D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

This meant it was a good chance to test out Lily’s new abilities. While Kat’s where potentially dangerous, Lily had much greater control over her spells and none of them were all that threatening yet. With nobody around it was as safe as it would ever be for proper testing… but it was not going all that well.

Lily transformed back to her human shape to vent her frustration. Something they realised early on was that Lily actually had better control in her Memphis form, so that was where they started. Now though Lily was just letting off steam. Lily hissed as she whipped her hand across the old wooden board they’d found under a tarp in the backyard with a few other scraps. Lily was surprised at the resistance she felt for a moment before it fell away. Then the board split into pieces.

Lily and Kat stared at the board that was just recently being used for target practice now in pieces. “Welp, you hit the target!” said Kat cheerfully.

“Yeah but that was cheating!” growled Lily as she examined her hand. “I’m trying to hit it with magic not… well I have to assume it was my claws… but I didn’t mean to call them up in human form… hmm… maybe I should be testing out that kind of shifting now?”

Kat just shrugged and continued to keep watch. They were trying to be safe after all. Just because their houses were empty did not mean the neighbours were out after all. Kat could hear that at least one person was in the house next door, though the street was relatively quiet otherwise. She tried not to pay attention to the specifics. Better for her sanity that way.

Lily frowned as she stood what remained of the old fence post back up and swiped at the wood. Her claws did not manifest. “Hmmm…” Lily mumbled as she took a step back and swung, this time with about twice the force. Her fingers collided with the old wood, shattering it even as she winced back, shaking her hands out more out of habit then real damage.

“Well that didn’t work…” grumbled Lily.

“Naw… want me to kiss it better?” asked Kat with enough seriousness in her tone to indicate that while she was joking, she’d do it in a heartbeat if asked. Of course, this got Lily picturing Kat seductively sucking on her fingers… which… well Lily hadn’t known that was something she wanted before now… but apparently her brain was being opened to strange new things every day.

.....

Lily quickly shook the pictures away, “Um… no I’m good,” said Lily despite the fact that Kat had gotten the entire string of fantasies supplied directly by her traitorous mind. Kat simply ignored the twitching in her eye as she nodded, not commenting on Lily’s horrible attempt at lying. Even without the link Kat wanted to think she’d have spotted it… and she was reasonably sure she would. Lily got a very particular face now they were dating. It seemed the lack of active suppression meant that Lily’s eyes glazed over and her mouth turned into a wide smile whenever she was imagining something lewd happening with her girlfriend. It was a very obvious pattern.

Really what stopped Kat acting was that Lily didn’t actually seem to be in pain. It was more of a light tingle as if to remind her that smashing through wood, even rotting wood like this, with just her fingers was not an entirely normal state of affairs. The plank in question was completely totalled now so Kat brought out a similar looking replacement, stabbing it into the ground.

Lily flexed her fingers, slowing turning her hand over to look for any obvious triggers for those sharpened nails. Running a soft hand over them revealed they were certainly sharper then normal nails… but nowhere near enough to cut so cleanly. “Hmm… any ideas?” asked Lily as she prodded away looking for some biological trigger.

“You were pretty angry at the time… lashing out at your lack of progress… I imagine you either wanted to HURT something or CUT something to relieve some of the stress,” offered Kat.

Lily winced. It had been an… uncomfortable realisation that for all she felt like her mana wasn’t flowing well during their last adventure that it undoubtedly flowed MUCH worse here on Earth. It was so much harder here and even knowing what she needed to do to cast a spell things just didn’t want to click. If casting a spell in qi infested areas was like trying to drag her finger through honey, here it was like trying to keep a pile of sand in a straight line while it was all vibrating and sitting on a sieve.

Something about the world disrupted mana on a fundamental level. Which… Lily thought she’d known before. Apparently she hadn’t really been able to appreciate just what it meant in truth. In worlds with Qi, it at least accepted some kind of higher energy. It was… displeased perhaps, with mana, but it was almost like the universes here HATED mana. A big difference.

So Lily didn’t really know how to feel about the fact that she could still slice cleanly through wood. That was the crux of the issue wasn’t it? Her spells were nice, her spells were useful… and they were… certainly less brutal in her mind then gouging deep wounds into flesh with her nails. Part of the reason she was trying poorly to replicate the feet… was that Lily wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to replicate it at all.

Lily glanced over at Kat who just raised a single eyebrow and shrugged. Lily cursed under her breath “No choice then,” which of course Kat heard as well, but didn’t comment on. Lily imagined someone attacking Kat. She imagined Kat simply letting it happen to avoid killing them. She imagined the pain of being useless, and brought her hand down lengthwise. A slight tug on her fingers, a pull on her joints, and then a moment later the wood split into three mostly clean sections. A few bits had chipped off but it was a rotten piece after all. It wasn’t going to split perfectly no matter the blade.

Lily glared down at her hand, blood pumping through it causing her fingers to involuntarily flex. “I don’t like this all that much…” grumbled Lily.

Kat stepped up and slowly pulled Lily into a hug. “You don’t have to like it, or ever use it if you don’t want to,”

Lily wanted to call Kat a liar for that statement. The knowledge that it could not be a lie only burning the shame deeper. “That’s a lovely idea Kat… but I don’t think I can believe you…”

Kat shrugged, “I managed to say it didn’t I? That means that it must be true!”

Lily sighed, “Perhaps… but I feel like I really should be able to use something like this if the situation calls for it… I… I don’t know let me just try to get this down,”

Lily reluctantly separated from Kat and psyched herself up as Kat readied another bit of wood. This time Lily focused just on the cutting instead of all the emotions behind it… and whacked her fingers on the wood. Lily frowned at her hand, trying a few more times, focusing on the idea of ‘attack’ or ‘slice’ and suppressing her growing annoyance with this process.

[I don’t like the fact that it seems I need to be angry or just… wiling to lash out. I can’t seem to actively attack like this. It needs to be a reflex. A reflex I could train yes but… I don’t like the idea of training that way at all…]

Kat floated over and gave Lily a quick smooch on the side of her head. “That’s completely fine. I imagine that you can do this because it’s part defensive mechanism when you’re stressing out. It might be something ingrained into all beastkin to make sure that they don’t die or get injured just because they didn’t really know how to use their abilities. It seems like a good safety net for them, if a bit deadly in practice,”

Lily nodded, “It does make sense from an evolutionary perspective even if I don’t like how it makes me feel right now. That being said… if I think about it that way… I have hope that I can manage it intentionally without all the mental tricks.”