Witch of Chains

** Amelia **

“What’s wrong?” the Witch asked, crouching next to me in her human form. The scary hot one, as opposed to the cute hot one.

The Witch and I were on our way to try and find a crashed Pag platform so we could find some more parts to repair the one she was using as a camp. There was also the possibility we’d run into a working one that we could… appropriate. Whichever came first, but we figured on finding crashed ones more than any functional ones around here since the front had moved on.

I had a feeling that our mission was about to be interrupted however, because as the perpetually resurrected hero likes to say, my Jazz target senses are tingling. Or something like that anyway. There was no one within visual range that I’d noticed however, so I had nothing to actually shoot at.

“Nothing yet,” I finally replied. “There’s just something around. My subconscious has picked up on something that I can’t see yet.”

“Let me know when someone shows their face,” she said with a calm nod.

Seeing her at a wary alert was slightly scary, if I was honest. She was cool and calm, surveying her surroundings like a jungle cat that knew she was good at the whole death and killing thing. I had to stop myself from staring at her instead of the surrounding forest in all it’s unimaginably boring white cold nothingness.

Adding to the distraction that was the Witch, my guildmates were now messaging me, asking where I was. I didn’t know what to tell them, other than that I was stuck behind the Pag lines and trying to get back. There was talk of them sending out a rescue party or some such nonsense, but I’d told them no. I was fine, and that I’d even made a friend.

Wait… what was that over there?

“I think I see some tracks over that way,” I said with a deep breath, pointing to where I had just noticed some snow had been kicked around recently.

“Okay. We should—” she began to say, before her head whipped up into the air and her nostrils flared.

I felt it too, and smelled it on the wind. There was a shitload of people nearby, and we needed to know where they were and fast. I didn’t wait to warn the Witch what I was going to do to get their position, urgency was the name of the game here.

I crouched low, my legs coiling and my mind readying the spell I needed. Then I leapt, throwing an impulse spell straight down. No Jazz needed for this one. It wasn’t quite a rocket jump, but it had the added benefit of not exploding my surroundings.

I flew into the air with a grin and a little mental finger in the direction of gravity, because it felt appropriate. I couldn’t fire myself up into the air and not flip the bird now could I? It would just be rude. I sent another impulse down as the first one dissipated, and found myself high enough to take a good look around.

Oh shit.

A column of Pags were out in the forest, dangerously close to where I’d left the Witch on the ground. To make matters worse, since they were closer than they should have been given my abilities with perception, they also got eyes on me at the same time that I saw them. Then, as I began to fall back down to Earth… or whatever this planet was called, I had another oh shit revelation.

“We have a whole assload of Steel Giants heading our way,” I told my companion when I landed.

“I am not familiar with that type of monster,” she said, her tone growing serious.

“Hah, good one. Not a proper monster though, at least as far as the game is concerned. You are familiar with them though. You slaughtered a smaller number of them a while back,” I told her with a laugh, but then I remembered what had happened after that. “It was, uh… the same battle you killed me actually.”

“I killed you?” she asked, suddenly nervous, her eyes rushing to find anywhere to hide but in mine. “I’m… sorry. I believe I actually remember that...”

It had been a relatively clean death as far as deaths go in this area. You didn’t come to the warfront between the two largest empires in the game without expecting to die in some pretty brutal ways.

“It’s fine,” I waved her off. “We didn’t know each other at the time, and this place is open season as far as killing players goes. Only a moron could fault you for being good at killing people in a video game warzone.”

The Witch opened her mouth with a frown, looking like she wanted to dispute it, but then a poker face slipped over her expression and her beautiful lips pressed closed.

“Do we run, or fight?” she asked instead, her tone betraying none of her thoughts.

“Well, they kinda saw my little stunt just now, so it might be a little difficult to run,” I said with a wince. “Harder still if we fight though.”

“Then we do both,” she said, a slow, dangerous smile easing onto her lips.

I raised an eyebrow at that, “You sure? There’s a lot of them. Their whole guild looks like it.”

“Good. It’ll be more fun that way.”

“Right, uh, okay. I guess there’s a reason you have a reputation,” I laughed nervously, my index finger running along Jazz’s trigger guard in anticipation.

My ears perked up almost as soon as I was finished speaking, and the Witch noticed. She spun in the direction my eyes had gone and threw a tangle of dark smoke. It coalesced into one of her signature weapons, a crescent blade on the end of a long chain. Now that I was close enough to see without dying, I could also make out that every link of the chain was bladed along the outside edge. Oh dayum, that was intense.

The blade plunged straight into the chest of some poor fucker who’d been given the job of scout, and wedging itself there. She janked roughly on it, tearing out the front of his chest, although he was very dead by this point. The game liked to cut you off before you actually died of whatever awful wounds you’d taken, how long it waited to do that depended on the person.

“Jesus!” I swore as the snow was splattered with gore.

“He’s not here,” the Witch said conversationally. “If he ever existed, he gave up on humanity a long time ago.”

“Right,” I nodded, still a little taken aback by her ferocity.

“I’m going to go and run right at them, you shoot them while they’re distracted,” she smiled, and there was something… almost soft in her eyes for a moment as we locked gazes.

“Uh, sure,” I nodded absently, then blinked as what she’d said clicked with me. “Wait, run at them?”

