The Chimera Summoner – Ch 39 On death, dying, and other recruiting strategies (part 2/2)
The binding runes hummed back to life when she sealed the door.
I sat there fuming for several minutes. Tears streamed down my face. I tasted copper. I felt hot and cold and clammy. My heart pounded.
What the fuck did that mean? Saving the world? The woman was out of her fucking mind.
A year ago, Atalanta Carmine looking at me and saying ‘I’m saving the world and I need your help’ would have been a literal daydream.
What am I going–
Black lightning coursed over Hera’s body, jerking her wildly.
Her black eyes went wide, spilling darkness that obscured the entire room until the only thing that I could see was her.
She hung suspended in the blackness, somehow even an even darker void than the nothingness in which she was enveloped.
Her mouth opened in a silent battle cry.
Then the darkness passed like a light had been turned on, and Hera slumped back to the ground.
Every hair on my body was standing on end.
I might have been levitating from sheer, unbridled fear.
I had absolutely peed a little.
Hera gasped, hauling in a tremendous rattling breath.
I couldn’t help it.
I screamed.
A high girlie squeal.
Like I was about to take my shirt off and wander into a basement in a horror show.
Hera gasped, shaking herself. She looked around, locking in on me as she panted. The endless oblivion of her eyes gradually lightened into her own natural hazel as she panted.
She jerked her chin up. “Hey.”
I screamed again.
SHUT. UP. Eir?! What the fuck is this stupid noise coming out of my–
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” She went on, speaking over me in a conversational tone. “But I didn’t want to talk to ol’ Carmine, and you woke up RIGHT before she was due back.”
She shrugged. Then rolled her neck side to side, getting several REALLY loud pops.
“Oooof!” She groaned. “That was a good one. So. What’s the plan?”
I stared.
I opened my mouth.
I closed my mouth.
I seriously considered whether I was in fact dead, and all this was just the last wild synaptic firing of my brain before my demise.
Nope.
There would be far, far more titties involved.
Hera nodded, encouragingly.
“I know.” She said, “It’s weird. Nice to know you care, hottie.”
She gave me an effortlessly sexy wink. The kind that would normally have me blushing and stammering in her presence for a week.
“WHAT THE FUCK, ARE YOU A ZOMBIE?!” I screamed.
“Shhhhhhh!” Hera wiggled her fingers in what seemed intended as a soothing gesture. “Don’t make it weird.”
“DON’T MAKE–” I was outraged.
Tears flowed down my cheeks in rivers.
“My patron is Death, remember?” Hera said, as if I was being slow.
“You were dead!” I hissed.
She nodded.
“Completely dead.”
She nodded again.
“Carmine snapped your neck and left you in here.”
She waved her fingers in a circle, like hurry-it-up.
“She chained you up.”
“Right.”
“Meaning…She knew you’d come back.”
“There she is! That’s my smart girl!” Hera beamed approval.
“...explain.” I demanded.
Hera sighed. “I dunno. My patron is Death so.” She shrugged. “I get to cheat a little.”
I gave her a flat look.
“A lot.” she conceded
“So, what, you just can’t die? You’ll just come back?” I asked.
Hera shrugged. “Until I don’t.”
“Which is when?”
She shrugged again. “That’s the thing. She doesn’t like people to know. So, I get to come back. Until one day, I don’t anymore.”
“This might be your last life?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“....Last life might’ve been your last life.”
“Yeppers.”
“What…?” I had about ten billion questions and they were not forming an orderly queue to get out of my mouth. “How do you stand not knowing?!”
She grinned. “Same as everyone else.”
I closed my eyes very tightly.
That is not how death is for everyone else. But. Focus.
“We can talk more when we’ve heroically foiled the evil cult’s dastardly– Come on, Eir, snap out of it.” Hera said impatiently. “Hang on, no, actually, keep your eyes closed. Tighter. Good girl. This is gunna be gross.”
“Grosser than you being DEAD?” I asked, eyes squeezed as tightly as I could, and choosing to Ignorrrrrreeeee being ‘good girl’ed by HERA.
I peeked just in time to see her brace to yank her hands out of her manacles.
I closed my eyes again, just in time. But the wet, ripping, tearing sound was more than enough for me. I gagged a bit.
A moment passed. I risked sucking in some air carefully between pursed lips, eyes closed tight.
“Ok, we’re good.” Hera said.
I peeked.
She was rubbing her hands. They were covered in blood, as were the manacles.
But she seemed miraculously unharmed.
“What are you indestructible too?” I asked.
“Nah.” She laughed. “But when I come back, there’s always a liiiiitle window when the healing hasn’t turned off. Or there’s some extra floating around in me, or something. Finally came in handy.”
She tilted her head. “Heheh. HAND-y.”
Pause.
“Eir. HANDDDDDY.” Hera repeated, insistently. “Like. Hand–”
I tried to glare while she explained her hilarious joke, but I was reeling. Nothing made sense. Everything that had happened since I regained consciousness had gotten sharply more insane. Now my friend who I had thought was dead, because she WAS dead, was walking around our cell, stretching her athletic form in front of me.
In her short little Wayfinding dress/armor…. Absently shaking her hair from disgusting rats nest into shining glorious waves over one shoulder…. Shaking her legs out and stretching…wide legged on the floor…bending one long, toned leg then the other….
From my angle sitting on the floor, she was showing me A LOT. And she had a lot to show.
“There she is.” Hera said, catching me staring and nodding approvingly. “The things I do to break you out of your random little funk.”
She turned directly away from me, and bent all the way over. Her skirt rode up well past her fantastic ass wrapped in tight athletic shorts. Just barely long enough to be called shorts at all, honestly. Especially bent over like this, I was being treated to rather a lot of very shapely cheeks.
“You were dead, like three minutes ago.” I growled. “You cannot seduce me right now.”
“Want to have a threesome with me and Nyke?” she asked, looking at me upside-down from between her own legs.
I choked.
Hera laughed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's note: Well well wellllllll, my handsome nuggets! We are in the thick of it! Hera's BACK! (you didn't think I was going to take her away from you without a lil smooch, did you? That would be crazy. You know I am weak.) Probably things will go smoothly and easily from here on out, probably!