Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 84 (Patreon)

After a few minutes struggling with the wizard’s communication device, I was finally able to click away and send a message. In total, it was an apology for disappearing, a brief explanation that something had come up, and a polite request that he repeat his last message.

After sending it out, I sat and waited. And waited. And waited.

There was no response.

"Dammit!" I cursed as I tossed the device down on the bed. I'd missed Galbatorix's reply to my question thanks to Lisette, and now it looked like I'd missed him completely. My chance to get in contact with Myrina had vanished.

I paced the floor, figuring maybe if I jumped down and helped with the fires, it would ease my nerves. I was about to do just that when the device started buzzing again. Racing over to it, I scooped it up, and sat back down to begin translating the short and long flashes into symbols, and the symbols into words.

This message was far shorter than the others, and I quickly got the sense that I wasn't talking to Galbatorix. I finished the translation, which came much slower than previous messages because the girls weren’t here to help me.

When I did, I stared at the message sitting on the page before me.

It's me. I need your help.

There was only one person that could be. Myrina.

"Myrina, what's happening over there?" I muttered to myself.

I translated that line of thought and sent it back to her. Her reply came agonizingly slowly over the next minute.

Check teleporter.

Apparently, Myrina had as much trouble sending messages through the devices as I did. Shipping letters back and forth had seemed slow to me before, but it was light-years ahead of this method. Whatever had stopped Thulga from shipping our letters back and forth before must have been fixed on her end.

But what had happened?

I didn't plan on leaving myself in suspense. I wasted no more time in my room and opened the window. A second later, I’d slipped through it. Catching myself on several window ledges on the way down made for a rapid descent. Moments later, I was racing through the streets on my way back to my farmhouse.

"Sharky, keep an eye on things back in town for me, alright?" I yelled to my spectral ghost shark as I passed him.

"Nom nom," Sharky replied, hungrily. Presumably, that meant I could trust him to look out for any threats to the city as long as those threats were edible.

When I finally returned home, I threw open the door to my farmhouse and found a sealed scroll sitting waiting for me on the teleportation pad. The letter I had left on it before was gone. Sometime over the past few hours, Myrina must have finally gotten my message.

I unsealed the scroll and read.

Carter,

Sorry for being out of communication for a while. The wizard in Valkyrie's Watch said you were asking about me and went to Mother, who passed along the message to me. I had no idea you already had a sneaky private channel with the Dragon Lodge! Not even Mother has one of those. The wizards must really like you.

Mother brought Thulga to me here in Shadefall. Mother knows some stuff now, but I promise I kept as much hidden as I could! She knows a few of the warehouses in Shadefall are connected to you somehow, but I’m trying to keep the full scope of what you’ve been up to under wraps.

Anyway, officially, I went drinking with Cyra to celebrate her getting a city and passed out in an alley somewhere. Unofficially, I'm camped out in one of your warehouses.

Misa showed it to me. You did a good job with this place! I hope you don't mind me taking a room. Your new employees are eager to work. You left so unexpectedly that Misa wasn't sure what you wanted them to be working on.

I know you got my last letter about what happened after Elder Thalassa banished you back to Earth. Mother attempted to have her formally censured, but that didn’t go as well with the other elders as we’d hoped. She ended up returning home, only to show her face again with some representatives of a rather powerful spellcaster family—the same one she wants me to forge ties with… Ties of marriage, if that wasn't clear. Hence the reason why I'm making myself scarce.

I need to ask a favor from you, Carter. A big favor. Please.

I don't want to pressure you, but it isn't the kind of thing that I can put in a letter. By my measure, your time limit should be up sometime today. Send the exact time through with your reply and I'll ask Thulga to bring you over so that we can talk face to face.

I hope to see you again soon,

Myrina

I flipped the scroll over and hastily penned a reply. Looking through my stat menus, I found my System-enforced cooldown for going off-planet was set to expire in just a few hours. At that point, I'd be free to return to Themyscira. Whatever Myrina wanted to talk to me sounded extremely important, so I wrote down the first second I would become available.

I was willing to help her however she needed it. I wasn't sure what kind of favor she wanted from me, but whatever it was, I planned to move Heaven and Earth to make it happen.

After returning the scroll, I spent a considerable amount of time pacing back and forth across the living room. Sometimes I could be patient. This wasn't one of those times.

