Stronger Together chapter 172

The first thing I did after we left the field was fix my body. I was  up to about eighty five percent godsteel, and it felt...wrong. I felt  inhuman, like I was becoming something other. Luckily I didn't have to  worry about it as much anymore since I'd discovered my new trick. I  began to slowly shift the godsteel along the living web of metal in my  body drawing the extra material out of other parts of my body ant  condensing them into my arm. It was excruciatingly painful, since I was  literally ripping muscle fibers free and growing them back, but I was  making steady progress.

The metal was slowly stripped away  one fiber at a time and my soulfire cleansed flesh healed up within  minutes, filling in the gaps. I could theoretically have just condensed  the godsteel weave in its current for, but I could feel my arm getting  stronger and harder as I went, the metal darkening as it became denser  and more refined, and I honestly couldn't stop. By the time I finished  and got my body back down to thirty percent godsteel like I'd been  before this night started the entire limb was so dark it reminded me of  incredibly shiny hematite.

Still, I ended up reinforcing  the weave a bit, if only so my body could function with the stronger  limb on it. I could feel the larger power reserves in the network of  metal running through me and in my arm itself. I conjured an orb of  godsteel, expecting it to be easier, but the golf ball sized sphere was  actually more difficult to make. That said the resulting metal was the  same dark luster of my new arm and obviously more powerful than the old  stuff, so I called it a win. My Aura reserves were much improved over  the last year and I could deal with a bit of a price hike magically  speaking.

Once I was done the slow painful process of  stripping divine metal out of my muscles and bones (I left my brain the  fuck alone, even super healing didn't make that seem like a good idea,  but it had shifted the least anyway) I turned to speak to the girls  sitting with me in the car. "Ok, sorry about that, I'm good. Now Raven  can you explain what the actual fuck that was? Because on the one hand  it was super cool, but on the other hand of you could do that why did  you wait until the last second to pull it off."

Raven  smiled slightly "It's a new kind of magic we've been working on. The  spell structure was incredibly complex because of the power density and  we weren't sure we had enough redundancies in place." She paused briefly  "There may have been a non zero chance our heads would explode." I  looked at her in horror and she shrugged "Like I said I wasn't going to  use it but we kind of got backed into a corner. Anyway seems like it  worked out fine. We got lucky we spent so much time double checking our  spell work."

I was pretty damn impressed. "When did you  guys start working on it? I knew you were hanging out more but I thought  it was romantically. I didn't realize you guys were doing magic  research." My face fell, I clearly hadn't been paying enough attention  to my girls. Sure plenty was going on but I'd just made the decision to  slow down and stop taking things for granted and I was already fucking  it up. They deserved so much better than that. I'd been meaning to try  to spend more time with Cinder to get to know each other better as a  couple and that moved up my priority list.

Raven saw my  face and chuckled, clearly feeling the guilt that was hitting me even as  she saw the look on my face. She kissed my cheek "Don't be so hard on  yourself love, this was a secret project, almost nobody knew about it.  We wanted to make sure it was possible before we inspired everyone to  try to start coming up with crazy fusion techniques. You didn't miss  anything or ignore us, we were just keeping it ourselves." She pulled me  against her in a comforting hug, taking the chance to whisper in my ear  "But spending more time with Cinder is a good idea.

The  little minx nipped my ear as she pulled back and I chuckled. "Well you  guys did amazing work. I take it the almost nobody you mentioned  includes River? Because that kind of advance construct seems like  something he would have been able to help a ton with." Raven just  chuckled and nodded. I kept one arm around her and slung the other  around Cinder as I turned to River, who was taking up the entire back  seat of the Suburban. "Thanks for keeping my girls out of trouble big  man, they're more sensible than I am, but that is not a high bar."

I  winked at him, earning a chuckle from the Sasquatch and an elbow in the  robs from Raven. Her arched eyebrow made her seem annoyed but I could  tell from the tiny smile quirking her lips she wasn't actually too  upset. I looked forward tot he front of the car, where Gard was driving,  with Barb sitting next to her. Yang had gone with Harry, Sam, and  Morgan in the beetle since putting our wizard boss in a car with onboard  gps was a big nono. I glanced at the pensive Valkyrie "So, any chance  that was enough to take down the big bad wolf?"

