Chapter 68 – Kinda hot

"Pretty cold." I comment, standing hand in hand with Letty on the edge of a large crater.

It's about fifteen meters across, indicating it's a quite powerful volcano, but nowhere near disaster levels, and the inner walls are a few meters high, so I'm pretty sure it hasn't exploded for a long while after the lava level fell. Also, there is no actual lava in front of us, at least not in the way I would imagine there to be, because, as Letty said, the volcano's activity is low. So instead of orange molten stone there is a dark, claret crust with some orangeish and reddish crevices, mostly unchanging.

"Just so you know, there's almost a hundred degrees Celsius here." My girlfriend tells me and I raise my eyebrows in surprise.

"...I don't feel hot at all. Though I get a vague feeling of temperature around me." I comment. That's pretty neat, whatever the cause is. It should be borderline impossible to burn or scald me as I am now. "Well, how do we go about it?"

"First we need to check if it isn't pressurized. We don't want it exploding on us." Letty stretches out her arm and a long, thin cable extends out of her palm, down to the layer of magma.

When it touches the stone, it lightly jolts and plunges inside, and Letty makes a focused expression for a few seconds.

"Alright." She nods her head. "There is some pressure, but nowhere near enough for an explosion. Now we need to break the thing and get the magma out."

"Sure." I glance at her as the cable smoothly flows back into her arm. "Should I hit it?"

She turns to me with a blink and opens her mouth to say something, but changes her mind halfway with a thoughtful expression. "...Yeah, I guess you can. I was thinking about heating it up and pushing the crust aside, but I guess we have... more unconventional methods available." She smiles wryly.

"...I can do that as well." I grin. "Be careful though, there will be... collateral damage."

So I let go of Letty's hand, give her a peck to the cheek, and jump down into the crater. With a beat of my wings I land softly on the deceptively smooth surface of stone, and I get hold of my Primordial Energy, only to freeze as a realization hits me.

I've never really used Primordial Energy out of VOW before. I mean, yeah, I used it much more than once, but it was nothing spectacular or impressive. Some small flame, discreet momentum manipulation, this kind of thing. What I'm going to do now is... a step I won't be able to retrace. A sign that magic really exists out here, a proof not only in the moment, but left in time.

...Not like I'm going to hesitate because of that.

I raise my arm, push Primordial Energy into it, and... hm, how do we go about it? I could just smash it down and hit till it breaks... but that's boring. So... I swing my arm, and imbue my fist with energy that will be explosively pushed into the surroundings on impact.

And the world suddenly explodes in hot air, steam, dust, debris, and a deafening sound of an explosion. I quickly coat myself in a protective layer of energy, also keeping me standing on the viscous fluid, and watch with a grin as the layer of hardened lava literally bursts into fragments. The largest of them only jolt, then tilt and partially sink into the bubbling lava peeking underneath, but the smaller ones, which are in hundreds, break off like splinters and fly into the air.

I feel and see as the lava level lowers slightly, then starts raising back up to a higher point than it was before, and I laugh in the decaying storm of dust and stone fragments, standing inside it like it was nothing. I notice in my perception field that a large chunk of one wall breaks off and topples into the lava, throwing dust into the air.

It's amazing. Exhilarating, even. There is the appeal of calm and peace, but they can't exist alone. And it's the action, the counterpart, that truly gets me going.

"Letty~!" I shout with a grin, turning around with extended arms to look at my girlfriend peeking from behind a black shield she erected. "Come 'ere!"

"Yeah!" She replies with a laugh after the initial surprise and discards the shield, then unceremoniously jumps in my direction.

I catch her in a hug, purposefully not using my energy affinity and stepping back as she crashes down, and slowly let her down to the lava level.

"How's your resistance?" I glance at her feet touching the surface and starting to sink slowly without a sign of harm.

"Good! I'll be fine if it doesn't increase drastically." She replies with a grin and looks critically at herself, and at me. "Our clothes won't, though, but it doesn't matter."

"Yeah." I nod and take a look at the burning hem of my pants, then get some Primordial Energy and burn all my clothes in a burst of flame, causing Letty, still hugging me, to let out a weird squeal in surprise.

"Helia!" She accuses me and I only grin in response, discarding the layer or Primordial Energy keeping me afloat and starting to sink into the viscous lava.

...Kinda too slowly, hm. Our feet and shins sink within seconds, because Letty now loses my support and starts clinging to me instinctively instead of supporting herself, but after that the pace slows down to a crawl.

Would increasing my temperature help with that? Worth checking, because right now... yeah, I can't even move my legs properly. I can raise them slowly, but the resistance is too high to move my legs any other way. Feels like I was trying to lift my legs while lying flat on the ground with massive weights on them.

