Bodies Convenyed Together, becoming Asa’s Medium!

Viatrix, with his egregiously modified and fit body, in seconds, penetrated my punching distance, which also happened to be where he could bite me accurately. Out of options, I fired my right, yet he slipped the punch easily to the side. So much for my amateur boxing.

My body seized up as six livid snake heads latched on as Viatrix bore into my personal space. I couldn’t break out from the creature eating me alive; Viatrix’s noxious embrace was solid, and I knew even leaving would give me six simultaneous incisions to bleed from like a shoddy kiddie pool.

My vision was dimming, and my muscles cramped. My head was a mercury migraine. The weakness took all my concentration not to falter to the ground.

I would have if not for Asa’s healing flowing through me, a warm pair of hands on the back of my shirt. I had to assume it was working as a countermeasure, an antivenom against the venom. Still, it was one woman against six of the most venomous snakes, all bearing their liquid death.

“I should warn you,” Viatrix divulged. “Soon, your blood will clot at vital points. This will manifest in internal bleeding, a full-body hemorrhage, a true killer. You don’t have to perish to my translucent venom. Just abandon, Asa. I’m sure the blow of losing her own medium will make it easy to defeat her.”

My body was being overtaken and drained. It unshackled my impulses. Betray Asa. Anything was justified to stop this suffering. My past and future could not be considered. You don’t want to die, do you? Especially after already dying once. This is your final chance.

My survival instincts could be a real deserter, huh?

“Hold! Stay the course!” Asa necessitated from behind. “It’ll be the only way we can both navigate past Damnation. I know you can triumph even as you falter. You want to prove yourself, don’t you? My attack will materialize if you continue through this torment by moving past your limits!”

I wanted to respond to her encouragement.

Unfortunately, my rate of breathing was uncontrollably hastening. I panted, unable to control and balance my diaphragm or core. This attack was going to be useless if it took too long. What should I do? The Beast Kingdom could be my choice. The real question was, would they ever consider a turncoat to be one of them?

The answer was obvious. I imagined I would be at the bottom again and likely to die in their order. Replaceable this, dumbest that, a real disappointment. Every place I’ve been, they look down on me, and they don’t even have reservations about telling it to my face. There was no beauty in it, only shame for me. I was being petty, or so my parents say, but I preferred to understand it as having a suitable memory.

It was clear. In my heart, Asa was who I aligned with. This time, I had someone who needed me just as much as I needed her. I was on a mission that only I could strictly perform.

I wasn’t choosing her because she was the strongest. Other gods would take that crown in attack and defense. I could see that already.

I wasn’t choosing her because she could give me generous rewards and status. Nothing like that mattered anymore to me.

Asa was my selected party because, compared with these unknown gods, she comprehended what they couldn’t. She gave me the best food that I never had the opportunity to eat on Earth. She was completely kind and honest, and was my only hope in navigating this nightmare. Most importantly, she had an ambitious dream I could follow.

She made me want to believe in my abilities to see how far we can go. What was the point of reaching the top if I didn’t do it my way? With my companions.

She was misjudged as an underdog in the same way I have been. I’ve seen it today, Gwydion schemed and sent a single medium to vanquish a god. That insult was stronger tasting than the blood tainting my inner mouth. I was bitter, and I was ready to show that underdogs have fiercer fangs than any other animal a zoologist could configure.

“I’ll be your medium,” I said. “I’ll be your knight, Asa!”

“Okay, I was starting to worry. I’ll give you as much of my precious power as I can.” She responded with determination.

Abruptly, my back recognized soft sensations amid cloth. It was as if I were being embraced from behind. Her arms and palms moved up higher on my back, and her chest, face, and torso pressed with temperature and faith into my lower back.

“The more I cling onto you, Astrid, the more magic I can force out as healing at once,” Asa whispered.

I could have exposed my feelings if my face wasn’t flushed ruby red from the venom. My legs were shaking just as much from Asa as from the venom. I kind of dreamed of being nuzzled like this, and it really happened.

