pocket campfire

He gave the man a hard poke in the chest while smoke wafted from the cigarette between his fingers, then leaned in with bloodlust radiating from every word hissed with his icy voice. “Notice that I haven’t asked your name yet, even though I gave you mine? It’s because you don’t have a name to me. To me, you’re just ‘Bitch’, the sniveling little Bitch who decided to come in here and ruin my evening, talking awfully big game for someone in skull-fucking range. That’s what’ll be engraved on your tombstone: ‘Here lies Bitch. Cause of death: got skull-fucked until his brains leaked out of his ears.’ Shit, I’ll carve the engraving myself. Now I suggest you get the fuck out before I use your eye sockets like a whore’s ass!”

“Can you really blame me?” Daddy asked with a chuckle, squeezing her in his arms and kissing her cheek. “Although to be perfectly fair, there was actually a bit more to it, before the event itself. I'd come across some of the internet porn she'd been reading, when I had to use her computer. Bestiality, daddy-daughter incest, and rape fantasy, mostly. I tried not to think too much of it, just normal teenage curiosity, or so I'd mostly convinced myself. But when I accidentally walked in on her and Bruce, and saw she'd chosen to make at least some of those fantasies a reality... well, I just couldn't resist! I just had to try her out for myself, after they were done!”

This wasn’t simply water magic; it was water magic and alchemy combined. Normally, alchemy couldn’t be applied to living tissue, as the mana produced by organisms interfered with the magic, but this potent combination allowed Phune’s magic to overcome that restriction. Noah couldn’t help but wonder where Phune had acquired such magic. Since it was written in his grimoire rather than an intuitive ability, either he figured out the formula himself, or someone else did. Whoever it was, did they have any idea what kind of threshold they were on? The surface they had just scratched?