Chapter 57: Borrowed Power

  “Oh, Rog is still here?” Jessie asked from above the group later that night.

  Erik had felt her rank up the last while and now understood the rush she was talking about earlier. It felt like a blast of magic and energy—which didn’t affect him or the others in any way—except for Erik feeling a sudden lust to rank up even more himself. It seemed like a strong survival instinct, a drive to push on to become stronger, lest he’d be left behind.

  “Hello again, Miss Callum,” Roger greeted.

  “I see you are doing better?” She said yet stated it more like a question as she walked down the metal staircase.

  “Oh, much. Thank you. Actually, I’ve—”

  “We’ve promised you away as a test subject after the war. I’m sorry Jessie, I did what I could, but promises have been made,” Erik interjected.

  “What are you wearing?” Jessie asked, looking at Erik and his new outfit. She didn’t believe his poor attempt at a lie for even a second.

  “What, this?” he asked, turning around with his arms outstretched to his sides, showing off the black unitard-like piece of clothing, its black leather-esque look reflecting dulled light.

  “It’s horrible.”

  “It is not! It’s sexy. Kind of shows off my improving physique quite nicely, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t, in fact, think. It shows your reduced gut, but still your gut, and your little boys are camel—”

  “What?” Erik screamed, looking down at his own body. “Gloom! Fix that, please!”

  An agreeing ‘Glom’ sounded from nowhere in particular, and in just moments, the area around Erik’s little man turned rigid and padded.

  “Thank you, little buddy.”

  “Okay, what is that?” the Witch asked, rushing over to look more closely at the unitard.

  “Gloom, would you like to meet Jessie? Save this configuration under ‘Sexy’ and go meet her,” Erik said, receiving glances from everyone in the building.

  His unitard melted off into a thick pool of black sludge on the floor. As it started growing again, white bubbles from inside the goo formed like eyes and a wide, smiling mouth, looking straight at Jessie.

  “Isn’t he adorable?” Sophie asked, scurrying over to meet Gloom once more.

  “He certainly looks better like this,” Jessie grinned, reaching her hand down to dab the mass. She scratched the outer layer beneath the mouth-bubbles, the whole mass shaking like jelly in response. “Oh, you like that? Have some more then!”

  After a while of the sisters both cuddling and spoiling Erik’s spirit construct, they turned their attention to the Titan once more. Gloom bounced around, greeting Angela and Emma again, before bouncing onto Bumley—who kept surprisingly cool about it as he gave the blob a rough belly rub that nearly caused Gloom to melt into a puddle again.

  “One of your new powers?” Jessie asked.

  “Yes. It’s Gloom, my new spirit. A construct copy of it, anyway.”

  “Almost like your Witch’s Familiar, right sis?” Sophie gleamed.

  “I suppose…?” Jessie responded.

  “It certainly isn’t that titanic of a difference,” Emma commented.

  “He told you, didn’t he?” Jessie said, a forced neutral expression clear on her face. She looked straight at her sister, assessing her face.

  “Actually, Angela did. But it’s fine. You don’t need to worry. I’m just glad I know more about it now,” Sophie said with a genuine smile.

  Jessie glanced around the room, looking at everyone’s expressions. “Everyone?” A few nods and several ‘yeses’ responded. She exhaled, her shoulders sinking.

  Erik:

  Minor Ability

  Name: Gloom

  From: Umbralux

  Type: Summoning, Dark, Construct

  Cost: High

  Effect - Iron:

  Construct (Gloom): Summon a Gloom construct to aid you. Constructs have no time restraints but must be re-summoned after taking severe damage. The Gloom construct deals escalating corrosive dark damage on enemy contact.

  Jessie:

  Minor Ability

  Name: Jet

  From: Natural Flow

  Type: Mobility, Enhancement

  Cost: Variable

  Effect - Iron:

  Increase your speed of traversal through natural mediums.

  “Didn’t you absorb two new abilities on our ride over here?” asked Angela, looking at Erik after reading the fresh additions in Sophie’s notebook.

  “I did! I’ve been wanting to try it out, but it has certain…special requirements…that need to be met, and I simply haven’t had the time and opportunity. Now seems perfect.” Erik’s grin was wide and pointed at Jessie.

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  Her face plastered with worry, she asked, “What does that mean?”

  “I just need to touch you,” he said, his voice laced with murder.

  “I will shock you!” Jessie shouted, raising her arms in defence.

  “Relax!” Erik tapped one of her blocking arms with a light touch. “There, it’s done.”

  Jessie turned pale-faced and seemed a bit out of breath, but after just a short inhale and exhale, she seemed better. “I feel…empty. What was that? No jokes, please.”

  “May I remind you that you ‘Volt Surged’ me? Just wait a second,” answered Erik with his eyes closed, like he was focusing on something. After a few tense minutes, Erik was ready, though Jessie still looked rather worried.

  Erik raised both arms as they glowed with a yellowish glow. The light solidified beneath his hands, taking shape and grew. Many of the people in the hangar had seen something like it a week ago.

  The bright light forming was hard to stare at for long, but not impossibly so, and no one could keep their eyes away. The light then blinked away, revealing two very different shapes being held in Erik’s hands. Jessie’s reflexes kicked in, and she attempted summoning her own schemas—as soon as she tried, the emptiness she had been feeling grew larger as she focused on the stolen ability—not just Mistilteinn and Caliburn, but all the stuff she had stored away in her dimensional space was just…gone.

  In Erik’s hands were two new weapons: one long, having even grown upwards and downwards both, and one shorter, curved weapon. His right hand held a polearm, with a long, double-edged blade making up the upper third of the weapon. The pole itself looked like deep brown and polished wood with ornate black and gold details along the shaft. The blade reflected the light with a silvery note, almost chrome in its reflectiveness. Along the centre of the blade, keeping it attached to the pole, ran a thin, crimson metal clamp.

