Trouble With Horns

73: Runed Pillar

Further down into the complex, and we discovered that it wasn’t a simple ruin at all. It was an ancient town, long since raided and abandoned. The whole thing was a network of tunnels and little burrows, with a complex air passage system that still functioned to this day.

There was also an air of magic hanging around, faint but tangible. The people who once lived here were definitely not your average human, that was for sure.

It wasn’t all empty corridors and memories of a long dead society, though. No, this was a video game, and ancient dark holes like this one were full of nasty surprises.

The first I knew of the enemy was when a bladed forearm came slicing out at me from a dark doorway. Almost immediately I was grabbing it and slamming it violently against the doorframe until it broke off. Its owner screamed in pain, then fright as I pulled it out of the darkness and hammered my other fist into its twisted face.

That was about the time I recognised what had attacked me. It was one of those petrified dryad fuckers that had killed me! Oh, vengeance was going to be mine. The giants might overlevel me by a significant margin, but these things were now far below my level.

Swapping my grip to its gnarled throat, I diverted power from my gauntlet’s engines into my grip and squeezed.

Its neck resisted for half a moment, then popped like a bug’s exoskeleton. Glowing green sap oozed out onto my gauntlets, and in a rare moment of quick thinking, I selected it and shoved it into my inventory. Good luck to whatever poor soul I ended up dumping that stuff on.

“Oh, that was gross,” Dawn said mildly.

“Not as bad as the spiders,” I laughed, throwing the now desiccated corpse to the ground. “Looks like the sap is sort of valuable, so we should collect it where we can.”

“Alright, I can do that,” she nodded, stepping up beside me.

What followed was a merciless slaughter. The strange dryad things had infested the old ruins, and we made it our personal mission to clear them out. They were fairly easy to kill, because both Dawn and I were built to counter them, so we had a lot of fun. Plus, they made such a satisfying sound when you smashed them to bits.

“Hey, babe!” I called, a little while later. “Watch this!”

We’d found our way into a deeper part of the ruins now, where things were no longer dry and dusty, but rather filthy and damp. I had a squirming angry dryad held in one hand, while the other fended off its feeble attacks.

When Dawn looked up at my call, having just finished her own monster, I grabbed the dryad’s head and carefully impaled it on one of my horns.

With it still dangling there, I threw a cheeky grin to my girlfriend and asked, “What do you think of my new fashion accessory?”

“You have glowing tree-bug goop in your hair,” she remarked, trying to keep a straight face. I could see her fighting that smile, though. I knew her too well.

I laughed and swung the body around a bit with my head. “It’s just glow in the dark paint. Pretend we’re at a rave.”

That did it. She began to laugh, shaking her head in exasperation as she did so. “God, you’re such a clown. I love you.”

My heart melted instantly, taking on a gooey, sticky consistency and making me worried my lungs would get glued together. “I love you, too.”

Distracted as she was by her glowing girlfriend, my girl didn’t notice the twiggy motherfucker that took a swipe at her. It never connected, because I raised my hand and slapped it aside with a bolt of lightning. It hit the wall with a faint squelch and lay still.

“We should keep going,” I sighed, aching to take off my armour and snuggle up with her instead.

 Her expression showed that she felt the same. “Unfortunately.”

So we did, diving deeper into this strange ancient town, all the way to the basement. There, we found and cleared out the remainder of the petrified dryads, thus cementing my revenge on their kind. Not that the end result of them killing me all the way back when wasn’t awesome, but it hadn’t been a pleasant experience.

“Phew,” Dawn sighed, wiping her sword down with a rag. “That was fun, and much easier than the giants. I guess we could also do with some actual training too.”

“How so?” I asked, casting Taylor’s cleaning spell on myself to wash all the muck off.

Sitting down to rest on a lump of stone, my girlfriend said, “Taylor mentioned it, right? We need to work on our actual knowledge of fighting. Not the ingame skills, but the ones in our heads. I’m pretty good with a sword, for a random self taught gamer, but I could use some real instruction on it. Same for you and punching things, although I have no idea how we’d find someone who can teach you stuff to fit with your fighting style.”

“Ah,” I said, wincing. “Yeah, no. That makes sense.”

“I imagine there will be someone who can teach you,” she said, giving me a placating smile. “Probably expensive, but we’re nobles now.”

Stepping towards her, I shrugged. “I guess we’d better hope that the goop we’ve collected sells for—“

The floor gave out under me in a flash, stone crumbling away in a rapidly growing cascade. Arms flailing, I tried to get a bearing on what was happening, only for Dawn’s cry of fear to narrow my focus.

