Gabrielle walked into work, and as soon as she walked in, she saw Skyler and Dr. Gage inside talking about something.
"Oh, hello you two!" She said as she checked in.
"No, don't tell her, she doesn't have to know." She heard Dr. Gage whisper to Skyler.
"You're so scared of her finding out that you'd tell me to not talk about it? I decided today would be a good time for it because she can't be kept in the dark forever." Skyler whispered back to him.
"What are you two talking about?" Gabrielle turned to them, hoping that after the debacle before, Skyler would tell her.
"I'll get Drake, she needs to know about this." Skyler turned around and started to walk to the door.
"Wait! Stop, I'll tell her myself! Please, I wish you wouldn't bring age into this, we all agreed that since it was her decision, we wouldn't make a fuss about it." Dr. Gage reached for Skyler frantically.
"Gabrielle isn't from there, you know as well as I do we need to explain it to her eventually." Skyler turned back around and pointed at Gabrielle
She was confused. Age? What about age were they talking about?
"What is it?" She looked to the both of them, not sure how to feel.
"Ah, um… Well you see." Dr. Gage scratched the back of his head.
"Fourteen." Skyler spoke up.
"Wait, wait! I was going to tell her! I swear! Just, give me time to think about how to say it in the right way!" Dr. gage held his hands out towards Skyler.
"Fourteen?" Gabrielle had no idea what Skyler was talking about.
"Okay, okay. You see…" Dr. Gage rubbed his hands together, a pained expression on his face.
"What is it?" She was extremely confused, and couldn't put two and two together.
"I'm not… Originally from here, I came to Lyserge originally when I was sixteen, I made a pact with a light god that if I defeated the Destroyer that my world was being ravaged by, I'd be given a new life. There were setbacks though." He folded his arms and looked away.
"Why are you telling me all this?" She took a step forward, wondering what that had to do with anything.
"The big setback was I was unable to have children, in exchange for the power to defeat the Destroyer." He looked back at her and then let out a concerned sigh.
"Oh… But Drake exists though, so that's not true, is it?" She didn't understand what he was getting at at all.
"You see, I'm from another dimension entirely, and the rules are different there. I didn't know that… I didn't know when I came here things would be different. I had to change mine and Deeana's age so we would not get in trouble here. I gave Jack this talk as well, when he found out out of boredom." He gave Jack an awkward wave, and Jack waved back, then looked back to the screen.
"Trouble? Age? You don't mean… How old were you two?" She felt her face crinkle into a grimace, she was staunchly committed to eighteen being the legal age of consent, and anything under that made her skin crawl.
"I hope you won't look at me any different, I had no idea what I was getting into when I came here. I sort of… Surprised Zlyena with Drake's existence, I kept him secret from her, because I didn't want him to know about magic until he was older." He looked down at his feet.
"Are we going through this talk because of me and Skyler being magically married?" She intertwined her fingers as she tried to not think about something she felt to be morally wrong.
"Yes. It's a family secret. I told Jack to not tell anybody. I'm from a different dimension entirely, and the age of consent there was low because people didn't live that long back where I'm from. I had no idea things were different here, and I understand how bad it is, Zlyena made sure to tell me how big of a mistake I made, when I legitimately did not know any better." He sighed again and rubbed his arm.
"Well, if you seriously didn't know any better, I can't fault you for that. Is it different in Lyserge?" She stepped forward. She had only heard Skyler talk about Lyserge in off-hand comments.
"Their age of consent was the same as where I was from, fourteen. When I decided to come here, I realized that it was definitely a bad idea. Zlyena explained it to me, even though Deeana grew up in Lyserge and also did not know any better either. Her sister is adamant to get it changed back to eighteen any way she can, even though she has made peace with the fact that her own sister had a child when she was younger." He looked back up at her and let his arms fall back to his sides.
"Fourteen?! Jesus… I, I don't know, that's…" She was mortified, even though she couldn't fault him for what he did at that age, it still made her stomach turn.
"I myself was sixteen at the time, and I would hope you won't tell others about this, it would be quite the scandal." He lightly put his hands out in front of himself and smiled awkwardly.
"That's a lot to take in… does Drake know about this?" She was worried about how the news would affect Drake, even though they had barely met.
"That's one of the reasons why I didn't tell him about his mother, he resents me greatly for it, but I was only trying to protect him." He took a step back and put a hand to his face.
"How was Drake even able to be… You know.. Born?" She furrowed her brow, unsure as to how it all happened.
