Liberty and Death, Chapter 67
[Lysander Pridelorn] [Level 11 Arcane Conduit (A)]
[Str:5]
[Dex:8]
[End:5]
[Vit:8]
[Agi: 8]
[Int:93]
[Will:24]
[Cha:15]
[Class Actives: {Elemental Surge}, {Ascendant Thaumaturgy}]
[Class Passives: {Elemental Weaving}]
[Skills: {Thaumaturgy III}, {Mana Channeling II}, {Stat Focus: [Int]}, {Arcane Implement Proficiency}, {Staff Mastery II}]
[Titles: [Anima Corpus], [Not Your First Time]]
[Skill points: 3]
“Holy shit,” was all Cora could muster in response to a, frankly, better looking and magic elf clone of herself appearing in the study. To be fair, she had thought she was going to fucking die a second ago, so she felt some degree of clemency was in order.
“Mmm. Crude,” Cora’s own voice said back to her, vaguely british, but all fantasy, all her. “More than a little bit proving my point, I think,” she chuckled, good humor coloring teasing words.
Right, Lysander was kind of a bitch, but a bitch with a heart of gold, Cora thought, accepting the hand she extended down to where Cora’s non-mush body had ended up on the floor.
She pulled Cora up, bringing her eye to those electric green eyes.
Lysander was one of the very few times the Casanova blues hadn’t been front and center on every movie poster.
That was the trouble with playing an established character, especially one from a video game; if you changed anything, you were liable to get lynched by rabid fans.
Fortunately, Cora had already been built like your typical unrealistic fantasy heroine, so the only thing they’d really needed to do was change her eyes and ears in post.
To be frank, in the movie, it had looked fine. Just fine. But now, made real, in person…
Lysander smirked, lips Cora knew better than the ones that were actually on the face she wore currently quirking up at the edges. Cora gulped.
Oh shit. Oh no. I cannot be enough of a narcissist to be flustered by my-fucking-self, can I?
“It’s fine, Cora, I’m quite used to the stares,” Lysander chuckled, perfectly plucked eyebrow arching in amusement. “Maybe even more than you were, I daresay.”
She raised a hand, and snapped her fingers.
The air in the office shifted swirling around Lysander. Cora’s skin dried a bit, as mist condensed around Lysander’s plush curves, forming an ethereal, flowing dress of water vapor.
Lysander frowned at it, apparently unsatisfied with her magic, then pointed at the fireplace, where a portion of its flame jumped to her fingertip. She traced it along her body, smiling to herself as blazing trails lingered in the smoke, leaving her dressed in nothing but water and fire, and more beautiful than either.
“FUCK ME, Cora, is that what you looked like back home?” Hawk said, leering at Lysander. She might as well have been drooling.
Wait, actually, she was a little bit.
Well, fuck, its not like I’m not staring.
“Uh… not quite,” Cora said, turning to the rest of her gang, mouths agape, one and all. “Hey, guys, so this is–”
“Lysander Pridelorn,” her magical double said, cutting Cora off. She gave a dazzling smile to Cora’s assembled heroes. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”
“A pleasure!” Tania cooed, looking at the mist-cloaked sorceress like a goddess. Lysander preened, ego true to form for what Cora remembered of her.
“I’ll say,” Hawk rumbled, with far less awe and far more lust than Tania’s tone had carried. Lysander looked at her with disdain.
“Mm. Please, any of you, catch me up on the situation. I’ve seen some of it through Cora’s eyes, and share her understanding of it, but let me tell you, that understanding is not great,” Lysander said with a dramatic sigh, and a little side eye thrown in Kyra’s direction.
“Hey!”
“Dear, you’ve focused on brawn over brains during your entire stay in this horrid city. Using Lacey’s gauche muscles instead of my intelligence? Well, you’re lucky understanding is what you’re lacking, instead of life and limb,” Lysander riposted before Cora really had a chance to defend herself.
She raised a finger to respond but…
Well, yeah, Lysander had pretty much nailed her to the cross there.
“Allow me,” Kyra said, stepping forward, taking a moment to smirk at Cora’s speechless scowl.
“So, Lysander, you’re some kind of wizard?” Kyra asked. She ran her eyes down Lysander's ever-shifting dress, trying to make like she was using it as evidence of what she’d said.
She wasn’t fooling anyone. That said, everyone else was checking out the fantasy knockout, so it wasn’t like they could judge.
“Of a kind, yes,” Lysander said. She boldly gave Kyra the same once over she’d just received, only with no pretense of it being anything but appreciative. When she locked onto Kyra’s hazel eyes, her smile said she liked what she’d found. “I am a conduit of the arcane. I would be powerful even without the knowledge that defines a wizard,” she declared grandiosely. Then her lip curled up in a aggravatingly arrogant smirk. “Fortunately, I possess that knowledge as well.”
“Lysander,” Cora interrupted, “this is… I mean, don’t you solve everything? I remember the climax of Warworld, you called down a meteor on a whole ass city! Nothing in Tyrinno should be able to fuckin’ touch you!”
“Should being the operative word, there,” Lysander snarled, enticing curl of her lip turning ugly. She sighed, like she was admitting to a personal failing.
“As I said, Cora, I am a conduit of the arcane. My strength waxes and wanes with the ambient magic of the world. Azalon was awash in arcane energies, this place… well, I am like a prize racing steed shackled to a rusty plow. Either I will have to grow stronger, or this world will, for such feats to be available to me,” Lysander explained.
Cora sucked in a disappointed breath, and let it out in one word; “Fuck.”
“Hah! Don’t sound so disappointed, dear. I am far more than magic meteors and arcane apocalypses,” Lysander said.
