Fell Champions

The morning of Juala’s funeral, Otter called on Liaru to assist her. She’d been working to teach Otter as much about Silayan custom and tradition as she could, and luckily, there wasn’t much needed to be learnt in this particular set of circumstances.

Funerals in the Silayan Islands were both formal and informal at the same time. According to Liaru, the formality was to be as informal as possible. Family, friends, and close acquaintances were expected to be there, but because of the political nature of the event, the Seats would also be in attendance. Invitations and groupings would be ritualized, but beyond that, everyone was expected to show up, drink, fuck, in some cases brawl, and have fun.

The greatest respect for the dead to the Silayans was to show the deceased a good time before their body was given to the tides. No one forced anyone to fool around and play during this type of festivity, but it was considered extremely rude not to.

“So, what’s the dress code like?” Otter asked after hearing out the brief summary.

“Lax. But expected to be fine clothing.” Liaru briefly appraised Otter. “And clean. At least, at the beginning of the funeral. You can expect some stains and damage by the end of the night. So, not your finest clothes, but still good.”

“They going to be expecting me to wear regular Silayan fashion, or can I go with my own choice?”

Liaru paused to consider, tapping a finger on her lips. Otter tried not to stare at them. Things were surprisingly easy between them, after their encounter. Which they’d had sex in. That Otter kind of wanted to repeat. 

But Liaru hadn’t said anything, so she didn’t push. 

Still, she really wondered if those lips, plump and curved as they were, felt as good as they looked. 

Otter shifted a little in her seat, worried her slowly burgeoning erection might become noticeable. 

“Non-Silayan attire shouldn’t be a problem,” Liaru said, care placed on each word. “But Sureya might make an issue of it.”

“Great, gives me an excuse to try out a funeral brawl. Those sound fun.”

“Keep in mind, anything you do does reflect on Seat Hyleah. If you engage in open conflict with another Seat, it could be taken to mean that it could mean something more.”

“It won’t be conflict, it’ll be funeral brawling. Upholding Silayan tradition by punching uppity bitches in their uppity mouths.”

“Then do your best to leave no permanent damage.” Liaru paused, and then added, “But make sure whatever you may do hurts.”

Liaru yawned and then stretched, and Otter’s eyes were drawn to her midriff. It didn’t have the toned abs of Rua’s, but it still looked really nice. 

But it was more than just the physical. There was a very real possibility that area was soon to be occupied by her child. Their child.

Fuck, that was hot.

Liaru pointedly cleared her throat, and Otter jerked her gaze upwards to eye level. She might’ve stopped for a second at Liaru’s boobs, but only for a second. Maybe a second and a half.

“Is this going to be a problem?” Liaru asked.

“No, ma’am. I know the nature of our relationship. I was just thinking about, you know…”

“The sex? It was passingly adequete, I suppose.”

“Passingly adequete? I fucked you stupid, and then fucked you some more. There wasn’t a brain in your head when I was done with you. You were a twitching, drooling mess.”

“You had Kaya’s help.”

“So? I was limited by your rules. I had to work with what I had. That night was easily in your top five best sexual encounters, and I will bet good money that you’ve already thought about using some of what happened that night as roleplay fodder with Kaya.”

“You… presume much.”

Otter rose from her seat and leaned into Liaru’s personal space as she could without touching her.

“I’m of half a mind to slide a finger into you right now just to see how badly you’re gagging for it.” She let Liaru soak that in for a second, and then shrugged, turning away and walking back a step. “But we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

She let that hang in the air. She didn’t actually hear Liaru gulp. The sound was likely imagined. Still, just the thought of Liaru being flustered put a smile on Otter’s face.

“Are we done?” Liaru asked. There might’ve been a waver in her voice.

“Yeah, go see your wife, I’m sure you have something important to do… I mean, say to her.”

“Quite.”

Liaru hurried from the room, and Otter watched her go. The skirt she was wearing today was tight, and really worked to emphasize the curve of her ass. Otter gave it a long, lingering look before Liaru departed. 

She wasn’t normally this much of a horndog. Well, maybe a little. But these stupid Silayan hormones and stupid pelanoa cock were driving her into unprecedented levels. She was worried if Rua didn’t get back soon, she was going to drill a hole into a wall just to have something to use her cock on other than her own hand. 

