The world shook as the gigantic sim came crashing down, landing on her knees.
“C’mon!” my love shouted, taking my hand and launching us up the prone woman’s spine. Aen conjured a great ball of fire in her arms that was just getting bigger, so I did the same, the two of us leaping up and spiking the flame down on Oya’s unprotected neck.
We were panting wildly when we leapt free, seeing the giant woman go still, and the subsequent silence was almost deafening.
“Is this it?” I asked. “Did we beat her?”
Aen grinned like a loon, running around pumping her fist and then performing a few cartwheels in victory.
Pro tip—don’t ever ask that question in a battle.
As if in response, Oya’s eyes flicked open, her hand searching for her weapon.
“Aen…” I called out, watching Oya’s spasmodic attempts to grab the handle. “Aen!”
The sim rallied faster than before, rolling up into a seated position and launching her whip.
“AEN!”
I put on speed I’d never thought possible, sprinting over to my consort, my love, watching every second as the whip came down, and finally dove under its path and thrust my hands up.
I caught the whip in my palm, and it felt like I’d grabbed a massive electrical cable. I knew how to absorb power, redirect it, stop fire from burning me, but this was something else altogether. They said fae could reach out and touch the divine, and somehow, this was one of those times.
Raw, elemental power of a quantity I’d never been able to imagine before now cracked down upon me in a much more effective way than the whip itself. The fire contained in the weapon roared in, breaking down my defences, my affinity, my bonds, myself, until there was only this.
A great roaring stream of destruction, it sought to chew up and spit out everything in its path. It was an out of control bushfire raging through bushland, consuming all life. It was a seething furnace used to melt the elements down into their most basic form. It was pure fiery death.
Find yourself within the power, or the power will take you.
My eyes flicked open, my skin feeling stretched tight and about to split, crusting with embers and ash, and I pulled my arm down.
Perhaps we were in a tug of war before and the sheer alien weight of her power had eradicated my ability to recognise it, or maybe that was happening now, but I looked up at her with eyes that burned in my sockets and wrenched the whip free.
She came with it, unbalanced now by the loss or the force, making me run across the room to scoop up Aen and drag her to safety as I pulled the massive whip behind me. It wasn’t hard or heavy, and it shrank immediately to a form easier to wield but no less powerful. Aen looked stunned, then flushed when she put together what had happened.
“You saved me,” she said in a voice that promised full body kisses and multiple orgasms later. I grinned and stood up on tippy toes to kiss her with everything I had. But not for long.
“Fuck, is there any way to turn this bloody thing off?” I muttered as Oya rose again.
Her movements were jerky and ill coordinated, but she was still the height of a five-floor building when she stood up again, looking down at us with eyes that seemed to burn that much brighter.
“Shit,” I said, as she took a deep breath in. “Shit.”
What had they fucking done with this sim, and how was it powered? They seemed vague about its abilities—how the fuck was that possible?!—and now this bitch was sucking up all the air in the room. First, wind whipped at our hair, our clothes, but then it tugged at us.
“This isn’t a sim,” Aen said, grabbing onto me. I wrapped my arm around her, glad for the contact and the extra weight to anchor us. “There’s something else here.”
The first hint was the crackles of lightning appearing in her hair, the next was the swirling vortex of wind. When she smiled, bolts of electricity played along her lips.
“Fuck…is she…?” I asked.
“Oya? Sky Daddy? I don’t know. We need to sit down with Bea after we put this bitch down. Seriously, sit her down and get her to explain what the fuck these ‘sims’ are.”
She grabbed my hand, yanking me away as Oya flung out a hand and a bolt of lightning speared into the mats we’d just been standing on.
We were back to reacting, not attacking, leaping away again and again as electricity crackled off Oya’s fingers, but when that didn’t achieve her goals, her mouth opened as she began to suck air in again, dragging us across the floor.
“Send fire into her,” Aen ground out, having reverted to male form, perhaps for the added weight. “She’s not defending against it.”
I nodded, clinging to him. Neither of us performed pretty movements or elaborate sequences. “Take a deep breath,” he ordered, so I did, then we unleashed everything we had.
Fire spiralled up in a great gout, the blow unable to do anything but hit Oya, the two of us shoving all of our power, stolen and our own, into it. We watched, wide eyed, as the goddess sucked it in, stopping still when she did, then saw it explode within her.
“Yes…yes…yes…” Aen panted.
Um, how about no?
Oya-sim reeled for a moment, looking perilously like she’d topple over. That would have been nice, but of course, not to be. She found her centre of gravity quickly enough, her smile spreading wide as clouds clustered around her head, great red clouds of flickering fire and lightning amassing like a hellish crown.
“Fuck…” I gasped, feeling exhaustion right down in my bones. What even had this day been? It felt like one punch to the guts after another.
“We have to stop this,” Aen said. “Train more. Learn how to counter her. We’ve just been flung—”
Swallowing lightning seemed to allow her to move like it. Oya’s hand snapped out so fast, it was a blur, sending a massive crackling bolt spearing out and through Aen. My scream was truncated, trapped in my chest with no way out as I watched my love get thrown backwards and left lying on the ground, a twitching mass.
For a moment, I just stared, unable to process what I was seeing. I was vulnerable, and Aen was jerking where he lay against the mats in a series of unnatural movements. My jaw clenched, and my teeth tightened.
Fuck Oya, fuck the trials, fuck all of this. I ran as fast as I could, and then dropped down beside him, dread and terror clawing at my heart.
And déjà vu.
“Aen…” I grabbed his limp hand, his skin as pale as milk and just as lifeless. “Aen…” Fear rose up within me, stifling Lilith’s voice advising me what to do, thoughts, plans, anything but staring at my love and pleading with him to wake up. “Aen…” I kept saying his name, a prayer for him to open those damn cut glass eyes. “Love…” I slid a hand under his shirt, terrified by the lack of a heart rate there.
His chest felt…dead, empty, still. Something massive moved within me, opening its jaws, ready to… No, not quite. There was something there, deep down under the roiling conflagration that filled the room. I hissed at it all to shut the fuck up. It didn’t matter, she didn’t matter, only him.
“Aen…” My voice was getting higher, shriller. It was harder to feel that elusive beat, as it was being smothered by everything else. “Aen!”