Fell Champions

The Thread of Fate exploded in an expanding sphere of red energy. Otter was thrown into her chair hard enough to knock both it and herself backwards onto the floor. As if her every interaction with that damned chair wasn’t uncomfortable enough, she received brand new experiences of pain associated with it.

 

Her head felt funny. And not in the ‘just smacked the back of it hard enough to see stars’ kind of way. Well, in that way, but also in a brand new form of disorientation as well. It felt kind of like that time when she’d experimented with some low-end hallucinogens that one time with Everett and a few of his friends at a Spasm Con afterparty. But it was only in one small corner of her brain. It was like her awareness had expanded, and where that had once been a neatly ensconced wall, there was a tunnel opened to a whole new space entirely.

 

There was something going on just beyond her awareness. It was like… she could look into the tunnel, and see into another place entirely. A window into another room she could freely peer through, but too small to actually hop through herself. 

 

It was like discovering a brand new sense. Like being able to see or touch for the first time, but without the frame of reference of other people trying to explain what it was like. There was information being relayed into Otter’s mind, but she had no idea how to process it. 

 

There was a sense of… shock in that other place. And then confusion.

 

And Otter realized that as she looked into that other room, something in that room was looking back into her.

 

And she could feel where it was.

 

Otter rolled away from the very stupid reading chair, and looked between the legs of the dining room table, to find Rua staring back at her. Her vision went double for a second, one scene overlapping the other. It was like she was looking at herself for a moment, while simultaneously staring at Rua. 

 

She felt her arm move, but it wasn’t hers that did. Rua shoved at the table between them, and Otter felt how easily it gave way as it was sent scraping along the floor and away from her. 

 

“What did you do?”

 

Otter felt her lips moving to say the words, but they very clearly came from Rua. And she hadn’t been the one to ask the question, hadn’t thought it until she’d felt herself saying it.

 

Or, no. Hadn’t thought it until she’d felt Rua saying it.

 

The words weren’t angry. They were hushed, filled with an emotion Otter couldn’t readily identify until she looked through that window into that other room in her mind, and realized it was wonder. 

 

Rua scrambled across the floor on all fours, bowling Otter over and climbing onto her and straddling her. Rua stared down into her eyes, and Otter could feel the absolute hunger inside of her.

 

“What did you do?” Rua said again, her breath coming out in ragged gasps.

 

“I don’t know,” Otter said quietly, almost a whisper. She wasn’t even sure why she answered. Rua knew the answer before she spoke it.

 

Rua was close, so close. They stared into each other’s eyes, and it was like gazing into an infinite mirror. Otter looked into Rua’s eyes and saw herself through them seeing herself gaze at Rua.

 

Otter tried to move only one time. When she did, Rua made a growling noise and firmly took her by the shoulders and forced her back into position. There was no resisting that grasp. Rua was stronger than her. A lot stronger. 

 

Rua moved closer. Or maybe Otter did. She wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. Their noses touched, and Rua’s warm breath, increasingly laboured, tickled at Otter’s mouth. Or maybe it was the other way around. 

 

Rua’s pupils were dilated, those beautiful heterochromatic eyes nearly eclipsed. 

 

Odin damn it all, she was pretty.

 

And Rua drank that thought in. Like she’d been feeding on everything Otter had been thinking.

 

Neither knew how long they stayed in that position. Time passed, their minds touching upon one another more and more heavily. Mixing. Neither could see each other’s memories, but in a way, it was so much deeper than that. For a moment, it was like their minds were one. Their wants, their desires, laid bare. 

 

Rua, so alone. So achingly alone. She’d never had anyone. Just pain. Abuse. Love for two, but unrequited. No one wanted her. Not really. They looked at her, and saw a tool. A weapon.

 

It was the single-most intimate moment in either's lives.

 

And then it was gone. Retreated. The window was still there, but so much smaller. Like a keyhole that you could peek through.

 

“No,” Rua whined. “Put it back. Give it back.”

 

“It’s still there,” Otter said. “Just… just focus.”

 

Otter could feel a gentle probing at the edge of her awareness. Frantic at first, and then reassured. 

 

“I think we’re stuck together,” Otter said. “Sorry.”

 

Rua made a low growl, and her grip on Otter tightened. “Mine.”

 

“Uh…”

 

And then Rua kissed her, hot and fast and hard and hungry. It was clumsy, unpracticed, her technique non-existent. She was all tongue and teeth, but the sheer desire behind it more than made up for it. 

 

Otter was more than happy to let Rua take the lead. She sank back, letting Rua explore and figure things out. She ran one hand along Rua’s hip, the other running through her hair. That seemed to remind Rua that she could be doing something with her hands and quickly moved one to cup and squeeze Otter’s breast.

 

She squeezed a little too hard, and Otter sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything. Even so, she sensed what was wrong and moved to be more gentle, slowly figuring her way through things.

 

She could feel that shifting again. Her cock was slowly sliding out from inside of her, straining at her pants. Rua noticed, and began to grind against it.

 

A notification blinked in the corner of Otter’s eye. Even without her menu up, apparently some messages still sent notifications. If ever there was a need for a Do Not Disturb mode, it was now.

 

Rua broke away, and said, “What’s that?”

 

“Oh, sorry, I got a message. I guess I have to answer it. Can you really sense that through… the thread?”

 

“Sense it? I can see it.”

 

“What do you mean you can see it?”

 

“There’s a blinking thing, right there.” She pointed up and to the left, similar to where the display appeared in Otter’s field of view.

 

“Wait. Are you getting my notifications?”

 

It had to be a side effect of Thread of Fate. If Rua could see her notifications…

 

“Imagine opening a book in your mind,” Otter said.

 

Rua arched an eyebrow at her, but then did so. The skeptical look turned into one of surprise. 

 

“What is this?”

 

“You have Menu access!” Otter said. “Oh man, that means you can see all my statistics. That feels a little invasive.”

 

“Yes, because seeing whatever this is is more invasive than being in each other’s minds. Besides, it has my name on it.”

 

“Wait, what.”

 

If Rua’s name was on the character menu, then that meant she was now in the game. Which was impossible. Like… so many other things that had happened. 

 

Otter pulled up the Online list in the Party Settings tab of her menu. She found two anomalies. One name, NightmareWasTaken, was now greyed out. And at the bottom of the list was a one hundred and first name that had not been there before.

 

Rua.