She was tempted to ask Sami again, but honestly, that just felt kind of desperate at this point. Sami had made her stance very clear. She was going to stick to this whole honourable debt bullshit she’d jumped on, instead of getting jumped on. 

Nope. She was just going to have to tough it out. Somehow. 

She got dressed, summoning up her now typical white uniform that she’d taken to wearing. At first, she’d chosen white as a kind of defiance against all the mud on Ashborne’s island. Now, it was more as a way to stand out against all the colours of Ri Oa. It was either that, or be cliche and go with all black, and that just seemed like some cringe edgelord shit to her. 

After that, she wandered about the house. They didn’t have to leave for a few hours yet, and while she had one task left to do before they left, she was otherwise ready to go. It felt wildly out of character for her. What was more, she actually felt like she’d gotten enough sleep, a habit that had started just as she’d shown up in the world of Fell Champions. For some reason, she was never groggy. Well, not the amount she usually felt in the real world. A blessing from Holt, or something else?

She helped herself to a small breakfast in the kitchen, a melon that was both spicy, sour and sweet, hitting her taste buds in a weird combination she wasn’t used to. It was still enjoyable, but it just felt very busy.

She was just finishing her fruit off when Vex stumbled into the room, her curly mass of hair in disarray, and her shirt on backwards. 

“Why’d you ask for bananas,” she grumbled, “when coffee beans were a viable option.”

“Because Rua likes bananas, dummy, and I’m not going to be responsible for pushing a caffeine addiction on an entire world.”

Vex set a kettle onto a glyph that was the equivalent of a stove, or maybe a hot plate, and began rummaging through cabinets before coming out with a ceramic mug and a pot of tea leaves.

“I have an assignment for you,” Otter said.

“Not awake yet, assign later.”

“This is serious.”

Vex raised an eyebrow at her. “You? Serious?”

“I can be. You only have half of my memories. I admit, I’m kind of a lazy slacker, but when it’s important, I like to think I can get my shit together.”

Some part of Vex deflated a little bit. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Sorry. I know you’re technically one of my parents, and I don’t give you the same attention as I do Mama…”

“It’s fine. We’re going to get her back. Maybe not today, but soon. I promise.”

“Right. Your mysterious plan. Which you still haven’t explained to anyone.”

“I need you to guard Leilynn at the funeral. She might become a target again. Il-Su’s still running around, and who knows what else might happen. She’s your priority, got it?”

“I was going to do that anyway, seeing as she’s my maybe future wife.”

“Yeah, but… you need to see to her. Even if it means ignoring Rua. She can take care of herself. If you need to make a choice, you stand by Leilynn’s side, okay?”

“Fine. Is this all part of your mysterious plan?”

“It’s less of a plan and more of a vibe. I’m setting up the tools I’ll need, and just kind of wing it from there.”

“You’re going to wing it?”

“Well, I don’t exactly have all the information I need for a good plan. I don’t know what kind of defenses are on Pruana Isle, how many soldiers they have, what Old Grey can do… I can’t make a good plan without that knowledge. So yeah, I’m giving myself the biggest gun I can find. One I know how to use.”

Vex snorted. “They don’t exactly have guns in this world.”

“I was thinking of something a little less literal. And a lot bigger.”

“Well, it’s not like you have access to…” Vex trailed off, and then her eyes narrowed. Otter could practically see the wheels in her head turning as she figured it out. “You don’t have the fuel for it. Where would…”

Otter pulled the soul crystal from her pocket, the one she’d been holding onto since Ashborne’s death. 

“You still haven’t used it?” Vex sputtered. “With that, you could have fifty Attribute points.”

“In an unknown stat,” Otter said. “Or, I could make a much more powerful weapon. With this, I get the hammer I need.”

“You’re going to create an Essence Spark, aren’t you? That’s what you were telling a story about for three days?”

The magic system of Immortalized. A convoluted mess that would’ve caused the game to flop if not for the fact that it was the first fully immersive VR game with time dilation through its Grey Gear, allowing its users to play for what felt like days, and only moments would pass in the real world. Very few people had mastered Element Weaving in Immortalized. It involved a lot of math and imagination in equal parts. 

