Libriohexer ~ 30!

“Hey girl, it’s just me. Sam. We know each other. We’re buddies. Feel that?” Sam tried to sound soothing as he crept toward the egg at the center of the nest. He stroked her feathers with his hand back in the real world. “That’s just me.”

The reptilian mega-chicken clucked suspiciously but made no move to stop him. He stole another few inches closer, extending a hand toward the egg. Now that… that she didn’t care for. Not one bit. She hunched forward, scaly lips pulling back from wicked fangs. The feathers running along her nape and back stood up on end, and she let out an alarming hiss. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but touch my Core and you’re mincemeat’, that sound said. But Sam couldn’t stop. In order for this to work, he had to connect a thread of his mana to the Core, then take a thread of her mana and run it back to his own core.

He licked his lips and took another tentative step. The hiss increased to a guttural *click-click-click*.

In the real world, Floof adored Sam and Bill, but Sam was attempting to mess with her Core. A creature like Floof could die and would respawn in time, but not if their Core was destroyed or absorbed. To let Sam get even this close without mauling him was a display of absolute trust. Letting him actually tinker around with the center of her being? That was a huge ask. But that is exactly what Sam needed to do. The Bakkuo had warned that this would be the second most dangerous part of this whole process.

“I’m sorry about this,” he spoke soothingly, “it’s really for the best. I know you can’t understand that but trust me. I have no intention of hurting you.”

He took another step.

One step too far, apparently.

The massive chicken-turned-dinosaur let out an ear-shattering roar and charged, clawed feet pounding against the nest floor. A scaled leg, capped by talons the size of short daggers, sliced through the air; the blow aimed at Sam’s throat. He threw himself to the side, falling back on his Judo skills as he tucked into a tight roll that quickly brought him to his feet. But a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs was waiting for him. He danced back and tried to summon his Orbital Tomes; he needed to defend himself, but didn’t want to hurt Floof too badly in the process.

Unfortunately, no books appeared.

Bill wasn’t here, he was likely facing off against Blaze’s Soul Chamber Guardian at this very moment. Without Bill, there were no Orbital Tomes of casting. No paper shurikens. No magic at all.

An angry cluck reverberated in the air as Floof’s mouth shot forward again, attempting to take Sam’s leg off below the kneecap. He backpedaled again, opening up a little distance, but this was a game he couldn’t play indefinitely. Dino Floof sidestepped the egg, obviously trying to back him into a corner where he would no longer be able to retreat.

It was working.

She fanned her wings out, the span easily thirty feet from wing tip to wing tip. With another angry hiss, she flapped, conjuring an enormous gust of wind that swept Sam from his feet and slammed him into the far wall of the nest. Before Sam could even get his bearings, she whipped one wing forward and unleashed a flurry of foot-long metallic feathers. They streaked toward him like arrows, and Sam had a sneaking suspicion they would impale him just like any other projectile. Panicked, he thrust his hand forward and called forth the first thing that came to mind. The writing desk he’d created back in his own soul scape.

It appeared with a glimmer directly in front of him. The razor-sharp feathers slammed into the wood, bits of debris flying off in every direction.

Sam laughed. “That’s right, this place isn’t real.”

The damage he suffered here would hurt—could possibly even kill him—but this place existed in the mind more than anywhere else. Maybe he couldn’t summon his magic tomes, but the only real boundaries were the limits of his imagination. With a thought, a metal kite shield appeared on his left arm. He never would’ve been able to wield something like that in the game—he didn’t have the strength or stamina for it—but here it was light as air and stronger than the strongest metal.

He leapt out from behind the feather-riddled desk and advanced on the oversized chicken.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Floof!” he called over the lip of the shield. “This is all for the best, trust me on that.”

She responded by sending another wave of feathers flying toward him. He ducked down and braced his shoulder against the shield, hoping it would hold under the onslaught. Metal clanged against metal, and the feathers fell away without so much as denting his shield. Sam loved the class he had, but he had to admit there was a certain appeal in playing a character that wasn’t quite so squishy. He lifted the shield and broke right, trying to circle around the gargantuan chicken, but she was a lot quicker and more agile than she appeared at first glance.

She spun, her tail flying toward Sam like a baseball bat. No way would he be absorbing that with the shield. He dismissed the shield, dropped onto his belly, and barrel rolled, letting the appendage *whoosh* over him. A descending foot almost crushed him, but another roll to the right allowed him to narrowly avoid the attack. Sam scrambled to his feet and bolted forward, slapping a hand against the side of the translucent egg. He could feel the steady thrum of potent power buzzing just beneath his fingertips. Working fast, he channeled mana into a needle fine point, then drove it down into the shell. It felt like trying to drill a screw into a two-by-four using nothing but his fingertips.

Sweat broke out across his brow, but he kept the pressure on, pushing the mana deeper and deeper into the egg. Finally, a tiny hole appeared, and a hair-fine wisp of mana floated out like steam rising from a coffee cup. Bingo. Sam fed more and more of his own mana into the hole, creating the first stage of a soul tether.

Just in time.

He sensed more than saw a fresh round of feathers screaming toward him. Instead of conjuring his shield, he blinked and found himself clad in a suit of heavy plate mail. The feathers slammed against his back, knocking the wind out of him even through the armor. But the metal itself held firm and rebuffed the feathery barrage.

