The island was a dry place. Had they been mundane people, the lack of water and shade would have swiftly left them parched. Even being superhuman, the trek was pretty dull. They saw so people move in the distance, locals that were killing ti by making sure no one set foot on their island unallowed. The armbands did their work. The trio continued unseen.
Their target was a simple house off in the distance. It was a box, reinforced against storms, yet a box all the sa. It was located near the cliffs, overlooking the sea below. Only a toilet cabin kept it company. A single door in its white walls faced inland.
John looked around habitually, but his current grade of contact lenses would not have told him about anything besides the most rudintary wards. If they had been detected, he would find out in a second.
A gesture of his head asked a question. A simple nod by Layla provided the answer. Whoever was hiding from them, he was inside that house.
John considered his approach for a mont. If he just opened the door, that could sour matters. If he knocked, that could complicate matters in its own ways. ‘Though I can’t really imagine a scenario short of obfuscation-based teleportation where knocking would be a sufficient warning,’ the Gar thought. ‘And that’s a power usually reserved for fairies, so…’
Two taps of his knuckles against the wooden surface.
“Co in,” a demanding voice answered.
John pushed down the handle. He was the first in, closely followed by Nathalia and then Layla. Sohow, the house was even less impressive on the inside. A small table stood against the left wall. An office chair had been pulled back to the single, sea-facing window. In it sat the occupant, the man that had been hiding – or, rather, the god.
He had long, brown hair. He wore it combed back, with only a few strands left to cover his forehead. He was pale and attractive in an average kind of way. Rectangular glasses sat on his nose. John had his doubts that they were needed for his silver eyes to scan the pages of the book before him. The man wore a suit, finely tailored to his lean figure. A silver tie over his white shirt pulled the entire look together.
“You know this is private property?” Veridion asked, eyes knitted in annoyance.
[Veridion AI: scdn.imgchest/files/04e77b74b3b8.png ]
The god of oaths turned towards them. His mouth opened in a follow-up, only to stop when his silver eyes got stuck on Nathalia’s rack. It wasn’t for the regular reason a man’s gaze would get glued to such a blessed place.
“’Dragon Boing’?” he read out the text printed onto the swimsuit. “You know, Nathalia, I always considered you a skanky slut – then you upped your tits by two cup sizes and now you walk around in that. I suppose I should admire your honesty?”
Nathalia pulled her red lips back in a growling snarl. Had they not been in real space, there would already have been violence.
John restrained his urge to send an Arcana Ray at the guy anyhow.
“This print,” the dragoness hissed, “was suggested by my Delicia. Insult her tastes again and I will remind you why I am the Fla of Destruction. Insult the desire of my mate to have more flesh to play with and I will see if I can make real one of Eliana’s more creative insults.”
“You must excuse for not knowing what that threat even ans. All I know about your pet failure is that she has a potty mouth, not how much she runs it,” Veridion declared. His eyes returned to the book. “Again, I remind you that you are on private property. You are in violation of an oath you swore as a citizen of the United States of Arica.”
John felt sothing in the back of his mind click. A vague sense of dread washed over him, as if soone held an invisible gun to his temple. “You are threatening already?” the Gar asked.
“I am holding you in contempt,” Veridion stated.
“First off, John is emperor of Fusion, he can do whatever he wants! If anything, you are trespassing on his property!” Layla spoke rapidly, the words flowing from her mouth in a wrathful cascade. “Second – nothing else matters! Learn your place! What’s a god in front of John?! You should be BEGGING him to take over this land! He’ll develop it, he’ll protect it like he protected the entire world from the Lorylim you absolute piece of fi-“
“Trespasser.”
The word of power tore a high-pitched scream from Layla’s lungs. Her legs gave in, her hands snapped to her head, holding her temples. John caught her, steadily lowering her to the ground. “Undo it,” he growled. “Now!”
“I think she is due a learning experience,” Veridion responded dismissively and closed his book.
The working of this ability was no mystery to John. Though many of the Concord of War had not deployed in centuries, their powers fading into legends, this aspect of his godly powers were known. Oathkeeper, they called it, a simple and yet potent ability to deliver a pain impulse directly to the nervous system of anyone who was in violation of contracts in the presence of Veridion. The intensity of the pain scaled with the oaths broken.