“Smash them hard, kill as many as I am physically able in a short amount of time, then leave them reeling while we make our escape,” she explained, emphatically miming the motions with her hand. It was actually kinda cute the way she was waving her arms around...

“That’s solid,” I smiled, her excitement was infectious. This was going to be either a complete burnout, or absolutely amazing.

“Let me just top up a little first,” she murmured, her voice dropping significantly lower.

Stepping forward and into my personal space, she placed a gentle hand on my cheek. Her face getting closer and closer as my heart began to hammer in my chest. Oh goddess, was she going to kiss me right here in the forest? My eyes fluttered closed as I felt her warm breath brush across my lips… and then she stopped, taking in a deep, almost relieved breath.

I opened my eyes again to find her sensual dark ones right in front of mine, and my legs were instant jelly. Holy shit, she was looking at me like, far too seductively! Wow! Shit girl! She held me there, breathing in whatever emotions I was currently feeling with a small, teasing smile. I wouldn’t have been able to actually tell her what they were if she’d asked, because words were not something I had in great supply at that moment.

Her hand wasn’t entirely still though, as I noticed with a small “Eep!” of surprise. Her finger was delicately tracing the long length of my ear, little strokes brushing along the downy feathers to steal still more of my breath away. Oh the buzzy warmth that finger dredged up from within me, oh sweet goddess of the moon.

She seemed to realise what she was doing after a second or two, because she jerked sharply away from me and stared at her errant hand in confusion. It was shaking, and I watched with surprise as a small shiver went up her body.

“You okay?” I asked, my voice indicating that I, myself was anything but okay.

She didn’t answer me at first, and when she spoke, it wasn’t to address my question. “Get into position, start shooting when I appear.”

Then she was gone, her form exploding into dark, inky black and blue smoke. There was this terrifyingly eerie inner glow to the wisps that seemed to subtly defy the eye, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Actually, I didn’t have any hair back there, just fine feathers. Anyway, point was that her smoke was spook central.

As soon as I recovered from her abrupt exit and prior kiss edging, I rushed off towards where I knew she was going. Wait, how did she know where they were? Damn this woman was intense.

I wove between the trees with all the grace my build would allow, skidding to a stop when I got eyes on the Steel Giant’s column between the snow drifts and hanging branches. They had all sorts of shit in the column, from carts pulled by some sort of wooly snow creature, to wary eyed rangers. One thing they lacked however, was anyone playing a race other than human.

Loading a particularly potent spell of Bia’s into the breech of my girl, I raised her to my cheek and took aim down the sights. Iron sights right now, because I was a total hipster like that.

I didn’t have to wait long before the Witch appeared, forming into that gorgeous human form of hers, already in mid swing with one of her chains. It wrapped itself around the neck of a tanky looking dude before anyone could react, and a quick twist and flick of her wrist sent his head flying from his shoulders. How much damage was she doing with those swings anyway? Far out!

She spun again, doing a pirouette that was both heart achingly graceful and terrifyingly deadly at the same. With each revolution, her singing crescent blades struck home. Slice, slice, slice. She cleaved her way through the front ranks like they were nothing but newly spawned players.

Shaking my head to clear it of all stray thoughts, I sighted again and without hesitation I pulled the trigger. A beam of destructive purple and gold energy lashed out from the barrel of my massive gun, and I swung it through the massed enemy players. Anyone it touched who didn’t have some sort of resistance to magic was fried, their bodies melting and crisping. Wow! How much damage was I doing?

It only lasted for a single second, but I had to lower Jazz’s muzzle in awe as I stared at what the spell had just done. Bia had made it for me one time after I’d defended her from some angry dude who’d wanted more from her than just a quick lighthearted date or two. I had to flick back to the memory because wow, had she really felt that grateful afterwards?

Even the Witch paused in her slaughter to throw me an appreciative smile at what had just happened, and I gave her a delighted grin back. Then I loaded another wild spell without looking, because why the fuck not hey? Let’s see what this one did!

Turns out, that one fired a massive slug made of ice that shattered into smaller shards mid-flight, turning it into a shotgun with devastating effects. It didn’t kill as many dickheads as the spell before it and that was probably my fault. Jazz had too much power now, and as such, the new higher velocity had tightened the cone of buzzing ice shards from what I imagined had been originally intended.

The Witch vanished from the fray just a few seconds later, then coalesced back into being next to me with a hissing, rushing sound.

“Time to run,” she said with a laugh, her eyes dancing with something far removed from her normal cold destruction.

She seemed… genuinely happy? What? I’d seen her a few times in battle now, and that was definitely not how she usually looked. Normally it was poker faces and death stares with her.

“Which way?” I asked, pushing myself up from where I had been kneeling. “We probably shouldn’t lead them back to your hideout.”

“Very good point. Let’s move in the direction of the war front then. Either we lose them and double back, or make it all the way through and deliver you home,” she nodded, her expression still happy and soft.

I didn’t want to go back though… I wanted to spend more time with the Witch. Could I say that? What would happen if I said that, would she get upset that I wanted to take more of her time? We did talk about getting to know each other though...

“What happens after that?” I asked, my voice a little raspy, and I felt a strange weak feeling rush through me.

Her expression turned pensive as she considered me with a slow and impassive gaze. “We’ll see.”