Blood & Carrots Ep. 27

"I suppose it is my longing for you that brought it to bare." The cat shows me a confident grin then looks back to you, your intent upon us full of interest.

I shiver and sigh before looking back to you with a blissful smile on my lips. "After my visit with Harold, I spent a week with the circle, I had some questions I needed answers to..."

#

I clutched his silky indigo vest in both hands, my head pushed to his chest. The cobra embraced me and held me close while I pulled heavily from him. I drank deeply of his power and finally willed myself to calm. A shudder rolled through my body as the connection severed and I felt my knees weaken. He held me securely in his arms and I gave a weak sigh, blinking up at him.

"Do you feel better, Alice?" Kazemde showed me his sharp teeth, his fingertips now in my hair, rubbing at my ears.

"I do... but it was your request, remember?" I practically purred the words, my nails digging into his chest gently.

"My apologies, I will see to satisfy this debt as soon-"

"Shut up." I snorted out a laugh and pushed my forehead to his chest, giggling as he held me.

The mage grinned and resumed stroking my hair, keeping me held close like that for several moments. I heard him hiss the words softly into my ears after a time. "I did miss you... it's been nearly half a year..."

I nodded my head a few times and hesitantly pulled from his embrace. "Yes, our schedules just couldn't line up it seems. Each time I wanted to call, you were busy..."

"And likewise, anytime I had invited, you were away with council business." The archmage smiled and folded his hands in front of him.

"I'm glad you could see me on such short notice..." I spoke the words and folded my arms over my stomach, glancing my eyes away.

"Well it took a few weeks to set it up, I wouldn't call that short notice, Alice." The snake hissed the words and moved to me with a lithe motion, his fingertips to my chin, lifting my face to look into his dark eyes. "Something weighs upon you, what is it?"

I blinked into his dark eyes and set him with a determined look. "I had to fight celestials for the first time recently. Very powerful ones..."

He frowned and pressed his palm to my cheek, staring into my blue eyes. "I thank the gods you are still with us then..."

I clenched my teeth at the words, biting my lower lip at his gentle touch. "Your words are too kind for me, Kazemde."

He smiled and pulled from my arms to put a finger to his chin. "How did you survive the encounter?"

"I had a lot of help, and I outsmarted them you could say." I showed my teeth in a grin.

"Outsmarted them eh? Now you sound like a mage, Alice." Kazemde gave me a coy grin.

A frown formed on my face and I asked him point-blank. "Is it possible for me to learn any tricks? The celestials were using shields like I have seen mages use."

"It stands to reason they would. They are a tricky bunch." Kazemde frowned and folded his arms. "I do not think it would work."

"Why is that?" I asked curiously.

He wagged a finger as his words took on a scholarly tone. "Most mages will focus on a particular school when they study. The truly adept of us, perhaps two. If you can do more than that, you risk spreading yourself too thin and your willpower will fray."

"Fray?" I frown and tilt my head.

"If you pull too heavily from the arcane, you will go mad. I don't think I need to tell you about what happens when mages lose their mind." He frowned and folded his arms.

"So, in theory, couldn't I learn a school?" I asked him curiously.

"I believe your radiance and hellfire already take a great toll upon your willpower reserves. Your thaumaturgy doesn't have much impact because it pools more from your physical body to function." Kazemde nodded his head while he spoke.

"It might be possible, but the arts are not for the faint of heart, Alice. This isn't just a show of force or will. You have to study diligently for years to see any progress. Incantations require years of study to even see the smallest of results."

"How many years are we talking, Kaz?" I frown as I ask the question.

"Most apprentices will be able to cast their first rudimentary spells after around a decade of study. This is assuming their willpower is not being pulled upon by other sources." Kazemde sees the shocked look on my face and follows up with a question. "When you channel your fire, do you feel like feelings and emotions are sometimes not your own?"

I lift my ears and nod. "Y-yeah... sometimes if I'm pulling heavily from it, I get this overwhelming desire to rampage and destroy. I always thought it was like the other power in me, just my demons wanting to come out."

The cobra shook his head and raised a finger. "That is no demon, Alice. That is the madness of losing yourself. You channel entropy like we mages do when you use that power."

A shiver rolls down my spine as I put the pieces together. "You're saying if I try to pull my willpower into other directions, I could make that voice louder and harder to shrug off."