Overall it feels kinda like falling into jelly, honestly. It's not that viscous and... jelly, but makes up for it in the thickness and density.

"Letty? Would you mind if I raised my temperature? I think it would help me swim." I ask her as she pulls away from me slightly, but still holds onto me to stay in vaguely straight pose.

"You're hot enough as is." She grumbles in response as finally gets to removing all her clothes, though she does it in more civilized manner, that is using her Nihility to dismantle and store them somewhere.

"Nah, you know I'm not." I reply casually, grabbing her small hands and pulling them away from me, keeping them firmly in mine, with my eyes lingering a bit on her shapely bosom.

That is, till I realize what position I'm holding her in and I giggle at her glowing cheeks and cute lips shut in a tight line. Not like my position is any different.

"Helia..." My girlfriend mutters in a warning tone, averting her eyes, and I let go of her hands with a grin.

I don't let my mood fall in the slightest though, and I focus on my energy again, this time spreading it uniformly around my body and willing it to release heat and raise my temperature. It feels... a bit weird.

I sense on some instinctual level that the energy within my body increases, I feel that my temperature is rising, but I don't really notice the heat, at least not in the way human body would. As a warning signal, that is, and instead more like a... state of being? Hard to put it into words. Just like humans notice that they are more or less tanned, I see that I'm hotter or colder. It's not the best comparison, but works.

And when I breathe out, a small cloud of steam seeps out from my mouth and dissipates quickly. Huh.

"Two thousand degrees Celsius." Letty comments dryly from the side and it takes me a moment to realize she's talking about me.

Wow. But I'm not done.

I once heard an interesting thing about pyroclastic flow coming from volcanoes, nicely matching the theme by the way, that it can sorta float above the water by vaporizing it and kind of being carried by created steam. I'm thinking of utilizing something a bit similar, though I'm obviously not planning on evaporating anything.

...I feel like that sentence is not something I can say with clear conscience. Anyway.

The problem is that while hotter lava should be more liquid and I should be able to swim in it easily, coupled with my much greater strength, it's not heating up nearly fast enough for it to be a significant difference. For it to work, I need to release much more heat.

And that's exactly what I do, I make my body release heat much faster that normally while the Primordial Energy keeps my temperature more or less constant.

The effect is... immediately visible. The lava around me starts bubbling lazily and I start sinking significantly faster, plus my skin takes on a glistening sheen for a reason I'm not entirely sure about. If that wasn't enough, the air around me starts almost shimmering from all the heat that goes into it, similar to that above a campfire, just significantly more pronounced and all around me instead of above me.

I need to wave my arms to keep myself floating on a reasonable level, and when I look at Letty, her mouth is slightly open and she is looking at me with flushed cheeks.

"Hot enough?" I mutter in a purposefully low, sultry voice, and my girlfriend jolts with her cheeks painting beet red and opens her mouth to say something.

She doesn't say anything, and instead only pushes herself forward with want and need in her eyes, with slightly hitched breath, reaching with her arms to me. I oblige to the wordless request and swim forward till I touch her chest with my own, still with significant resistance, but incomparable to the force almost stopping me from moving as it was before.

And I smile softly, happily returning the embrace when Letty immediately wraps her arms around me and hugs me with all her strength. I see as she pushes herself to the limit to forcefully wrap her legs around my waist as well, and I gently caress her hair when she presses her head into my shoulder.

I keep us afloat with the help of my Primordial Energy, since it's pretty hard to do any other way with all four limbs occupied, and notice that Letty's body is getting dangerously red from the heat I release.

"Letty." I mutter into her ear. "You're going to melt."

"Mmm." She replies strongly, only tightening the embrace, and I blank out for a moment when she looks up at me with a wide, happy smile and a hint of tears in her eyes. "Let me... stay like this for a while." She says in a slightly croaky voice dripping with emotions so close to bursting, and pushes her head into my shoulder again.

"Alright." I mumble in response, hugging her tighter and waving my legs lightly to lean back in the pool and have her lie on me a bit rather than hold herself straight up.

"True Demon Form?" Letty mumbles quietly and I freeze for a moment.

Damn, I have that, too. Totally forgot about it. And... wow. Wow, wow, wow. I do want that. Now, in this place.

I feel at the little thing that has always been within me, at that True Demon form, and I'm about to kickstart it... but I wonder. Accelerating my perception of time massively, I feel the part of me that makes it possible. If I do... shouldn't it be possible to change it?

The humanoid form, the True Demon form; if I can affect my humanoid form by retracing my wings and my tail, it should be possible to affect my True Demon form in a similar manner, shouldn't it? I certainly feel like it should be possible, because nothing I know would prohibit me from doing it. And well, if energy manipulation is in actuality reality manipulation as Shiva said, I don't see a reason why my body would be outside of the reality I can affect.

