“Well, this was… a day,” John tried to put it into words as he made his way over to the line of chairs that had been put up by Aclysia in a neat row. They were all facing outwards so that whoever sat in them was looking over the railing and at the Atlantic Fuse.

They had passed through the other two leylines without any problems or further interesting details. More intensive than the the previous one, in particular the outgoing line, but it wasn’t like there was a huge difference between being surrounded by light on all sides and being surrounded by light on all sides for a minute longer.

“You know what I hate?” he continued on. “Everything remarkable, positive or negative, always happens in like an hour or two. Yet I will remember the 10 minutes we spent waiting for Salamander’s firestorm to go out forever with a bleak sense of dread for the next decades, while the pretty eventless, happy 22 hours surrounding it will be mostly forgotten.”

“Yeah, that’s how that goes,” Rave spoke from the chair to his right as she took her drink from him, leaving John with his own. For this occasion, he had allowed Aclysia to punch his drink with some alcohol. He took a sip, he barely tasted anything of the nerve-poison, but this orange juice tasted sweeter than usual. “Ya with your super brain can still remember pretty much everything, can’t ya?”

“Consciously? Totally,” John responded. “But that’s not my point, it would just be nice to have random flashbacks to that one time we kissed in the jacuzzi in the Neon Lights. Instead I sometimes just lay in bed and then remember that one time I had my chest cleaved open.”

“I am fucking sorry, okay?!” Eliza picked up on that ill-chosen example. “I was really fucking angry and you just refused to kill me!”

“I would like to say you should have just listened to me back then,” John said, “but in this one case, dying was actually the smart way out.”

“Wait a second, you DIED?” Maximillian suddenly darted into the conversation from the furthest removed chair.

Silently reprimanding himself for letting that slip, John exhaled a baited breath. ‘I got too relaxed,’ he thought, recounting the past few hours. After the tension that was Tilgun’s appearance and the even worse tension that was Salamander’s insistence on doing THAT then and there and then the worst tension of Izha and the following infection.

The resulting exhaustion and just general lazing around had probably put him in a less careful mode than was normal, for him to just mess up like that around Maximillian. ‘Alternatively, it could just be that you look at him as something like a friend and don’t think you need to keep everything a secret from him,’ John thought, half sarcastically, half self-scolding, which was confusing in its own rights.

In a totally platonic way, their relationship was advancing towards something resembling actual friendship. At least that’s what his subconscious was telling him there. He was not sure what he actively thought about that. Rave looked at John as he was thinking and just giggled knowingly.

“Yeah, I fucking died, twice if you want to know for real,” Eliza didn’t give a tosh about that part of her history, “and both times SUCKED, although way less than the time preceding them. First was being hunted by shit-eating Nazis and sleeping in overcrowded beds too small for one person alone. Second one was just lots and lots of a lot of fucking torment.”

“Yeah… but how are you still alive then?” Maximillian asked.

“Remember how there is a goddess living inside me, giving me overpowered as all shit powers by proxy?” Of course that was something the crippled king could hardly forget about. “There, now stop asking about this kind of shit; you should know about not wanting to remember certain stuff, you post-traumatic-stressed-dick.”

John wanted to intervene at that, because he felt that this was going a bit far beneath the waistline. However, he waited for the half-second it took Maximillian to react to that.

“Well, I can deal with my PTSD, but you will always be short,” the gravity king shot back.

“MOTHERFUCKER!” Eliza jumped out of her chair, onto her feet and almost made the extra step of leaping at the guy to shake him a bunch while throwing death threats at him. Feeling that the latter half of that plan would probably send Maximillian in a panic attack, she stopped herself at the last moment. “You are a lucky shit that I still have something like empathy, otherwise I would hang you off the mast by your intestines.”

“This ship doesn’t even have a mast,” Maximillian mocked.

“I would build it,” Eliza’s voice was dangerously quiet, “out of my blood and your spine, using the shards of your pulverized ribs as thorns to grind your smartass face against.”

Maximillian shut his mouth after that one. A moment later, Eliza began to laugh maniacally, the high-pitched, temporarily painfully shrill sounds echoing over the deck.

Aclysia leaned over to John and whispered, “I am thankful to you, Master, that you got her more stable so she doesn’t do that every day anymore.”

“I heard that, cocaine hair!” Eliza suddenly whirled around.

“Cocaine hair?” Aclysia tilted her head in confusion.

