Velka refused to co along with them. With a belly full of mice, the Magryph’s highest priority was to lay down in the grass and sleep. The spot she chose for that non-endeavour was near a rock, leaving her just one roll of her nimble body away from switching from lying in the warm sun to the cool shade.
After so final belly rubs, Nia stood up and took John’s arm. Her slender body felt in the correct place, right next to him, and he put his hand on her hip to embrace her as much as he could while they walked. Quietly, for the majority of the ti, they made their way to the south-western bridge that connected the bottom of the star fort to the Residential District.
“You mind if we take a short detour?” John asked.
“Yes,” the cute-needing pariah answered swiftly – by her standards.
“Even if it is to put up a statue of Stirwin?” The additional question caused the usual break between Nia’s words to occur. Her habit to think through her answers combined with her emotionless staring tended to unnerve people almost as much as her alien aura did.
Her putting on a thoughtful expression to counteract her case of ‘resting ice-queen face’ would have gone a long way. The aura was easier suppressed, emotional monts put aside. Nia hadn’t yet gotten so far that she could show what she felt at all tis. She had to make a semi-conscious effort.
Deciding to gently push her in the right direction, John said, “You’re staring, Nia,” and watched her expression slowly shift. Her pale pink lips curved slightly, small wrinkles around her eyes indicated happiness, and her eyebrows shifted a bit closer to each other. “That’s better,” he told her and leaned down to kiss her.
They stopped in the middle of the bridge. Nia stretched to et him. Her lips were soft and warm. As odd as the lack of taste and sll were, as alien as the aura she exuded, so human and wonderful was her body. Feeling it through her dress was difficult, in a way. The non-fabric separated his palm from her pale skin with a feeling smoother than silk. It was so smooth, in fact, John failed to find an equivalent. At the sa ti, the dress felt like a liquid under his fingers, as if he could push through if he just tried.
A minor headache started to swell in the comprehension part of his brain. Much as it irked him, John steered away from this thing he couldn’t understand. Instead, his hand slid upwards, to the open back of her colourless dress, where the honesty of her soft, pale skin awaited him.
Their kiss was calm and loving. No excess wrestling of tongues turned the contact of their lips into a noisy or wild endeavour. They rely stayed connected, listened to their breathing and enjoyed the sensation of being so close to each other.
Suddenly, Nia pulled away, “No.”
“No?” John asked. The possibility of being rejected stunned him. He was used to resistance by enemies and could cope with the rare female that he both wanted and resisted his advances. One of his harettes telling him off had him confused for several seconds. Even his erudite mind failed to co to the obvious conclusion imdiately. It clicked before long though. “No, you don’t mind if we take the detour?” Nia nodded and he kissed her on the forehead, just to shake the rest of the shock out of his system. “I thought for a mont there you didn’t want to kiss anymore,” he laughed.
His last chuckle ebbed away and Nia grabbed him by the collar. On her toes, she claid his lips again. It was a long, direct kiss with no movent. Just contact between the two of them. “I always want to be with you, darling,” Nia whispered afterwards.
With a big grin on his face, John resud their walk.
__________________________________________________________________________
The Monunt to the Celestial Devourer was a Building John had unlocked when Stirwin had Unleashed in his true form. Its functionality was as limited as it was useful, allowing Stirwin to absorb the mana used for Guild Hall upkeep to Unleash using it, as long as he was in the Guild Hall territory. Like everything else to do with John’s powers, there were a series of conditions attached to this powerful effect.
The obvious was that absorbing the power of the Guild Hall would cause its Buildings to shut down. A customizable list of which Buildings would never be affected sowhat alleviated this problem. Shutting down the other security asures of the Guild Hall when Stiriwn used the function to turn into an able protector would have run counter to the intent. The less obvious limitations were those on Stirwin’s Unleash independent of the energy source. Because Stirwin could only store energy for about 12 to 16 hours, he could only draw energy from the Guild Hall once a day.
There was a potential workaround there, because the Guild Hall restored all of the 1,23 million mana it currently produced at midnight. With so clever timing, additional effects could be drawn out.
All of that being said, the roughly 2 million mana Stirwin could draw from the Guild Hall in an optimal ergency situation was useful. Not world-moving, he was still 98 million short of the Celestial Devourer stage, but enough to give the space one more protector. It helped that it was in addition to the permanent Stage 3 Unleash he already enjoyed in the Guild Hall. His true form was Stage 7.
As for where John put the Monunt to the Celestial Devourer, that had been a bit difficult. Stirwin had refused to have it on the Light Island, for no other reason than it would have made him uncomfortable to have a big version of himself standing around for people to marvel at. The next contender, the Cherry Square, was out because John had other plans for it. With no other imdiately obvious locations, the Gar decided to simply put it in the Park and be done with it.
The Monunt deserved the moniker, being a two-tre tall statue of the cosmic reptilian squashing under its golden claws a ss of black tentacles and teeth. Curving around half of the circular plinth, the tail of the statue seed almost as sharp as the real scales had been. About a tre out from the light brown stone of the statue’s base was a ring of gold and silver crystals, surrounding the site like a crown, several arches letting people enter and witness the Monunt.
