Fell Champions

They took a break after the funeral announcement. Reyna needed a moment for herself, while Liaru went to see about having food prepared. Everett insisted on accompanying to see if there was anything he could do to assist, which both seemed to please and annoy her. 

Vex was busy snoozing in her corner of the couch.

Otter went through the box they’d received, which contained only a single slip of paper. The writing on it was a strange script of lines and dots, but she found she could understand it as well as she could English. 

It was just a simple set of instructions, detailed out the date, time, and how many would be permitted to attend in Otter’s party. Conveniently, the number was five total, an easy enough value to work with.

Most people invited would probably bring a retinue of servants, or people who knew Juala. Otter needn’t bother with that.

She needed to display strength. With Rua gone, people might think Seat Hyleah weak, and while Otter couldn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought, Rua might. They might also choose to strike if they smelled blood in the water. This was probably a good place to display the value of thug power.

“What are you thinking over there?” Sami asked.

“Thug power.”

“In a language I understand?”

Otter detailed out her thoughts, explaining her reasoning and motivations. Sami just nodded along and listened. She was good at that.

“It’s not a bad idea,” she said when Otter finished.

“You think so?”

“We still don’t know what to expect here, so I’d rather show up with people who know how to defend themselves than people I’d have to protect. Although Liaru seems… capable.”

“There’s nothing going on there.”

Sami raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, we had sex. Like, a lot. But it was probably a one-off. And she’s married and not looking to add a third.”

“So… you had sex with a married woman?”

“It’s fine, her wife was there.”

“And you don’t know if there will be a repeat performance?”

“Well, depends if she’s pregnant or not.”

Sami blinked, and then notably looked at Otter’s crotch.

“She wanted a kid!” Otter said. “And, uh, turns out that’s a major turn on for me.”

“And you’re not worried about being baby-trapped?”

“Nope. Like I said, she’s married, and neither of them had the equipment to do anything about the whole pregnancy thing. And she’s made it abundantly clear, the only thing she wants from me is my spunk.”

Sami sighed. “Just… be safe, okay? I know I don’t control you, or can tell you what to do, but I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Yeah, I get it. So…” Otter waited until Sami took a sip of her tea. “Wanna get back together?”

Sami looked at her levelly and swallowed, not bothering to spit-take like Otter had hoped.

“Don’t joke,” she said.

“Who said I am?”

“We both know we’re not there yet. We’ve both intellectually processed the trauma of what I did to you, but… the emotions are still there.”

“Nah, I’m good. It’s been two years. I figured shit out already.”

“If you had, you would’ve talked to me, instead of hiding. You’re not ready. But more importantly… I’m not ready. Every time I think about it, I just… hate. I get so angry.”

“You know, I hear sex helps produce oxytocin, which helps–”

“Otter. Please. I know you’re a horny monkey, and I love you for it, but I need you to just be patient with me.”

Otter kicked her legs impatiently and groaned. “Fine, be a responsible adult. Ugh. I hate having a cock. It’s like my libido is doubled. All I can think about it sex sometimes.”

Reyna walked back into the room, snacking on what looked to be some kind of wrap. “Don’t know why you’re trying to talk to her. You’re pelanoa, she’s interested, just fuck her.”

“I can’t just fuck whoever I want just because I want to.”

“Why not?” Reyna asked, her mouth full.

Otter looked to Sami for help, but she had a small smirk that said she wanted to see where this was going.

“Because… I… damn Silayans, you’re all crazy.”

“You’re Silayan.”

“Barely.”

“Blue eyes, pelanoa, might be a little tall, and that pink hair is a little weird, but you seem plenty Silayan to me. You should be out on the streets, breeding any woman with passable hips.”

Otter wasn’t entirely sure what ‘passable’ meant where hips were concerned, but Reyna’s were definitely wide and curvy, flaring out in a way that complimented her skinny waist. Just the right shape to grab onto and sink your fingers into as you fucked her from behind.

“You volunteering?” Otter asked.

Reyna choked on her wrap and stared at Otter, her face alternating between embarrassment and horror. 

“What? I… uh… I didn’t mean, you know, me.”

“Back me up here, Sami. She said I ‘should breed any woman with passable hips,’ right?”

Sami leaned forward. “She did.”

