Marathon - Part 6

The sound of the door clicking alerted Aclysia to the presence of another, something that surprised her only until she noticed who had entered. Farrah leaned against the door frame with a smile, twisting a lock of hair with one hand while she secured the lock with the other.

"Heyya. You busy preparing?" Farrah rocked her hips idly against the wall, a sweet smile directed at the Artificial Spirit.

"No, I do not have many tasks which I can perform in advance of my training with Creator John," Aclysia responded quietly. "Creator John is carrying my equipment in his inventory. I had considered attempting a dungeon completion alone, but after the reaction to my prior injuries, I fear that showing up with any lingering impairment to my physical form would result in Creator John disallowing me from further expeditions.

"You got hurt? How bad was it?" Farrah asked, her eyes widening. "You didn't seem like you were in pain when you came back!"

"I was not truly injured. It was merely a deformation. I believe these plastics which I have integrated into my frame lack sufficient integrity to be of much use in combat scenarios. My current physical form is insufficient."

"I think your physical form is plenty sufficient!" Farrah puffed out her cheeks with the energetic objection. She leaned and possessively snaked a hand around Aclysia's navel while planting an overly firm kiss on her cheek, firm enough for her to feel a trace of the hard stone underneath the outer layer.

"Sufficient for combat, not for intimacy," Aclysia clarified robotically.

"I was trying to be sweet and give you a compliment."

"I apologize. I thought my statement was ins-"

Farrah interrupted Aclysia with an effervescent giggle, covering her mouth as she daintily shook for a moment. "You're not having as many of those moments anymore. You're cute when you're a little dense about stuff like that, you know."

"In spite of the silicone compounds on my outer layer being lighter, my body is still quite dense, I assure you."

"Okay, it's less cute when you do it on purpose. Buuuut it's also cute that you can make jokes like that now, so it's a wash." Farrah nuzzled a little closer with that, leaning her head on Aclysia's shoulder. A matching smile finally appeared on Aclysia's face at the close contact. The ivory-haired construct happily rested her arm across Farrah's shoulders, further solidifying the embrace.

"Thank you for coming to visit. I believe I was starting to feel 'anxiety' over the upcoming training," Aclysia admitted. "I still do not understand why all of these emotions are necessary for humans."

"Well, every emotion has its little purposes... usually," Farrah soothed, rubbing her cheek against Aclysia's dress affectionately. "I'm surprised the anxiety is the worst of it, though. What about the fighting? The hurting? Yourself, and others too."

"From my discussions with Creator John, I have gathered that I do not experience pain in the same way that a living creature does." Farrah's brows knitted at the implication that Aclysia was not a living creature, but Aclysia continued her explanation without interruption. "I am aware of damage that occurs to my body's composition, but it does not cause me distress beyond the knowledge that I am not functioning as optimally as normal."

"And you don't mind hurting other things? Or seeing John and our other friends get hurt?"

"They would be doing those things regardless of whether or not I was present. If anything, accompanying Creator John gives me some small chance to save him that pain." Aclysia's fingers tightened a little on Farrah's side, giving her a protective squeeze. "And thus far, the beings we fight are no more intelligent than animals. According to Creator John, they exist only temporarily, and would dissipate upon the release of his Barriers regardless. I have no reason to doubt his explanations."

"I bet even if they're not as real as we are, I could still feel their pain," Farrah whispered, shuddering a little. Aclysia turned into the brunette, taking her free arm and joining it with the other, fully wrapping Farrah. "I would hate knowing that I was doing that to something. And I would really hate feeling it myself."

"Have your efforts to shut these sensations out not been successful?"

"Well, I stumbled for a little bit, but otherwise no. I'm actually doing really well. I still have to actively do it, but at least I can tune out the worst of it." Farrah stuck her tongue out and made a grossed out face, accompanied by another shiver. "I do that a lot when the others come back from training, until John heals them up. Pain is bad enough when I do it to myself on accident; having to feel it from a whole bunch of other people really sucks. I don't know how they all put up with feeling it so often."