I ended up passing the remaining hours of my System-enforced cooldown crafting more Mana Swords and a few other odds and ends late into the night. Since I'd be taking a trip to Themyscira, I figured I should bring over the raw materials and item templates I had been planning to have my workers there craft.

I also packed up much of the stuff Gobgob and her goblins had been working on. She was great for physically assembling the items I was enchanting, but not very good at adding in those final enchantments. From everything I'd heard, putting on those final enchantments was what Shadefall excelled at.

It seemed like a perfect match to get both groups working toward the same end, especially when pairing them with high-end component materials from Earth. If Misa had continued our work in my absence, those workshops would be just about ready by now. It would be good to have their first real project ready for them.

I had a dozen bags of holding all over me stuffed to the brim with semi-finished enchantments. I'd practically emptied the obelisk shortly after arriving in Crownhill last time, so I could keep Gobgob and the others busy. Now, those goods had been turned almost all the way into merchandisable products.

I also had a lot of the rare raw materials Galbatorix and his friends were interested in.

All the stuff I was prepared to sell would be enough to buy another chunk of Shadefall in its current war-torn state. I would have been excited—and should have been—if Myrina's request and current situation hadn't weighed heavily on my mind.

Eventually, though, my System cooldown ran out. I was standing on the teleportation pad when the timer counted down to zero. Two seconds later, I felt the spatial magic around me react. Apparently Myrina and Thulga were just as eager to see me as I was to see them.

I let the familiar process sweep me away. I’d left a brief note on the kitchen table for Sakura and Bridget—though I didn't think I would be staying in Themyscira long enough to run out of time. I just needed to hear Myrina out.

"Carter!" Myrina wrapped her arms around me.

In one swift and sudden motion, she pulled me right off the teleportation platform and into the air. She was taller than me again and looked different from before. A quick glance told me her recent changes were intentional. She had a cloak draped around her shoulders and her fiery hair pulled back into a tight bun. She also sported a ridiculous-looking, bushy, fake mustache.

It was an overdone attempt at a disguise, and I had to hide a snicker behind my hand. It was black, in stark contrast to her cherry-red hair.

"Welcome back," Thulga said, hands on her hips and faint smile on her face.

I nodded in her direction, then turned back to Myrina and her disguise. "Hey! Who are you and what have you done with Myrina?" I demanded, fighting to keep a chuckle out of my voice.

Myrina tore off her fake mustache. "Ha! Fooled you. It was me all along!"

We shared a smile for a moment, though Myrina's joyful expression soon faded and returned to a concerned frown.

I looked around the room. It was roughly the size of my living room back home and rather plain with its lack of decorations. The walls were made of rough wood, and there was only a single, small window in the upper corner. As Myrina had said in her letter, we were back in one of the warehouses we’d built in Shadefall.

There was no sheathing on the inside of the structure, just bare walls with external planks to keep out the weather. Myrina had made herself comfortable anyway with a bedroll and camping stove in one corner, but the place looked like a construction site. It was a big step down for a member of the main family of this area’s ruling clan.

We shared a smile for a moment, though Myrina’s joyful expression soon turned to a concerned frown. She tried to force her face back into smiling, but it was too late. I’d already seen her true feelings beneath the mask.

“Alright, I’m here.” I waved around us. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Myrina turned and I moved to join her. Thulga sensed she wasn’t needed at the moment and made her way quietly to the door.

“Carter, there’s something I need to tell you.” As Myrina began to speak, her voice tinged with a seriousness I hadn’t heard before.

I listened, sensing the gravity in her words. The shift from her normally enthusiastic and determined demeanor belied the seriousness of what she was about to say.

“It’s about my family. And the whole of the Samhain Clan.” She took a deep breath, eyes fixed on something on the other side of the wall before us. We stopped by an open window. It was the only source of light in this dim attic space.

“And?” I pressed. “I’ve been privy to more secrets of the Samhain Clan than most. And I’ve got a tattoo to prove it.” I gestured to my shoulder, where the mark of the Samhain Clan slowly faded into existence.

“Well… it’s just…” Myrina took a deep breath and pushed a strand of hair back over her shoulder.

I reached out and took her hand in my own. “Just what?”

