at some point. I think he’s going to be well under my control.”
“Good. I hope you do better with him than I did. And I mean that — for our mutual goals.”
“Don’t warm my heart too much, Glae. But what about Twin Wells? The Dominion will probably be taking it soon.”
“When they camp there — which every conventional army has to for that stretch of the land — I will monitor the right time to activate the effect. It’s already set up between Zadkiel and I. Unless they take the time to meticulously alchemically analyze the water, they will suffer. Rest assured I desire them to and look forward to it.”
“Alright, then. Guess I have to trust you.” Literally the last thing I want to do!
There was a subtle feeling of amusement from him. “Life is full of such little tragedies. Some of us live long enough to be buried by them.”
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