"Creator John takes care of them. His abilities to heal are quite impressive. And there is a certain thrill to it, I am told," Aclysia explained, angling the arm draped behind Farrah so that she could gently stroke the empath's hair, fingers tracing idle patterns against Farrah's scalp.

"A thrill?" Farrah asked, a note of intrigue entering her voice now. "From... fighting?"

"Yes, I once heard Lerianna describe it as 'almost as good as sex'. Apparently, for non-artificial bodies, fighting something, or even being near someone fighting something else, causes a significant endorphin rush. It seems quite invigorating to them, at least for the first few hours of our training together."

"Huh. I haven't really felt anything new in a while..." Farrah raised a hand to tap her lip thoughtfully, her eyes wandering toward the door. "Sex kind of feels like this glowing warmth that spreads through my whole body. Even the person doing it sometimes feels like a big ol' furnace, like I could warm up just by cuddling up to them. What do you think a big adrenaline surge from fighting feels like?"

"I do not know. Your description of feelings is often similar, yet distinct from what I feel I am experiencing," Aclysia admitted.

"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," Farrah noted, her eyes angling up to meet Aclysia's downward gaze. "You think John would let me tag along on the next run?"

"Most likely." Farrah gave a little victory cheer with a fist pump. "You may claim my place in the roster. I do not gain power from training the way that the others do. Even if you do not choose to aid them in combat in the future, nothing will be lost for my absence."

"Oh, I don't want to make you sit out! You just started," Farrah murmured, feeling guilty at the idea, even though she was still a bit confused as to why Aclysia wanted to do something so violent in the first place. "I appreciate it, though. You're always so selfless, Aclysia."

"I am merely offering the most logical solution. Besides, I am attempting to learn so that I may aid Creator John in a way that makes him seem less troubled. You taking an interest in his activities would make him happy, and therefore, aid him. So long as he is being aided, I see no reason to insist that I be the one to perform the act."

"Mmm. So you'll perform any act, as long as it makes someone happy?" Farrah mewled, one of her fingers daintily tracing the line of Aclysia's jaw. The Artificial Spirit's body was incapable of blushing... but she felt a sensation uncomfortably similar to warmth spreading through her, and one that seared deeper than any fire elemental.

"I would be happy to aid you, Farrah."

"Well, in that case, you've still got another hour until you have to leave." Farrah's lips joined her finger in an intimate tour of Aclysia's features. "Come over here and let's make each other happy.”

"Lady Adantia?"

"Little busy here, in case you haven't noticed!" Adantia shouted angrily. She was already mentally overloaded without the strain of focusing enough on the aura the voice had originated from to figure out which idiot was distracting her, else she'd have been far more specific in her airing of grievances. Her thoughts were elsewhere—about a hundred 'elsewheres', to be exact. Five of her most intricately enchanted cables were unwound, each of their separated tendrils burrowing through the undead across the battlefield, shattering the weakest of the shambling corpses and pinning the others in place.

"I am aware, but I am growing concerned." Well, perhaps she didn't have to waste too much mental effort on analysis after all. The voice had moved closer, and for as much as she was trying to tune it out, Adantia couldn't help but recognize it. Irvaie, one of the Fateweaving specialists. "We were under the impression their forces were weakening, but they seem unusually insistent on-"

"On kicking your asses? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to prevent!" Adantia growled.

"On reaching you, Lady Adantia!"

"Yeah, I noticed," Adantia grumbled, most of the anger in her tone exchanged for a displeased awareness. She didn't need a C-class Fateweaver to tell her that these necro-freaks were trying their damndest to get their bony little hands on her. It wasn't the first time they'd tried it, it wouldn't be the last... but there was an unusual stubbornness to their attempts today.

"High Magus Richard is calling for us to regroup. We should fall back; they're repositioning two dozen mages from other parts of the defensive line, but they won't-"

"If I fall back right now, you're gonna lose a lot more than the two dozen on their way," Adantia replied through gritted teeth. "Now quit distracting me, this is hard enough as it is!"

