Soft touches...

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Probably worth mentioning that I commissioned some art for Miles some time ago, which can be found in the link at the end of this note. While the clothes are “wrong” for now, that’s the general look of her. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/370753064724070404/527137898420633630/image0.jpg]

John was now likely an enemy of whatever state these Lawmen worked for; all he had left to show for it was bleeding on the cracking frost beneath his hands and feet. He had no chance to speak, not with the floor threatening to buckle as merciless blizzards blew up against it and apparently not while appearing as he did.

With no other route to test, he opened one more tunnel and barely managed to catch Miles as they both fell through and onto a far-off roof. The portals back at the fight winked out of existence, but John made sure they were too far to see how “Daedro” would react. The new surroundings were a few blocks John had only barely taken note of while sweeping the dark city, and now, being on a roof and so near its roads, it came into sharper focus: alien aromas sweet and noxious filled the air from a large, square clearing below where simple stands with cloth ceilings hid boiling pots. This place was alive compared to the seemingly abandoned streets John had found so far: barely-clothed, and sometimes outright naked, specimens of winged goblins and almost-humans loitered along with freakish abominations, most empty-handed save for spoons hovering over steaming bowls of a black syrup. Everything they wore, wielded, or crouched under seemed hemmed from the same aquamarine material as the homes but softened or hardened as application demanded; the black syrup, meanwhile, seemed too risky to call food just yet.

The more John saw, the less the world made sense: melee weapons, sorcery, and something like cybernetic tech meshed in a city of poverty, cubes, and old spires, where manual laborers were threatened by gilded flying warriors and all of it on but one of several disks stacked atop one another-

No, not now. Now John just had to patch this woman up enough to get her somewhere safe; the apparent night was now alive as torches seemed to burn taller and brighter, Lawmen dotted the air like sparkling, lost locusts, and the streets started to bustle with alarm. Dorbins and Dorsins, those bizarre shapes and sounds, became a menagerie that filled the street and, occasionally, glanced up to stare, baffled or horrified, at John as he worked.

The wounds around the spear through her guts were turning blue and somehow spreading thanks to the ice; knowing he’d have to work fast once it was gone, he gently laid his hand on the only part of her shoulder not covered in blood as he began to heal her until, with an ugly series of crunches, the largest chunks of ice broke and were slowly pushed out of both of her sides and each of her wounds.

You healed Miles for 90HP.
You quickcast healed Miles for 90HP.

Heal is now level 10!
Biomancy is now level 14!

Her health bar slowly filled and the ugliest wounds shrunk. John didn’t want to bank on charging up Restore while she remained in this condition, nor spending all his mana at once; instead, he multitasked until he found another, black lump of a building using his tunnels. Alarmed voices urged him to accept it: constructed much like the one being occupied by his fellow humans, that would better serve to cover Miles and himself from the spreading Lawmen, at least now that everyone was drawing attention to the low, exposed rooftop. With another tunnel, they were there.

The interior had been far less decorative this time, but now the semblance of furniture could be found: small chairs, child-sized at best, lined the two long walls of the chamber. Pediatrics? A home for those goblin-like creatures he’d seen a few times now? More questions he hoped a grateful Miles would answer. He pressed his mana ever into the beautiful terrorist. The messages continued to generate until John had piecemeal healed her for at least 2,000HP before he reached her halfway point on the health bar.

Heal is now level 11! Efficiency improved.
Heal 11, 30mp
Heals a target touched, or one's self, for 20hp per skill level. Dying targets are stabilized and instead healed for 5hp per skill level until they're back to 1hp or higher. Does not work on dead targets. Heal does not damage or heal inanimate/construct/undead targets.

You healed Miles for 220HP.

She had a generous health pool, if the little progress he was making on her odd interface was any indication-

[MM = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3tYhyUJLw]

Another song began… and though the world did not glow with the violent radiation of her first bout, the bricks did appear a bit less dirty, the dark pockets of the ruin became warm, and her skin took on a welcoming glow. Her eyes were still squeezed shut in pain when her hand grabbed hold of his. A squeeze firm enough to hurt, and then her grip eased. The song continued, a low hum against reality, and John found he barely noticed it while looking at its apparent source.

Her sparkling eyes eased open and then continued until they were huge and alarmed, each one displaying something curious and horny in a way that John couldn’t be sure made them windows or mirrors. They were bright, milk-chocolate brown, and that was the last thing John managed to contemplate about her eyes before she took his healing hand and dragged it to her left breast. Newly healed in a strange place with a stranger… and yet it was her first and only act for a full minute. She commanded his fingers with a grip so sure that it betrayed any notion of someone barely saved from ****. The flesh was soft; she moaned when his fingers broke off from her tour to squeeze and tease her as he wanted. She didn’t refuse his detours. Her hands traveled his leather armor as if to welcome them. He continued to heal her to full, and then some, as her body arched and sighed with lust.

He did want her; even here, in some abandoned hovel while killers loomed overhead, he found her arousal infectious and all-consuming. He clung fast to Tricia’s worried face, to the hungry glances of those he dragged into this-

It was now when John realized that his head had drifted rather close to hers… and the colors of her smoke-like hair, pouring from her scalp in some unseen transition from real to imagined, from stasis to dynamism, were now rising to wrap about his face in their misty grip. Her “hair” came and went like dreams; it showed him a cacophony of visions and madness now familiar to the Dream-aware Gamer until, with her gentle hands, she guided his face down and away from the ever-upward fumes of her soul.

“Hey now, don’t go drinking me all at once.” John was upon her, now, though he didn’t recall moving to straddle her. He remained clothed, albeit with his new armor already torn all over. His state of dress did not deter his new companion, however: her fingers had followed one such gash to slip under his armor, and then under his belt line, and then to tease what she found there.

How long had they been there, half in a daze on the dusty floor of some ruin? Her health bar had fully regenerated; his health was mostly healed on its own, as well. “Who… who are you, really?”

“I’m still figuring that out,” she moaned. John stiffened over her, his body joining the rest of him. She slowly fell from her high as she realized how serious he was taking this. “I’m just someone trying to survive down here.”

“You’re human, right?”

A confused furrow of her brow; a look John was growing familiar with these days. “Your… when you talk, your voice and your lips don’t match.”

“I’m translating to your language magically.”

“A fancy tongue; I can use that-”

John tried to keep their exchange somber, even as their hands caressed one another’s face in curious probing. “But are you human?”

“I look it, sure, just like you.” Her words were a chuckle in her throat, and John was barely able to hold on to the conversation. The song swelled into a melodic chorus; was it coming from her or the world? She made no sign of noticing it.

“I’m not an imposter,” John urged, “I’m actually human, from Earth, and stuck here without food or water.” Her hands paused. “I helped you back there, and I'm probably screwed for doing so… so please, do me the favor and be straight with me: who or what are you?”

Miles gave him a curious expression too human to doubt… until, as if catching on to some unspoken joke, she grinned. “Ooooh, of course, of course… we’re real humans, you and I. Divine and blessed, powerful and wise and all that… and when you're screaming my name, it's Miles. Now come on. I’ve got business in a bit and I don’t want to be late.”

“Business?” John questioned.

“Oooh, going to play secretive with me? We don’t have friends, much less human-looking ones, so drop the act. Mmmm, or maybe keep it,” she cooed as she hugged him closer to her body, “mysteries can be kinky in a place like this.”

“Aren’t you- aren’t you even kind of worried-“

“I’m too wet and hard to think about all that right now.”

Though John had many questions, of how they ended up here, of where to get food, of who Miles the Human truly was… one stood tall above all others.