“Because it’s snow-white and I want to press my nose into it. What the fuck did you pick to exude today? Cause it makes me so hungry that I just want to start salivating all over your head, you delicious piece of cooking maid meat.” Those were some interesting word constructs.

“It’s cinnamon,” Aclysia spoke over John, as Eliza was two removed from his right and Aclysia sat to his direct left.

“Why the fuck would you smell like cinnamon,” the blood mage demanded to know, “like, why in the name of my empty, sperm-churning stomach-“ she had eaten about a kilo of dried meat just 10 minutes earlier, “-would you do that to me, you heartless bitch?”

Aclysia averted her gaze, clearing her throat and blushing slightly, “My intentions are of no importance, I just picked it randomly.”

“Bullshit! Ya never pick smells at random,” Rave intervened, “ya go all like,” what followed was a pretty good mimic of Aclysia’s tone, “‘Today, Master deserves to feel comfortable, he had a hard few days. Therefore I will go with orange, since that is the smell that makes John feel most at home… Ah, but orange is too on the nose, I want to keep that for special occasions. Something else citrus related, perhaps pink grapefruit?’ AND THEN ya do it!”

The weaponized maid continued to clear her throat as if that would forcefully change the subject.

“I’m gonna look up what effects cinnamon smells are supposed to have on people,” Rave declared, pulling out her smartphone.

With a sigh, Aclysia caved, “I will spare you the time, it boosts male erections, Mistress. I wanted to be taken tonight… best in an orgy.”

“Look at ya being a subtle little manipulator,” Rave giggled, “although only in a good way. Ya ain’t mad about that, John?”

“When Aclysia does it? I have full trust that she only has our best in mind,” he gave the expected answer. “And is that cinnamon thing true?”

“It is apparently proven that it increases blood flow in the genital area. Lavender has a similar effect. Any strong smells really. I have increased my arsenal accordingly, only with the pleasant sexual smells, and am happy to take orders as to what you want, like sandalwood.”

Sandalwood gave his pants a little tug as it reminded him of a certain evening in a spa. “We may want to be careful with sandalwood, I can see myself getting afflicted with Pavlovian conditioning quite easily… although I guess that could be a good thing as well?”

“Ya hear that ladies? From now on, whenever we are in an orgy mood, we burn sandalwood!” Rave, as chairman of the Waifu Republic of John’s Life, decreed. It was met with general approval.

Maximillian shook his head to the sound of Eliza’s chair creaking as she fell back into. He remarked, “I guess I know which smell to… smell out for to find out on which evenings you had a good night then.”

“You mean like you and cherry?” John asked and rolled his eyes on the taken aback look that earned him. “Come on, buddy, we both know I am really observant. Doesn’t take more than three incidents to conclude that you use a certain, probably very costly, deodorant after you had amazing sex. I know that kind of swinging step and broad grin.”

Rave added, while raising her hand to her mouth conspiratorially and in the whispering tone of someone that wanted to still be heard, “Because at least one person around him has it every day,” she pointed at herself. “I almost don’t want to go into dangerous situations anymore since he got good at this whole sex thing.”

“Much like with Dark Souls, trying over and over again was the trick…” John glanced at the horizon in their back, where the sun was slowly approaching the edge of the ocean. “That aside, we should probably enjoy whatever is about to happen in silence.”

“Oh, it’s going to be awesome,” Maximillian promised, “I already saw it once before.”

Taking his own plead seriously, John did not answer that, and soon all instances of idle chatter around ceased; even Sylph waited for the show they had been promised.

It got darker, quickly now, every passing moment making the sky less red and more blue and black, as if a painter was adding infinitely small strokes every second. They all looked at the mountain range of auroras, waiting for the sun’s light to cease.

The golden disk vanished behind the curve of the earth, the red bled away and left only the night and a sky on which only a few stars were visible, drowned out by the immense light of the Atlantic Fuse.

In anticipation, they all waited. They had been promised that something amazing was going to happen at the turn of day to night. Sylph spied it first.

“Look, look, there, at the edge, see that, see it? I see it!” she palavered, pointing at the rim of the barrier. Around the leyline, the point where sky, outside and inside ocean met, the aurora spread in a thin line, following perfectly the border of the Protected Space they were inside. The same thing happened at the other two leylines, the emerging auroras meeting and melding together.