The whole room had given out, falling apart like my mother when I told her I was trans. Chaos whirled around me, but I had a mission. My wings spread out, beating to take control of my fall, all while they were battered by debris.

Dawn had already fallen past me, so I dove, arms outstretched. I reached her without any time to spare and I enfolded her into an embrace, flipping us so that I would hit the ground first. My shield took the brunt of the damage, but stars still danced in my vision from the impact. Having her land on me forced the breath from my lungs, and I instinctively sucked in a desperate breath, only to get a lungful of dust.

“Jesus,” she exclaimed as I coughed up my lungs. At least the pain was dampened. “Are you okay? Fuck. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I wheezed, blinking back tears.

I heard a cork pop, and then her hand was on the side of my jaw, gently coaxing it open. "Healing potion," she explained, placing the small vial to my lips.

Letting her tip the contents down my throat, I let out a sigh of relief as it got to work on my bruises. God, VR was so much better than reality sometimes. That little stunt would have killed me out in real life. Not that I'd have needed to pull it in the first place, but still.

As my vision cleared, I noticed a notification in the corner of my HUD. A blinking quest alert. Eh?

Quest Update: Birth of a New Species

In the depths of an ancient ruin, among the twisting tendrils of the realm of energy, you have discovered something to aid you in your quest. A wellstone of power pulses in the chamber with you, waiting to be harnessed. Will you give a part of yourself to your companion, and in so doing transform them?

"Oh snap!" I exclaimed, pain and dust forgotten. "Babe, I think the game forced us here for my quest."

Staring at me, then past me, then back to me, she said, "I'm guessing it has something to do with the big glowing rock?"

Craning my neck, I surveyed the cavern and spied the rock she was talking about. It was just slightly taller than me, and vaguely pillar shaped. All across its surface were glowing blue runes, packed so tight together that I swear some were overlapping somehow. It pulsed with a pressure similar to that of the noonday sun, but with magic instead of warmth.

"Yeah, that thing," I agreed, mesmerized by its power. "The quest update says I can use it to turn you into my race by, ‘giving you a part of myself,’ whatever that means."

"Oh, now that’s exciting!” she said. “Very keen for that. Your race seems so overpowered, even compared to my randomly generated one—” A thought occurred to her mid sentence, and she grinned. “Does it want me to fuck you against it?"

My thoughts jumped to wild, fun places, and my pulse hiccuped. That sounded hella fun, especially if we used our combat forms.

“Probably not,” I laughed, disappointed by my own reaction. “Possibly it wants like, a literal part of me. A hair or something.”

“DNA or something?” she mused. “I mean, we can probably get that just from kissing, at least.”

“Wow, someone is horny,” I grinned, not at all opposed to the idea.

To my surprise, her cheeks flushed red and she glanced shyly off to the side. “Shut up, I was just…”

“Just… what?” I asked, taking a step closer to her. She was so cute in this smaller body.

“I mean, it’s way more romantic if it’s… you know, a kiss that transforms me, right?” she said bashfully. “I’m assuming it will do something fun to my race, and maybe I’ll get my own wings. Plus… being the same as you… it would make me happy.”

“You’re so cute,” I sighed, taking her hand. “Come on then, let’s test your theory.”

The cavern we were in was made of the same subtly runed stone as the stuff we’d seen above ground. It was also obviously natural, which made me think that the carvings were actually something that generated along with the stone itself. An inherent property, or whatever. Maybe we should take some home with us.

Careful not to trip on any stalagmites, we headed for the glowing stone pillar. It seemed to get almost excited the closer we got, until the runes were shifting over its surface. How carved runes could move across solid rock, I have no idea, but that’s what was happening.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked as we neared the pillar. “We’re kind of just jumping into this without much thought.”

Dawn turned a disbelieving look in my direction. “Who are you and what have you done with my Tami? As soon as you mentioned that quest, all the way back when, I wanted to be the first person you turned. I’m not giving up that opportunity for fun game shenanigans right as it’s about to happen.”

“Wait, you never said that!” I protested.

“I don’t say a lot of things until they’re relevant, my love,” she teased, reaching up to brush my cheek with a thumb. “Otherwise half of my life would be dedicated to just telling you all the dumb shit I think about.”

“Ah… point taken.” I giggled, leaning into the touch while I looked her up and down. “Are you ready?"

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