Savage Awakening 521. Claws

They were back on the Barbarian Sage’s home planet at last. It was an unusually chilly afternoon. The Banshee Monkeys had given it a rest do

They were back on the Barbarian Sage’s home planet at last. It was an unusually chilly afternoon. The Banshee Monkeys had given it a rest down in those mist-steeped hills. There was still a background hum of wild battle, but that was just how it went here. All was as it should be.

“Well,” said the Sage heavily. “That’s it, then.”

“Looks like it.”

Fluffy gave him a big lick. Sparks flew as the little spikes on her tongue scraped his skin. It was a sign of affection. It could also mean she was hungry and trying to eat him, granted, but he went with the affection explanation.

The Sage looked to the horizon, one hand over his eyes. “Reckon I’ll give it a few months to take stock of things. Then I’ll get started on prepping boot camp… that’s the gym I used at the edge of the galaxy to get into peak shape, by the way! Now we’ve got all the tools we need.”

He jingled a bag of Z-Platinum. “It’ll be a bit of a pain to get to, granted—you’ll see. That chunk of space is as good a training camp as any. Dangerous as hell, of course—it’s right between these two strong-as-hells black holes, and it’s got a godsdamned neutron star butting in there too. You really ought to see it.”

He scratched his chin. “It’ll be a pain to prep and salvage too. I’ll tell you that right now. But it’ll be just what you need to get that wrecking ball rolling.”

The Sage gave him a once-over. He patted Zane on the shoulders, eyes wrinkling. “Hells… there’s a rhino in the prime of his life if I ever saw one. You’ve made a man of yourself yet, lad…”

He frowned. “Now, why’d I go and waste all those years, stewing in all that Destruction? What a piss-poor way to go out, that’d be. Whittling your damned soul away. Waiting for the Chaos Cycle to end you. Never. Rage, damn you! Or why even bother?”

“I will,” he promised the Sage. He got what the Sage was saying intellectually, but it clearly meant something deeper to the old fellow emotionally. Maybe it was something you needed time to feel.

“Attaboy.”

A pause.

“Alright, you come in here.” He bear-hugged Zane and gave him a hearty thump on the back. When he pulled away, there were tears in his eyes. “Couldn’t have asked for a better disciple. All these years of work… all that grinding!”

Zane was feeling a bit melancholy about the whole thing.

He’d found a very enjoyable rhythm down there in the Lost Ruins. Fight, eat, loot, sleep. Pretty much all the things he liked best, over and over. Then there was the old fellow for company, and fighting side by side, crushing through kingdoms… it was everything a man could ask for. And he knew how much work the Sage had put into prepping it, just to build him up.

How much work the Sage had put into making those training plans before that, giving him full reign over his home gym, coaching him all the way through. Picking him up after every muscle in his body had burst, slapping on a band-aid, giving him a nice electric drink, and throwing him back into the fray…

Zane was not a man lacking in self-confidence. If you put him in a fight, he’d always think he’d win it—it wasn’t a matter of logic. That was just the mentality you had to have. Sometimes a certain level of self-confidence, even delusion, had a certain force over reality, something you couldn’t measure, stronger than essence or Law. He’d felt it in every fight he never should’ve won.

At a logical level, though… he still knew he could be broken. There were limits to his body, and there was a limit to how much he could exceed his limit. He might be able to power through more than any man his level. But fights like the Slayer still showed him what it meant to lose.

In the end, it was his friends—and he included the Sage in that—who worked to make him the man he was.

If the Sage weren’t here... he wasn’t sure he would’ve made it through that very first beating the Slayer put on him.

He owed a lot to the old fellow.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better master,” he informed the Barbarian Sage. He meant it wholeheartedly.

Neither of them was very good at goodbyes. So the Sage just thumped him on the back again, and he left.

***

Grand Elder Wyn bowed nearly to the floor. “…and you can be assured, Mistress, that Alchemy Team Theta is well on its way to supplying your thirty Heavies goal,” he said. He smiled toothily. “And might I say, Mistress, I’m not certain how you managed to coax all six Grand Master Alchemists back from exile. But with them on staff, the task was a foregone conclusion.”

A woman stood before him on a dais, lit by a lone shaft of sunlight. The woman, when it came to the World Tree Faction. She always held these High Council meetings just before noon, when the light struck her just so. With her looks, handmaiden Syriel felt she didn’t even need it. But she liked to make an impression.

The Mistress was proud like that. Handmaiden Syriel had heard some of the back-bench nobles muttering that she was vain. But Syriel just couldn’t stand it; she knew her Mistress wasn’t like that.

“Thank you, Grand Elder,” said Reina. “Though next time, feel free to leave out the flattery.”

The Grand Elder scraped away.

“He even looks like a rat,” muttered handmaiden Aelin.

“Even those old Monsters want to get her approval…” whispered Syriel.

Aelin gave her a side-eyed glance.

“What?” said Syriel.

“You know she doesn’t fart perfume, right?”

“H-hey! I’m just saying—”

She cut herself off. The Mistress was starting to talk. But Aelin smirked, and Syriel knew she’d been baited again. She reddened even more.

