I do not recommend death by electrocution. It hurt a lot more than people have ever said. I don’t care that it only took a few seconds to disrupt the body's neural signals, those few seconds were painful and felt like they lasted minutes rather than seconds.
Then again, that might have been because it didn’t actually kill me.
My consciousness returned to see all four of my girls crowding around me. Rieka had her back to me, her normally active tail hanging limp behind her as she scanned the room warily. From her posture, I could tell that she was keeping watch for the other girls.
Jane was squatting near my head, her little skirt pushed up to reveal the fact she wore a set of skintight shorts that looked like a more classic version of cyclists pants underneath them. Her large ears were folded back in concern as she watched me.
Looming over my right was Shayla, tears sparkling on her cheeks and amongst the fluff of her neck-ruff while her wings spread menacingly behind her. My beautiful moth had her spell rod in one hand and a light-orb in the other, ready to lash out at anything that came close.
Near my waist, Kassandra was frantically chanting a spell while her rod wove through the air above my waist. I could tell I was laying in an ice-cold puddle of water right now, and my sweet dwarf lamia was shivering with her clothes soaked by the icy water produced from her healing spell.
“Kass—” I croaked, trying to get her attention. However, Jane interrupted me.
“Liam! Don’t move, okay? Just lay there and let Kassandra work.”
“Cold,” I mumbled, not looking away from Kassandra.
“I’ll be fine, Liam. Please, just lay still.” Kassandra’s voice was thick with worry, and tears continued to stream down her face.
I tried to sit up to look at what she was doing, but my muscles all fired strangely and I just twitched. Jane immediately leaned forward and pinned my shoulders to the ground, pressing her entire small weight onto my torso to hold me in place.
“Don’t move, Liam. Kass will get you sorted out and then you can fuss, but for now just lay still.”
I could have forced it. My Shape-Shifting and System-enhanced strength score meant that I could do a lot and there was absolutely nothing Jane could do to stop me. But I didn’t want to hurt the tiny, concerned woman trying her best to hold me in place. So I just lay still.
“He’s got a point, Kass,” Rieka said without turning. “I understand you want to save that hand, but you know how he’s going to react if you get hurt doing it.”
Kassandra just growled in frustration. I couldn’t help the flinch as Rieka’s words sunk into my brain.
“It’ll be fine, Liam. You trust Kass to fix you up, right?” Shayla crooned, sparing a glance in my direction that showed fresh tears of worry welling up in her pitch-black eyes.
“Yes,” I grunted, still struggling to talk, “trust my Nugget.”
Kassandra’s shoulders twitched and I heard a strangled sob from my dwarf lamia as she worked, but she didn’t stop or look away even as more tears poured down her face.
A clatter of metal hitting stone made me twitch again, worried something had happened, but Kassandra’s gasp of excitement told me it was a good thing.
“His hand is moving! Quick, someone get something between his teeth. If it’s moving then the nerves will be healing next and that is going to hurt.”
Jane was the quickest and I soon found a musty hunk of wood forced into my mouth. I tried to mumble a protest around it, but no sooner did my teeth get into the wood than Kassandra’s warned pain hit me like a freight train.
My right hand twitched—a feeling that I was only aware of because of the muscles in my biceps moving—then the sensation of being dunked in a river of molten metal raced from my fingertips to my elbow. It was only my determination to not hurt my girls that kept me from sitting bolt upright in a sit-up with the kind of speed that would have launched poor Jane across the room.
The hunk of table between my teeth cracked and then shattered into a storm of fragments, but as soon as my jaw tightened on it, my instincts had raced to adjust my face with Shape-Shifting to preserve my teeth in the best way possible, by removing them and fusing my jaw together into mandibles like a grasshopper.
I can say with certainty, getting electrocuted almost to death sucks. But having all the nerves in your hand mended in a single burst sucks just as much. My left hand dug furrows into the stone flags of the floor, claws I hadn’t realized that I had sprouted sending fragments of rocks flying.
Then, just as suddenly as the pain had appeared, it vanished. Then the chill numbness of ice-water spread throughout my hand and up my arm.
“Done,” Kassandra gasped, slumping backwards and nearly keeling over before Shayla caught her with one arm to support the dwarf lamia’s torso. Jane leaned back off my shoulders and I slowly began to sit upright. The first thing that my eyes found was that damned door I’d been working on.
The lock mechanism was nothing more than a mixture of slag and damaged metal. I could see bits and pieces where my entropy magic had sheared through the door, but more than half of the lock was running in melted streams down the front of the door now.
Something had dented the door from the other side, pulling it outwards from the frame and horrendously deforming it, clearly breaking the lock and blowing the handle entirely off.
Remembering the clatter of falling metal, I glanced down at my right hand to see the deformed hook of metal that had once been the handle to the door, which had been protruding from the main mass of the slab itself, lying on the ground next to my right hand.
The ice water around my hand was a mixture of black and red in color, and my arm about halfway to my elbow was the raw, bright pink of fresh skin and missing any hair.
