Chapter 18: A Forceful Will Hidden Within

  It was sudden. In one second, Jessie went from anxious for her best friend’s first power absorption to deathly terrified.

  One second.

  Everything had gone from her mind in that one instant. Everything had been replaced by that one being. That one thing. The moment it arrived, it took her breath away. It took her mind, her soul, her very core. A monster unlike anything she’d ever seen. A being requiring her attention, stealing it along with the warmth of her body and her will to resist.

  It was the lion reigning supreme over the jungle. Commanding. Superior. It was tyrannical in the way it demanded to be followed. Jessie had to follow. The monster deemed her worthy to follow it, and she should be glad it was benevolent to those it deemed strong enough.

  The beast was without form, without colour. It was authority in the rawest form imaginable, as if it were a law of nature. No, the laws of nature would still fall in line between this King’s greatness, its sovereignty. At its mere whim, it would decide who lived and who died, who ate the weak and who it deemed less. It was Will incarnate, and then… It was Erik again.

  “Help!”

  The ringing voice penetrated Jessie’s cloudy mind just then. The Witch found her fingernails burrowed into her own skin, her hands as pale as moonlight and shivering. Her throat was tight, though with her mind returning to normal from whatever had been affecting her, she took a deep breath and once more utilised her lungs.

  “Jessie!” she heard Erik say, his voice tinged with worry.

  “I-I’m fine,” Jessie gasped even as her body was trying to regain control over itself.

  “What was that, Jess?” Sophie asked, still panicking.

  “It… It was powerful,” was all Jessie could respond.

  The Witch stared at Erik, unable to keep her eyes off him. She had stared at him non-stop for the past five minutes, her expression worried and unsure. At least she didn’t look terrified anymore.

  Sophie didn’t know why. It was just Erik. Nothing had changed. He hated seeing her sister’s reaction to him after his absorption, and she felt an uncomfortable hot spot grow inside her chest.

  He was funny and oddly decisive when it mattered, but she hadn’t seen him this serious. It was clear he cared very much for her sister. She knew this wasn’t the right time, but she wished someone would look at her the same way. Not as sad, but as caring. It had been a while since anyone except her sister had done that.

  “It’s… it’s like that feeling you usually give off… but thousands of times more powerful. But just now, there was… a will. There’s a tingle, usually. It’s stronger now. It’s fine. But earlier it was… it wasn’t even scary, it was threatening to dominate me, my senses, my… life,” Jessie explained.

  “You feel that tingle as well?” Erik asked, having thought back to when he was alone with Sophie in Jessie’s apartment, feeling that sense of something approaching, his body tingling all over.

  He’d realised it was Jessie when she opened the door and could sense the feeling coming from her. He hadn’t asked, though. They had been too busy, and it didn’t seem important. That sensation had been there ever since, always pointing to Jessie. Now, he could barely feel it anymore.

  “Yeah, but it isn’t just a tingle anymore. It’s much stronger. There’s still a slight sense of dominance, of control, like a weight or a burden. It’s weird, but it doesn’t feel dangerous anymore. I’ll be fine in a few,” Jessie said, now looking at her sister, who was looking back and forth between the two Remnants with an odd expression.

  She didn’t know what the expression meant, as she hadn’t seen it on her sister’s face before.

  “I promise,” she smiled at her sister, wiping away her younger sister’s tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Erik said, looking into his best friend’s eyes.

  Despite his knowing he didn’t do anything on purpose, he felt the need to get it off his chest. Jessie smiled and sat up.

  “Whoo! Anyway, I need a shower after that. I’m all tense, still. Give me twenty!” Jessie said, getting up to her feet as she pulled her own sister up with her. She scurried into the bathroom after pulling out some new clothes from the bag she had packed from home before they went back to the hotel.