“And her hips look better than ‘passable,’ right?”

“They do. Although, I might need a better look.”

Reyna shifted her gaze between the two of them, her face burning. The rude, often abrasive woman looked utterly disarmed. Vulnerable, even.

It made a part of Otter want to eat her up.

“Too bad I’m technically your boss,” Otter said, slouching back into her seat. “HR would be all up in my ass for trying to get all up in yours.”

“That might’ve been in poor taste,” Sami said.

“Oh, good point. I should probably have asked what her thoughts on anal were before making that joke.” She turned to Reyna. “So… thoughts?”

Reyna fled, leaving the small plate with her half-eaten wrap, and jostling Vex on her way by. Vex snorted awake at the sudden movement, and watched after the departing woman. She glared meaningfully at Otter, and then left after her.

“Oh, free food,” Otter said, grabbing the wrap and wolfing it down.

Sami chuckled. “It’s been a while since we’ve done that to some poor, straight girl.”

“I don’t think she’s straight. Or any of the women on the Islands.”

“No. But there’s something… off about her.”

Otter grunted. Sami usually had good instincts about people.

“Think she can’t be trusted?”

“It’s not that. I don’t know what it is. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Good, because she’s coming with us to the funeral. You, Everett, her, and Vex. Team Thug Power.”

“Tank, two front-liners, mage, and healer. Not a bad party comp either. Does Reyna have a Pact?”

“Not as far as I know, but she’s got some soul power under her belt. We fought Il-Su together, and she messed him up pretty good.”

“I’m liking her more already.”

“We would’ve had him, too, but someone got the drop on us. Hit us with a Willcasting, knocked us both on our asses. When we came to, he was gone.”

“How much Will do you have?”

“Seventy. And a half. No idea why Holt’s system doesn’t just round up or down.”

“Seventy? How’d you get that high already? I was fighting bandits and slavers on the daily and I’m nowhere close to that on my main stats.”

“I am a gamer, yo. Also, killing Ashborne got me fifty points in Will all by itself. None of my others are even close.”

Sami shook her head. “Even so, whoever saved Il-Su has to be powerful. Holt said that for Willcasting to work, you need at least twenty-five more points in Will than your target.”

“So, whoever whammied me has around 100, if not more.”

“That would seem to be the case.”

Vex entered the room, holding her own wrap, and shot Otter an accusatory glare. “What did you do?”

Otter gave her best ‘Who? Me?’ look.

“Reyna practically ran out of here. She was mortified.”

“Oh, that. Just teased her a bit. Nothing serious. I’ll apologize, but she definitely started it.”

“Just… be careful with her. She’s a little… sensitive, since she died.”

“Wait, what?”

“She was here when… when Il-Su killed Juala. I healed her, but only… listen, it was complicated, okay? And I was running low on Will. I couldn’t fix everything. Just be gentle with her.”

“Hey, if she wants gentle, I’ll give it to her gentle.”

Vex gave her a flat look.

“You know, you were cuter when you only came up to my hip and made me pancakes. Even so, you’re still my favourite child.”

“I’m your only child. Technically.”

“Only child so far. You’re gonna have competition soon.”

Vex rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey, you try having a pelanoa’s cock and hormones and see how you handle it. I bet you wouldn’t last a week before knocking up Leilynn and making me… a grandma? Grandpa? What’s the title convention here?”

“Grandfather,” Vex said. “Although that’s only because English doesn’t have the proper term, so I think the game system of Holt’s is just translating it that way.”

Stupid inconsistent game. Stupid Holt.

After everyone ate and got themselves resituated in the sitting room – Reyna noticeably sitting as far from Otter and Sami as she could – Liaru got back to the business of briefing them.

“After Rua disappeared, the balance of the Islands shattered. Rua hadn’t known it, but by being a deciding vote in deadlocks, she’d been keeping a tenuous peace.

“She never sided with any one person too often, though she clearly favoured Leilynn and Kir. She supported whichever faction she believed in, and her opinion varied from issue to issue.”

“Great way to say she was flighty,” Reyna muttered. When she received a roomful of glares, she raised her hands defensively. “I might be a bit biased to Juala’s point of view. I… was around her a lot. She was often frustrated how Rua wouldn’t pick a side.”

