Divinity Rescue Corps
126- Ability Alchemy

I awoke the next morning to birds chirping, the breeze sighing through the gigantic spherical leaves of the trees and the grasses, the sun warming the place, and lots of supple flesh pressed up against me.

Cinzy hadn’t wanted to sleep separately and followed me to my room, where we had yet another unhurried round of sex. Finally she and I drifted off to sleep on my bed, only to be joined sometime in the night by Vellenia, Regina, and Tweedle Dee. Also for some reason Isabelle had joined in? A typical morning meant Vellenia snuggled up on my left, sometimes Tara or Regina on my right, and that was it. Right now Cinzy was draped over the left half of my body, while Vellenia snuggled in on my right. Tweedle Dee was curled up in a ball between my legs, and Regina lay down there with an arm draped over so she could sleep pet her bond mate. Isabelle was spooning Vellenia, and slowly running her free hand up and down the pure white skin, with its minty green and pink highlights. The other was tucked under my pillow.

Also everybody was naked. Tweedle Dee was also naked but that was the default setting for a flower fox.

For a long time, I just lay there and enjoyed the springy, toned bodies in my arms. I noted Vellenia’s eyes open and we smiled quietly at one another. It was time to get to work, but it was also time to soak up some good old fashioned cuddle time.

Now I don’t know about you, but I figure few people have had naked cuddle puddles with more than one person. I would say, so long as you love and trust all these people, I’d recommend it. Sure you can’t really go anywhere, but you might have a gorgeous sleeping woman run her thumb back and forth over your nipple, while another partner stares lovingly into your eyes. Then, after a minute of that, she shifts up and sticks out all of her tongues for the weirdest kiss imaginable.

Cinzy’s confession meant a second of my ladies had pushed past the Relationship plateau and up to the next level: Devotee. The trust she had displayed was enough, apparently.

The Relationship level up also brought about another change, and I was presented with it while laying there in the mass of snoozing ladies: first, whether I wanted to overwrite one of my shared abilities with a Bard ability, or level up one of my existing shared abilities.

Presently, I had Psyspeech, Stalwart, Fierce, Eagle Eyed, and Beast Talker.

The first and last were too valuable to get rid of. Stalwart and Fierce gave me unexpected social check leverage I had used to get out of some sticky situations. Eagle Eyed was also excellent for spotting, problems, and not being snuck up on. In a world of ambush predators, I liked that one.

Fierce probably got used the least. It relied on me pressuring people into social checks.

The other option was using Cinzy’s level up to level up any of these powers. Right away, Beast Talker was the obvious choice, but all of them had come in handy at various points. That was like taking your highest level ability and leveling it up even higher. Sure your other abilities are kind of meh, but you never use them so who cares?

I hesitated there, because any replacement from Cinzy would be pretty great, and work more often than Fierce at least. It would be a social power.

With all that in mind, I decided to chance it and grab a new ability.

Congratulations! You have joined in the flesh with Cinzia Graham. Your relationship has increased to Devotees.

Partners devoted to one another are something special to behold. Friends, family and even bystanders will remark upon how good they look as a couple, how natural.

This is the fifth level on the Relationship track, and brings with it the first tangible system benefits.

*You lose Relationship points with Cinzia more slowly.

*Your shared abilities advance. You have gained Intrinsically Convincing Oration Atop Simple Soapbox III. Cinzia Graham has advanced Healing Aura to level III. If you choose this ability, Beast Talker will be lost.

*You gain a Meld ability.

And as soon as it appeared, I laughed, remembering that all of Cinzy’s abilities had long, overly-elaborate names. My upgraded Affinity and the skill Mana Affinity allowed me to know for sure what I’d be getting if I chose to replace Beast Talker.

Intrinsically Convincing Oration Atop Simple Soapbox III

(Special Ability, Uncommon, passive)

I- Any time you use a non-intimidation Social check, you gain +2 skill levels. If you are at an elevated position when speaking, gain an additional +1 level.

II- When addressing more than one target for a non-intimidation Social check, gain +1 skill level per target beyond the second, to a maximum of your Likability attribute. If you are at an elevated position when speaking and you succeed in your check, regain a Token at random. 

III- Difficulties for non-intimidation social checks while addressing more than one target are reduced by 25%. If you are at an elevated position when speaking, difficulties are instead halved.

