Chapter 44: Hangovers and Assassin’s-a weird combination

As Junior escaped I left, my mind exhausted as I felt a pulsing headache.

'Gods! Fuck that hurts!'

Note to self! Projecting my will has a NASTY HANGOVER!

On the plus side, I think I awakened Bast's horse... so uh.

Actually is that a plus? You know what? I'm gonna stop worrying about the meaning of this ability and just accept I can use it. Fuck it, maybe I'll awaken a jellyfish next.

Now though...

Fuck I'm gonna get some water and lie around till my head recovers.

No water magic to summon it either, I know over-stressing my will means magic will just hurt it more, I experienced this when I awakened Bast too.

'Ow ow ow ow ow...'

~ ~ ~

Bast came to rather suddenly.

"AAAAAAAAARGHFFF-cough!" She screamed as she sat upright suddenly!, spitting out a bit of sand she'd breathed in from the air at the end.

Clear sky, sun, arid ground of the ravine.

Still alive.

She panted slightly. Getting up she looked around, only to see Junior... lying on the ground.

With light magic healing a nasty wound in his side.

"Boy? What happened? Wait how are you..."

She found a scorpion, crushed by a hoofprint beside him.

It had attacked and poisoned him?

But... he was healing somehow.

Bast knelt beside him and lent her light magic as well, and then a trace of fire went in to burn the poison out as the light magic healed from that too.

"Sorry, I know it hurts. You've worked hard." She smiled at Junior in an attempt to comfort him.

The desert really isn't a place for a horse... even if it seems like it just awakened.

He hasn't had enough time for its spirit to grow into the capabilities of speech and intellect yet.

"Horses... evolve into alicorns right? Unicorns are mythics, but alicorn is what an awakened horse is... right? So light and air."

Bast nodded to herself. Okay. That's workable.

'My horse will become a flying horse. Truly life has become very very strange after...'

Bast's eyes slowly became wet as she bowed her head.

"Father... everything feels so wrong without you."

~ ~ ~

Kire knelt, a wooden blade across his lap as he concentrated inwards.

'Looks like I have a new... brother? They feel different... oh! Is it an animal the Dragon has chosen?'

He curiously examined the new little point of light, a mix of light and air the size of an adult's fist floating between the light and air magic's, yet distant just like him and Bast's Astral cores.

'Hm... Bast can teach you light magic while I teach you air then.' Kire smiled to himself before returning to reality.

'Unfortunately it seems that awakening others intentionally has put a lot of stress on him... but from what he told us, awakening me didn't do the same?'

Kire got up, practice blade in hand. 'Then again, I couldn't immediately enter the Galaxy until after our connection slowly strengthened by the flow of magic widening our connection over time; with these two, he has been forging the full connection instantly.'

Kire began to take practice swings, striving to keep to the exact same path.

Carve it into muscle memory!

His reflexes and speed were better than the average person now, but he wouldn't be facing the average person; in war, the Saxon's would send their warmages and followers of Mara upon him.

Bast and the Dragon were good practice, but Bast was already stronger in will, and the dragon far outstripped the two of them for many obvious reasons.

But Kire had one advantage: he knew he was less gifted than these two.

Which meant he knew exactly how hard he had to work himself.

He was not traveling and risking many dangers like those two, so he couldn't gain experience that way, but he could train.

And then he would fight.

And in all honesty, he'll probably die in battle, especially since the Saxon's don't want him to grow stronger as a rare human awakened...

Apparently a weapons master was being sent to help the front lines and potentially train him, and he had learned a little from the over-zealous mage.

Now the main issue...

Kire sighed as sweat dropped from him, having practiced a basic lunge, slash, jab, and overhead strike 200 times each.

"I can feel your breathing."

Shadows detached from pillars within the empty hall, gathering around him, easily numbering at 13 or so of them, probably more.

Kire looked at them, and a mocking smile graced his lips. "I don't suppose you'll be telling me why you're about to try and kill me?"

A cold feminine voice snorted. "So cocky, aren't you? Awakened or not, you'll bleed."

Many identical blades slipped into every hand of the assassins around him.

The blades were shaped like an arrow head with runic symbols along them that shine a dark bloody red.

Each blade had no handle or hilt, simply held by the fingers of each assassin pinching the blade, and one began to move their fingers, making the blade dexterously dance in an entrancing manner.

Kire frowned.

Did they think a simple mental trick like distracting and entrancing with a blade's movement would work on him?

Every single night, he suffered from flashbangs of color and illusions, hallucinations and absolute mental-fuckery thanks to an endlessly creative Dragon.

Of course this only started after Kire brought up his feelings over the fact he could tell the will he had in his spells was weaker then his peer, and the Dragon had smiled and said [Ah well, nothing builds up will like suffering right?]

So in the face of that...

These simply tricks are almost embarrassing to have used against him.

However, the way they handled those blades was interesting indeed!

Kire spun his practice blade, and moisture beaded along it before freezing into a blade of solid ice.

A small gulp echoed in the space as one of the assassin's steeled themselves.

Kire's smile returned as mocking as ever.

"You sure you don't want to monologue? Every assassin should monologue after having been revealed."

"Says who?" A voice challenged with fury as it gripped their blades with white-knuckles fury at his flippancy.

"My God." Kire's expression became dead serious in that moment...

And he reached out his hand right as an explosion of white light blinded every one of those there!

'Light magic?!' The female leader internally questioned as she shut her eyes to use her other senses to detect him.

"Lightning." Kire simply said, both as an explanation, and as a call.

And the lightning answered as a web of electricity shot out from his palm... only for a dark orange(basically brown, brown isn't an actual color, it's just shaded orange, look it up) and dark purple series of runes to light up the dark grey cloaks and absorb the electricity harmlessly.

'They know I'm an awakened of air and water, and I've been seen using lightning and ice most often, so of course they have safeguards! Idiot!' Kire mentally chastised himself even as a bloodlust filled him.

A predatory hunger for battle and blood, something in his blood that seemed to echo the power of one of the greatest of all predators...

His will began to leak into the elemental particles around him, transmitting his desire to kill in a way that could be felt as an aura.

He turned, and a shiver went through everyone there as some had their eyes shut, while others were trying to blink away the blinding color splotches leftover from the light.

They felt like an ancient beast was looking at them, ready to kill.