[Spirit of Lust] Chapter 83: Forcing a door open. (Patreon)

Seeing Nanami cry left William in an awkward position. He needed her to continue guiding him and explaining things, but he still had an idea of how much she must have been hurting. Her aunt, her own family, was being forced to act on Jack Evan’s commands without any regards for bystanders.

“…” Will awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck and decided on something to say. “So your aunt is in this place we’re trying to get into, right? Doesn’t that mean I might have a chance to take her back, then? Like I promised I would?”

Nanami turned back to him with wide eyes and a half-opened mouth. Her lip quivered for a moment before she rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and shook her head. She turned back around to continue walking down the stairs, but not before Will caught a hint of a smile on her lips.

‘Smooth.’

‘So that helped?’

‘Hmm. So a bit of cluelessness can be attractive as well? Interesting.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘No, if you realize it it’s gonna lose all meaning, so forget it. Now, back to searching.’

“I said the Aether Realm is a world parallel to our own, but I didn’t mean it as an alternate reality that varies from our own in some ways. I mean it’s a self-contained plane of existence coexisting with our world,” Nanami explained, voice cracking at first but steadying as she pushed through. “I have no idea what we’ll find there, and that’s assuming we can even get there in the first place.”

She reached the bottom of the stairs first, and her head turned specifically to an empty corner of the ample basement. Will followed her there, and once close, he felt an uncomfortable tingling on his back.

“What is this?” he asked. There was nothing there, only the empty corner of two concrete walls, and yet Will felt something… warm.

“I said most of the supernatural phenomena in our world has to do with aether, remember? What we have here is a leak,” Nanami explained, her eyes focused on the invisible thing. “I’m surprised you can feel it at all. Perhaps it’s because of the spirit? Normal people won’t even sense it, but… I can see it. It’s like a misshapen ball of faint, white light. Basically, a cluster of aether forming due to a hole connecting our worlds.”

Will swallowed. “So that’s our entrance?”

“Hopefully, if we can get it open,” Nanami nodded and bit her lip. “My aunt is capable of using aether, so she must’ve been able to manipulate this. The problem is… I’m not nearly as skilled as she is.”

‘…Will, let’s switch.’

‘Huh? What? Why?’

‘I have a hunch.’

‘A hunch? What are you trying to do?’

‘Get us where we need to. Trust me, okay? I think I can do this.’

‘Alright, but don’t take too long. Being in my body but unable to move feels gross.’

“Hey, Nanami, I’ll be stepping out for a bit,” he told the girl.

“Eh? S-Stepping out?”

“Don’t worry. I’m leaving you with a friend,” Will nodded reassuringly before he let Ishtar take over.

***

Ishtar stretched, glad to be able to move but still feeling uncomfortable at being in a man’s body. She might be a spirit, but she definitely felt like a woman, and having something dangling between the legs just didn’t feel right. She’d try to get things done quickly and switch back with Will. With his mental state in better shape these days, hanging out in his head felt surprisingly comfortable. It was one more reason to get the girls back.

The Asian girl, Nanami, suddenly took a couple of steps back. Her face was pale white, her body visibly tensed and shaking, her breathing was deep and ragged and her eyes appeared damp. She retreated until her back was against a wall.

“W-W-Who are you?” she asked, voice almost a whisper.

“Oh, you noticed? We haven’t personally met, have we?” Ishtar realized, speaking in Will’s voice. “I’m Ishtar, the Spirit of Lust.” She gave the frightened girl a casual wave, then frowned. “Now that I think about it, Reina and Ruth know I exists, but I haven’t really spoken to them. And then you have Anna, who I HAVE spoken to, but she didn’t know it was me. Will, we’re doing this in the wrong order.”

‘Believe me, I would love to do things properly, but I have no idea how that looks like in this situation.’

“Point taken,” Ishtar nodded. “Now, to business.”

“W-Wait!” Nanami stopped her. “What happened to William!?”

“Hm? We switched places for a moment,” Ishtar explained like it was obvious. “He’s been getting better at controlling sexual energy. He’s learning frighteningly quickly, actually, but I think this calls for more finesse than he’s capable of right now.” She cracked her knuckles and rotated her neck. Or rather, Will’s knuckles and neck. It was confusing.

‘You don’t really need to do that, do you?’

“Shut up, I’m psyching myself up. Don’t disturb me.”

Nanami stiffened and took her hands to her mouth, thinking those words were meant for her. Well, that worked, too. She really did need to focus.

Ishtar couldn’t exactly see the aether cluster Nanami spoke of. Was it because she was seeing through Will’s eyes or did she also lack what it took? Regardless, it was of little issue because she could feel it perfectly. It was like a ball of heat in front of her, flowing yet contained around itself. It felt somewhat familiar and… nostalgic even.

“This is aether?” she asked to no one. “It feels similar to…”

She looked at her hands and let the sexual energy flow to them. It was the same as when Will used it to make women feel good, to enhance the sensibility of a person. At Will’s level, that was as much as he could do, and making a woman come from her breast alone was a cakewalk to the guy already, but Ishtar was be able to make a person’s finger feel like an erogenous zone if she wanted to. That was the extent of the control she had over her own power. The aether in front of her felt foreign and strange, but there was no doubt in her mind. It was similar to her sexual energy.

“Nanami. If I wanted to open a door to the Aether Realm, what would I have to do with this?”

The girl swallowed her nerves and answered. “The… The aether cluster is the result of kind of road from the other word to ours, like an accidentally occurring pathway. If you were to make it bigger… we’d be able to go through.”

“That simple?” Ishtar was surprised. She figured it took something more. “Okay then. Last question. Are you sure you’re coming with us? You said it yourself. We don’t know what we might find there. I don’t know if I can protect you, and even if Will says he can, he’s weaker than me.”

‘Thanks.’

“…I’ll go,” Nanami answered firmly. “I need to see this through. I need to see my aunt. And besides… I need to be there to make sure we find a new entrance in case something happens.”

Poor girl was cared shitless. Her legs looked like they were about to give out. And she still wanted to go? Ishtar had to give her some credit.

“Alright then,” Ishtar nodded. “You owe Will a date if we get back in one piece. Don’t worry, you’ll love it!”

“Eh?”

Ishtar didn’t pay any more attention to Nanami. She focused her sexual energy in her hands and grabbed hold of the invisible aether cluster. It was kind of like touching a very stretchy and light substance. Hot, too, but not enough to burn. She pulled and stretched it, making the hole bigger and bigger. She started feeling some resistance at one point, like the hole was naturally closing.

“We’ll need to be quick,” she said. “Get near me. We jump when I make it as tall as me.”

“O-Okay!”

Ishtar continued to pull the aether in her hands, eventually reaching the desired height.

“JUMP!” she yelled.

Then all they saw was white.

***

Author's Note: There are a couple of things I want to say in this chapter. The thing is, worldbuilding was one of the things that drew me to write in the first place. The problem was that I always got too into it and my plot suffered for it (I'm talking about things I wrote before I published anything), so I decided to forgo worldbuilding in favor of focusing on characters. Now that I'm taking this story in a more fantastical direction, I can't help myself from going into a bit more detail about what the supernatural in the world is and how it works. I try not to make them huge info dumps, but rather organic conversations in situations they make sense. 

Another thing is switching the PoV to Ishtar during the body takeover. Writing from Will's PoV when Ishtar is the one moving is awkward, and I wanted to try out Ishtar's narrating voice. I want to think it sounds distinctive enough, but it's a little hard for me to tell objectively. That said, it's only been half a chapter, so yeah.