Once all the laughter had died down, the tavern owner told Deacon’s team they could have a small room in the back. He mentioned tonight would be a memory his small town would talk about for years to come and that should be worth something. The room itself was barely large enough to fit four people standing shoulder to shoulder. It had wicker cot in it that none of them would fit on and a mop bucket. It was obviously a closet he converted to take naps. That was fine by Deacon. He placed Alfred on the ground and his dimensional boundaries subsumed the walls.

They all froze as they appeared inside Deacon’s mansion. Standing in the middle of his sitting room was a clockwork soldier. It bowed at the waist. Deacon instinctively dropped into a defensive Hóu Quán stance before realizing the robot had a white fluffy towel draped over its right forearm. That didn’t stop Amanda from throwing a knife at it. It clanged off of the metal man’s outer shell.

“You finally got it to work!” said Tantus excitedly.

“Got what to work? What’s going on? Alfred is that you?” Deacon asked.

“Yes, it is. To answer your question, I took hold of the parts you dumped out back when we were battling these automatons. Tantus and I thought we could create a body for me to help you out in the world outside of my dimension. My cylinder slots right into the chest cavity. We have parts to spare and even if we didn’t, I could spend some energy recreating them. Would you find this helpful?” asked Alfred.

Deacon just walked up to the automaton and gave it a big hug. The others also gathered around it until finally Sun Wu stretched his arms around everyone squeezing a little too tightly.

“Enough, Sun Wu. You’ve ruined the moment,” complained Deacon.

“We still need to test it outside the boundaries of my dungeon. I got the idea after I still had control of the wagon once we left it,” explained Alfred.

“This great. You can come all kinds of places with us now and make your own memories. You know, so you don’t have to watch on the big screen in the conference room. How does the frame move? I mean can you run if you had too? Let’s go down to the practice field,” said an excited Deacon as he ran toward the doors.

Amanda plopped down on the couch looking at the door out of the dungeon. The others headed down to the practice field to test out Alfred’s new body. It took a few minutes of Alfred twisting his torso completely around and windmilling his shoulder joints before he said he was ready. Sun Wu set up a throne for himself to lounge on before calling out to the gathered on lookers.

“Deacon, Champion of Chimera versus Alfred the dungeon automaton. Fight!”

“This isn’t Mortal Kombat, you don’t have to annou—” but Deacon was cut off as Alfred came in spinning his torso rapidly enough to make his arms look like a fan blade. Deacon was bounced back rolling across the ground. That actually took twenty percent off his health bar since the automaton was considered an enchanted item. He popped back up to his feet and decided to try out his connection to the Suppression Plane.

Deacon thought back to how he felt when he woke up the other day. It was like the air around him was pulled in tight and world was firmly planted on his shoulders. The felling was not dissimilar to him floating things around in his aura. A sense of connected lines drawing objects to his center mass. All of these thoughts went through his mind as Alfred continued to advance on him. Alfred’s waist and legs didn’t rotate. It was just his mid-section, so he was able to keep plodding forward without falling over. Deacon was using his aura to dodge as he backed away. Feeling Alfreds steady encroaching form before he finally spoke out loud.

“That’s heavy man.”

Immediately his eyes changed. His pupils had light grey energy on the top half while the bottom half had dark grey energy. It made it seem like his pupils were split in two. Deacon could feel the world around him in finer detail. As Alfred closed in on him again, he tipped completely over slamming into the dirt. His legs pointed up in the air and they began to spin while his arms were embedded in the ground.

Deacon lifted his right hand and made a flipping motion. The energy in his eyes swapped positions and Alfred was launched into the sky. It was quickly apparent that the effect ended just outside of Deacon’s aura range. When Alfred’s body hit the boundary, regular gravity reclaimed him. He was effectively stuck there in between two gravitational forces. The sound groaning metal could be heard from Alfred’s chassis as the pressure of multiple newtons of force were applied against it from two directions.

“I concede the match. Please stop before I require more repairs,” Alfred shouted over the noise.

“I don’t know how. Hang on let me check my slate,” Deacon said growing worried.

“Deacon stop!” yelled Tantus.

“Gimme a second,” replied Deacon.

New Technique Discovered: Newtonian Vice- While channeling the Suppression Plane you can control the force of gravity within your aura range. There is no limit on targets, but you can only apply pressure in newtons up to half your level rounded down times one thousand. Each use costs fifty soul energy.

Deacon did some quick math in his head. That means he could exert over two hundred and sixty pounds of force right now. He quickly snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the popping of rivets from above him.

“Ice in my veins!” he yelled.

