“I wanna knoooow!” Rave complained while John was kneeling down inside an Illusion Barrier made on the house’s back lawn.
It would have been really nice there in the sumr. Stone slabs covered the veranda floor, an oversized grill stood a few tres away from a big table. All of that was severely less attractive when made slippery by the nightly frost.
It was the morning of Wednesday, around 7 AM. The household had recovered from the conversation they had yesterday. It hadn’t passed without a trace. A few tis, John caught Rave in thought and she had confessed that she was still working out how she felt about everything. Aclysia seed to be in higher spirits than ever, while everyone else was just moving about as always. Nothing had been off during breakfast. John was keeping an eye on things, but he was hopeful.
In the spirit of keeping things moving, he had elected to go ahead and summon the new elental he had accidentally gotten the option to acquire. They still had quite so ti before they needed to relocate to Ro and there was no need to remain still in the anti. New power could always be acquired.
Nothing of this was what Rave was complaining about though. “Tell what that new armguard does!” she whined and pointed at his left arm. The new piece of equipnt was strapped over the sleeve of his suit. He had chosen to wear it because it was, for reasons of Abyssal money investnts, the sturdiest thing he owned. That and he looked pretty good in it. Making a good first impression on his new elental felt key and so he had put on his entire battle regalia.
“I told you what the necklace does,” John responded, grinning.
“Fine… so, a shadow elental, right?” Rave gave in.
“That’s what the Skill says,” John humd and added so malicious looking runes to the basic summoning circle.
Lydia had said that shadow magic wasn’t inherently evil, but it sure did its best to convince him otherwise by the sheer amount of edge the drawing radiated once he was done with it.
“Not sure how I feel about ya summoning a hot girl that’s my polar opposite type wise,” Rave said, “Also, that circle could only look more satanic if ya drew it in blood.”
John nodded in agreent to that statent. “Well, I am only doing what the Skill tells to,” he explained.
“Can you hurry the fuck up doing that?” Salamander cursed. The fire spirit was out there with them because Rave, as per usual, could not stand the cold for more than a nanosecond. “I was in the middle of a Mario Kart tournant.”
“The fact that you have internet…”
“elecnet!”
“…elecnet access in my head is highly disturbing,” John comnted. “How does that even work?”
“Sothing about the collective shared consciousness of all elentals that are still connected to our ho planes, represented in a modern way because we don’t live in the stone age anymore. I don’t fucking know the details, I just know that it gets faster the better you get at elental magic. Now summon that new sister for our cock-loving sorority so I can get back to kicking Gno’s slowpoke ass!” Salamander gave him a quick tutorial.
“Yes, yes,” John agreed and put the chalk down before putting his hand on the edge of the circle. The goal was summoning a Tier 3 elental. The circle reacted to the intent and sapped the required life and magic from him in a heartbeat.
“Well, look at that, now it’s actually glowing red,” Rave’s snarky remark was the last thing he heard before sothing alien invaded his thoughts. All light vanished and now he was in a vast space of pitch black silence. Visually, it looked similar to the nothingness he had known from the empty barriers Magoi had created for him.
ntally, however, this was different. The darkness of an unfilled Illusion Barrier was clean, almost sterile. It was waiting to be replaced, representing a potential for sothing different to take its place.
This darkness was full. It was what it was. It was sharp, black, and unapologetically embraced him with its lightless expanse. Elental powers roiled either openly or under a veil that John could not perceive. There was sothing just beyond the reach of his arm, if only he could try to grab it.
John couldn’t move most of his body, the thing in his thoughts blocking every signal that didn’t go to his eyes or mouth. Looking anywhere was useless, everything was the sa absolute black. Speaking at least pushed away the silence.
“Hello?” he asked. This wasn’t like the other summonings, usually the Mother of that elent would speak to him and then he would be shown so vision. Even Salamander had followed that pattern. Now he was just alone, save for that presence in his head. That soon changed, however.
The darkness in front of him slowly crept back to reveal the shape of a woman. Her slender arms were bound in shadowy chains above her head. Her feet, the shape of high heels whose stilettos were exceptionally sharp, dangling just above the ground were similarly restrained. Both were covered in so latex-like, almost black, deep-purple layer. Towards her hands it beca slightly lighter in colour, covering her hands and feet, the final segnts of her fingers were long claws, sharper than glass shards.