"That's it." He gave me a nod and I saw the pride in his eyes from me putting the pieces together from his context clues. "You channel radiant fire, hellfire, thaumaturgy, and you even have divinity in your body. Your willpower is already overloaded, I think adding new tricks to your bag is a very dangerous prospect, Alice."

"O-overloaded... Am I going to be okay?" I blink upon him and frown.

"You should be, if it were too much to bear, you would have lost yourself by now." Kazemde smiled and put his hands to his stomach, clasping them. "Your force of will, it will improve as you utilize your powers. I do not think learning other things will be beyond you. I just feel you need to take it slowly, stop thinking like a mundane and realize you have all the time in the world to strengthen your resolve."

I nod and frown. "Let me ask you something else then, Kaz."

"Go right ahead, Alice." He gave me another smile.

"Those shields. Is there a trick to cracking them?" I fixed him with an annoyed look. "If that asshole hadn't had the shield backing him up, I probably could have taken him."

The cobra smiled and put a finger to his chin. "Do you honestly believe you could have brought down an elite celestial on your own, Alice?"

"Well, I certainly would have fared better!" I grumbled and folded my arms.

Kazemde smiled and shook his head. "They say confidence is key..." He cleared his throat and opened his palm as he spoke. "Shields like that come in a variety of forms. The ones you are encountering are designed to absorb kinetic energy."

"Alright, so they shrug off physical attacks, but if I'm infusing my strikes with fire, doesn't that mean it shouldn't work?" I fold my arms and tilt my head curiously as I respond.

"Yes and no..." Kazemde taps his chin in thought. "Let's look at it like this. Say I placed you before a stone wall and told you to bring it down with your whip?"

"Uh... that wouldn't work. I think my whip would wear down to a nub before the wall so much as had a few chips knocked out of it." I tilted my head curiously.

"Now say I placed a very powerful sledgehammer in your hands. Could you bring the wall down?"

"Sure... I mean depending on the size and strength of the wall, it would take a while, but I could." I blinked and put my hand to my cheek. "So... kinetic attacks would just flail away on the shield uselessly, but infusing my attacks does chip away at them?"

Kazemde nodded and smiled. "That's right. You could stand there all day striking a shield with your whip or firing upon it with your gun. The mage projecting it would feel next to nothing and could hold it indefinitely."

I nod at his words. "Well I'm glad I can crack them, but is there a sure-fire way to bust them down quickly?"

"Yes actually." He nodded and raised a finger once more. "The more variety of energies you push against a shield, the more of a toll it will take on the mage holding it."

"So I should maybe lash against it with hellfire while shooting at it with bullets infused with radiance?" I show my teeth in a grin.

"That would work, but even better... fuse your divinity into the attacks, or combine them into one." He put his hands on his hips and peered at me curiously. "Have you ever tried to do this?"

I blinked at the thought of it and shook my head. "I... I wouldn't even know where to begin..."

Kazemde sighed and gave me a smile like a parent would a child. "It is a good thing you are with me for a week, come Alice. We have much to practice."

The next several days were spent with the archmage teaching me of focus and how to more accurately harness my powers. I won't lie, it was very difficult, and worked a part of me that hadn't been getting a lot of exercise these last few years; my brain. It's hard to explain, I had been studying and educating myself in the traditional sense of things. It was like learning a new language versus learning a new mathematical formula. Both required your brain, but on different levels.

#

We found ourselves in one of their practice halls. "Well then, Alice. It's your last day here, let's try putting all you've practiced to a more practical use." Kazemde spoke the words calmly as he paced away from me.

"Alright, what shall I do?" I rolled my shoulder and bent at the knees a few times, limbering up.

"I will project a screen of energy before me. We will test your new powers against it." He gave me a look as if he already knew the concern and spoke out. "It will be several feet from me, even if you break it, I will be in no harm."

I nodded and smiled in relief before unfurling my whip and cracking it in the air a few times with some warm-up strikes. The cobra nodded and I felt his will gently fill the air. "First let's go over the basics. See how the shield looks as you strike it with just your whip and nothing more."

With a nod I sent the tip of the whip out, it slashed and striked an invisible force in the air. There were no signs of anything, just simply a wall of an unseen force that batted the tip away. Kazemde nodded. "As you can see, there are no signs of the shield, you see nothing and only the force of it deflects your blow."