Deacons eyes returned to their normal pale green color as Alfred dropped to the training ground in front of him. Deacon immediately picked him up noticing his mid-section had some dents in it.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know exactly how that would work. It’s kind of why we have this practice field to begin with. Didn’t think it would get that intense,” apologized Deacon.

“Not to worry, master Deacon. This isn’t my real body, and I can’t feel it. I just wanted to try it out a little longer… Amanda has left the manor, sir. She seemed to be in quite the hurry,” Alfred said as he turned toward the exit.

“Breaks over boys. Time to go,” Deacon said heading toward the stairs.

The party emptied out into the hallway and were greeted with the sounds of screaming. The tavern keeper was on the ground with his unicycle on top of him. There was a line of blood running down the side of his face. Slumped against the stairs was a strangely dressed man wearing a bandana on his head. On the ground near him was a cutlass and hanging from his right hip were manacles.

“Slavers,” Hani whispered.

“Dead men,” replied Deacon.

It was clear from his wounds that Amanda had gotten to him first. They were festering with blue-black puss. She was out in the rain fighting on her own and Deacon didn’t know why.

“Spread out and find Amanda. She’ll be near most of the dead bodies. Make no mistake if you find a slaver no mercy,” ordered Deacon all mirth gone from his voice.

Tantus was healing the tavern owner and asking where everyone else had gone. Hani kicked the door open and listened for more screams. Alfred stomped past Deacon in all his five foot tall top hatted glory. Deacon was using his aura to pinpoint movement outside. He zeroed on something and ghosted right through the wall at it. In the alley next to the tavern there was another man dressed like a sailor, but his pants were around his ankles and Gnomish woman was screaming as he fumbled with her skirts in the rain.

First Deacon popped his dragon claws and ripped off his yam bag. Blood fountained from his crotch as he emitted a high pitch scream Then he grabbed the man by the back of the head and crushed it with one hand before throwing the body to the ground. Deacon then recognized the Gnome woman. It was the mother of the kid that kept jumping back and forth through him the other day.

“We healed the Tavern owner. You can head inside. My friends will deal with these pieces of shit. Before you go, where’s your boy?” asked Deacon with fear in his heart.

“They took him. Please save him. I’ll give you anything,” the mother pleaded.

New Quest: Crok full of Slavers- Stop the slavers from ransacking Crok’s Landing and return the boy back to his mother. Rewards; Title upgrade.

Deacon nodded at her before he used Spectral Jump to get airborne. It wasn’t raining as badly as before but it was still coming down. The wind had let up and he could see most of the town at the apex of his leap. There were five slavers at the gates of the town creating a chain gang with there captives. Hani was engaged with two of them on Deacon’s right in front of house while Alfred could be seen in the middle of the street pounding a slavers head into the dirt road repeatedly. There were two others around the metal man stabbing at him with swords to no avail. That was all Deacon could see before he started to descend.

Using Spectral Dash, Deacon angled his landing near Alfred just as a huge wind gust slammed one of the slavers into a waist high rock wall. There was the cracking of bone as new angles were forced into his spine. That one dropped his weapon and just wheezed as his body was folded over the wall. Deacon looked over his shoulder to see an irate Tantus pointing his staff.

“We’ll take care of these few. You stop them from leaving,” said Tantus.

Deacon didn’t feel like he was being asked so he left Alfred and Tantus to deal with the last one. He sprinted past the last couple of houses to the gates where one sailor was whipping a gnomish man who wouldn’t listen. Deacon used Spectral Dash again to get in front of the whip before it could land on the man again.

The whip cracked across Deacon’s face before it stopped. The man holding it was shocked to see that someone stepped in the way. Behind Deacon was at least twenty townsfolk all chained together. Stones of various sizes flew out of Deacon’s bag. They spiraled out in a circle forcing the oddly dressed slavers to back away from the prisoners. They then began to build an igloo-like dome of stone that covered the people in chains from all sides.

This all happened in seconds while the slavers looked at each other in sheer bafflement. All the while Deacon’s eyes never left the whip holders. The slaver in charge started to push his fellows and pointed at Deacon whose pupils were blazing with Nether energy. They lined up to rush Deacon.

“You never should have come here,” said Deacon before triggering Dragon Claw Barrage.

Gouts of blood pumped into the air as Deacon slashed through three out of the five of them. Their bodies segmented and dropped to the ground around Deacon. Their blood mixing in all the rain puddles. One of the two slavers left pissed himself and tried to run. Deacon hit his feet with a Nether Beam freezing them to the ground before moving the beam up to his waist. The next few minutes saw Deacon beating the whip holder to death with his partially frozen compatriot. The land in a ten foot radius around Deacon was covered in chunks of Nether ice and aura was so full of Nether energy the rain coming down around him turned to snow. This coated the are in white and red.