Oracle let out a little laugh and I felt her shift, becoming her smaller foot-high form and taking off as I climbed to my feet. I was going to have to make ‘adjustments’ now, and that was dangerous with her about as well. I turned my back to her and started shifting myself around when a thought occurred to me. I paused, realizing just how much easier this was to control; well, not easy, but…
“I know, Jax, it’s a lot easier to think like this, but… I’m using a lot of mana to do THIS,” Oracle commented, and I turned, accidentally sweeping a book from the table as I spun too fast. Oracle laughed from where she hovered before me.
“Oh, for fuck’s…” I groaned spinning back around and putting myself right. When I turned back, Oracle was grinning, and I shook my head, knowing I’d been tricked.
“Right! So, care to explain what you’re using our mana for, then?” I asked, trying to move past her cheeky maneuver.
“Ah, ummm…okay.” Oracle said, still smiling. “I’ve suppressed my emotions, and dampened down our link, a bit like the reverse of the way I bypassed that slave collar.”
“I have no idea why that has anything to do with the slave collar, but no,” I said firmly, and Oracle blinked in surprise.
“But, Jax, this way you won’t have to feel…”
“Do you still feel your emotions properly?” I asked her, and she shrugged.
“Well, some of them. I…”
“And you’re using most of our mana to do this,” I interrupted her, checking the mana bar in my vision. We were hovering at less than a third of the usual total.
“Well, yes…” Oracle said, wringing her hands, “But…”
“No. Undo it please, Oracle. We need the mana, and I’m not having you stunt your emotions to make my life easier. We’ll both just have to watch it and try to control ourselves.” I took a deep breath and shrugged. “It’ll feel like being a teenager again, I guess. All I wanted to do was shag constantly, and I survived that. Guess I’ve got a lot of cold showers ahead of me until I figure this out.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, and I nodded, feeling a strange sensation inside as she released the weave she’d used to suppress my emotions. We both took an involuntary deep breath.
The world seemed different and I couldn’t even explain how. Brighter, the air crisper, and Oracle looked…I refocused my eyes with an act of will and saw her doing the same. Even though it had felt this way before, I had been exposed to it gradually, and I hadn’t noticed how much of our bond I’d taken for granted.
This would come to a head soon, I just knew it, but right now, I had a fuck-ton of other things I needed to sort first, and banging my companion senseless was not going to help… maybe just a quickie?
I drew in a deep breath and forced those thoughts aside as Oracle and I headed for the door. It had been an hour that we’d been up in the Hall, and the ship had to be ready by now. They were probably all waiting on me and placing bets on what, or who, I was doing!
I opened the door, and Oracle and I set off jogging, letting it seal the room behind us.
A handful of minutes later, I was on the ship and Oren was grinning at the pair of us. Cai and Isabella stood with a dozen others, watching as Jory slowly awoke the ship under Oren’s direction.
“Tha’s it! Bring ‘er to life again; warm ‘er up jus’ right now!” he called out, and I felt a deep ‘thrummm’ of energy run through the ship, causing it to shake slightly. The energy began to build, slowly at first, but after a few seconds, a faint blue glow began to build around the engines, and I moved closer to the nearest one.
I leaned over the side of the ship, watching as the cylindrical pod shook slightly, and the light began to grow stronger. As I continued to watch, a line of runes lit up, encircling the top half of the engine, and slowly pulsing with the energy that flowed through them.
“Tha’s it! Now th’ engines, bring ‘em up!” Oren called out, and I looked over my shoulder. He and Jory stood at the helm, hands flashing as they hit and adjusted levers and dials, two engineers standing watch over them nervously.
I turned back, watching as a second line of runes ignited on the lower half of the engine pod, and the entire pod shook like a bear awakening from slumber. The light grew, shifting from a deep indigo all the way to a pale blue that was almost impossible to see. As the engine flared fully to life, I felt the entire ship twist and tilt slightly as it lifted from the Tower’s balcony.
“There! Number three! Get ‘er up!” Oren shouted, and I saw three more of the engineers running to the far side of the ship to make some adjustments.
It only took a few minutes, but the bobbing and weaving of the ship evened out, and the slowly building seasickness I’d started to feel began to fade. I looked back over the side to the engine nearest to me, and I saw the steady deep blue color holding strong.
The warship ‘Agamemnon’s Wrath’ slowly began to turn, heading out and away from the Tower. I had a moment of vertigo as the point where I stood passed over the edge and out into the air, and I gripped the railing tight.
I