"Um, gimme a moment." I tell Letty and... let's get to it, shall we? Because I have a pretty interesting idea I'm itching to put into reality.

The transformation I can kickstart feels a little... strange. It's like I know what it is, I could describe every single part that would change if asked, but... I don't actually see what it would be? It's like I know it, but nothing else.

...I guess it's a little similar to numbers? Take number two - I know what it is, I can describe what it is and what it means, but if someone asked me to define how I know it or how to visualize it, I wouldn't be able to answer without using an... example. The situation with my True Demon form is very similar in many aspects. I know what my transformation means, but it's more like a concept which only gets applied to my body when I activate it.

Can I, uh, copy it or something, in that mental space or whatever it is where I see it... as much as I see it, because it's not accurate at all. It's kinda like feeling my thoughts; as weird as it sounds, that's the closest comparison I can make for now.

But going back on tracks, I can indeed copy it, and I end up with two identical possible transformations. Hm. Now let's try to modify the fresh copy a little. Damn, I'm already excited at the prospect.

...

"Hey, Letty?" I purr quietly into my girlfriend's ear as she continues to cling to me in the lava bath with puffy eyes and a smile on her face... in reality only a few seconds after I dove into my, uh, mind, or however I should call it. Mental space, tentatively.

"Mhm...?" She mumbles, looking up at me questioningly.

"I kinda created a new form?" I say with a grin worming its way onto my face, not helped by the visible decrease in Letty's cuddliness at that revelation. "I'd like to test it, but I've no idea how safe it will be, because, well, it's my first time doing something like that. What do you say?"

"If you mean if I want to cling to you while you test it, then I'm a hundred percent in." She grins with a small giggle, making my heart do something it hasn't done in a while. "And you're not backing away."

"I warned." I grin in response. "Ready?"

"Shoot."

And I kickstart the transformation, and immediately feel the massive changes happening to my body.

Nine feet of height, growing muscles, and massive horns, just like in True Demon form, are only the beginning. I see as my skin gets darker, from the lightly tanned to a full on tan bordering on brown, I feel my tail thickening, growing, and getting covered in black segments, I feel my fangs and claws growing slightly, and I feel the incredible power coursing through my body.

I shut my jaws with a loud snapping sound and arch my body with a shudder. Wow. No matter how many times I do that, it's an absolutely incredible feeling.

Letty seems to think so as well, as she raises her head and examines me from top to bottom with a growing grin. Granted, she is now so much smaller than I am, laying on my belly with her toes barely reaching past my knees and her head above my chest - where her eyes wander a couple of times, not surprisingly so considering how ridiculous my chest size is now despite changing nothing in my body proportions. But fact is it should be well over two hundred after scaling my body up by one and a half, which suddenly puts things into perspective.

It's so cute, that difference between me and Letty. The monstrous and the humane.

"Helia?" She whispers, her voice overflowing with barely suppressed emotions.

"Mmm?" I shift slightly, pulling her up to rest her head on my chest, which she does with a shaky sigh.

"It just all... hit me now. How lucky I am. Remember how I told you I was obsessed with monsters... falling in love with humans, and all that? That I wanted to find someone as odd as me."

"Yeah, I do. What about it?" I ask curiously.

"I didn't exactly tell you everything then." Letty says quietly and looks up at me with resolve in her slightly puffy eyes. "Mechanical... they develop... around three times faster than humans, according to my mom." She averts her eyes and I blink in surprise. Doesn't that mean... her mental age is around three times mine? It certainly doesn't feel like it. "That's also where the cycles comes from; it's an approximation of the time it takes for a Mechanical to mature." My girlfriend pauses and stays silent for a long while.

"So... yeah. I've been waiting to meet you for... so long." She tightens her embrace. "Sorry I'm messy, but..." She sighs and breaks into a grin. "Yeah. I needed a while for... you, to fully sink in."

She pulls herself up and gives me a slow, deliberate kiss, no different and no more intimate than any we've shared so far and yet somehow much more important, conveying a whole load of meaning and emotion. I pull her slightly up to give her easier access and reciprocate the kiss delicately, my current form so large she has to switch between kissing my bottom or upper lip, with something indescribable tickling my mind.

Letty slowly breaks the kiss and nuzzles into my shoulder, not managing to hide the massive smile on her face, and I put my hand over her head lightly, running it through her black hair. "Well, I'm not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, so how do you want me to make up for the time you've been waiting?" I ask quietly with a wide smile.

"...Cuddles." She mutters after a while. "A lot of cuddles. And, um, can you go larger?"