“I’m very pleased with how the World Tree’s been running! But there’s still work to be done,” Reina addressed the assembled Grand Council, chin high. “With our elixir pipeline and Creation endowments, it’s clear that forty Heavies by Endtimes is well within reach.”

When the Mistress wore a silk sash, half the noble ladies in the open council showed up with a sash too. Syriel shook her head. The Mistress was just so… she didn’t know.

Aelin pursed her lips as she eyed a few noble ladies. Syriel’s fellow handmaiden was as loyal as she was to their Mistress, but Aelin wasn’t like all the other ‘moon-eyed fangirls,’ as she liked to put it.

Syriel blinked.

…Was Aelin talking about her?

Just as she was beginning to explore that, an attendant dashed up to the stage and whispered something in Reina’s ear, and the thought burst like a cloud.

“Really?” Reina just lit up, all decorum forgotten. Syriel and Aelin exchanged a look. Only one man could have that kind of effect on their Mistress.

Reina blushed. “I must apologize, but some urgent business has come up. We’ll adjourn until the next fortnight. Keep up the effort, everyone!”

She dashed off.

“…I expect we’ll have to clear her schedule for the weekend,” said Aelin.

“Mhm!” Syriel nodded. At least, if precedent was anything to go by.

Syriel was also convinced this Zane man was nothing special. He might be tenacious and able of body, but there were plenty of those types around. He just happened to spawn in around the same area as their Mistress.

Miss Reina was into these strong barbarian men for some reason. She could’ve taken any one of them to the top, in Syriel’s view—the Mistress just stumbled upon this Zane first. She spent so much of her precious time leveling him up, too…

“He really should be grateful,” said Syriel.

Later that night, they noticed quite a lot of bough-shaking.

Sure enough, their Mistress went on to have a busy weekend.

***

Level up!

Essence Level 597 -> 598

Levels these days took a great deal of essence. Their Skill worked on feelings, though—and with how long they’d spent apart, there was quite a lot of pent-up feeling being released at once…

Reina collapsed on him, struggling to calm her breathing. A few strands of hair had gotten matted to her face—she’d gotten quite sweaty—which she brushed away.

She blinked up at him. “Is there something on my face?”

“No, it’s just…” He let himself smile. “It’s good to be back.”

She grinned too.

“What’s happened since I was out?” he said.

“There’s been… a lot.” She pursed her lips. He could sense she felt troubled about something.

“Anything I should know?”

She nodded, looking conflicted. “There is, but… I’ll tell you later.”

Then she claimed him as her pillow and pressed up on him, pleased. This position suited him just fine.

It was morning again, and the first ray of sunlight slashed across the bed. It moved across her bare legs, resting on the curves of her hip.

His brow furrowed. His mood changed instantly.

There was a wound stretching from the side of her hip to the small of her back. A wound with that signature pale Destruction scar.

He hadn’t noticed it earlier. He wasn’t sure how. He’d been a bit busy, but…

He brushed a thumb over it. Reina winced.

“…Who did this to you?”

“Zane, I took care of it,” she said.

He sat up. “Reina—” he said, almost in a growl.

“It was Malzareth.” She hesitated. “But you don’t need to worry about me. It’s just...”

She took a breath and met his gaze steadily. “The rituals take place in a space between the spiritual and the physical, especially when they’re at their peak, and… that makes openings. It tried to come at me then, kind of like how it tried to come at you when you were breaking through to Minor God. It can slip past the System in those critical moments, when space is thin and it cloaks well.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“It tried it when I was breaking through,” she explained. Then her eyes brightened. “But it didn’t realize I knew it could do that. I saw it try the same thing with you. And it’s not as clever as it thinks it is! I made sure my best warders set up a trap to catch it when it came through and strip it of its cloaking. Expose it to the System for punishment. I wanted to take a page out of Noughtfire’s book.”

She lifted her chin. “Zane, it worked. The System blasted so much Tribulation lightning it burned a wing off of it! It’s just…”

She blushed. “I might’ve underestimated it. Just a little. I didn’t think it’d have time to get a shot off. Our wards, they were tied to the World Tree’s Creation cores; it shouldn’t have been able to break through! It just… it hits really hard.”

At the look on his face—“The wards still took off over 99.9% of the essence. It only grazed me. I’m fine, really. It’ll be healed in just a month or two.”

He studied the claw mark on her face again. The one it’d made with the Slayer.

Reina chose not to heal that one, partly because it gave her credibility with her generals, she said. But he also got the sense it served as a reminder to herself. She was embarrassed by it, so it pushed her.

It inspired an altogether different emotion in Zane.

This Malzareth just kept putting its claws on his woman.

“That was far too risky,” he said.

“I know. I… that was stupid of me.” She shook her head. “Not doubling the wards, I mean. But I don’t regret trying to trap it.”

“Reina—”

“That snake just keeps putting its claws on my man,” she told him fiercely. “I had to try to punish it. And I did.”

She looked proud of herself for it, too.

He blinked.

“What?” she said, bewildered.

“…Never mind.”

He felt a sudden upwelling of warmth in his chest. He kissed her.

…They mutually agreed they might as well finish up that final Level.

Level up!

Essence Level 598 -> 599