  She undressed in a rush and turned the water on. Despite its freezing temperature, it somehow relaxed her. Frosty cold rushed over her skin, soothing every tense muscle from top to bottom. Then, the water slowly turned scorching, and Jessie was already sitting on the floor beneath the shower head, shivering from something entirely unrelated.

  As Jessie shut the door to the bathroom behind her, Sophie couldn’t help but notice that her sister didn’t lock the door. Again, the intensely fiery feeling in her chest grew from out of nowhere. An awkward silence between Sophie and Erik ensued until the sound of running water from the bathroom broke it.

  “I’m sorry,” Erik said to the younger sister this time.

  She looked at him, wondering what he was apologising for. That moment was it. He looked at her the same way he looked at her sister. His face was serious, but his eyes were filled with kindness. He wasn’t mad, but genuine. He wasn’t sad, but empathetic.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “For what?”

  “Your sister wasn’t the only one who had to go through something just now. You were frightened as well, though in a whole other way. That’s also because of me,” Erik explained.

  As he talked, Sophie went to sit on her bed. Her expression told him she didn’t care about all that, especially since everything turned out fine in the end.

  “You really love her, don’t you?” she asked, her expression unchanging.

  “Of course I do,” Erik said, sitting down on Jessie’s bed across from Sophie.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but what is your relationship with my sister, really?” She looked towards the unlocked bathroom door.

  “She’s my best friend. In the past few months, she’s become like family to me. She and I connected in a way I haven’t with anyone else in my life.” Erik told the honest, unfiltered truth about how he felt.

  “You know, she said the same. I just don’t understand-” she started but stopped herself. She grew flustered and turned her head down.

  “Don’t understand what?” Erik asked, not sure what she meant.

  “Nothing.”

  “Please? As Jessie’s sister, I consider you my family as well.”

  “You both say the same thing. ‘Friends’, ‘family’. But there’s more at play between you. She didn’t even lock the door when taking a shower, which tells me that you’re more intimate than you both say you are. It doesn’t matter to me, but I don’t understand why you’re lying about it,” Sophie said, the glisten in her eyes increasing. Despite how Sophie was feeling, Erik chuckled in response.

  “I’ve seen your sister naked several times, sure. We’ve changed in front of each other—we’ve skinny-dipped—heck, I’ve walked in on her going at it with Hosu more times than I’d like. I mean, they’re both beautiful, sure, but like I said, she’s family to me. They both are. The fact that she’s into girls helps, sure, but I don’t feel anything more for her than I say I do,” Erik explained. Sophie’s expression changed multiple times over the next few seconds.

  “Hosu?” she ended up asking. She looked confused, and Erik remembered Jessie hadn’t told her sister about the love of her life.

  “I shouldn’t say too much. It’s Jessie’s tale to tell, but Jessie is very much in love, just not with me. There was someone else in Afterlife, and the two of them connected as well, just in other ways.” Erik smiled. “Never, no matter what, would I hurt your sister. I hope you know that.”

  “I do. But I thought you were… that you were lying, I mean. The way you two…”

  “Behave just like the two of you do?” Erik asked.

  “I guess you kind of do that, yeah,” Sophie said, contemplating.

  “I won’t steal her from you,” Erik said, realising why Sophie was acting so emotional. “You are sisters! I just hope you’ll want to keep me around as well. Consider me your pet dog, if you will,” Erik grinned.

  Sophie let out a laugh. “You’re hard to pinpoint.”

  Erik loved her smile. It brightened the world around her.

  “Says you. I haven’t forgotten how you teased me outside the apartment building yesterday. But how so?”

  “Sometimes you can be such a dork, but it’s obvious that’s your intention. If you act stupid, you’re doing it for a reason. You’re decisive but pretend you’re not unless it really counts. I’ve seen you stand up to military guys without an ounce of nervousness inside you. You force them to do what you want them to, and I don’t know if they even realise.”

  Erik thought about her words. She wasn’t wrong, but none of this was new to Erik. He knew who he was, and he knew what he was doing. She was mistaken about him not being nervous those times, but he was glad he didn’t let it show.