The cobra hesitated before averting his eyes. "Infuse your whip with radiance." I waited until he looked away, I knew to see me hurt myself bothered him. I tore a gash in my palm open on my tooth, then proceeded to drag the whip over the bloody wound, coating it.

I dragged my tongue over my bleeding palm to heal the wound, lapping the remaining blood back up. "Alright Kaz, it's safe to look."

The cobra nodded and fixed his eyes back towards me. "Go ahead and strike." My whip erupted into blue flames and I lashed it out hard, the tip again struck the shield and this time I saw the familiar-looking screen of energy right where the tip struck. "Did you notice you could see it this time and it lingered for a breath?"

"Yeah, I've seen that before when fighting mages and the celestials." I cracked the whip in the air a few times then pulled it back, letting it wrap around my wrist, the flames still rolling off it.

"The sight you glimpse from the impact gives an idea of how much stress you are putting upon the shield. Now while it still has radiance, strike my shield several times in the same spot and watch." I did as the cobra ordered and slashed my whip out rapidly, striking the tip viciously against the unseen force repeatedly. With each strike, the screen grew darker and more obvious. "Good, stop." He called out.

I pulled away and I watched. It took a few seconds this time for the image to fade. "Good job, you would get similar results from your hellfire or thaumaturgy." Kazemde showed me a grin and I saw him shore up his own resolve. "Now my student, infuse your whip in the manner I showed you, and wait for my command."

Biting my lower lip I nodded. I pulled the length back and gripped it in both hands, holding it taught, one hand gripping the base, the other holding the center. My ears folded and I focused inward. I did as he had shown me these last days, focused upon the hellfire, the radiance, and the divinity within my soul.

We had discovered there was no way to bring both hellfire and radiance to their full potential together. I could lean more heavily on one or the other for this technique but one had to be dominant.

"Strike with your radiant fire!" The cobra hissed the words and my eyes opened in focus. My left hand erupted in black flames that rolled over the length of the whip, my right started blue and flushed straight to a white-hot flame. I clenched my teeth in focus and mixed the divine energy in my soul, mingling the three together. It's hard to explain really, suffice to say the divinity acted as a catalyst to let me fuse them.

I pulled the whip from my left hand and lashed it in the air a few times, the whole length caked in an ominous flame the color of charcoal, not unlike the wings of my angel. The warm-up strikes made the air around me quiver with force. My eyes narrowed and I lashed out against the shield with a single slash. The grey shadow flames struck the force and left a clear outline that had taken more than a dozen strikes to produce with one form of the power.

"Ngh... that's phenomenal, Alice..." Kazemde grunted the words, showing his teeth as he stepped back a pace as if I had shoved him.

I frowned and lifted my ears. "Are you okay, Kaz?"

"I am!" He showed me a smile and straightened himself. The image of the shield faded after several seconds.

He took a controlled focus and narrowed his eyes. "I'm pushing it all into this one, strike it with your hellfire until it breaks."

"W-won't that hurt you?" I spoke out with worry in my voice.

Kazemde showed his teeth in an uncharacteristically cocky grin. "Yes... but I want to test myself against a chimera. It will be splendid training for us both."

I swallowed hard and gave a nod. "As long as you're sure..."

The cobra showed me a resolved grin and narrowed his eyes in focus. "Pour all your energy into the strikes, I want to test myself as well!"

I took a controlled breath and pulled forth the whip and clenched it in my hands. My eyes closed tightly and I dragged forth the flames anew. My left hand erupted in blue and my right black, my brow furrowed before the black flames took on a blood red. I let the power run amok in me and fused it with my divinity.

I opened just one eye, my right one, my pupil was jet black with crackles of blue energy coursing over them. I looked at the cobra with the wink and cracked the whip a few times, a coy arrogant grin on my face. The red flames had fused with the blue ones and the whip now had bright purple flames pouring off it. "Ha... truly this is my favorite of the two... isn't it beautiful, my mage?" I purred the words in a drunken voice.

Kazemde parted his lips to speak and I lashed the whip hard. The tip struck his shield and purple flames rolled over the dome of energy. I gave a wide grin as I opened my other eye, both looking wild and crazed with power. "Ha! I wouldn't have it any other way of course!"