Unreal. Okay, there was no way I was replacing Beast Talker. This would turn me into a mini Cinzy whenever I addressed up to… 10 people. Meaning that social checks got much more difficult the more people who participated, and I had a defense against that. The need for a literal soapbox was so funny to me. It didn’t seem like a bad trade off, and the ability to regain a Token was a good one. I just wasn’t about to start rattling off oration on a soapbox or tree stump whenever I wanted a Token back. It seemed ethically questionable.

I lay there enjoying the flood of new information, possibilities, and abilities.

The next thing my UI did was inform me that I also had another Meld ability.

Oh boy. I hadn’t even dealt with the first one from Regina yet. And, sure, Regina was running around with over a dozen Nakamamon pals at any given time, frolicking like a princess who could sing to birds and deer and bunnies, but I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to replace one of my abilities with another. The future held uncertainty.

Cinzy would also get a Meld ability, but she only had a single ability from me. She would take Healing Aura and apply it to one of her abilities. As for me, I had to consider how I wanted to combine any of my four abilities from the ladies with any of the ten I had from my two classes. How would Arcane Alchemy pair with Eagle Eyes, or Stalwart?  What would happen if I put Man Enough together with Psyspeech?

There were a total of forty different combinations I could pick from.

I laid out a mental list, beginning with abilities I’d gotten from the ladies.

Psyspeech

Stalwart

Eagle Eyes

Fierce

Beast Talker

You could map these onto the Attributes, sort of. Stalwart could easily fit into Durability, the long name from Cinzy would cover Likability, and Eagle Eyes and Psyspeech both seemed to favor Ingenuity, or Affinity. Beast Talker also felt like it went there. Fierce was the one to match with Physicality.

My new Arcane Mender abilities could do likewise.

Arcane Alchemy: Ingenuity

Healer’s Resistance: Physicality… or possibly Durability

Verdant Rejuvenation: Likability

Mending Aura: Affinity

Mender’s Focus: Durability… or maybe Physicality?

It wasn’t a perfect fit, it would do.

Some of these would make no sense in how they might fit. How would Mending Aura, which was a great ability and I could definitely see myself copying, mesh with Eagle Eyed or Psyspeech?

And that didn’t even take into account the Indulgent Consort abilities, which mapped to the attributes as well.

Eromancy: Ingenuity

Post-Sharing Clarity: Affinity

Drive In Deeper: Durability

Man Enough: Physicality

Coming Together: Likability

Again the possibilities seemed endless. Man Enough allowed me to clone myself, which only worked in the bedroom. If I melded it with one of my abilities from the girls, I doubted it would work outside the bedroom. I just get an even more erotic thing, which seemed hardly necessary. Or if I wanted to further enhance Token generation, could I meld together Drive In Deeper with one of my gift abilities? And that didn’t even take into account Coming Together, which I hadn’t used yet… if allowed my partners to experience my sensations. The options were mind boggling.

When I placed the abilities into the little UI window’s oven to meld them together, I got a vague sense of how the melding was going to end up. This was a strange sensation: when I placed Eagle Eyed with any of the Pleasure Seeker abilities, they all felt gross and wrong. Only the Eromancy one gave me the impression it might be okay, like Blissense all over again. I repeated the process, and got the feeling that the ability from Cinzy was equally as weird and off-putting. The sensations from Stalwart or Psyspeech were much more compatible. The vibe from them was that I’d last longer in bed, or be much better at sensation. Whether that was my partner’s feelings or their erotic fantasies was unclear. Heck, it could mean that my erogenous zones were a lot more sensitive. 

It was a very different situation when comparing the gifted abilities to my Healer abilities. Arcane Alchemy paired well with both Psyspeech and Eagle Eyed, but much less so with Fierce or Stalwart. A diagnostic tool? It could be incredibly useful to be able to find the scattered parts of a dead god, or diagnose problems with the help of an ability.

Verdant Rejuvenation already seemed like more than enough… but paired with Eagle Eyed, again the feeling I got was a sensing ability. Would I get a plant sense, to help me find ingredients? Pairing it with Stalwart gave me a strange impression… hardy plants. Like they would keep longer once I cut them.

