Chapter 392: New Allies
There was silence in the room before the veil faded and the room was returned to normal. Celes and Laz sat on the bed in silence, still naked as their bodies gave off the aroma of sex. But that was the furthest thing from their mines.
All of the rest of the shadows had vanished, except for the lead shadow with female like features and a sweet sounding voice. Her form was also similar to that of Celes when she was in her battle form, one that looked like a female body covered from head to toe in a black wet suit. While Laz was only half convinced she was female before, now he was fully aware of it.
"We... never thought that they would lose... Now what do we do...?" The shadow woman asked, her voice vague and confused.
"You stay with Celes. You said she was of your blood right?"
"Well... yes. She is of the royal line. And the black flame wings... if we were still back on our home world, she would have been made the next queen. The leader is the one who awakens those wings. But in the tens of thousands of years we have been travelling in the shadow realm, no one had ever awaken those wings. Not that there are many of use left anymore. When we thought of how our past queen had given her flame the your leader... we felt like she had betrayed us. But yet, she has it now. And so do you. It’s all... so strange..."
Laz sighed while looking at the shadow in front of him. Perhaps he wouldn’t have felt such pity, but he had seen what these people really look like, beyond the shadows that cover them. He could clearly see the years of suffering etched into their bodies.
And they were Celes’ people.
"As long as Celes’ grows stronger, you can grow stronger?" Laz asked.
"Yes. But we can also grow stronger outside of her. It’s just... we would need some form of tangible energy that can be set into the realm. Right now, this would and it’s light source is far too dangerous for us to roam around, even when your sun has set for the night. But once we regain our lost strength, we will be able to at least walk under your sky in the dark," the shadow answered, hiding nothing.
"Tangible energy... would this work?" Laz asked, taking out one of the stones that he had gotten from the compound. After thinking for a moment, he also took out the battery like device he had gotten off world. While they were useful, their ability to match his current strength had been lessened to a great degree. For all intents and purposes, he didn’t have a good use for them anymore since they only helped recover energy, not helped build it. And now, with the well of strength his palace provided him, these things were somewhat useless.
"Both of those work... The stone is far stronger but the energy in this strange metal object has been refined to a point where it’s easy to digest. Yes. The metal object would help us to heal much faster. The stone would only be good once we have reached our full strength and want to get stronger. Do you have many of these?" The shadow asked excitedly, but then backed away. It seemed she remembered that she had wanted him dead only a few minutes ago.
Celes turned to look at Laz who looked back at her. She was not aware of how many he had after all. But for something so precious, how many could he afford to give away?
The answer to that was everything.
As he reached into his pouch, he began to remove sacks of them. Originally, they had just been tossed in there without order. But having them just laying around was causing things to be messy so he ended up gathering them all up and putting them into bags.
By the time he had finished, five sacks, the size of Laz himself, laid on the floor with their tops practically bursting out with the metal batteries.
Neither the shadow nor Celes could believe their eyes.
"This... this is..."
"That’s a lot. Are you sure?" Celes turned to Laz and asked. While yesterday she was crazed and obsessive, all be it not by her own influence, now she seemed reserved and calm. Even if taken into account of how she was before the shadow’s influence, she would come off as a completely different person./
"Yes. And I trust you shall follow Celes from now on?" Laz asked, staring at where the eyes of the shadow should be.
"Of course. I shall give my life for my queen if needed. Not only because of the black flame wings, but since she is a part of royalty, that means that whoever passed on their bloodline was also related to me. So I think this means we are cousins by the standards of your people."
"Our people," Celes corrected her.
"Yes... Our people now. Still though, from what I have seen of your memories and forgive me for having looked from before, this world is very interesting," the female shadow commented.
"How so?" Laz asked.
"Because there are so many different bloodlines present and they have all integrated with the native species on this world. It seems like it would be harder to find someone without a special bloodline than with one."
"Well... there are still many regular humans however... and those other people," Celes pointed out to the shadow.
"I can’t really talk about those others you have here as I have never seen people with those types of abilities. Then again, the only ones we ever came in contact with besides the Infernals were those or the Asura army. But I can tell you this; Those ones you claim are regular humans are just those whose bloodlines are been diluted over the years. I truly wish I knew just why there are so many bloodlines present here."
"There are also sleeping members of other races spread out all over the place. I met a sleeping figure in a glass coffin who scared the hell out of me. Luckily, her body wasn’t in any condition to get out of the coffin but even then, she was able to speak to me,"
"A crystal coffin?" The shadow asked, trying to confirm.
"Yeah. It was clear like glass, but I do remember them saying crystal."
"I can’t believe even they survived..." the shadow said before quickly covering her mouth.
"Who?" Celes asked.
"It’s not important right now. For now, let me take these gifts to my brothers and sisters in the realm so that we may start healing ourselves. I shall let you know once we are all set," the female shadow said before disappearing like smoke in the wind.
