Cleo sighed as she held Laurence’s arm. It had taken a while for her to stop crying, but she could not help it. She would not lose a person she cared about again. She simply refused.
After she had ascended the entire group quickly moved out of the Lupe base. There was no longer any point to them being there, but they knew that Yun was probably still fighting the Heaven ranked Lupe above them, alerting the entire city to their presence.
They walked up the stairs and were presented with wasteland. All the buildings around them for three to four hundred metres were levelled, rubble was strewn everywhere and Yun stood in the sky like an angered deity, looking down upon the Lupe that dared to provoke his ire. Standing on an odd platform, surrounded by hundreds of odd trinkets in a variety of shapes and sizes, he mercilessly beat down upon the creature with beams and blades, arrows and all variety of other projectiles. As the barrage continued it seemed to become more and more focussed until every single strike hit the same spot upon the Lupe’s body. He was long since dead, but that did not stop Yun from wanting to remove him from existence bit by bit.
As Cleo watched the godlike young man destroy his enemy wholly, she felt Law stand up straight next to her. She turned and heard him shout “Yun! It’s done! Come down, or do you not want to properly greet your brother?”
Almost immediately Yun stopped and turned round in shock. Rushing down he tackled Law to the ground, accidentally bringing Cleo with him. Both boys smiled at each other before hugging then yun helped both of them back up. Once Cleo was on her feet again she brushed off her dress and turned to Yun. “I’m going to hog him for a few days, Yun. I hope you don’t mind”.
“Not at all. I’ll steal him... Wait, you ascended to Heaven rank?”
“I have,” she replied. “I now have the pure elemental body that Chaos practitioners gain when they rank up. It’s not as pronounced as your Myriad Manifestation, but because of it I basically have a never ending supply of mana at my fingertips”.
Law turned while hearing that and smiled, “So that’s what you gain when you reach Heaven! I was wondering, as you didn’t seem much different to yourself the last time I saw you. Still beautiful, still strong, still fiery”.
“Well none of that changed, I’m just stronger, and more fiery than ever!” Cleo pumped her fist in the air. “This is honestly the first time I can feel like I can relax in a year. I feel so free!” She wrapped her arms around Law once more and held him awkwardly. “Law became stronger too”.
“Yeah, brother, I’m... I guess you would call me a twin Saint now? I’m a Saint of Creation and Destruction. I learned over a year that I’m surprisingly gifted when it comes to the act of Destruction, and now my Empty Throne is half complete. When I complete it, I think I will have completely mastered the Book of Destruction”.
“Wait, twin Saint?” Said someone behind the three of them. They turned to look at the rest of their group and for the first time Cleo noticed the man who had come with Law and his weird companion. The odd creature flitted around Law before settling back on the shoulder of the man. “Laurence, you’re a very very lucky boy”.
“Don’t beat around the bush Damascus, just say what you’re hiding,” the man interjected. He had obviously put up with this creature for a long time.
“Alright Jake. What Laurence has become is something rather incredible. He called himself a twin saint, but that is not the name that most people know them by. He has entered a very rare stage within the path to Ascension called False Immortality. A False Immortal is someone with The strength of a Heaven ranked being, but without the completed path. It’s incredibly hard to reach such a state, as most often people reach it entirely by chance. It’s not very well studied, so there’s a lot of conjecture, but the important part is Laurence was a peak Saint before he became a False Immortal. If he can just make his Manifestation then he will jump straight from Sainthood to Immortality”.
The moment he finished talking everyone stared at Damascus like he had grown a second head. Through this chance situation that Laurence had experienced over the last year, he was a step away from realising something that almost every single person who climbed the tower wanted. The only issue was that Cleo knew how hard it was for Law to take that final step. He had been trying to take it since he was eleven years old, and now six years later he was still stuck. The step up to completing a path was one that solely required a flash of inspiration or pure chance. It was not something that could be taken just because a person willed it.
Law sighed and nodded at the odd creature. “I realised most of that when I became a Destruction Saint. I still have issues when I look at all of the Manifestations. None of them seem right”.
“Well none of them seemed right to me until I saw you make your minor world, so perhaps you need some sort of trigger to push you over the edge?” Yun looked around before sighing, “Shall we get back to my world and I’ll move us to somewhere less destroyed?”
The group nodded in assent and they were soon pulled back into the tower that had become their home since Yun had reached Heaven rank. Cleo had not spent too much time in the tower since Law had disappeared, because it reminded her too much of him, but now that she was back she could finally relax. There was nothing that could hurt them here, nothing that could take Law away from her again.
She dragged him back to her room as soon as they entered the tower and pulled him onto her bed before showering him in kisses. She had to make sure that he would stay with her, that he would never make such a stupid decision ever again. There was no way to stop him really, she knew that, but she had to do something. She kissed him, again and again and again, rough and passionately, before peeling off his clothes and throwing them on the floor.
“We need a shower,” she said, desperately trying not to betray her nervousness. What if he doesn’t like me anymore? Has the last year changed him? Is he different now his arm is gone? A million thoughts ran through her head, all of them she knew were inane but still she thought of them. The only way to deal with them was to stall for time, to sort her mind out. Awkwardly she began pulling off her dress while pushing Law towards her bathroom unit. “We need a shower,” she said again, pushing their now naked bodies into the stream of pleasantly warm water that came out of the nereid aquamarine embedded in the ceiling of the cubicle.
As they stood in the warm water, washing off the stress and grime of the year long struggle they had both experienced Cleo could not help but trace her fingers over the stump of Law’s left arm. “Did it hurt?”
“I guess? Not really, I think... I think the thing that really got to me was the fact I have no arm there now. I felt incomplete for a very long time. I still kind of do, which is why I need to make myself a new arm”.
“I still have the old one if that helps? It’s not exactly in good shape, for some reason Yun was unable to preserve it, but the bones are still there?”
“That will be of help. He couldn’t seal my arm because there’s a weapon bound to my arm. That arm was the one with Inklight on it, so I really do need that back at some point,” Law replied.
“I can imagine,” Cleo said as she continued to run her fingers over his muscles before pressing up to him. “We need to clean ourselves of the world, of the filth that caked us over this last year. Wash me, and I will wash you”. Both of them began rubbing soap into each other’s skin, relaxing and working the caked on sweat and grime off their bodies and out of their hair. Soon enough they were sparkling clean, but Cleo was still nervous.
She sprinted back to her bed, diving under the covers of the bed and looking at Law as he walked up to her in all his glory. She blushed seeing him react to her body and pointed towards the door. “Close it, I don’t want anyone peeking on me”.
“Are you nervous?” Law replied.
“Yes,” She said as the door closed and sealed them away from the rest of the world entirely.
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But Yun will know, although he's a good brother so he'll divert his attention.
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