“Yeah, you’re a fire fashionista,” Cora grumbled, drawing a more genuine laugh out of the elf.
“That I most definitely am, but no, I meant that I am so much smarter than you that it’d likely be more appropriate for me to view you as a pet, rather than a peer,” she said, with what might be the first good-natured sneer Cora had ever seen. “Also, I can still shoot fireballs big enough to deal with most things in this city, just not the city itself.”
“Well woof woof, then,” Cora laughed, “cause we’re in need of some smarts. Mike’s got a hell of a mind for logistics, but most of us are…”
“Women of action!” Hawk finished.
“Kind way to put it, but yeah,” Cora admitted.
Lysander gave her the kind of smile a mother might give a well behaved child. Or a dog particularly good at following instructions, it was weird how close those looks were.
“In time, Cora,” Lysander said. Her eyes drifted back to Kyra, who squirmed, but not entirely uncomfortably, beneath her gaze. “I believe your delectable friend here was in the middle of catching me up on things?”
A few minutes later, a little of the shine had come off of Lysander’s self-assured demeanor.
“Right, so, you are isolated, in a staggeringly dangerous part of a city that is almost wholly hostile to you, with no allies, and immediate enemies with access to effectively limitless manpower?” Lysander summarized. Put like that, yeah, Cora wasn’t feeling great either. Not that she had been previously.
“Yep!” Kyra said, remarkably chipper. “Soooooooo many motherfuckers to kill! It’ll never be enough, but fuck, I’ll probably die before I’m finished with the ones on my plate anyway.”
Lysander smirked at that. Cora didn’t, but she understood Lysander’s reaction.
If that woman had the memories of the character she looked like, then she’d burned her entire kingdom down, rather than let it remain the tyrannical hellscape it had become under her younger brother.
“Right, well, I very much appreciate the… optimism? Kyra, but it is difficult to see your situation as a positive. Any more variables I need to be aware of?” Lysander asked.
“Could you guys hear [Big Sys] in my head?” Cora asked.
“Hmm?”
“Oh, then at least one big variable,” Cora laughed. “God is on our side, in a fairly literal sense.”
‘Oh don’t flatter him Cora! He’ll be intolerable!’ Lux complained.
“Ah, the charming animus loci of this place, how do you do, Lux?” Lysander said, and the air heated slightly in what they had all come to realize as Lux blushing.
‘Very well, having such a beautiful new resident!’ The house giggled. ‘I’ll have to update the furnishings, or you’ll make the place look dour by comparison!’
“Didn’t you just scold me about flattery?” Cora asked.
‘Yes, well, I am the only one besides you who can hear [Big Sys] all the time, and he is… talkative.’
I GET BORED
SUE ME!
YOU’RE A HOUSE? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO?
‘Quite a lot, actually!’ Lux answered, as the rest of the room’s occupants looked confused at missing half the conversation.
“Leave it!” Cora commanded, and while both deific ethereal forces grumbled, they obeyed.
“Do you remember Azalon as a video game, or just as your world?” Cora asked Lysander.
“Simply as my home, for what it was worth near the end,” Lysander answered. “Video game?”
“That’s what your world was in my world,” Cora answered. “Doesn’t matter. What matters, is that in my world, you had stats. Numbers that represented your strength. I kinda hoped that’d be something you remembered, so you could explain it better than the voice in my head does, but not like I’ve been lucky recently anyway.”
Cora sighed, and locked eyes with Lysander.
“Your stats were astronomical. Enough so that it carried over a little apparently, you’re already level 11 in this world. Just… try to think about it a bit,” Cora prompted. Lysander looked skeptical, but her brow furrowed in concentration, then her eyes went wide as she found out Cora wasn’t lying.
Cora didn’t have to explain much. Lysander must have speed-read her own stats, then moved on to everyone elses.
“My my…” she said, with a smirk that quickly became a frown. “Well, like you implied, it does seem to be quite a downgrade, but it isn’t nothing. How is this related to… what did you say, [Big Sys]?”
“Right, so, the thing, god, dude, whatever that controls all that brought me here personally, and he’s been… helping?”
I HAVE BEEN HELPING!
“He’s the reason so many of us have stats and classes. That’s not common here. For reference, it would have been in your world,” Cora explained.
“Hmm… so, the forces of Luxholme, while small, are comparatively elite?” Lysander asked.
“Oh definitely,” Cora nodded, “anyone in this room is worth, like 50 of those dickheads.”
“Psh, I killed 50 of ‘em last night,” Hawk scoffed. “Pump those numbers up, Miss Mistress.”
“Right, and Hawk is considerably more dangerous than the rest of us,” Cora nodded, patting the big girl’s flank, then yelping as Hawk wrapped an arm around her waist pulling her in close.
Cora didn’t quite manage to stop herself from catching her lip between her teeth. The transformation hadn’t made Hawk’s scent any less potent… intoxicating.
“But there is the matter of the [Class Traitor], yes?” Lysander asked, and Cora felt Hawk deflate a little bit. “The enemies arrayed against us have a very solid counter for our own ace.”
“Yeah…” Hawk admitted. Cora didn’t like that. Sure, Hawk had gotten her ass beat last night, but it wasn’t like her to admit it.
“Tell me, is there any public connection between the Chains and your other enemy, namely the entirety of Tyrinno’s gentry and slave owning class?” Lysander asked.
Cora had no idea, but Mike did.
“None, though what Kyra has told me about their encounter at that ghastly mill implies there is very much a tacit one,” he reported.
Cora would have expected the news that their enemies were at least a loosely united front would draw a negative reaction from Lysander.
Instead, the smile she delivered was one of the most terrifying things Cora had ever seen.