The Sands of Time

“Cotter… now… would be a good time to share that skill with the rest of us!” Piper cried. “W-We can’t carry on like this!”

Pandemonium would be a good way to describe the current situation.

Whatever drills and physical training I honed in the orphanage courtyard, it felt like I was doing all my moves ten times faster in succession just to keep myself afloat.

In other words, I was getting tired. I couldn’t imagine how Piper and Uriel felt.

[Major Frostbite!]

The spell I conjured was aimed squarely at a goblin that was about to cut into Piper. Swivelling, Piper clubbed its head clean off!

Of course, the tank being the tank, she was using a club instead of a sensible weapon when going against armorless enemies!

Still, I can’t afford to get distracted! I needed to share my power to the rest of the group!

But how?!

I parried a jagged cleaver with my forearm ward; Daisy’s vine snapped from the ground and tripped the orc for me. “I don’t know,” I said, lame even to my ears. “I thought about group cohesion and… something inside me just activated.”

“Gods…” Piper’s eyes widened as a second goblin feinted at her knees. “You must not trust us enough.”

I shook my head, breath fogging. “Maybe we’re not as cohesive as I thought.”

I may as well have planted picket fences between us with this power.

“It tracks,” Daisy said, palm up. A blossom unfurled, kicking an orc’s knee sideways. “Technically, Cotter and I know more about each other than you and he do.”

“H-he’s known you for all of three months!” Piper sputtered.

“And yet my newfound power speaks for itself,” Daisy said, flicking the flower’s stem toward a charging goblin. “Why do you think that is?”

“Whatever it is, we need it!”

“There were no secrets between us,” Daisy answered. Her voice went strangely calm as she slid beside me, shoulder to shoulder, our link singing. “For instance: he knows that I’m the reincarnated form of Malmitres, a rather bloodthirsty demigod from ages past.”

“You are a what?” Piper missed a beat, just enough for a goblin to nick her forearm. Blood beaded; she hissed and batted it away. My [Major White Flame] caught it in the chest and hurled it back!

“He also knows the daily hell I go through because Malmitres keeps trying to possess my body,” Daisy added, calling a second flower. She peeled a petal loose with clinical care even as an orc lurched at her. She stepped in close, tapped a finger to Piper’s collarbone.

The nasty cut healed. Piper’s been getting injured the whole time, and that was what left her reeling? “So despite all your attempts to paint me as a cruel and vindictive bitch, I don’t mean for things to come out the way they do.”

Uriel’s knife flashed and drove home into a goblin’s heart, and it crumpled. “RAU!! Can we please, please, please leave this for later?!”

“No, she needs to hear this!” Daisy shouted.

Piper dodged some strikes in the meanwhile. “I’m also interested in what emo-girl has to say.”

“We all know I’m a loner,” Daisy went on, eyes tracking a new wave forming at our nine o’clock. “Maybe I’m just more comfortable not being around people. Not because I hate anyone. I’m just awkward and terrible with social skills—and always have been. That doesn’t give you an excuse to demonize me, Piper. Cotter takes me how I am.”

This was by far the longest I’ve heard Daisy talk in any conversation.

“In spite of the social deficits though, I am observant. I read people well. Which is why it’s obvious you’re putting on a mask every time I ta—”

“I-It is not a mask!” Piper blurted, tail coiling tight around her own waist as three goblins vaulted a log toward her. “Y-you think what I’ve been doing has been strictly rational and calculated?!”

“It’s a mask all the same,” Daisy said quietly. “And Cotter instinctively knows that, whether he wants to acknowledge that or not.”

Piper bared sharkish teeth. “If you want my mask off, then fine!”

“Piper…?” Uriel’s ears flattened further; a cut bled down her cheek where an orc’s blade had kissed her ward thin.

“I’m done hiding, Yuree-El. Done duping everyone around me. Done playing a part I’m decidedly not!”

She rose onto her coils and shrugged off her linen coat even as arrows hissed through it. A golden crest over her heart flashed in the grey light. I actually swayed. Now? How was this appropriate now?

“My name is Princess Py Pir, third of her name, of the Pymon line in the Oasis Kingdom—the so-called Kingdom of Sand!” She batted an arrow aside with the back of her hand. “By right of my eighteenth year this twelvemonth, I claim my name and crest!”

The golden emblem over her heart flared, throwing honey-light across the snow. For one heartbeat everything went still—then the air warped, heat shimmering where there shouldn’t be any.

“Engel?” I asked, already bracing Daisy as the blue link tugged us into position.

“Temperature spike,” Engel squeaked from her root-bunker. “Localized heat dome… rising!”

A knot of goblins surged at Piper.

Py Pir coiled high, crest blazing. “Royal Rite,” she intoned, each word landing like a seal, “Crown of the Oasis—Unbind!!”

Snow sublimed to steam around her, then fell back as glittering tan sand that hadn’t been there a blink before. It spiraled up her like a living cloak. Mirage-serpents flickered in the heat haze—dozens—each a ribbon of sunlit grit with a viper’s yawning jaws.

[ULTIMATE ABILITY: SANDSTORM!!]

Goblins all around us were blasted back by an awesome force!

The sand soon disappeared...

And we were all that was left in its wake!

“Vitals stable but dropping,” Engel reported, flitting to Piper’s side with trembling hands. “I sense you used a lot of mana… you should rest.”

“Later,” Py Pir hissed.

“Holy crap, Py Pir…” Yuree-El wasn’t just facepalming; she was carving a hand-shaped hole into her skull. “On the battlefield? In front of the East Gate garrison?!”

“You think anyone is going to care right now?!”

“...Point taken.”

I knew Py Pir had something fishy going on, but revealing it like this?!

“That’s not all though…” Py Pir continued. “There was a reason my parents chose East Gate over the capital, where perhaps I would have been more easily hidden.

All of a sudden I felt a wave of connection between Py Pir and I. Was it working?!

Was Daisy right about my power?

“The reason why I am so attached to Cotter… is because of my secondary objective: to seduce a Crystal Elf of royal bloodline!!”

WHAT?!

Daisy-slash-Malmitres, in a rare divergence of her usual behavior, widened from a half-lidded stare to a full-lidded one. “WHAT??!!”

Just like that, I felt a power spike. I felt her courage as if it was my courage.

Py Pir, Daisy and I were now connected, one and the other, inseparable, unbeatable!

~SALARYMAN POWER ACTIVATED: GROUP COHESION!!~