Despite her obvious imprisonnt, her greyish pink hair was silky and fell over her full chest, softly curling towards the tips, where more of that latex-like exterior hugged her tits and stomach in the shape of a leotard. Nothing of her hourglass build was hidden. If anything, it was all accentuated by the swirling patterns. The soft rise and fall of her abdominal muscles was as clear as if painted on. The only purpose of the latex-like layer seed to be to shield her light blue skin from greedy eyes. With gleaming yellow eyes, the irises the shape of a snake, she looked at John. Purple lips curved into a smile.
“Another lamb for the slaughter? How nice of Mother.” Every word that left her mouth was sensually drawled. It was the kind of tone that those who spoke artificially seductively wished to copy. “Co now, little man, I am completely at your rcy. Do with whatever – your heart – may – desire.” Every stretched-out word drew out a bit more of John’s primal instincts as control of his body rushed back into his limbs. He got to his feet and stumbled one step forwards.
Her ample chest rose and fell with a steady want, accompanied by the lustful sighing of her every breath. It made the Gar’s pants tight. All John would have needed to do was extend his hand and he could have dug his fingers into these sizable mounds of flesh.
“Yeah, no,” he said and crossed his arms instead, the presence in his mind finally gone. “This bait is too obvious.”
The shadow elental shifted in her chains, rubbing her legs together in a desperate gesture, “Please, oh mighty newcor, I have been aching for sobody like you.”
“Not falling for it,” John told her.
“Tsk,” the elental averted her eyes for a mont, clicking her tongue, then looked back at him with pure innocence, “Mister, all I need is your cock.”
“You are not a particularly good actress,” John comnted, “Pro-tip: Don’t start with ‘another lamb for the slaughter’ and don’t ‘Tsk’ in the middle of the dialogue, completely breaks the imrsion. If this was a cutscene, they would fire the writer.”
He looked more closely at the chains, The shadow-forged links ended sowhere beyond the reach of darkness his eyes could pierce. “Usually, the visitors start drooling and just ignore all I say,” the elental admitted and shrugged, the chains rattling in response.
“Ah, being honest now?” John asked.
“Mother evidently didn’t send you over as entertainnt, or you would have been dumb enough to fall for that,” the elental looked at John, who was walking around her body. “I only had the pleasure of quick entertainnt for the longest ti. I keep getting the scum of Earth presented to . The weak, unsatisfying kind.” She tilted her head to follow him as he walked. “You might be worth clawing apart?”
“I had a way stronger being suggest that to yesterday. I am not exactly intimidated by you.” He was now behind her.
Turning her neck to a degree every human would have described as highly uncomfortable, but still within the realms of possibility, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Checking out your ass,” he bluntly stated, “and I have to say: Nice. Looks firm but would probably jiggle when slapped.”
“Why don’t you try it out?” she asked and wiggled enticingly. Not once did her alluring tone drop or skip a beat. It sounded like that was genuinely her voice.
“Mhm, so you get out of these chains if I lay a hand on you, would be my guess.” The elental furrowed her eyebrows, that was all John needed to know. “Bullseye, you are a really bad actress… or you are distracting from sothing else.” He walked back to her front and stopped just close enough that he could reach out and touch her whenever he wanted. “If you want to keep a secret you say sothing unrelated, you don’t imply the exact opposite,” he gave her another tip.
“I wonder if your brain would still produce such smart words if I scattered it over the floor?” The words were calm. A curious thought, spoken out loud, rather than a threat.
John had no answer to that, he instead used Observe. Which was denied. That wasn’t to say that it didn’t work, it did, but the silent Mother of Shadows blocked the results from his vision, leaving him with only a pitch-black rectangle in a light blue fra. ‘Well, I can’t learn her na through Observe. That would betray the usual motions.”
“If Mother didn’t send you to entertain , what are you here for?” the elental wondered.
“I wanted to make a contract with an elental, the Mother of Shadows sent here following the ritual, so it seems that’s what I am here for.” He scratched the back of his head.
The elental giggled. “Are you serious?” she asked not him but the vast darkness around them. John did not notice anything, but the elental’s giggle grew a little louder, as if listening to so kind of joke. Her voice continued to drip with eroticism, mixed with hope and genuine interest. “Do you know how long I have been here?”
“Obviously not, I just got here,” John remarked.
“Neither do I,” she said, ignoring his implied question. “I know why I got here, however. Possessing the dreams of mundanes is skirting the lines of the divide Gaia put up. Making a sad prostitute murder her pimp was apparently a bit much.” She sighed and stretched. “Ah, that mont when those who think they have everything have it all taken away – how I miss it.” The last part was spoken with sharp, tantalizing intent. Enough to send a chill down John’s spine. “How much do you have?” she asked.