Targeting a bunch of rotting corpses was something she was growing used to, but it really was a cavalcade of shitty battlefield conditions for someone like her to work under. Creatures that felt no pain and had very few truly 'vital' components to their anatomy were difficult to pierce in a way that really damaged them, and their numbers made taking the time to fully decimate a body unappealing, to put it mildly. Even trying to skewer them and hold them in place for the other mages to finish didn't always work as well as she would've liked, especially since the necromancers seemed to be adapting to her presence...

Their latest batches of minions were crafted differently, seemingly for the sole purpose of frustrating her efforts. Reanimated creatures usually had at least one core body part where the energy was focused, something Adantia had no problems targeting. The last few days, though, each wave had a clusterfuck of pointless enchantments inscribed into their body, most of them entirely cosmetic, or even non-functional.

Their only purpose seemed to be obscuring her ability to sense their mana, to see their structures clearly, and to identify their weak spots. Individually it was easy to focus and identify even through the haze of random junk enchantments, but doing that on a large scale was hellish. It **** her to slow down, to focus more on each movement, rather than cleaving whole swathes of the battlefield clear in minutes as she had shortly after her arrival.

It would have been easier if she could just mindlessly blast away without care for composition or structure, but she didn't have the mana to cast spells day-in and day-out. She had to be efficient so she could stay active as long as possible; the guild mages were constantly on the verge of being overrun if she wasn't pinning or annihilating the biggest threats. Besides, Adantia could still handle herself, she just needed to-

Mana burst directly beside Adantia in a cascade, accompanied by an all-too-familiar warm feeling splattering against her right side. Whatever chastising warning Irvaie had been about to deliver next was cut short... permanently, as a mana-imbued dagger lodged itself in his throat. Unseeing eyes widened as Adantia felt the dagger's energy, and through it, its shape. Familiarity blossomed, accompanied by the tingling sensation of a Barrier being formed around her.

Adantia's cables retracted immediately, bound to her and pulled into the Barrier alongside her, returning to circle in a neutral position through the ground beneath her feet. The auras of the mages on the battlefield became obscured, as if hidden behind frosted glass, just barely present at the edges of her senses. She all but lost the ability to sense the undead, or the spells being haphazardly flung about. Only three auras remained clear, three others present in the Barrier she had been pulled into.

Two necromancers, one of which she'd gotten close enough to be familiar with in an earlier battle, though she hadn't been able to kill her. That one was powerful enough in her own right, at least more than the average mages on the Northern Ashes side that Adantia had met or slain since coming here. The other one, though, she was far more impressive... still not enough to justify being quite this bold, though.

The necromancers weren't where Adantia's focus lay now, though. No, it was the third that had her attention. The dagger that had embedded itself in Irvaie's throat pulled itself free of the corpse with a sickening noise, returning to that third aura and setting Adantia's jaw with a blend of disbelief, rage, and horror.

With the background noise of the battle and all its errant mana gone, Adantia could sense each aura clearly enough to see the very shape of their bodies, but even if she hadn't, there was no mistaking the nature of what she was sensing. Even tainted and twisted with necromantic energies as it was, the aura was unmistakable, as was the dagger. She hadn't felt either of them since long before being **** to hone her magical senses to this degree... yet she still knew the truth of them at once.

"How the fuck did you get that?" Adantia growled. The ground beneath her trembled as her cables twisted and writhed.

No answer came to her question save for the dagger being unleashed once more. Adantia shifted her balance and a cable flicked from the ground, snaring the dagger in mid-flight a dozen feet from her. Mana surged through the blade, and a cloud of smoke burst from the blade, but Adantia was already moving to block as that familiar signature warped forward and struck her with a leg. A leg that didn't quite feel right, that flickered against the skin of Adantia's crossed arms as if it wasn't really there.

Adantia only had an instant before the woman was gone, blinking away again and this time taking the dagger along with her. But it was enough. At that close distance, with their bodies in contact, Adantia could see the shape of the woman's face as clearly as if she were looking with her own eyes.

Wren Mertsat. One of her most trusted enforcers, a woman with a heart of gold and a dagger of steel... a woman whose body she had never found, but still hadn't expected to turn up here. The implications weren't lost on Adantia, but in the moment, she was too disgusted, too enraged to spend much time considering them.

Adantia's hands clenched into fists, and began to tremble.