Gabrielle woke up at Elega after a long day at work, and the fuss Drake made when he told her to tell Lunara to stop going into his room without permission and jumping into something he called the Mainframe with him.
She ran to the gate as per usual, and smiled when she saw Skyler's familiar shape as it waved back at her. She felt like tearing through the gate just to get to him, but she wasn't that good with light magic yet, and the gate needed to be there. As soon as the gate was high enough she ran under it and hugged Skyler.
"I missed you!" She felt her face muscles start to hurt because of how big her smile was.
"I missed you too, we've got a big day ahead of us though, so get ready." Skyler outstretched his hand.
She took it, and he opened a portal. They walked through it and appeared at the same hideout where Skyler had worn that machine.
"Why are we here?" She looked around, there was nobody there.
"It's time you learned the big spells." Zlyena appeared out of the ether.
"Oh, really? I thought I was doing okay with the ones you taught me earlier, why the sudden difficulty spike?" She was worried that she wouldn't be able to do the spells without possibly hurting Skyler.
"Well, a little birdie told me that we don't have all that much time until things get bad." Zlyena frowned.
"Oh, after you're done, there's... Something I need to talk to you about." Skyler gave an awkward grin and looked away.
"Oh, alright... It isn't something bad is it?" She already had so much on her plate, she didn't know if there was any room for more bad news.
"Not... Necessarily." Skyler rubbed his arm.
"Oh, well if it's not that bad, that's a relief." She sighed, she had already gotten over Skyler's bloodthirsty demeanor from the last time she saw him, she felt silly that she was so conflicted before. He was a demon, it was in his nature to be like that.
"It's still a bit... Complicated." Skyler sucked air through his teeth.
"Oh, well I'm sure we can work things out." She smiled at him, and remained optimistic.
"Enough talk, come here." Zlyena waved her over.
"Yes ma'am" She looked at Skyler for a second, then turned and walked to Zlyena.
The spells that she was told to work on were difficult, she had trouble controlling where they were aimed, and almost hit Skyler a few times on accident.
"Sorry, sorry!" She put a hand to the side of her face.
"As long as you don't actually hit me there won't be much to be sorry about." Skyler smiled and shook his head.
She continued to try and get the hang of the new spells she was being taught. After a while, she could aim the spells with a good amount of accuracy.
"That's the ticket." Zlyena smiled and patted Gabrielle on the back.
"So, you said there wasn't that much time left before things got bad, what did you mean by that?" She turned to Zlyena, who sighed.
"Well, I heard from one of the Gravekeeper clan that Wrackivorn was planning on making a move." Zlyena looked down.
"Who even is this Wrackivorn person anyways?" She was annoyed, she hated that he had started the war up again after Skyler worked so hard to end it.
"He's an uncle of mine, he used to be the smallest, but Pain told me he was quite large when he got dethroned." Skyler put his hands in his pockets.
"Oh, what does he look like?" She wondered if Wrackivorn looked a lot like Skyler.
"He's one of the Centaur clan, obviously the same as my father and the one who gave me the scar on my eye. You probably already know what Centaurs are, half human and half horse. They are still Darklings, which are shadow demons, so his horse half is that of a black horse, like the rest of his clan, while they were still alive." He was visibly uncomfortable while talking about his family.
"Oh, that's weird, you don't have the bottom half of a horse." She was confused, if his father's side was Centaur, why didn't he look like them?
"Mother's genes are more prevalent, so I look way more humanoid with this new body. Fortunately for me. I don't have to be reminded of the bastards every time I look down." He smiled and let out a small laugh.
"You can talk later, right now, you need to focus on honing your skills." Zlyena tapped her shoulder.
"Oh, yes, sorry, I just..." She felt her face flush red, she really did want to know who foiled all of Skyler's plans to end the war.
"It's fine, just focus on this right now." Zlyena gestured for her to not worry about it.
She continued to work on improving her aim with the spells, while Skyler sat at one of the tables and watched her.
"I'm starting to feel, weird." She grabbed her head, the room was spinning, did she try too hard?
"Oh, it seems that you've reached your limit, I think we should stop for now." Zlyena caught her before she could fall backwards, and guided her to the same table Skyler was sitting at.
"You ok?" He quickly walked up to her and helped lead her to a seat.
"The room started spinning and I started to feel... Light headed." She felt like her head was floating up and down, and even though she tried resting her head on the table, it still felt like her head was moving.