  No, none of the specific things she said needed thinking about from Erik’s view. What he was thinking as he looked at the girl was how much attention she had paid him and him not even noticing.

  Jessie opened the door to the bathroom just then and left the room. Her hair was wet, but not dripping, and she wore nothing but underwear. The bird-like tattoo nestled on her breast was clear as day. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the two beds, grabbing the giant diamond on the table before she did so.

  “Alright, I’m ready,” she said after taking a deep breath.

  Sophie looked panicked as she watched her sister exit the other room, but looking over at Erik somehow calmed her. The man stared at the almost naked woman in front of him, but there was no sign of lust or wanting there. He gazed into her eyes, just as determined as Jessie was.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  Sophie’s face turned from panic to calm the moment she saw his expression. He had told her the truth earlier. There wasn’t anything else between the two. She could see it now.

  “No. But I’ll never be readier.”

  “For me, I had to focus on both my ‘sea’ and the waterfall, pulling them into each other by their links to my Crest. I don’t know if it’ll be the same for you, but I hope that helps,” Erik explained.

  “It probably won’t, but here’s hoping.” She eyed the diamond in her hand. Brightless Bond, she had called it.

  “Have you decided which wing you’ll put it in?”

  “I feel like neither is the right choice. I’ll do the middle one first,” Jessie said, placing the diamond beneath the Core of her Crest, in the large circle not on either wing, but on the lower end between both.

  The smaller circles following that circle had no connection to the rest of the Crest, save for a curvy line from the bigger circle before them. Her minor power slots, the smaller circles, hung like fruit beneath the two wings, though Jessie resented the tattoo-like Crest on her chest descending into her cleavage.

  The Witch closed her eyes and focused. Erik and Sophie looked at each other in anticipation. After a few seconds, her Core’s red light grew brighter, just as it had with Erik.

  She was within her magic now. Moments later, an intense white light started glowing from the diamond. Erik looked squinted at Sophie, who understood what he was wondering. She nodded to him and faced her sister once more. The same thing had happened to him.

  He hoped she wouldn’t be interrupted like he was, as it nearly made him fail. The diamond started getting absorbed, and after an uneventful ten minutes, the diamond had disappeared. The large circle beneath Jessie’s Core had a white marking now, aglow from the red light of her Core.

  As Jessie opened her eyes, her eyes were white, but they soon turned back to normal. Sophie’s heart leaped with joy. Uneventful meant everything went fine. Right?

  “That wasn’t as easy as I thought,” Jessie said, standing up, though she looked dizzy.

  “I know, right? Nana never mentioned it being anything special.”

  “No, she didn’t. Did you feel anything?” Jessie asked Erik, sitting next to him on her bed.

  “No, not really. Not like you did,” Erik responded, thinking back to when he exited his meditation earlier and found Jessie on the floor, her younger sister panicked.

  “Okay. That’s good. That means it was either the type of power you got, or something else that happened. I hope it won’t be the same for the rest of your powers,” she shuddered.

  Erik agreed, of course.

  “So, time to see what we’ve got?” Erik asked.

  “You don’t know?” Sophie asked them both.

  “No. Just like with the Core power, I can feel it, but the feeling means nothing to me. We have to meditate on it,” Jessie said.

  “Are you sure nothing bad will happen?” Sophie fidgeted, looking more toward Erik than Jessie.

  “Not at all. You didn’t feel anything, so you’ll probably be fine. So long as Jessie’s also meditating, she shouldn’t notice anything either, even if the same does happen again. Her mind will be elsewhere,” Erik explained, though he was only guessing.

  “Just to be careful, let me start first, and when I’m under, you can go as well,” Jessie said, and squeezed her eyes shut. Moments later, her Core glowed brighter.

  “Take care of her if something happens,” Erik told Sophie before starting his meditation. She nodded with determination. Erik went inside himself once again.