Mending Aura was the most useful in the short term. I could bring people back from the brink of death just by spending Tokens. So if I got another ability like that… could I though? The UI gave me some very strange vibes once I slotted in my three choices. Adding Stalwart was the most right feeling option, sort of like I could extend that willfulness out to others. Pairing it with Psyspeech felt right too, but I couldn’t place why. It felt like it would assist with mental illnesses.

I tried not to feel smothered by all the options and potential. The real question was what I wanted or needed.

So what did I want? Clearly, having sex and driving my partners wild needed to be secondary to my actual job. The trouble was, I was getting some wild abilities out of Pleasure Seeker. I could create a forking clone myself, and do Ivy and Isabelle at the same time. Now when I enjoyed some time with Cinzy or Regina, my attributes were boosted for almost an hour afterwards. I regained Tokens and boosted Relationship rewards even faster.

Pleasure Seeker was also the reason I was in this position to begin with. It had been a gateway to the abilities that helped me overcome all the problems with Blake’s people. Fending off the Ferrosaurs? Beast Talker. Enraging Blake’s people into making mistakes? Stalwart and Fierce. Gathering a whole host of creatures to stampede the camp? Beast Talker again. I wouldn’t have any of those if it hadn’t been for my abilities in the bedroom.

On the other hand, we had a god to bring back to life and then heal, and it was ramping up to be a big one. I definitely needed to meld a Healer ability with one of my abilities from the girls.

“Ugh,” I said, quietly, so as not to wake the girls.

In the end, the clearest and best sense I’d gotten from the UI was Mending Aura and Psyspeech. Trouble was, just like Beast Talker, I didn’t want to give up Psyspeech.

“Here goes nothing,” I breathed.

At the very last second, I switched out Psyspeech. I waffled between Stalwart and Fierce. Finally, I put Stalwart together with Mending Aura.

Congratulations! The UI gushed. You have melded your second ability! Stalwart has been replaced by Mender’s Soothing Mental Balm.

Okay that… sounded good. I felt the muscles in my body relax.

Mender’s Soothing Mental Balm II

(Special Ability, Rare, Aura)

Speak soothing words to those within range suffering from mental or emotional distress to help ease their torment and anguish.

Spend an Affinity Token. Make a Treatment check with Affinity to immediately begin healing all beings within range. All mental illnesses suffered by nearby non-divine creatures are healed so long as this aura is active. Once the aura ends, all creatures previously affected by mental illnesses regain them at half strength and half duration.

Range: 60 feet. Duration: 1 hour.

This was… good. Very different from Stalwart, but auras as a rule were excellent, and this was no exception. This one worked differently than Mender’s Aura, which healed hit points lost and that was about it. Instead, this would give me time to work up a cure while providing an umbrella of perfect calm for those around me.

I thought back to the emotional distress of the Marshins in the first village we’d come to. The people of Slinktrickle had been mortified that their entire clutch of eggs would die, and that ballooned out into a zombie-like fervor to get at their eggs. It wouldn’t have helped, and they’d have only destroyed their eggs, but the emotions had been so overwhelming that they wouldn’t know or believe us. Instead we were just meddling outsiders who were just like Blake’s people.

This would have obviated all of that. In its place, the eggs would have seemed perfect and healed faster. The cure would’ve been much easier to brew up. The blow up with the entire village wouldn’t have happened.

And likewise, perhaps I could’ve activated it and saved Cinzy from leaving. Hell, maybe I could’ve convinced Blake to take his damn medicine and stop being a piece of shirt.

This was a good thing, no two ways about it. I snuggled into the comforting feel of many women and luxuriated in knowing I’d done the right thing.

Almost everything about Cinzy was amazing, except for her difficult position with regard to me and other women. Oh, sure, she was in a naked pile with them now, but she still looked around with apprehension, then at me. What was she doing, being with a guy who was definitely having sex with almost every woman within shouting distance? That was a recipe for getting seriously hurt… which had already sort of happened once. It had also been sort of her fault.

But it wouldn’t happen again, now that I had my new aura!

I stroked her cheek, her ear, the line of her jaw, and when her eyes met mine, I smiled at her with what I hoped was placid reassurance. I didn’t know how the Bard could be so commanding and in control of the emotions of others, yet still be such a mess internally, but we would get through it together.

This is Christopher with the right tool for the job.

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