"You must've channeled a bit too much energy for your body to handle, light magic is safer because of the fact that it won't drive a person insane unless they go too overboard. All you really need to work on is your tolerance level for using a lot of high powered spells in a short amount of time." Skyler sighed sadly.
She felt him run his fingers through her hair, and she closed her eyes. She was glad he was there, she would have felt so scared and alone without him. It was comforting, his fingers as they ran through her curly blonde hair.
She then stopped feeling his fingers, so she opened her eyes and raised her head back up, and turned to see a very worried looking Skyler.
"What's wrong?" She felt fine all of the sudden, so she didn't really know why he was worried.
"You were asleep for two hours." He put a hand on her shoulder.
"Really? It seemed like maybe a minute to me." She rubbed her eyes, and sure enough, there was sand.
"You tuckered yourself out, no doubt about it." Zlyena's voice came from behind her.
She turned and saw her sitting next to her, though there was relief on her face instead of worry.
"So this was all to test my tolerance?" She felt a little mad about that, Zlyena should have known when she was doing in too much.
"Only partially, I can't know your limits until you reach them." She smiled at Gabrielle.
"You seem to not be worried about it like Skyler is, why is that?" She got a little bit madder because of the smile.
"I used to run Cara ragged all the time, forgive me for not being worried." She blushed and averted her eyes.
"She used to run me ragged too, only she kept having to teach me sanity defense spells a lot because I'd go nuts from time to time." He took his hand off her shoulder and frowned.
"It's not my fault that you're inherently good at black magic and shadow magic, blame your parents." Zlyena huffed and cupped a hand to her face and set an elbow down onto the table.
"I'll blame my father but Mother never chose that," he said with anger in his voice.
"I don't think she meant it like that." She turned back to Skyler and saw him bearing his teeth.
"Cara didn't choose to have a cursed bloodline either, nor did you, but we all have to make the best of what we have." Zlyena put her arm back down on the table.
"I wish you wouldn't bring up my grandmother all the time." Skyler groaned.
"She was the first one I ever trained on Earth, I'm just using her as an example." Zlyena shrugged.
"You two, cut it out." She put her hands out to her sides in a stopping signal to both of them.
"I'm sorry, Gabby. It's just, she went until you fainted! You can't expect me not to be at least a little bit angry about that." He balled his fists.
"I know, and I'm fine now, you don't need to worry about me, see?" She stood up and twirled around.
"I know, but that doesn't make me feel any less mad." He put a hand to his arm.
"I think we should call it for today." Zlyena got up and started to walk away.
"Alright, see you later Zlyena." Gabrielle smiled and waved.
"Yeah, see you." Skyler grumbled.
She kicked his foot, and he jumped up.
"Yeah, see you!" He waved.
After Zlyena walked out, they looked to each other.
"So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?" She sat down next to him.
"Oh well, I wanted to tell you something, I've only dated once before and that, well..." Skyler rubbed the back of his head and looked away.
"What is it?" She leaned in closer.
"It was with... A guy." His face flushed gray.
"Really?" She gasped, she had no idea he was into men. This was something she never knew about, and she thought she knew everything about him.
"Yeah, I've been attracted to... Both genders, ever since I can remember. I never told you because I felt too... Disgusted with myself about it. I didn't tell anyone else either, or the shit I had to deal with would have ramped up tenfold." He turned back to her, he had a look on his face like he had done something wrong.
"I don't think it's something to be disgusted about. You can't choose who you're attracted to." She put a hand on his shoulder.
"I know that now, I was just, too scared to tell you until now, I mean. I was scared you'd want to reverse the ritual, and bad things would happen if you did. So I didn't say anything." He tilted his head.
"So, who was the lucky guy?" She smiled and lightly shook his shoulder.
"Uh, well..." He grinned and scratched his cheek.
"Come on, you can tell me." She gave his shoulder a few pats.
"It was Pain." He quickly looked away.
"Oh! You mean the spiky haired floating guy?" She giggled.
"Yeah, him, I told him to not do that around you because it would freak you out." He shook his head and blew air out of his nose.
"Oh, it was a bit shocking initially, but I'm ok with it now." She waved her hands.
"So you... Aren't weirded out that I'm bisexual?" He looked back at her.
"Of course not, all I'm sad about is that you didn't feel comfortable enough to tell me back then." She put her hands behind her and intertwined her fingers.
"Well, I would have, if I was able to." He looked back down and tilted his head.
"Is there anything else you want to tell me?" She wondered if there was anything else he was hiding.
"Besides working for the government and the time I had to chop my own hand off, I don't think there's much else." He shrugged.