I wanted to ask what had happened, but my concern was immediately transferred to Kassandra, who was beginning to shiver violently. A push of thought allowed me to revert the shift on my face and spat out the mouthful of splinters. I’d really appreciated Jane’s actions now, because it’d given me enough warning to not break my teeth grinding in pain.
“Need to warm her up,” I mumbled, shifting so I could get to my knees. I swayed, prompting both Jane and Rieka to steady me until I was stable. None of them protested, showing they knew that my focus wouldn’t waver until it was taken care of this time.
Weakly, Kassandra held her arms out to me, tears still running down her face. I scooped my lovely cuddle-noodle up gently, being careful with my right arm until I was sure it would operate without problems. Once I had most of her weight off the ground, I shuffled to get clear of the large puddle of frigid water I’d been lying in as Kassandra poured her healing magic on me.
“Jane, gather up the wood fragments needed for a small fire. We can’t build too big in a cave like this, but Kass will need something to warm her up. Shayla, help me get blankets to dry them off. I know Liam is already going to help warm her up as best he can.”
Rieka took command without hesitation and the other two girls hopped to obey while I got settled between two doors opposite the one that had somehow attacked me with Kassandra shivering in my lap. She didn’t resist me when I started peeling her soaked clothes off, and in short order we were both naked and pressed together.
Jane worked quickly to make a small pile of broken wood and get it lit while the other two worked to dry us off. As soon as we were dry, a shift caused me to sprout a coat of curly wool that helped insulate Kassandra as her shivers began to slow and her body pulled in more heat from me and the others.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“What happened?” I asked when my dwarf lamia finally relaxed and regained enough control of herself to wind her tail around me.
The other three girls had pressed in around me, Rieka and Jane on one side while Shayla took the other, doing their best to help share body heat with Kassandra.
“I missed the first part of it,” Rieka began, frustration laying on her every word.
It was obvious that my wolfish princess was upset with herself over it, and possibly blaming herself for my getting hurt. I silenced that as best as I could by turning to press a kiss to her cheek by leaning over top of Kassandra.
“There had to have been a trap on that door. Probably something on the other side that you triggered on opening it,” Jane said when Rieka didn’t continue. “Maybe something you triggered in breaking the lock?”
“But why not on this other door?” Shayla asked, her antenna fluttering towards the storeroom door.
“Maybe it wasn’t as high security? That or Liam damaged that one differently,” Jane rattled off quickly. The small mouse woman pulled free of the pile and bounded over to look at the backside of the storeroom door. “I see runes here, but just an alarm one. Not something that would produce lightning.”
“It was terrifying,” Kassandra mumbled into my chest.
I looked down at my redheaded lover to see she was still crying, but far slower than before. She sniffled and rubbed at her eyes before continuing in a small voice.
“I heard the crack of the spell going off and turned to Liam. I saw you thrashing about and the door glowing from the discharge, then you convulsed and tore the handle right off the door, denting it out like that. It cut the spell off but your hand was ruined… the door handle was fused with your fingers.”
“Shh,” I hushed her gently, pulling Kassandra into my chest and rocking her lovingly in my arms. “You fixed it, love. I’m all better now.”
While I reassured Kassandra, I looked at each of the other three girls and got nods of agreement from them, confirming that my hand had been that badly mangled.
Glad I didn’t see it then, I thought without comment, turning my focus to reassuring Kassandra. Jane slipped back over and curled up in the impromptu group hug while the small fire crackled away in front of us reassuringly.
<><><>
It took another ten minutes before the girls were ready to move again. Kassandra was very demanding of snuggles during the time, despite the fact that her body temperature had rapidly recovered between the fire, the other girls, and my fuzzy coat of wool. But she eventually admitted that we needed to get moving.
I could tell that approaching the heavily damaged door made all four of the girls nervous, but they didn’t argue when I told them to head back into the other supply room to cover me from there.
From the look in Rieka’s and Jane’s eyes, the two of them at least understood that if any of them had been hit with the trap on the door, it would have killed them.
Since I didn’t have anything made of rubber handy, and couldn’t think of an animal with rubber skin to use, I did the next best thing and used a hunk of wood to hook the door and tug it the rest of the way out.
The door made an unearthly screeching noise when I pulled it fully open, the hinges deformed by the force I’d used trying to tear my hand free of the door after I’d blacked out. But it squealed open to reveal just what Jane had suggested.
While the first door had been a simple locking mechanism, there was a metal plate set on the back side of this lock that was half-melted by the entropic magic. The plate was absolutely covered in runes and sigils, most of which I recognized despite the damage to the plate as being related to conductivity and electricity.
When the action of opening the door didn’t produce another reaction, I eased up and peered into the room.
Like the other storeroom, it was set up with racks on the walls and a pair of tables in the middle of the room with elaborate brass scales and several other measuring devices. But unlike the other room, this one didn’t hold jars of ingredients or incense.
On one side of the room was a collection of bowls that held clusters of glimmering crystals under glass domes. These crystals glowed with internal light in a rainbow of colors, but the ones that caught my eye were at the far end of the row. The bowl only held a bare handful of the clear stones, but I immediately recognized the neutral mana crystals for what they were.