Getting treated nicely and brushing with a pretty girl was admittedly a weakness of mine. Which was news to me. I was finding out through experience, huh. Damm, this was embarrassing.

I was intoxicated until I let it go. More was demanded of me.

Vitarix’s snakes hissed in irritation and scoured new sections of my body. Two of them even targeted Asa, though I intercepted them. I snatched them by the neck and felt something like a snake whisperer. That was until they savagely latched onto my wrists.

“My body is still on the ropes. My death is guaranteed at this rate!”

Divulge the Words. Seal the Pact.

The exact words I heard when I had that first oblivious conversation with Asa. This time, the commandment bellowed in my mind like it was one of my own thoughts. Incredible and poignant.

[Telepathy is difficult for me, but all gods can do it at will if they prefer. I can talk to you, yet you have to purposefully talk to me if I am to hear your thoughts. Urgently, you must acquire self-healing to combine with mine. The only way is to become my medium.]

I put extra emphasis and emotion in my mind and imagined the recipient as Asa, who was the only impression my mind received. [Sending thoughts works like this?]

[Yes.] She replied.

[How am I meant to know the words to do this?] I asked as Viatrix grinned, as I stood immobile. He kicked my shins and kneecaps. What a little shit. I winced from the bluntness.

[Assemble them for yourself from your heart and soul. I’ll move our spiritual bodies together.] She said.

Before I could react in agreement, she pressed her forehead into my back and wrapped her hands around mine. I felt each groove of her palm and skin, and their tenderness whittled with my calluses. It was blissful, particularly because my body was going so cold. Oh, you charming, sensual goddess. Souls would go to war for less.

In my mind, I handed her my full trust, and I experienced a room-vibrating gong sound reverberate through my soul. I found myself in a majestic temperate field of autumn trees and wild flowers at the heart of blossom, surrounded by moths and monarch butterflies, with just another formless humanoid glowing figure, and I looked much the same. Did I disappear from the fighting?

She was still holding my hands; I was facing her, and we floated freely with our feet above our heads. The world upside down felt like that was how it always should have been.

I…I understood what to say. My mouth forced open in spite of the paralysis that had taken hold, and to Viatrix’s complete dismay, he heard me herald words in the physical realm. He saw my body enlightened with a lantern’s radiance. I spoke with an eldritch amplification to my voice, intertwined with Asa’s distinct gallant speech.

I am a bound human in a ritual of the Gods.

The time has come to awaken anew

as a Medium and take up a keen oath

I will savor the suffering while ceasing it

For all that is noble. Bestow me power

upon a union with Asa of Goodwill.

With each of my words, the world I knew was spun on its head. I felt burgeoning energy that my spiritual body used as a supply to updraft against the air itself, and Asa cheerfully dragged me through worlds removed from the divine realm. Some I knew already. There wasn’t really an aim. She was showing me what she saw and had found the same as an unbridled child would.

The grey and white craters of the moon, the expansive, crimson, and plaster-sculpted Pluto, and the cosmic ejections and flare-ups of the sun. I could touch them. They were real, I wasn’t. Simple space was pleasurable to traverse with stars and otherworldly rocks. Finally, I took Asa to Earth, gliding through cities I had never seen and would never see again. No one else gets to see this, I thought, which really opened my eyes.

I flew through the lit towers and conglomerates of Solar City, and in and around the smog clouds and for the first time, I could make sense of the endless cluster and see the charm I saw in the beginning. The city I hated could be so much more if it threw excess away and focused on cleaning out the crime above and under the table.

These visions flickered in what must have been only scarce seconds to anyone else. The process of consummation defied time, huh? It was a form of mental, spiritual stasis.

I was back in the divine realm, exhausted, but much stronger. I was fulfilled and still more of a human husk than after working for twenty hours. I was shown clairvoyancy at the infinite cost of not being certain I could experience it again. I was so connected with my goddess in great joy that I felt I didn’t have to be afraid again.