"You what?!" Working for the government was one thing, but him chopping his own hand off was a completely different thing altogether.
"Oh, yeah. I got some of that weird gas that turned people into bloody puddles on my hand, so I had to use a fire axe to chop it off before it killed me." He just looked at her like nothing was wrong.
"Okay, you never told me about that either, what kind of weird stuff have you been mixed up in?" She was flabbergasted that he didn't even have a hint of concern in his voice.
"Well on the upside the government gave me a really nice prosthetic hand, but I think they made a clerical error when they installed retractable razor blades into the fingertips." He laughed and put his hands on his knees.
"Oh my god." She put a hand to her head in frustration.
"I think they just wanted me to be their attack dog, I was off my rocker quite a bit back then and they pretty much exploited that." He sighed and his smile faded.
"That's horrible, the fact that they would use your mental instability as a tool instead of getting you help." She huffed and folded her arms.
"Yeah, only Betty saw me as a person, the rest of my colleagues just saw me as an animal." He messed with his bangs.
"Betty? Who's that?" She never heard that name before, but that woman he just named couldn't have been one of his former lovers, could she?
"My sister, she's not with us anymore though," his voice wobbled a bit.
"Oh, that's so sad. I'm sure she was a really nice girl." She hated that she felt relief when he said that Betty was a relative instead of a lover, she never thought of herself as a jealous type, but her emotions were a different beast.
"I... Don't really want to talk about that right now." He sniffled and blinked a few times.
"Alright, I won't press you." She leaned down, lifted Skyler's bangs and gave his forehead a kiss.
"You didn't have to do that." His cheeks went gray and he played with his fingers.
"It made you feel better though, didn't it?" She closed her eyes and grinned at him.
"It snapped me out of it at least." He looked back up at her again with relief etched into his face.
"Good. Now, are we ready to go back to the castle?" She outstretched her hand like he did before.
"Well, there's one more thing. I used to have four fingers and toes initially when I got my new body. I had to perfect my shadow magic to even get a fifth finger." He blew air through the gaps in his teeth.
"Really? So Betty only had four fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot?" She was real interested, and imagined him with one less digit on each limb, it made him seem more alien to her.
"Yeah, all of the Forsaken were like that, I call them that because me and the rest of my brothers and sisters who shared a father were different." He nodded.
"Oh ok." She nodded back at him.
"I think it's time we go." Skyler got up and started to open a portal back.
As he was opening the portal, she caught him wiping his eyes and she saw him shake his head.
"You alright?" She grabbed hold of his hand.
"Yeah it's just... Memories, you know?" He blinked a few times again and wiped his eyes one more time.
"It's ok to cry, you know. You don't have to hide your emotions from me." She tightened her grip on his hand a little, and made it more snug.
"It's not that, I just, if I let loose all the time most of my time would be dedicated to crying. It's a defense mechanism, I bottle up my emotions for a reason because letting them out would be dangerous and would take up a majority of my time. I don't have time to cry." He put a hand to his head.
"I'm going to help make a world where you have all the time in the world to cry." She pulled him closer.
"I'm sure a bit of time in the time cube would suffice." He smiled sadly.
"No time cubes, I mean real time. You don't have to do it all the time, just bits throughout the day. You promise that you'll let your emotions out like that?" She widened her eyes and made a small frown as she tried to make puppy dog eyes at him.
"If I find the time, sure. Maybe after this is all over, I could. How about I promise to do it after we beat Wrackivorn?" He returned her tightened grip by gripping back.
"It's a deal." She smiled and patted his head.
"He-Hey, come on!" He chuckled and closed his eyes again.
"Your hair is fluffier than I remember." She used to give him headpats when they were young, but only when nobody else was around.
"Oh, is it?" He opened one eye to look at her.
"Yeah." She nodded.
"Must be the new body, I didn't really get to pick and choose what I got back then." He shrugged with his hands.
"No, I like it," she said.
"Oh, that's good. I'm glad." He put his hands back down to his sides.
"I'll see you later." She leaned in and kissed him on the lips, then let go of his hand and waved as she went through the portal.
She walked back to the castle and found that Lunara and Fira were sent off on another mission. She was worried that since the war started up again, that they could get hurt, even though she knew they prepared for battle. She spent the rest of the night staring out onto the castle's interior from the balcony. She thought about Skyler and how he always bottled up his emotions, she wished he could be free to express his emotions more. A world where Skyler hid in his shell is not a world she wanted to live in, and she was determined to change that.