"His mother is the only survivor of a ritual that I'd rather not talk about. A side-effect of the ritual's failure was her gaining the Azoth, which is the alchemical holy grail. It gives the holder the ability to create life from nothing. She knew about my inability to have children, and knew that she was the only one who could." He looked to Skyler, who silently nodded back at him.
"Oh, so she's the only one who could? But why did she?" She was asking a lot of questions and she knew it, but she needed answers.
"I was the only one who did not feel threatened or scared by her appearance when I first laid eyes on her. There's a reason why her entire body is covered in bandages, and it isn't pleasant. I found her while I was fixing the wiring below the hospital, I'll never forget that absolutely miserable crying noise she made." He recoiled at nothing and gripped his heart.
"So she felt attached to you because of that? She did… Do it willingly, right?" Her face contorted at even the thought of it not being a willing act, on top of her being that young.
"I was unwilling to do such a thing at first and had resigned myself to my fate. It took a lot of convincing from her for me to agree, we were both going through hard times, to say the least. We both had to leave our lives behind. She took me not being willing as me thinking she was too ugly to be touched, which wasn't true, but there wasn't much I could do to tell her otherwise. She already knew I had a hard time agreeing to trade my ability to have children for more power, so it hurt her deeply that I would refuse" He looked back to Gabrielle with a somber look on his face.
"I don't feel comfortable talking about this anymore…" She quickly walked to the doorway, but Skyler was still there.
"Ah, um, Skyler… Could you move? I need to get to work." She looked up and tried to smile.
She heard a person enter the hospital behind her. She went to turn around, but Skyler put his hand on her shoulder and firmly pressed back, which kept her from turning.
"Gabby, don't look. Close your eyes." Skyler took off his right glove, and his lower arm morphed into a shotgun.
"W-What are you doing?!" She went to grab his arm but he grabbed her hand with his other arm.
"Shoot already!" Dr. Gage shouted.
She backed up and turned around, there was a man with a spiky green mohawk and a long beige coat that had the initials D.H on it, who was trying to stab Dr. Gage, who had his hands pressed against the blade from both sides. She heard a click behind her, and everything went black.
A shot rang out, but she couldn't see anything. When she reached for her face, she realized that Skyler's hand was over her eyes.
"What happened?! Let go!" She grabbed his hand and yanked at it, but it wouldn't budge.
"Keep your hands over her eyes until it turns yellow," Dr. Gage said.
"Fuck, more are coming. Jack, I could use a little help here." Skyler said, and took his hand off of her face.
All she could see was a puddle of clear yellow goo and clothes. She looked up at Skyler, not knowing what to think.
"There… There was a guy there, but now… What's going on here?" She looked back to Skyler's right lower arm, which was still morphed into a shotgun.
"Demon Hunters, you need to hide." Skyler grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into the doorway.
Dr. Gage ran up to them, splattered with the same clear yellow goo.
"To think they'd come so quickly, now I wish I hadn't given Madina the day off." He grimaced and wiped some of the goo off of his face.
"We know you're in there, filthy Mags! Die like men, motherfuckers!" A man shouted at them
"Mags? What are they talking about?" Gabrielle looked up at Skyler, still not able to process a lot of what was happening.
"It's a slur for anyone who uses magic or is made of it." Skyler's head was still turned away, his free hand balled.
"Oh that's horrible! I don't understand that at all!" She put a hand to her face, surprised anyone would hate all magic or every magical creature.
She stared at Skyler, and wondered how hard it must have been for him when he wasn't human anymore.
"I said go hide, hurry!" He looked back at her and lightly pushed her away.
"No." She gripped the sleeve of Skyler's trench coat, she was too scared to leave, and didn't want anything bad to happen to him. She wasn't there for him before, and didn't want to leave now.
A man with a similar coat ran into the view of the hallway, and her vision went black again. She felt Skyler yank her to the left, then she heard another shot.
"Stop it!" She was angry that Skyler was keeping her from seeing the fight even though she's a nurse, and nurses aren't supposed to be squeamish. She yanked at his hand again.
"I don't want you to see that," Skyler spoke into her ear.
The way he said it, half-breathless and in a low tone made her heart skip a beat. Even in moments of danger her emotions were getting the best of her. She had only known him when he was still young, him being all grown up was a foreign concept to her until recently. It was a trick of her mind but how he said those words sounded romantic and even sexual to a degree, even though it had nothing to do with what he was talking about.
She snapped out of her lust-fueled daydreaming and pulled at Skyler's arm again, it relented and she found the man had been reduced to a puddle of yellow goo and clothes like the other one.