“Rua believed it to be the smarter course of action,” Liaru said. “And history vindicates her. Once she vanished, things began to escalate between Juala and Kir. No one knows how things precipitated so quickly.”

Reyna snorted. “I do. Sureya bullied Juala a lot. Told her she was weak. Worthless. Half the woman her mother was. Never let up. It was like that ever since her mother died. Sureya stepped in, and did nothing but belittle her, told her she was unworthy of the Moseina name, how she would never leave her mark, that kind of thing.”

“Sureya sucks,” Otter said. “Everything I hear about that woman just makes me want to shit in her open mouth.”

“She’s very well-respected, and has done a lot for the Islands, especially during the Occupation.”

“Yeah, and it sounds like she’s been having the biggest ‘I told you so’ parade ever since. Next time she opens her mouth to spout some racist shit, my own shit is going in to replace it.”

There was an awkward silence. 

“You’re all envisioning me squatting over her open mouth, aren’t you?”

“Well, now I am,” Reyna muttered.

“You’re welcome.”

“No one wanted that mental image, though.”

“But you’re going to be thinking about it the next time she says something awful, so again, you’re welcome.”

“So, what happened next?” Sami asked.

“Open fighting in the streets,” Liaru said. “Not often, and always with off-duty soldiers. No one died, they were just brawls, and always over some inconsequential thing. Kir and Juala both seemed to realize things were getting out of hand, and tried to rein their people in.

“And then the assassinations started happening. This was less than two weeks ago. They all looked like accidents, and that’s what everyone thought at first. But they just kept happening. And no one knew who was doing it. Juala thought it was Kir, calling her Pact-crazed, and Kir accused Juala, citing her inherent need to attack her closest allies–”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Reyna said.

“--but the people assassinated were disparate. A merchant with a lucrative trade with Mikovia. A landholder undergoing a dispute with a Mikovian mining operation. A woman falsely accused of smuggling contraband to the Pruana garrison. They affected both sides. It was just chaos.”

“How much you want to bet it was Il-Su?” Everett asked, his voice sad.

“It sounds like his style,” Sami agreed. “But I’m not sure why he’d be attacking both sides.”

“Trying to cover his tracks? He works for this Kir person, yes? Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know it’s her.”

“Nah,” Otter said. “Not Kir’s style. She’d stick a sword in your chest and apologize for doing her duty. Didn’t strike me as the type to hide her dirty deeds.”

“What do we know about Kir? And this Juala?”

“Well, Juala’s dead. She was a bit of a bitch, like a right selfish brat, but–”

“That’s my friend you’re talking about,” Reyna growled.

“Am I wrong?”

A pause. “No. I guess she was kind of a cunt. She was… you know when you find an abused animal? And you take it in, and try to pet it and show it love, and it wants to love you back, but there’ll be times when there’s a loud noise, and it startles the poor thing, so it just kind of reflexively bites whatever’s nearest? That was Juala.”

“Yeah, well, maybe she should’ve taken some personal accountability now and then.”

“Yeah. Guess so. Too late now, I guess.”

“And Kir?” Sami asked.

“Well, she’s got a scary ass fucking Pact,” Otter said. “If she beats you in a fight, she can control you. Some kind of mind whammy. It’s how she has Rua. They fought, Rua lost, now Kir has some kind of control over her. But that’s just her secondary ability.

“We don’t know what her primary is. At least, not entirely. Rua said she couldn’t hurt her. She’s been forbidden from revealing too much, but implied a few hints to me. She said she couldn’t hurt Kir, but when I asked if I could, she laughed, like she was some kind of hard counter to me.”

“What’s Kir like?”

“Duty-bound and boring,” Otter said.

“Kind of a bitch,” Vex added. “And annoyingly perfect at everything she does.”

“Beautiful beyond imagination,” Reyna said. “She always was. But then, she got soul power, she began investing in Allure, as if she even needed it.”

Everett laughed. “I get it. She’s hot. And if you think she is, she’s immune to you.”

“Son of a bitch,” Otter said. “That’s why her dad was able to bruise her, but no one else could touch her. Fuck. How do we beat that?”

“Seems pretty easy,” Everett said. “I’m gay. You girls and your girl bits are weird. You all have cooties. Let me at her. I’m not afraid of punching a girl.”

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