“Not as cute as the original,” Nia judged.
“Honestly, I can’t see fully Unleashed Stirwin as cute,” John confessed. “He was too large. It’s like thinking a skyscraper is cute.”
“You have a narrow mind.” Nia’s chastising words were accompanied by a frown. “Would Velka not be cute if she were the size of a skyscraper?”
“Velka isn’t even cute now, she’s just a thieving little pest.” John delivered the joke with a straight face, causing Nia to look at him with raw disgust. “If she were that size, I’d have to worry she’d steal Lady Liberty and hide her in the Mariana Trench, or sothing ridiculous like that.”
While he gestured wildly at the Statue of Liberty atop the Palace, Nia raised both her fists to defiantly drum them on his chest. None of the punches hurt. He was closer to laughing than he was to relenting. “Tu es une mauvaise personne,” she started to complain in French. A number of other insults and accusations followed, none of which John found himself able to deny.
He was too distracted by how adorable the blonde pariah was. The deliberately weak punches on his chest kept her lithe body in motion. Pouting and looking up at him, her expression contrasted so strongly with the cool deanour she had naturally. That difference between what everyone else saw and what he knew she truly was inside made her so much more precious.
In a minorly raised voice, Nia asserted, “A larger cute animal ans there is so much more to cuddle!”
“I bow to your wisdom, I bow,” John conceded with a laugh, and the drumming of fists ca to an end. Acting the part of the annoyed girlfriend, Nia turned away and marched ahead. Typically, the Gar refused to be anything less than in charge of the situation.
He ran after her and swept her off her feet into a princess carry. The mont she laid across his arms, her existence vanished from that place and continued a tre in front of him. Taking up the challenge, John chased after her. Each ti he was about to catch her, or even when he did, the second Maiden of Null utilized her powers to shift her being elsewhere.
Counteracting her repeated teleportation by changing the angles of his assaults, John guided her in the direction he wanted. Eventually, they entered a small wood. While it was more difficult to manoeuvre between the trees, they also limited the places she could teleport to. Inside the wood, they continued their ga of cat and mouse until Nia turned too translucent for comfort.
John grabbed her by the wrist. Rather than teleport again, she freed herself with a quick martial arts manoeuvre (one of the mundane variety). They both stepped towards each other. Their hands t in a reciprocating intertwining of fingers. Her other arm ended on his shoulder. His ended up on her hips. Before they knew it, they were dancing under the shade of the treetops.
A ballroom dance with no lody but their hearts, the two of them dodged the trunks and low branches with natural elegance. John trusted his supernatural senses enough to never move his gaze away from the piercing blue of her eyes, an icy colour turned warm by the love reflected within.
What started as a dance to the beat in their chests was soon the target of a song. Attracted by sothing about the display, fairies and elentals, primarily of the air variety, flocked to the patch of trees. The small pixies and typically green-haired elentals had their similarity in size and attitude, but the giggle of the forr was enchantingly sinister, while the latter was dangerously carefree. John didn’t worry about either, he had reigned in their excesses months ago – the occasional troublemaker aside.
Fairies and elentals sung for the duo dancing around the trees. An impromptu chorus of many voices, interweaving into an intricate piece that should have been impossible to create on the spot. Unbothered by such assertions, the magical beings did it anyway. Their voices were wordless tones, hitting whatever pitch the individuals desired, and layering into a wonderful unison.
Still, John and Nia only had eyes for each other. They twirled, circled and walked together, expanding on what would have been proper for a ballroom dance with what was elegant and fluid. Sotis their dance slowed to a unified swaying, back and forth to the most important part of the entire song, the beat of their hearts.
Their steps sped up, the song followed suit, the trees shook and flower petals rained from their sumrly green branches. Everything aid towards a final mont. John whirled his beloved pariah around, took her by the hips, raised her up, turned round and round on the spot, and finally scooped her up, getting her in that princess carry he had wanted from the start. The translucency was long gone by then.
The shower of flower petals around them exploded into a fireless-work of light and colours. In this rainbow ocean, John bowed down on the pale blank in his arms and kissed her again. He could hear her chuckle, a rare and girly sound. “I love you,” she whispered between kisses.
“I love you more.” John decided he wanted to play that particular ga.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Back and forth it went, until the colours around them had settled and they looked around. All of their visitors had disappeared already, save for a lone air elental that was busy clapping. “Yay, beautiful, outstanding, romantic, great, I…” The small air spirit looked left to right, her light blue hair cascading around like a cool breeze. “Uhhh, where is… Eeeeeep!”
As if only realizing she was being watched now, the air elental suddenly took off and flew away in the direction of the Elental Island she ca from. John could have easily caught up to her and asked what all of that had been about. A hunch told him that they wouldn’t know either. They weren’t the kind of beings to plan anything carefully.
In a way he didn’t want to know. For all of the predictability of the ga systems involved, the Guild Hall was still a place where many different kinds of beings interacted. The friction would sotis create conflicts, often create nothing at all, and sotis create magical monts. If he could predict all of the great happenstances that could randomly spring into existence, that would make the world a lot less interesting.
“Alright, enough of cute you,” John said and carried his beloved pariah eastwards.
To the nagerie.
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