Opposite the crystals were what Rieka had been worrying and hoping for. Simple racks held a mixture of finger-sized metal rods and coin-sized hunks of mana-imbued metal. There were hundreds of the iron and copper coins, while just like before there were flat, sealed boxes next to them that I bet held the silver, gold, and palladium coins.
“Liam?” Rieka called from the other room.
“One minute, hon. Let me check for more traps,” I called back without thinking.
Rieka squeaked in surprise at the affectionate term and I smirked, imagining her blush as the other girls shot her knowing looks.
One of these days, my princess is going to get used to it. Until then though, it’s fun to tease her, I thought while carefully checking the room over.
Not wanting to risk the girls’ safety, I carefully shifted my arms into tendrils and ran them over every surface, checking the hard way for any trigger plates or the like. But nothing reacted to my touch and I called the girls in after I moved the three closed cases to a table in the middle of the room.
Rieka led the charge into the room, with Jane close behind her. While my princess hurried over to the table, spotting what I’d set out, the mouse kin woman stopped at the door to study the plate I’d pointed out to them. She began nodding furiously and was joined by Kassandra, who made noises of concern.
Shayla flitted over to look at the crystals, carefully studying the glass bell jars sitting over them to keep them isolated. Each of the large, porcelain bowls were filled with the crystals.
While in the other facility, they’d only had the primary four elements and some of the unaspected, here they had the four primary and all four secondary, as well as light and dark crystals too. Not many of the light and dark ones, but they did have them.
“Do you want to do the honors, Rieka?” I asked with a smile, patting the first of the three boxes. Just as before, they were shaped roughly like a cigar box but sized up, with a simple latch on the front to keep them closed. I’d picked the heaviest of the three first, figuring it was the silver coins.
“Considering that you got hurt coming in here, I think you should get to open them, Liam,” Rieka said quietly, pressing into my side and wrapping her arms around my waist as best as the smaller woman could.
“Okay, come on over here girls. I want all of you to see this,” I called, drawing the others to join the group hug while we looked over our loot. I caught Shayla and Jane glancing longingly at the mass of imbued copper and iron on the wall behind us, but when I popped the latch on the three cases in rapid order, they turned back.
Just as I’d suspected, the first case was nearly full of shimmering silver coins and ingots. Unlike the previous facility, most of the box was made up of the rod-shaped ingots that were about the size of my thumb. But there were still easily a hundred silver coins in the box, nestled into ancient blue velvet.
I didn’t study that one too long before moving to the next and popping open the case to reveal gold. It held about half as many of the ingots and coins as the silver one, glimmering brightly against the velvet lining.
It was utterly silent as I popped the latch on the last one and flipped it up to reveal its contents. All four girls were holding their breaths, only to let the air in their lungs out in a rush when they saw the contents.
Palladium as a metal is difficult to distinguish from silver. Side by side, they are nearly a perfect match in color. But the mana-imbued palladium of this world, called ‘holy palladium’ by the natives, literally sang with mana as oil-slicks of energy rippled over its surface. Opening the box felt like having someone turn a heat-lamp on my face, even in this mana-saturated environment.
Just like in the Shadow Mountain research facility, this one had the coins laid flat into recesses in an octagonal shape. Eight coins about the size of a quarter and they radiated more raw mana than the entire box of gold had.
“Holy shit.”
The squeaked exclamation from Jane broke the tense silence. I choked on a laugh as the small mouse woman bent closer, her tail flailing excitedly and nearly smacking me in the face.
“Yes, exactly that Jane,” I said when I’d gotten the laughter under control. “Come on, ladies. Let’s get all this secured and check the other half of the facility. I’m sure that the queen will only be happy when these are locked away somewhere safe.”
“But—” Jane began to protest, her eyes not moving from the glowing wellsprings of power in front of her. I couldn’t fault the tiny scholar, it was probably more mana in one place than she’d ever seen before in her life.
I gently laid a hand on her head, stroking the hair between her rounded ears reassuringly. She twitched but leaned into the affectionate caress and I felt the length of her tail wrap around my waist once.
“It’ll be okay, Jane. I guarantee the queen will pay you properly for these,” I reassured.
“Agreed. It might take time to get the funds together for them, but mother would not risk allowing these in the open market. Until then… Liam, I want you to hold on to these.” Rieka tapped the box holding the coins. “Your Dimensional Pocket is the single most-secure location we have access to. I want you to store these there at least. I’d have you take the gold too, but there’s too much there.”
“Yeah, mine is limited by weight and there is more than ten pounds of gold there…” I sighed as I looked at the boxes before a thought tickled the back of my mind. “Though I might need some raw materials to take back to work with. I can earn money back home by making that jewelry and the statues, but if I can cut out the need to go panning for it then it might be worth it.”
“I can get you some regular gold, Liam. It’ll be easy enough since I’m managing your investments,” Kassandra interjected. “But let's get this packed up. Those unaspected crystals at the end are yours, of course. Just like the other ones were.”
None of the girls protested that. From the looks on their faces, I was fairly sure that they would have all been rather upset if I refused, so I just nodded in understanding.
“Thanks, Nugget.”
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