‘This girl is cray-cray.’ John decided to look for another elental who was less homicidal. He was a pervert, yes, and she was hot as fuck, yes, but without assurance he wouldn’t stick his dick into that, or allow her to pull so other stunts like that when he would have to take the responsibility in front of Gaia.
‘I can give you assurance,’ a toneless voice said in his head. It was like sobody was scratching words into the inside of his forehead. ‘If you take her with you, she will have to obey five rules you can set-up however you want and you can change them however you want.’
‘Seriously?’ John thought, ‘What If I make one of the rules: Kill yourself at 11 PM.’
‘She will have to obey whatever rules you set,’ The scratching repeated. ‘If you do sothing as foolish as that, know that you will not find any shadow elental that is not your enemy. I wish to make it your charge to show my wayward daughter a way to live in the world again. Do this for .’
John rubbed his forehead with both hands to get that disgusting feeling away. “Mother doesn’t seem to like you enough to use her pleasant voice,” the elental’s tone was vibrating with amusent.
Raising an eyebrow, he said, “You are an awful actress, but pretty good at picking up small things.” With a shrug, the elental took both the insult and the complint.
“And, what did Mother whisper to you? That I will be difficult to handle?” the elental licked her lips in a gesture that was both seductive and bloodthirsty. The chains pulled taut. “Because I can imagine very few things more fulfilling than seeing you bleed out. People like you deserve the reminder.”
“People like ?” John asked, out of sheer curiosity.
“People who have everything they wish and get everything they want, people whose life just seems to reward them for existing,” her wide grin showed sharp, white teeth, her yellow eyes glowed brighter and her hair rose until it stood upwards, swaying like the fla of a candle. “The happiest people, the ones who are shattered completely when their boundless success suddenly ends.”
“I am pretty blessed,” John admitted, “the ability I have is suprely strong, I have the best girlfriend in the world, a harem and enough money to buy just about anything I could ever want.” He looked into her eyes, “But to say I get everything for free is unfair.” The desire to gouge out his throat and do things to his corpse that even a butcher wouldn’t be able to keep his stomach in check for was spelled out so clearly in there that John had to smirk. “Well, even if I tell you my life isn’t without hardship you are going to stay convinced to kill , aren’t you?”
“Whatever hardships you face are probably laughable. You’re a Latebloor. I can sense the power of your soul radiate in this plane,” the elental responded, struggling with renewed vigour against her chains. “I’ve seen many like you. You think you do good and cut down too many in your path. Soone ought to claw you back down to reality.”
Tendrils of shadow extended from her back, each of them ending in a long blade. Their size varied, but each was sharp and ready to skewer him. They stretched towards John, but failed to quite reach him. The sa magic that kept her chained also made this act of aggression re show.
John wasn’t certain of that in the first few monts, and had taken a large step back. “You know, just yesterday, I showed another woman who the world thought to be nothing but a monster that she was beautiful. I think your Mother wants to do the sa for you. I’m inclined to try,” John offered.
“My desire is to ruin you,” the elental didn’t raise her voice. Even now, it was the sa, purely sexual tone. “Why would I agree to a contract with you?” The question was bait, she wanted to get out of here and they both knew it. There was sothing else that she wanted, however.
“How about a bet?” John said and carefully stepped closer again. The bladed tentacles were forced away, unable to overco an invisible barrier around John. His hand hovered up from her legs to her chest and finally her face. Careful to never touch her, he continued, “I unshackle you and you get one shot at killing . If you win, congratulations, you hurt a lot, even if you can’t kill here. If you fail, you tell your na and we make a contract. I should add that your Mother told she will give the power to enforce 5 rules you will have to obey once we are outside though.”
Her eyes beca darker, quite literally; where normal eyes were white, hers were grey and now they beca pitch black, only intensifying the yellow of her iris by contrast, “Why would you tell that?”
“Because I don’t want to base our relationship on lies and your disappointnt that you cannot try to kill outside of here.” John smiled and shrugged. “I’m a good guy, I’m reasonably certain. I don’t always act like it and you don’t believe . Admittedly, I can be quite selfish.”
The tentacles increased in number until he saw dozens of them to each of his sides, like the needles of an iron-maiden waiting to close, telling John what her answer was going to be. “I accept your wager,” the elental sighed. “Let’s make this quick and ssy.”
With a smile, John stayed his left hand above her chest. He leaned in and placed a kiss on her full lips. Black pupils thinned to a razor-thin slit. The tendrils rushed towards him from every direction. There was fire and a flash.
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