Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 091

"Two things. One, if I hadn't, I think you'd be dead already. And two," Yuki held up her hand and summoned a ball of golden light. "I would absolutely give it back to you if I knew how. I can feel it coursing through my veins like liquid fire. Ever since I absorbed it, I've been in pain. My body doesn't know what to do with it. Every time I use magic, I can feel it lurking like a predator, ready to pounce. I don't even know what that means for potential outcomes. Will it escape? Or will I explode? Trust me when I tell you I didn't want it in the first place. All I wanted was to level the playing field, but you know as well as I do that magic doesn't always work the way you think it should."

Jack/Freya stared at her for a bit before Jack broke the silence. "Does Mike know?"

Yuki shrugged. "Would it matter if he did? You're the priority right now. For some reason, he believes that you'll be willing to help us take down the Krampus. I have my doubts, but he seems to have a knack for reading people that I do not."

"Hmm." Jack seemed to accept this answer.

"Speaking of our dear Caretaker, surely you've noticed the divine spark in him." Freya whispered this, as if afraid of being overheard.

"I have," Yuki admitted, releasing the ball of golden light. It flowed back into her hand, making a hissing sound as it disappeared into her skin.

"And what would he do with it? In fact, how does a mortal shell even survive such an in-flux of magic? Even this worthless body--"

"Hey!" Jack interrupted.

"Even this worthless body could barely contain it," Freya finished. "A touch of it would drive an ordinary man insane."

"Mike isn't an ordinary man." Yuki tilted her head and sighed. After so many days of Freya's bitching, the goddess was really starting to get to her. "And if there's one thing you should never do, it's underestimate him. He's a survivor, always has been." It wasn't lost on her that Mike had absorbed divinity while saving her life yet again. If it did cause him harm, she didn't think she could ever forgive herself.

But now that Freya had brought it up, why wasn't Mike experiencing problems with it? Surely he had to notice that the power of the gods was now flowing through his veins. At the best of times, Yuki felt like her soul had a sunburn. If not for all of those years being miserable in a tower, it would definitely bother her more.

A kitsune's body was designed for divinity. Every hundred years, they would grow a new tail and gain access to a new realm of magic. At a thousand years, they would become powerful enough to ascend, to properly harvest the magic of the gods. It was a long process for a reason, and Yuki wondered how different she would feel if she were further along in her evolution. Though magic wasn't really something that could be measured, each tail she grew hypothetically doubled her power.

She had never met a kitsune close to ascending, nor heard of one that had. It was always just rumors and legends, and the only one she knew of for certain was Tamamo-no-Mae. That particular kitsune had made it to nine tails, but was killed for trying to overthrow an emperor. Her spirit was currently sealed in a stone in Japan, but not the one everyone thought. Yuki had sought out the spirit once, curious to learn about her own kind. Tamamo had tried to trick her into giving up her body, but Yuki had seen through the desperate ploy easily enough.

The truth was, Yuki knew very little about her kind, or even herself. There was no real memory of her youth. One day, she was a fox with human intelligence. Dozens of years later, she awoke to discover that she now had two tails and could become a human. Her magic was instinctual at first, but the older she became, the more she learned.

Freya cleared her throat. Or maybe it was Jack. It didn't really matter. Either way, Yuki had tuned out the goddess and became lost in thought.

"My apologies." Yuki moved to adjust the pillows around Jack/Freya to make them more comfortable, then moved to the window to look outside. It was a frozen world out there, trapped in a single moment of time. In here, Mike slumbered while divinity circulated through his soul, doing gods knew what to him.

"Baka," she muttered under her breath with a smile. Gods, how she loved that idiot.

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I super hope you enjoyed that chapter, because my pieces are almost in place for the third act! Expect to see some holiday spice in my next post, because I'm about to show you something you'll never see in a Hallmark movie!

Lit readers, you're awesome and I love you for all the opportunities you have brought to me. Thank you so, so, so much for letting me share this story, I adore Mike and all of my girls. Maybe it's silly, but I've had some really rough days recently where I've leaned on more than one of my characters for support. My Lily comes out when solicitors come to my door (or that newspaper guy at the grocery store who won't take no for an answer), but my Suly appears when I'm gardening. It's kind of strange, but it makes me feel like I'm never truly alone.

Please don't forget to leave some stars and some comments to help other people find this story, and then give yourself a hug. You matter.

~Annabelle Hawthorne