She suddenly looked embarrassed. "...about that…” She scuffed one sandal along the floor, drawing a circle with her toe. “Carter, I need a place to hide out for a bit. Your warehouse is good and all, and I'm sorry for borrowing it without asking, but it paints a target on Cyra's back. I don't want to be a burden to my sister... or to my mother. I need someplace further away.”

She sighed. “The trouble is that all the worlds I know of would be even more dangerous for me than this one—all the worlds but yours, that is."

"So you're in hiding from your family?" I asked with raised brows.

Myrina wrung her hands together in front of her. "It's complicated, but... well, you were there when Elder Thalassa explained most of it. Mother's going away. Cyra's going to have to lead the Samhain Clan. Elder Thalassa's made some new friends with a lot of power and who place a lot of value on a Samhain bride.”

A pit of fury started simmering in my gut.

“I don't know who they're going to send for me, but he's bound to be strong. That ritual of ours works both ways, you know? I can reject any man who can't beat me, but any man who can? Well, unless Cyra or Mother is willing to challenge and kill him for me right after he wins, saying no isn't really an option. But Mother's going to be gone soon, and as for Cyra... well, I can't burden her with that. I need to make myself scarce.” She looked down at me, hopefully. “Just for a little while, mind you."

I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrows. "Really?"

"Just for a little bit!" Myrina held up her hands. "I promise I won't be a bother. And if Elder Thalassa's new friends are somehow powerful enough to track me to Earth, they're bound to be dramatically weakened by the System if they come calling.”

I stared Myrina up and down.

She waved her hands again, fearing the worse from my angry frown. “Foreign visitors like me won't even be able to visit until you unite your shard. And even after that, communication with the rest of the Multiverse will still be cut off. It's the perfect place to hide, but if I bring any danger to your settlement I promise I'll hike off into the woods and—"

I held a finger up to her lips. "I thought you were going to ask me to move a mountain stone by stone or craft ten million Mana Bombs—and I was prepared to say yes to either or even both of those requests. You just want a place to stay? Myrina, you didn't even need to ask."

Myrina let out a long sigh. "Honestly, I wasn't sure where I'd turn if not to you, Carter."

I chuckled. "Well, I hope you never doubt me again. The only issue you raise is that now I have twice as much reason to deal with Lisette as quickly as possible. You can't cross over until things are finished back on Earth and the System is preparing us for the next stage of the integration."

"It'll be good to visit Earth again. I miss those magic moving picture boxes. Remember those?" Myrina asked fondly. "I'm looking forward to seeing our old stomping grounds.”

"Televisions. And I remember. We've gotten some of them working again, though I'm sorry to say there's no programming on them—just what DVDs we can scrounge up to play in a DVD player. And I'm afraid Crownhill is nowhere near where we grew up. I'll be happy to show you around the city, though."

Myrina wrapped her arms around me and didn't let go.

"Thank you, Carter..." Her fingers slipped beneath my shirt and caressed the small of my back. "But now I need to ask for another favor."

"Already?" I laughed.

"Already..." Myrina muttered, pressing her body against mine. She wasn't wearing any armor. Nor much of anything besides a thin silk shirt. I could feel two hard nipples poking against my chest. And I was pretty sure I was poking her with something below the belt in return.

"Since when have you gotten so needy?" I chuckled, expecting a joke in reply. But Myrina met me with an intense gaze.

"Since you showed up in my life again." Myrina chewed on her lips for a moment. "You know, I used to be jealous of Cyra. Back when Mother told me she would run the Samhain Clan and I would marry off to forge ties for the family, I mean. I didn't want to give up on fun and adventures to be part of some stuffy old planetary ruler's harem of ten thousand wives. Then I thought back to you and realized marrying out of the family might not be so bad, depending on the person."

"Do you still think that way?" I returned her serious expression with one of my own. "A newly integrated world isn't like Themyscira. Your mother and family name won't protect you back on Earth. Nor will you enjoy the kinds of luxuries you're used to. You won't find a single servant in my home."

Myrina shrugged. "I'll lose some stuff... but I'll gain so much more." Then she leaned closer to me and closed her eyes. Her lips brushed up against mine, feather soft and warm to the touch.

She held that pose for a long breath. It was an invitation, should I choose to accept it.

And of course, I did.

<Note>
Merry Christmas, guys! (And happy holidays to all other religions as well.)

I will hopefully have a brief holiday special for you guys tomorrow, as well as the usual chapter.