By my third strike, the archmage had taken a knee but met my wild eyes with cold focus. I showed my large canines in frustration and focused my will, giving the power a firm grip upon me. The energy roared forth and the violet colored flames burst out from my own form, rolling off my elongated ears and tail, along with my limbs.

At full power, it took a single final lash from me. The shield shattered and Kazemde took both palms to the floor, panting in fatigue. "W-well done..." The cobra panted the words, then sensed my presence as I was over him in a blur of speed. "A-Alice?"

I showed a grin and pushed my hands to his shoulders, shoving him down to his back and looming over him. "Well, I beat you... don't I get a reward?" I sighed the words drunkenly, my purple flames lapping at my ears and palms, rolling over his shoulders but showing no signs of burning him.

"You have lost your focus, reign the power in." He hissed the words and narrowed his eyes upon me.

"Or what, mage? You're out of energy, I can practically taste it." My hands gripped his wrists and shoved them to the floor, pinning him as I pressed my smaller body down to his own, my tongue lolled.

Kazemde blinked up at me in shock, his forked tongue showing as his mouth gaped slightly. "Alice, control yourself, what did I tell you!" He spat the words out in a hiss then clenched his teeth hard as he felt my will baring down upon him.

"Haven't I respected your preferences long enough, my mage?" I cooed the words and leaned in, dragging my tongue along his throat, feeling the faint outlines of his scales create slight ridges against his flesh. "You enjoy the power I present... it would be all the sweeter in the throes of passion..."

He shuddered and I heard him give out a soft gasp as my tongue dragged over his flesh. I showed my teeth in a wicked grin then parted my lips, my canines pressing to his throat. The cobra hissed out loudly into my ear. "Alice, if you feed from me now, you will kill me! Think about that!" He spat the words out in a pant.

"Ha... as if I would ever harm my cute little mage... my adorable snake... my..." I gasped and shut my eyes hard, shaking my head. When did he become mine, when did I call him 'my snake or mage'?

"S-stupid... knock it off..." I growled the words aloud to myself and pushed away from him, rolling over to sit on my rear. I clenched my teeth as I hugged my arms tight to myself and shuddered. "Stop... stop... calm down..." I panted the words to myself, willing the power to calm, locking my demons away once more.

My body shivered as the power left me and drooped my head, panting heavily to compose myself. "I'm... sorry... Kaz..."

The cobra was next to me on his knees, his hand on my head. "It's alright... when is the last time you lost control like that?"

"Years... I was arrogant... stupid... thought I was past it..." I shook my head and felt tears fill my eyes but I clenched my teeth, I wouldn't hide behind my pity and sorrow.

"Your kind must always fight that battle, Alice. I understood and accepted the risk when I asked you to call it all forth." He rubbed my head gently, his touch making the tears finally start to roll down my cheeks.

"But what... what if I hadn't reigned it in... w-what if I?" I sobbed the words and shook my head, not even wanting to think about the consequences.

"Ease your mind. I had a backup plan in place." Kazemde hissed the words and rubbed at my head lovingly.

"Y-yeah?" I frowned and looked up at him, his hand stroking my ears.

"Yes, one of the rings I wear is charged with a kinetic wave enchantment. I could have willed it forth and launched you across the room. I would have the moment your teeth pierced my flesh." The cobra gave a shrug. "So that's one less worry on your mind."

I gave a relieved sigh and nodded, pushing my head to his chest while he held me. "I'm such a screw-up..."

"You are young and make mistakes. You are just as fallible as the rest of us, Alice." Kazemde nodded his head and held me tightly. "You did a great job, and you will be a force to be reckoned with now, especially against anyone using that sort of power against you."

"Thank you... I just want to keep my loved ones safe..." I nodded against his chest and felt my tension ease as he pushed his will into me.

"You will be a mighty deterrent someday, rabbit... Just remember to not lose yourself." He hummed the words and rocked me gently in his arms.

"Lose myself..." I frowned and shook my head while he held me, pushing the thoughts aside to just relaxing in his arms.

#

I gave the cobra a polite bow as we stood outside of one of his shimmering gates, the front of the mansion in clear view. "Thank you for everything Kazemde. I do not deserve to count you as my friend, especially after how I acted earlier."