"You don't need to do that for me, I'm a nurse, remember?" She huffed at him and gripped his hand.
A sound like a machine releasing steam rang out, she wanted to look to see what it was but she did not want to stray too far from Skyler.
"It's been months, forgive me if I'm still a little rusty." Dr. Gage smirked and in a flash of light, he summoned a lightly luminescent and transparent short sword with sigils etched onto it. The bottom part of the sword's blade curved outward and had a circular indent slightly below the center part of the sword and in the middle of the curve.
"Glad you finally had free hands to be able to do that." Skyler sighed with a smile.
Dr. Gage ran out, and she yanked on Skyler's coat again.
"Alright, stay close." He turned to her and nodded.
She took his hand and they both came out of the doorway. Jack was in the middle of fighting off a few of the Demon Hunters, his hand turned into a small jackhammer. He put it up to one of the Demon Hunter's chest, and cylinders sprung out in a circular pattern near where his metal lower arm met flesh. With a mechanical hissing sound, the cylinders slammed back down, and the man went flying into the wall, blood spilling out of their mouth.
"I could use some help here!" Jack shouted, and smacked another one of them with the metal of his arm.
"I'll clear this room real quick." Skyler smiled, and the shotgun that his lower arm morphed into morphed into a serrated blade resembling a machete.
He quickly ran towards one of them and, with one large sweeping motion, cut right through one of the men, who's upper body slid off.
"I thought you didn't like killing?" Gabrielle walked up to him, confused, he cried about all the people he killed.
"Not if they're trying to kill me." He looked back at her as his smile faded.
Dr. Gage was up front, most of the men who came after him were already turned into yellow goo and a pile of clothes. He dug his blade into the chest of the last Demon Hunter, put his foot up to the man's chest and pulled, the blade slicing down the man's lower torso.
Skyler took his lower arm blade and quickly stabbed into two of their chests, one that he stabbed used a dagger and slashed at Skyler's face. It cut into his left cheek, and black blood creeped out of the new wound. He wiped it and frowned angrily. He then turned to the last one alive, and quickly made a perpendicular slash across the man's chest, and they fell back.
"Motherfucker got me." Skyler huffed and wiped more blood from the cheek wound.
"I got a little scratched up too." Jack turned his lower arm back to normal and raised his other arm, then pointed to bloody scratch marks.
"I think it's best if you two take the day off." Dr. Gage turned around and, in another flash of light, the sword he was holding was gone.
"Yeah, going to need to shut things down to clean up all this goo." Jack laughed and pulled bandages out from his back pocket, and started to wrap them around the scratches.
"Actually, why don't you try your healing magic?" Skyler looked to Gabrielle and smiled.
"Oh, I haven't been able to yet… May I?" She looked up at him, and reached for his face.
"Sure, just don't burn me please." He scrunched up in a recoiling motion.
"Burn you?" She paused for a moment, and then remembered that when she used light magic last time, the darkling looking woman was burnt to a crisp.
"Darkling, remember? If you use a normal light magic spell instead of a healing one, It'll burn me." His smile became a bit of a grimace.
She closed her eyes and focused on the wound on his cheek. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes, and found that only a bit of blood remained of the wound.
"Oh, good. I was scared you were going to scorch me for a second." Skyler laughed awkwardly and wiped the remaining black blood off his cheek.
She turned to Jack, who put the bandages back into his back pocket and walked up to her.
"I guess it'll save on bandages." Jack shrugged and smiled, then put his left arm out.
She held her hand out towards the scratch marks and closed her eyes, then focused again for a few seconds. She opened her eyes again and all that was left was the blood that was already outside of his body.
"Thanks, you two should go home, I'll clean up." Jack nodded and walked past them.
"Oh, ok. See you tomorrow." She went up to the front and clocked back out.
"I'll go talk to Drake if he isn't plugged in, though it would explain why he didn't come to see what the commotion was." Skyler turned around and kissed her on the forehead, and then walked to the other doorway.
"Ok, see you tonight." She awkwardly turned around and walked out while stepping over the yellow goo and piles of clothing.
She got into her car and went home. Thinking about how happy Skyler was to kill, she never thought he had a violent bone in his body. He had killed Darklings in front of her before, but never Demon Hunters, even though they most certainly were not human. She did remember he had killed before, but thought that he wouldn't be happy to do something like that. It was on her mind even when she was about to go to sleep, the reality of the man she loved enjoying taking the lives of others was something she would have trouble getting over.