Once the circle was complete, it began to rise. The upper edge remained that thin line, but it left behind a curtain of shifting rainbows, slowly creating a dome. The ring narrowed as it approached the top, eventually vanishing into itself.

For a solid minute, they were simply surrounded. In John’s opinion, this was way more impressive than the complete engulfment of driving through a leyline. The ocean beneath, the towering Atlantic Fuse, with its tip connecting to the very centre of the dome, the two spread out leylines they could currently see. It was a scenic picture, a complete whole, not just a drowning encapsulation of light.

Without any warning whatsoever, the curtain disintegrated from the top downwards. Wherever the aurora no longer covered the sky, all of the stars that would reach a lightless world shined through in all their radiance for just one second like an uncountable amount of diamonds in the sky. Most of them vanished again thereafter, only the strongest glowing ones staying behind. It happened rather slowly, especially with the amount of area it needed to cover; John had an idea and got up.

“Let’s take some photos,” he announced to everyone, using Craft to reform the backrest of his chair to be able to hold his phone and then having Jack land to push the button. The idea was met with enthusiasm.

First was just a group photo with everyone present. Even Maximillian, despite the king first denying the need to be on such a thing. After some talking to by Rave, Aclysia and Sylph, he was finally coerced into it though. They stood close by each other, all of them, even the king and the host of which he feared. Yet, Maximillian managed to look more concerned over looking good than afraid, for the most part.

Next was a series of pair photos. Rave how she enthusiastically kissed him on the cheek, arms around his neck, one leg raised, him smiling and half-hugging her. Him and Aclysia, just standing, heads resting against each other, his arm around her hips. The third photo was him with Eliza in his arms, the blood mage flipping the camera off with a giant grin on her face.

Next was Gnome, who peeked out underneath John’s arm from her cowered position behind him. Salamander struck a wide open pose, flames in hand as if she was in a photoshoot for a supervillain movie, John standing in the background shaking his head. Sylph landed on his shoulders, arms cheeringly raised to the sky, legs stretched out, as John had to panickedly grab her and keep them both in balance, a moment that turned into their photo. The photo with Undine was a weird display of the quiet water elemental becoming quite daring, her parting in two, surrounding him on both sides, touching him in lewd ways and whispering things into his ears that made even him blush. Afterwards Undine disappeared into the pool blushing herself. Siena acted all nice and compliant until the very last moment before the picture, upon which she turned into a flurry of shadow blades. With her commandment to not hurt John currently disabled as a sign of trust, John was genuinely afraid for a second, turning their photo into a display of a Gamer ready to dodge and a towering mass of bladed tentacles around a hot, domineering nightmare elemental with sulfuric yellow glowing eyes. Siena loved her picture.

He and Nia had three photos taken. One where she was in the process of walking out of it. A second where she was in the process of walking out of it with Copernicus in her arms. Finally a third where she stood still without any expression whatsoever, with Stirwin nesting in her voluminous hair and the suncat in her arms.

Metra put John into an armlock, he didn’t complain as he was pressed right against her chest, and she laughed through all of it.

Last was Maximillian, John and him getting talked into taking a photo by the present girls. They were even forced to take a shared pose, both of them crossing their arms and then, in attempt to out-cool each other in that pose, taking it seriously and doing their best. The popular vote was that Maximillian looked better on it; John had overdone it, looking more like a caricature of a cool guy.

All of the photos could be ordered quite easily by the falling curtain of light in the background.

So, what was that phenomenon in the first place? Different answer existed, but the two John subscribed to were that it was either an internal pressure thing or something there to keep the barrier working. Either way didn’t explain why it was coupled to the day-night cycle.

Well, there was the answer he had been wanting.

“That was nice,” Rave stretched, “do we have any more plans on this cruise?”

“Not really, no,” John said, “I think the next two and a half days will just be us lazing around.”

Salamander drifted over, radiating the golden glow of fire. “I am going to throw a barbeque from my allowance tomorrow. You know, to do at least some shit for all the trouble I put you all through.”

Eliza giggled, her fingers drumming on the rests of her chair in nothing that even resembled a rhythm. “Make that a regular fucking occurrence for the rest of my whoring life and then we may be able to say you did enough by the total end of it.”

“I guess I can afford a monthly one, if we go grinding again,” the endflame elemental wasn’t opposed to the idea.

John liked the idea, “Anyway, let’s go back into the jacuzzi, no reason to keep sitting here.”