Outer Olympus

Outer Olympus: Chapter 36

It had taken two days after returning from the disastrous mansion heist for Rune to recover from her slump. Though she disparaged her own healing abilities, her burns had receded to a mess of facial scarring; still somewhat grisly looking, but no longer a source of constant pain. After her discussion of her history, she had been allowed to wallow in misery on Viola's advice, clearly not being in the mood for much social interaction as she ruminated on her defeat. In her self-imposed isolation, however, she had still been subjected to an uncharacteristically profanity-laden chewing out from Sasille, who was furious with all four of them for going on a mission while they were supposed to be laying low, especially after Sasille herself had almost been captured due to her proximity to them and the attention that it brought. While all of them took Sasille's genuine anger roughly, Rune took it the hardest, despite her lack of history with the woman. She couldn't let someone get abducted for her dramatic actions again, not when there was no desperation to pull off the mission in the first place.

Though this resurgent guilt had hit her hard, it also provided her the motivation to pull herself together. She had been having fun playing around with her new friends, but the stakes were high now. With Hope around, there was a very real chance she could be recaptured before she was reunited with the fleet, and that would have disastrous consequences for all of Outer Olympus. It was time to start treating things seriously.

"Alright everyone," Rune announced suddenly, sparking with the energy she had been lacking the last few days, "We're up against an enemy mystic now, which means y'all need some basic training." Geode raised their eyebrows in concern, Viola smiled, and Taroh almost jumped with joy.

"Are you going to teach us to have cool psychic powers?" Taroh asked excitedly, "I wanna see if I can use your lightning stuff to remotely control circuits." Rune laughed, shaking her head.

"I can't just give you all powers. But I can teach you all to resist Hopes'. You probably noticed when we fought each other, despite both being fairly talented telekinetics, we didn't spend a lot of the time tossing each other around or ripping each other's weapons from our hands." Rune began.

"I was wondering about that," Geode said, "I presumed you must have some sort of defense against it, or why would anyone bother with psyblades at all, when you could just reach into someone's chest and stop their heart."

"Morbid," Viola scolded, but Rune shook her head.

"No, Geode's right. That is theoretically possible with telekinesis, and there's historical accounts of it happening, but it also is one of the easiest attacks to defend against. Lethal biokinetic attacks- that's what the Lighbringers call using Tee-kay on a living being, tend to target the throat or brain." Viola looked a little disturbed by the gruesome detail, Taroh was eagerly taking detailed notes on his laptop, and Geode looked happy to be vindicated. "But biokinetics in general tends not to be too valuable in a fight against anyone who knows what they're doing. Which I'd like to be all of you, because I'd rather Hope not be able to kill you with a thought." Viola's lip twitched but she refrained from saying anything, but her relatively strong physical composure didn't hide her emotional reaction from Rune's telepathic notice; she doubted Hope would do this after she had so quickly let everyone but Rune escape. Rune looked Viola in the eye. "Even if she wouldn't kill you, she still might grab you to use as a hostage to draw me out; I think we can agree that taking that off the table is in our best interests." Viola conceded her unspoken argument immediately, but there was something about that reaction that still concerned Rune.

"Okay, so do we do some sort of weird ritual? Is there a chant?" Viola asked, only half joking. Rune realized that her friends had never seen mysticism outside of movies before meeting her, but there was a certain level of familiarity she assumed everyone had with some of the basic concepts.