  Erik’s left hand held a golden brown bow with a thin, black string. Around the nocks and along the limb were thin, ornate lines, like the ones on the polearm, yet the grip was plain and a deeper brown than the rest of the bow.

  “You took my ability?” Jessie asked.

  “Only for another minute, I promise. It’s a five-minute duration, give or take,” Erik said, flexing his puppy-eyes.

  “Fine. It’s just so…uncomfortable. I feel like an actual part of me is missing.”

  “Sorry. At least we know I can have separate schemas from you. I wanted to make something with different practical applications than swords, just in case. I’m not even sure these schemas will remain if I take this ability from you again sometime.”

  “My stuff—do you have it?” Jessie then asked.

  “No…doesn’t seem like it,” Erik said, hesitating.

  “What if we don’t get it back?” Angela interrupted. “She had some of my stuff as well.”

  “Way to delete our stuff, you jerk!” Emma burst out.

  “Hey, hey! Let’s just see what happens, okay? Geez,” Erik tried to calm the small firecracker. “Do I have to remind all of you that she tried to explode me?”

  After another minute, the weapons—Gungnir and Bane—dematerialised, turning back into motes of yellow light, which vanished in a flash. This was unlike the de-summoning Erik had tried a few times.

  “So?” Angela asked Jessie, looking excitedly at the Witch.

  In response, Caliburn appeared in Jessie’s hand almost in an instant, not requiring another schema configuration like the first time. The magical sword vanished as quick as it came. A cosmetic bag appeared in her hand the next moment.

  “It’s all safe,” said Jessie with a relieved sigh.

  “That’s it? You were all raging for your make-up?” Erik asked, irked at their earlier reactions.

  “Of course,” they all answered with awful timing.

  Erik:

  Minor Ability

  Name: Confiscate

  From: Authority

  Type: Utility, Control

  Cost: Medium

  Effect - Iron:

  Temporarily steal an ability from someone else. Your own attributes will be used in all aspects of using the stolen ability. Stolen ability will be rendered inert in the original owner for the duration of Confiscate. Confiscate cannot be used again immediately.

  After this, they deemed it safe for Erik to attempt taking others of Jessie’s abilities, but his cooldown of an hour only offered another attempt before everyone went to sleep to prepare for the following day.

  The experiment proved the same the second time around—Jessie felt something missing inside her, and Erik used her ability just as she would. The difference the second time around was how long he touched her. If he focused whilst touching her, he could get a feel of which power he could take, like a Rolodex of magical powers.

  Knowing which power he wanted to try first, that hadn’t been an issue. The second time he scrolled through a mental list of abilities, finding two of them out of his reach: her Familiar ability and her Core ability. They had both expected the latter, yet Familiar was perhaps the ability Erik wanted to borrow the most following Ease The Burden.

  When explaining the Familiar ability and its history to Roger, the minute man hypothesised that because of the requirements of summoning her familiar—the summoning ritual—the base ability itself would be worthless for Erik. Grace’s resurrection timer shouldn’t be impacting it.

  What excited Roger the most was the fact that the group was hiding away a real-life dinosaur, not to mention the fact that its death was only temporary. Creating fire from nothing was one thing, but creating life and resurrecting it after it died? It should be impossible, much more so a whole week after the death occurred, which was only considered a limitation, not a cost-factor of the re-summoning.

  The party invited Roger to tag along with them, as all of them found his company both pleasant and helpful, and his knowledge and tendency to consider things they all couldn’t because of their lack of the former. As much as he would’ve liked to throw himself into dangerous and mortal situations with little to gain from it, he had to pass on the opportunity.

  He promised to keep everything a secret until such a time came that he didn’t have to anymore, however long that took. No one thought it would be long, as their coming fight would not just be public, but political as well. Hiding away while taking back territory the size of the Empire would be all but impossible, and they couldn’t afford to lose their lives or their fight for such a dumb purpose as privacy.

  All it meant was that they had to hide much better later if they wanted to avoid scrutiny, experiments, and politics. That was if they defeated the army of Hellbeasts and wherever, whatever, or whoever they were coming from.

  Tomorrow would see the beginning of their first mission. Reclaiming the bridge would be the first pivotal step in fighting back. There would be no turning back after that. It wasn’t just their fight, but a fight for humanity and for their planet.

  No one felt the pressure more than Erik, who had escaped the ruins of the Empire all alone. It had been his home. Now, he was going to reclaim it. It would take time, and all his friends would be in constant danger. It was up to him not just to win the fight—all the fights…but to protect his friends and allies as he did so. A growing sense of dread filled his thoughts as he fell asleep that night, his brain keeping a constant vigil, never letting him stop worrying.

  That night he dreamt of the black fire for what would be the last time. It started like all the rest of his dreams, with intense heat and choking. The dark flames crawled across the room like spiders on a wall, jumping and spreading with malicious intent.

  His mother, like a siren, screamed loud enough to almost shatter glass, hadn’t it already been melting in the black inferno. Her skin melted before his eyes as she struggled to reach him, her only child. The skin on her face boiled and turned black, and she fell before she could reach him. The impact on the burning floor shattered her body into ash, leaving only cinder and bones. It was a sure sign of what would become of him. He struggled to look away from his mother, but eventually, he did. His childhood home was gone, as were his mother and father.

  In his panicked periphery, a familiar face passed by outside the window. A face that couldn’t be real, watching from behind an inky wall of fire and shattered and melting glass. In just a moment, Erik could no longer feel life within himself—just pain and fire.