More importantly, the armor bought him the handful of seconds he’d needed to complete the first part of his task. A shiver raced down his spine as his mana took hold, slowly intermingling with the latent energy inside the egg. He cut off his own flow of energy and hunched forward, pressing his lips against the tiny hole then deeply exhaling. The Bakkuo had walked them through this part several times. To Sam, the process sounded a bit like siphoning gas from a full tank. His mana tether acted as the siphon itself, and blowing into the core puncture primed the pump, allowing mana to flow out.

After a second, he pulled his mouth away and watched as a thin stream of brilliant silver liquid poured from the hole, pooling in front of him. Ever so gently, Sam wrapped the mana thread leaking from the egg around his left hand. Prize literally in hand, he spun and darted back the way he’d entered—but Floof was blocking the ethereal passageway that connected to his own Soul Chamber.

She was hunched low, golden eyes narrowed in anger as she looked at the wispy thread of energy twined around Sam’s fist, her visage practically shouting ‘That belongs to me, human’.

There was only one way out and Floof was directly in front of it. Sam dismissed the clunky metal armor, knowing he wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to do what needed doing. He hunched forward and charged her, keeping his head low. She let out a confused *cluck*. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting him to just bum rush her. He was small and squishy, she was huge and powerful. But by the time she reacted it was already too late. Sam dove straight toward her, tucking into a ball and rolling right between her oversized legs. She wheeled about in a flurry flapping wings and opened her jaws wide.

Opal light built in the back of her throat, and Sam knew in that second that if he didn’t do something he was as good as dead.

“Sorry about this, Floof,” he yelled, summoning a replica of his Quill blade to his right hand. With a roar he leapt straight up, jamming the blade into the underside of her scaly jaw. The tip of the blade sliced through skin, feather, and muscle, and continued right through her top jaw—effectively pinning her mouth shut. Silver blood gushed out and she reared back, lashing out with a kick that caught Sam in the chest, one sharp talon slicing through his armor and leaving a deep furrow across his skin. The pain was intense, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins dulled the worst of it.

Floof was frantically trying to dislodge the sword lodged in her jaw, which was fine by Sam. So long as she was busy with that, she wasn’t trying to eviscerate him.

“Sorry again, Floof! It’ll totally be worth it,” he called over one shoulder as he turned on a heel and took off at a sprint, leaving the giant chicken in the rearview mirror. He slid to a stop once he got back to his own Soul Chamber.

He was panting, sweating, and bleeding profusely from the slash running across his chest. Sam doubled over, planting one hand on his knee while he took in great wheezing breaths. The Bakkuo had warned them that convincing a Monster to share their Core was no easy process, but he had conveniently neglected to mention that it would involve fighting Godzilla-Chicken. But then, the Bakkuo had formed his bonds with rats, spiders, foxes, and any number of lesser creatures. It was distinctly possible that he hadn’t had to go through the trial Sam had just endeared.

“Went that good, huh?” came Bill’s voice from across the chamber.

Sam glanced up and straightened his back. The Bibliomancer was leaning against the wall with a molten gold thread of mana wrapped around one fist. He looked terrible, even worse than Sam felt; like someone had run him through an industrial-sized paper shredder. His clothes were in tatters, he was covered in nicks and claw wounds, and his facial hair had been singed off. He had no eyebrows at all, which was a hard look to pull off; he didn’t pull it off, not even a little. Sam lifted a hand to his mouth and tried to stifle the snicker building in his throat. His attempts weren’t entirely successful.

“Yeah, har har har,” Bill grumbled as blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. “Laugh it up, funny guy—doesn’t look like you did so great yourself.”

“You’re not wrong,” Sam admitted with a shrug, “but at least I came back with all my hair.”

“It’s all laughs, but you didn’t see what I was up against in there!” the Bibliomancer protested. “I thought I was going up against a spicy chicken sandwich with legs, not an honest to celestial Phoenix! That thing was literally made of flames. On an unrelated note, I retract my previous statement about people looking down on us for bonding with chickens. Once Blaze turns into whatever the heck that thing is, she’ll just set anyone on fire who laughs at us.”

Bill sighed and glanced down at the fiery mana thread clutched in his fist. “So, we gonna do this thing or what?”

“I’m certainly not putting my thread back. Not after what I went through to get it.”  Wearily, Sam pressed the thread against the silver dewdrop that was his Core—so very different than Floof’s enormous egg-shaped power source. Because he’d already formed a mana tether, Floof’s mana took almost at once. A wispy tendril of opal power braided the two strands together until they became one. Sam gasped as new power flooded into him, and an unnatural awareness of the enormous chicken blossomed inside his head.

It wasn’t quite the same as the bond he shared with Bill. But it was close.

He couldn’t hear her thoughts, but he could sense her feelings about things. A burbling concoction of fear and anxiety mixed with curiousness and even a hint of excitement. Sam stole a sidelong look at Bill as the Bibliomancer did the same thing with Blaze’s mana tether. A shiver rippled through Bill as he fed the wispy thread of power into his own Core, effectively binding the spicy chicken as his animal familiar. Step two, done. Only one step left to go and, according to The Bakkuo, that was the most dangerous step of all.

What came next had the potential to destroy Sam’s Core entirely… or transform him into something both more and less than human.