Like all magic, those that were powerful could resist a lot of it. Layla was incapacitated even by this minor application of his power. Fleeing into an Illusion Barrier would do nothing. Only ti or manual lifting would end the pain.
“She belongs to !” John proclaid over Layla’s choked screams. “Is the Concord declaring war on Fusion? Are you betraying the agreent struck with the other Divided Gates?”
“You have a lot of nerve speaking of that agreent when you covet a second empire’s worth of land.” Veridion glared down at John. “But no, the Concord is not acting against you. I have friends here. I have witnessed the signing of this contract. I will see to it that no tyrant governs this or the other isles of Hawaii. Thus, this is my private endeavour. Now, if you are a-“
Nathalia suddenly grabbed Veridion by the shoulder. Every fibre of her being was taut, pressing against her urge to blow up this island in an cataclysmic eruption that would end with Gaia erasing her from existence. “Lift this pain, now,” she hissed.
The god of oaths took a violent step forwards, getting out of her grip. “I will do so once I am a safe distance from you maniacs,” he stated. “I would have preferred learning of your arrival second hand. But no, the first thing you do after landing is go to the one island no one is allowed to enter.”
“Walk away, then,” John told him. “Do it fast. Don’t waste her ti with your talk.”
Blowing air out of his nose, Veridion began to walk towards the door. He stopped just past Layla. A quivering hand had grasped his pants at the ankle. “Apologize to Nathalia, you piece of shit!” the brunette pressed out between clenched teeth. The hazel of her eyes was filled with a light glow, barely enough to be noticed on this bright day. “You’re not going anywhere until you do!”
“One wants to leave, another insists I stay.” Veridion cast down a dismissive glare.
Faster than John could react, acting with a cruelty that had not been expected, the god swung his heel back. It crashed into the side of Layla’s face. The determined expression on her face was overwritten by the daze following the concussive impact. Her head flew to the side. Her hand went slack.
John just stared at the man’s back, watching as he walked away. Veridion didn’t even look back, just tugged his book under his arm and kept on striding into the beautiful day.
“John…” Layla croaked out.
The Gar imdiately snapped back to her. Though what she was to him was a more than open question, in that mont she was a hurt woman. There was never a ti in his life where he would not have held one of those in his arms. Nathalia squatted down next to them.
The pain suddenly disappeared. John felt it in himself. What had been an unpleasant buzz to him made Layla’s whole body go limp when it was gone. It only took a mont for her to tense back up.
The depth of hatred on her face rivalled Aclysia’s in her worst mont. Calmly, Layla reached up and then into her own mouth. Her fingers ca back red, holding two of her teeth. “He damaged what is yours, John,” the brunette whispered with grave certainty. “He has to die.”
John stared deep into her eyes and uttered a single word.
________________________________________________________________________
They managed to save the teeth. It was a simple operation: just push the teeth back into place and have Gno heal her. If she had kept them in place with her tongue, it would have been even simpler.
Though he could not deny that the display had worked on him.
The mood on the catamaran was tense. Nathalia certainly had shifted her opinion of Layla from disdain to begrudging respect. If there was a positive developnt that had co from that encounter, it was that perspective change alone. Beyond that…
Obviously, the conquest of Hawaii had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. Fighting a god was a difficult affair, especially one as powerful as Veridion. What made him especially annoying to deal with was that his power, as just demonstrated, could be used in the mundane realm with relatively little concern. That he had to use a Babel Phrase to activate it was the only part that regular people would find supernatural. People collapsing due to sudden pain was incredibly rare, but not impossible.
Though that wasn’t the primary difficulty that ca with this developnt.
“We will have to re-adjust our strategy.” John lifted the anchor as he spoke. “Veridion said this was a private endeavour. I don’t believe him. He wouldn’t act this haughty if he didn’t have powers to back him up on this. Favours he gets from his position.”
“Fighting on neutral ground is a violation of the Concord of War, isn’t it?” Lee asked.