Players usually had skill in one half or the other, and rarely both. Otter had taken to it like, well, like an otter to water. She could manage the complicated mathematical equations to channel energy and force without blowing herself up on the fly on an instinctual level. But if you asked her to write it down, she always had problems. Leaps in logic, numbers in absolute disarray.

Sami had always tried to insist Otter should be able to do it on paper as well on her head, but no one asked a Major League baseball pitcher how the math of a curveball worked, how they could put the right amount of spin on it to make it evade a batter at speed while still going through the strike zone and safely landing in a catcher’s mitt. 

Oh, now she was thinking of baseball. She was going to need to purge that awfulness from her brain before she tried manifesting her Essence Spark. 

“Three days to make the story interesting,” Otter said. “While covering everything an Essence Spark can and cannot do. How it is alive, but bound to its wielder. How it feeds and channels energy, and recovers, and all the assorted Elemental Weavings it can do. And then adapt to how it could theoretically work in this world. While maintaining it was fiction. And I’m not even sure if it’ll work the way I want it to.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Dreamer warned me that I wouldn’t get a perfect result. I have no idea how or if the Mythwalking will be corrupted.”

“That’s why people don’t Mythwalk up solutions to all their problems.”

“But they do sometimes. From the way people talk about Ashborne, I don’t think he was always a monster. Something happened to him, changed him. But before that, it sounded like he helped the people of the Islands.”

“Yeah, he helped the plants grow,” Vex said. “The storms around here can get intense sometimes. Things get uprooted easily. Drowned out others. Ashborne made sure there was always enough regrowth to support the population.”

Otter grunted. “And we killed him.”

What kind of effect would that have on the Islands going forward? The Silayans had already been dealt a crap hand. What would happen if their plant god Mythwalker was dead on top of all that?

“Hey, ladies,” Everett said, walking into the room. His hands were covered in dirt, and he helped himself to the glyph equivalent of a sink to wash himself off.

“Gardening?” Otter asked.

“Yes, we wanted to take a tour of the grounds, see what we had on hand. I think I can help out a bit around here with my Pact.”

“What’s that again?”

“Sungrifter. Light magic, kind of. Illusions, illumination, and a sunbeam attack.”

“Support magic? You? Is your Dreamer on crack?”

He smiled, which looked weird on his draconic visage. “She seemed to think it was funny.”

“She’s not the only one. Ev, you are probably the only person I’ve ever seen on Gallant Stand who barely used magic at all and actually managed to survive, much less excel.”

“What can I say, I wield the mightiest weapon of all.”

“I swear to Buddha if this is a penis joke…”

“A shield, you fool. Perfect for defense and offense, if you know how to use it right. Speaking of, I’m going to need one, if we’re expecting a fight at the funeral.”

“Yeah, I’ll see if I can get Liaru to hook you up. A targe, right?”

“Preferably steel, but I’ll take wood if that’s all they’ve got. Beggars and choosers.”

“Uncle,” Vex said, as if trying it out, and then finding it agreed with her. “Otter is about to do something stupid.”

“When isn’t she, little flame?” he said with a smile.

“She’s going to summon an Essence Spark.”

“They have those in Fell Champions?”

“They do now. She Mythwalked it in.”

He grunted. “That’s magic stuff. I don’t do magic stuff. Otter’s our magic person. She says we need it, I just smile and nod and then make sure she doesn’t take aggro.”

Vex made a frustrated noise. “I’m going to find Sami. She’ll talk you out of this stupidity.”

Otter and Everett exchanged a look and then laughed.

Vex growled and then stomped out of the room. The kettle finally began to whistle, and Everett swooped in, pulling it off the element.

“Free tea,” he said. “You should probably go do your magic stuff before Sami gets wind of it. I’ll try to distract her, but you know how she is.”

“Thanks, Ev, you’re the best.”

He grunted, pouring himself a cup, and waved her away. Otter left. She was halfway to the training room she’d planned to do the Manifesting in before she realized Everett had said ‘we’ when he’d been gardening. Weird word choice. Eh, he’d probably just been with Sami. Who else could it have been?

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