The Mana storm raged around the platform like a blizzard of fragile diamonds, but all I could focus on was the bloated figure of Mr. Cook hovering at the center of his hooded minions. His robe fluttered in the whipping winds, revealing glimpses of cracked, salt-encrusted skin.
"You thought you could curse me and walk away, Elaine?" Mr. Cook's voice boomed. "I was thrown out of the hospital humiliated and too satisfied in the afterglow to even realize the extent of my humiliation!" He raised a fist, and they roared. They surrounded us, all twenty of them. We were backed against the central pillar.
Princess raised a hand and a transparent bubble shield grew from where she was until it covered all of us, creating a protective barrier between us and the Salt Miners.
They chanted in low, guttural tones, their hands weaving patterns that summoned crystalline shards from the storm. The shards hurtled toward our shield, cracking against Princess's barrier with explosive force. Each impact sent vibrations through the platform, rattling my teeth.
Princess strained, her Mycenean dress whipping around her. The barrier didn't keep out the wind.
I tried pulling out the piercing, but even with all the pain it was immovable. It was lodged in there good. If only I could find its weak spot.
I looked at Shala and Catherine. They had a lot of my Sugar already. I wondered if they would accept a bond, and if so, perhaps I would be able to dip into the Sugar reserves? Not a very classy action, but I'd be able to more than make up for it.
"But the Sugar Patriarch isn't the only big dog in town, didn't you hear!?" the Salt King, Mr. Cook, yelled.
He flew wildly at the bubble and pounded on it ferociously. Each blow caused a reverberation on the platform.
"How did you master the use of Mana so quickly?" Elaine demanded. "You've never been able to use Salt before!"
He threw his head back and laughed. White powder drifted from his cracked lips, dissolving into the storm. "Oh, Elaine, my sweet Spice temptress. Me and the rest of the Spice addicts have been courted by other powers for years. The failure of my operation earlier was the last straw. I finally took them up on their offer. In return for my obedience, I have access to the raw power to take what I want!"
The Salt Miners intensified their assault. Cracks spiderwebbed across the bubble shield, salty residue eating away like corrosive acid.
Elaine's hands glowed with golden light as she channeled Spice, weaving threads of energy into the barrier to reinforce it. "Hold them off as long as you can!" she yelled.
Calliope remained eerily calm, her midnight gown billowing like a dark sail. She glanced at me. "Well," she said. "Go on, now. Protect me."
I groaned. I turned to Shala and Catherine.
"I might be able to do something about this," I said, "but I can't do anything without any Sugar. I just need the slightest bit. I think."
"Without a bond we can only take, not give," Shala said. "But if that's what you want..."
They both smiled. That's when the barrier broke.
The barrier shattered with a sound like a thousand glass panes exploding at once, but the pieces all evaporated in the air. Princess threw herself forward, arms wide, conjuring a desperate secondary dome just in time to deflect the worst of the shards, but the platform lurched violently.
Mr. Cook's laughter boomed louder than the storm. "There it is! The sweet scent of desperation!"
I didn't have time to think. I lunged between Shala and Catherine, grabbing both their wrists at once.
"I'm ready to bond. What do we need to do!?"
Shala's violet eyes sparkled with feral excitement. "Finally~!"
Catherine's gaze darkened with hunger. "Oui, Master... claim us."
As soon as I was about to continue speaking, they froze. Then they were immediately covered in salt like they were frozen in ice.
Damn it! I thought.
Damian and Seraphina exploded into motion, Damian moving first, his silver pinstripes flashing by. He snapped his fingers and summoned twin walls of shimmering force that slammed outward, crushing three Salt Miners against the platform railing. Their hooded bodies burst into white powder; the wind carried the dust away like morbid confetti.
Seraphina laughed and fondled the chain that hung between her pierced nipples. Four Miners staggered, eyes glazing, cocks visibly tenting their robes as unwanted arousal drowned their focus.
She didn't give them time to recover.
She sprinted forward, emerald crop top bouncing with every stride, and drove a glowing knee into the nearest miner's groin. He folded with a wet gurgle. Before he hit the deck she spun, grabbed another by the hood, and slammed his face into her chain-linked breasts. The contact burned; he screamed as Spice-infused ecstasy overloaded his nervous system. He collapsed, twitching, cock leaking through his robes while his body turned to crumbling salt.
"Pathetic," Seraphina purred. "You boys really need to learn how to handle a woman."
Elaine glanced at me, golden curls whipping. "Teddy—!"
But I was already moving. Calliope stood apart from the chaos, midnight gown billowing like spilled ink. She hadn't lifted a finger since her earlier warning. She didn't flinch when I stopped inches from her.
"You're not fighting," I said, voice rough from the storm and the adrenaline still pumping Sugar through my veins.
Her lips curled. "That is what you are here for."
I stepped closer. Close enough to smell the jasmine that clung to her skin beneath the salt tang. Close enough to see the faint rise and fall of her perfect breasts beneath the crystal-strapped bodice.
"Then give me someone to fight for," I said.
Her brow arched. "Bold." She tilted her head, studying me like a rare vintage she wasn't sure she wanted to uncork.
"You think pretty words and a hard cock could earn my submission?"
"No." I reached out slowly, slowly enough that she could stop me if she wanted and held her hand. "I think watching me beat the shit out of the Salt King might, though."
Something flickered in those fathomless blue eyes. Interest.
Behind us, another Miner screamed as Seraphina rode his face to a shattering orgasm that turned his skull to salt dust. Damian laughed, walls of force pushing people this way and that through the torrents in the sky.
Calliope's gaze never left mine.
"You are reckless," she murmured. "Foolish. Generous to the point of self-destruction." Her free hand rose, gloved fingers trailing along my jaw, then down my throat, then lower, stopping just above the straining bulge in my robe. "And yet..."
She leaned in. Her lips hovered a heartbeat from mine.
"... you intrigue me."
The kiss never landed.
Instead she pressed one satin-covered finger to the center of my chest and pushed.
Invisible force lifted me half a foot off the platform.
"I do not bond lightly," she said powerfully as she stepped forward. "I do not kneel. I do not beg. If you wish to prove yourself for a second time, and I am willing to give you that second time...."
She casually floated me through the barrier to the outside and dropped me.
"Then show me you can last five minutes from outside of a woman's shadow."