“And who would we report that to?” Nahoa asked, arms crossed. “The Concord of War’s chief negotiator? …Oh, that’s right! Veridion will certainly take our issue with Veridion seriously!” The axolotl maid dropped the sarcastic tone. “A simple truth of power is that those who have it aren’t bound by laws.”
“I am hardly in a position to judge him for that,” John admitted. “Ultimately, this is the reaction one could expect for the constant skirting of the rules I did. Still… he overstepped other boundaries.” After entering the captain’s cabin, he began the process of turning the vessel around. “We can expect Veridion to contact us in the coming days.”
“What makes you certain of that, Master?” Aclysia asked.
“He expected us and he is known to be orderly to a fault,” the Gar responded. “Either he will attack us in our base or he will suggest we gamify this conflict.”
“Another tournant?” Lee wondered.
“Maybe, but unlikely.” John switched on the motor. The twin engines of the catamaran rattled to life. They were moving against the wind now, no choice but to burn fuel. “Engaging in simple tournants against us is tantamount to handing us victory at this point. No, he will co up with sothing different. No doubt he will try to get to swear an oath to leave Hawaii alone for a thousand years, or sothing to that end. If I break it, I’d be in for a world of hurt.”
“I would rather cut his head off, Master,” Aclysia stated.
“He must be confident that we will agree. Otherwise, why put himself in this situation?” John sucked on his gums. ‘If we hadn’t gone with Layla… nothing about the outco would have changed. Well, I would have let Veridion go while disliking him. Now I hate him. A lot.’ He paused his thoughts for a mont, then reached out to Aclysia, ‘Can you take over for a mont?’
‘Affirmative, Master,’ the servant responded.
John stepped away from the steering wheel and jumped back out of the cabin. His steps quickly took him to the back of the ship. There, Layla sat on her own, stewing in her impotent rage. Her eyes were directed at the island.
“What did you an when you said I am yours?” Layla’s tone wasn’t even inquisitive, just hollow. She needed to know but she lacked the energy to be as euphoric about the implication than she usually would have been.
“Honestly? I don’t quite know,” John told her the truth. “And I am losing the excuse to say that.” He sat down next to her, his feet touching the warm waters below. They sat a hand’s width apart, close but not touching. “You’re not lting in my presence anymore.”
“I could. It’s a flick of the mind away.” It was a casual, factual response. “I… don’t want to dissolve because of your glorious presence right now though.” She clenched her teeth, expression darkening again. “There’s sothing I must do first.”
There was beauty in the shadow that was on her face. Though the scowl twisted her features, though her knit eyebrows fit her so much poorer than a manic smile, the expression finally proved, without a doubt, that this was Layla Viorica. She was not just a stalker with a lack of common sense. She was a woman driven by her ambitions, her desires honing her into a keen edge. She was dangerous. She was crazy. She was competent. She was beautiful.
“I failed to protect you,” John apologized. “If there is anything you want as recompense, tell .”
“No.”
The answer was instantaneous. She didn’t even glance at him before she delivered. John allowed himself to check her emotions with passive Observe as well. There was not an ounce of subterfuge in there. She didn’t want a kiss, didn’t leverage his guilt to get into the harem, she didn’t even ask for power. She could have had all three at once, if he had given in. No, all her mind was dedicated on was achieving her own goal: to kill a god.
Instead, she stared off into the distance.
[Layla Stare AI: scdn.imgchest/files/5c850eacd042.png ]
It was terrifying.
It was futile.
That was what John would have thought if she hadn’t played an instruntal part in killing a much grander entity. Part of him wanted to let her loose. To watch as she turned Veridion’s life into hell in every way she could conceive of. Ideas that John, in all of his intellect, was not capable of conjuring.
All of it, not for herself, but for him.
It would be hilarious.
It would be dangerous.
It would be hot as hell.
‘Yup, there it is,’ John thought, sensing the quickening of his heartbeat and the fluttering therein. ‘I lost it. Again.’ He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Falling in love because a stalker proved that she truly was not doing any of this for herself. Truly, he was a collector of red flags. ‘Now is not the ti.’
He just enjoyed sitting there with her for a while.
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