Gard  looked pensive as she glanced at me in the rear view mirror "I'm not  sure, honestly. It was an impressive showing, there is no doubt, but  Fenrir is...I do not know. I understand why lord Odin chose you for this  mission however. I have rarely seen your equals in battle. If anyone  should have a chance of defeating the beast it would be the lot of you."  Still, despite her encouraging stance on the matter I sensed a level of  hesitation in her tone. She wanted to have hope, but refused to commit  because realistically she knew this could go bad. That was less than  ideal.

It looked like we would  need to do some more training in this next month, just to make sure we  were at our absolute best. Luckily we had an easy way to do that.  Because of the harmonious effects between klurkor and soulfire on the  body Cinder, like the rest of us, could use it to get stronger, while  Raven could continue to refine her bloodline. If they were both more  powerful next time then their new move would be too. Not to mention with  real world experience they could refine the attack more.

The  question was, was klurkor training enough? It felt stupid to be so  passive while we waited, but all I could think to do was learn some more  spells at the same time. It wasn't like we could have an anime training  montage. But maybe I could do something better. Personal power was  amazing, but if I could work with the Svartalves and learn their forging  I could make some gear for everyone before it was time. I was sure I  could get their enchanting style at least part of the way mastered in a  short time since I could telepathically manipulate the structure of  godsteel before it set.

Not  that I thought that would help me become a truly great enchanter, but  if they were like Gard svartalves would use runes which would give me an  advantage, and besides that godsteel was the biggest cheat material you  could have for enchanting. Combine that with a brain partly made of  divine metal and the rest of the way composed of flesh enhanced with  soulfire over time and I thought faster and more clearly than literally  any human being. I should be able to manage at least something decent  for my loved ones, even if it was only a few rings.

We  made it home in about half an hour and we all dragged ourselves inside  tiredly. Something about battle always felt more exhausting than even  hours of training. That rush of tension and excitement was like cranking  your brain up to eleven, and even if you didn't actually fight it was  tiring, never mind going all out like we had. When we got home we  stepped into the house and headed for our rooms to put all our stuff  away while Kara went over to get Inari and Andi. I put the Fang of Hati  on my dressed and stripped down to change into some sweat pants before  sighing in relief.

Something  about being out always made the house feel empty when you got home.  Even when it was full of people, it was like all the life had drained  away while we were gone and we needed to fill it back up with warmth and  emotion. It made me wonder how much of that feeling was my imagination  and how much of it might be some function of the threshold I didn't know  about. I knew living in a house and making memories and enjoying life  there made a threshold more powerful, did being away for too long drain  some of that? Or was I just noticing the lack of accumulation?

Inari  and Andi came home with a decent amount of fanfare, giving everyone  hugs and letting us know they were happy we were alright. Inari smiled  over at us "So Kara said you guys easily handled them in five minutes  and from the way she tells it she probably could have managed it in ten  even by herself." She gave her girlfriend a teasing smile "Anyone want  to give me a less biased version of what happened? Because that seems  like it might be a bit of an exaggeration at the very least." her words  where happy and joking, but there was a slight tone of relief to them,  she had obviously been pretty worried.

I  rolled my eyes at Kara's recounting of the nights events. "Not exactly  easily. They were tough sons of bitches, pun intended, but we managed to  get through it without any serious injuries." I knew Kara wanted to  spare Inari from worrying but since this was over it made sense to just  tell her, knowing how strong they were and that we beat them anyway  might make her feel better the next time. "They merged their god powers  together to create a tiny bubble in reality where they were basically  gods, and it took everything we had to break them out of that. After  that physically combined into a super huge werewolf monster."

I  paused, considering how insane that sounded out of context. I mean it  had been insane to see too, but retelling it I felt like a crazy person.  I shook that off "Anyway the werewolf megazord or whatever you want to  call it fought all of us to a complete standstill before Raven and  Cinder finished it off with this crazy combo attack they've been working  on. There were a few minions too but we got rid of them easily enough,  no one was really hurt and we officially took down two or the biggest  bads of all time." Granted condensed like that it sounded much less  terrifying so I'd kind of helped Kara out but Inari looked pretty  pleased to be in the loop.

I  made a mental note to train her in klurkor and activate her Aura, maybe  she could come with us next time. Not to fight the god wolf obviously  but after that. She smiled at Kara and the two of them headed off to  their room together while Andi and Morgan chatted excitedly about what  happened. In the meantime I decided to get some sleep. Tomorrow I would  go and talk to the svartalves, since Fenrir wasn't dead, maybe starting  my lessons now would mean I didn't have to give back their stuff. I  really liked that knife.