Laz turned to look at Celes who turned back to look at him. Seeing as how they were still naked, they decided it was best to get dressed and see just what kind of trouble they had caused.
"I’m really sorry," Celes said, pulling her shirt over her perky breasts.
"Well... I don’t really know what to say now. I won’t say I forgive you, but I will let this go. From now on, you need to keep better control of your mind and not let yourself be so easily manipulated," Laz said, a firmness to his tone.
"Yes daddy," Celes said, in almost a whisper as her face turned red.
"You’ve been wanting to do that for a while, haven’t you?" Laz commented with a smirk.
"I also wanted you to spank my ass and call me a slut, daddy..." Celes responded, turning to look Laz in the eyes, this time with a rather coy smile on her face.
"You really did see everything, didn’t you?"
"I did. And I was jealous..."
"And now?"
"Now? I can’t wait to be tied up next to Nora and taught just what a bad slut I am..." Celes had obviously awakened to her cardinal desires. And Laz didn’t know how to respond.
"Of course... I think I too would enjoy giving Nora some punishment for how she’s been ignoring me for the past few days. Perhaps to daddy, I will be his little slut, but for her... he he he he he..." Celes snickered as she put her shoes back on.
’Looks like she’s awoken more that just her submissive side...’ Laz thought to himself as he walked out the room with her.
When he got outside his old bedroom, there was only one girl standing there but she was facing away from the door. Upon a closer look, Laz noticed her ears were bright red and the blush extended down to her cheeks.
Laz had the bad feeling that she must have heard what Celes was saying as she walked out.
"Leah, What’s up? Why are you here?" Celes asked the girl. For whatever fault she might have, Celes knew the name and face of everyone living within the facility as a part of the order.
"Mistress. The old mistress asked that you visit her as soon as you are able," the girl said while not making eye contact.
"Alright. Thank you."
As soon as Celes said this, the girl named Leah ended up running away, obviously too embarrassed to stay a moment longer. Celes just looked over at Laz and laughed while walking away, seemingly intent on visiting her grand mother now that she was free.
Laz didn’t follow her as it seemed like the invite wasn’t for him. Whether that was intentional or accidental, Laz instead made his way to Nora’s place where he had disappeared from earlier without a word.
Walking along the sidewalk, Laz noticed that the sun was coming up, an indicator of just how long he had been trapped within that shadow world. Even more than that, the air felt different, more primal and chaotic. This surprised Laz as he had always felt a more peaceful vibe from this place, especially in the cool light of the morning.
If this was some time ago in the past, Laz would have wrote the feeling off as being caused by the events of the previous night and would have ignored it. Now however, Laz knew that something was going to happen again, something big. While he didn’t know what that could be, this wasn’t a feeling he would get from something small.
Coming upon the porch to Nora’s house, he found her outside sipping coffee while staring off at the rising sun.
Perhaps she had been waiting for him.
Perhaps she hadn’t.
That didn’t matter at the moment as Laz walked up to her and boldly put his arms around her waist while following her gaze.
"Rough night?" She asked.
"Quite."
"MMmm," was Nora’s only reply as she took another sip before leaning her head back into Laz’s chest.
"Not going to ask me anything else?" Laz questioned, amazed that the person who questioned everything normally would be so docile.
"Oh. You’ll tell me later, so that’s enough. I did follow you and figured out where you were. And knowing what I know, I knew who did it too. Considering I neither see nor smell blood from you and you don’t seem off at all, I’m guessing things worked out all right. So for now, I’m just going to sip this bold roast, look at the massive sky and enjoy this moment of quiet. Mostly because I feel like it won’t last long," Nora said, taking another sip and doing just what she said she would.
Laz took a moment or two to breath in the sweet scent of her fiery red hair before backing down into one of the large wooden chairs on the porch and bring Nora down onto his lap. She happily complied, making sure not to spill a drop as she nuzzled up in his lap.
"You feel something?" Laz asked, wanting to confirm his thoughts.
"I think we made a mistake. But then again, how would we know?" Nora said, a little cryptic.
"What do you mean?" Laz was confused.
"Nothing I can prove now. But what’s coming can’t be stopped. Still though, I think the worse thing is that we will have to abandon this place. I kind of liked it here."
"What do you mean it can’t be stopped... what happened?" Laz said nor more alarmed than anything else.
"I’m not sure what happened in the room you were trapped in. In fact, until I walked away and came back here, after knowing you were fine, I didn’t even notice it. But once I got home, I felt it. It’s in the air. The feeling of power. It would be a nice boon for us... until one considers where it could possibly be coming from."
"..." Laz had no idea what to say. Nora seemed to be straightening out her thoughts while she talked, so Laz just figured it was best to leave her be and let her speak.
"The devil or god... whatever is buried around here...."
"Yeah?"
"I think it’s waking up..."
