Rogue Element 2: City Life by Silas Keplar

Author:Silas Keplar [Keplar, Silas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ISBN Canada
Published: 2021-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

When Vanya left him, she wore his cloak. She blew him a farewell kiss as she slipped over the edge of the brewery and vanished into the early morning. Neither of the suns were up yet, though he could see the black of night transitioning into purple on the eastern horizon.

She had made him promise to wait a moonspan so that she would be well gone before he appeared. That would prevent even a casual observer from linking the two of them as they departed.

He wasn’t going to take even that much of a chance. When it was time to go, he wouldn’t use the ladder. With her along he would be restrained for choice, but alone he could scale the sheer walls at any point and depart using a totally different alley or street.

But a promise was a promise, which left him time to kill. He had already checked his orb for the smaller shifts that the night’s conflict had given him. His Acrobatics (Tumbling) and (Balancing) had both been nudged higher, as had his Knife (Thrown), Climbing, and Wilderness Survival (Urban) Skills.

As expected, the real noteworthy change was the addition of a new impactful moment. He read the title of it with interest.

Impactful Moment: Fantasy of the Cursed Tavern Wench:

- New Talent: Blend Pleasure with Pain – Talent now level 1

- Quirk (Skewed Perception) intensified by one level.

This time around, there was no real surprise in the title. He had experienced something entirely new while being what Vanya had wanted: a safe way to delve into a dark fantasy. The same had been true of Aeleanthra. He had wondered if there were others, and he had certainly found one. Unique in her own way, needing her own flavor of the dark to taste… but in some ways, not so different. There could be more. And if there are… well, I have no problem being what they need.

Since the encounter had only served to stoke the Deviant fire that was his Quirk, it was no shock that his Skewed Perception had increased once again.

The Talent was intriguing, though. He knew Talents were not like Techniques or Skills where you could apply them with the same active mindset. They just… happened. And yet there was a supernatural element to them, more than could be explained by the mundane nature of most Skills. His (albeit limited) erotic experience told him that there was a strange union between pleasure and pain, suggesting they were not so much the opposites that some might think. His prior encounters had suggested as much, and apparently his time with Vanya had only served to give him access to something beyond the typical pulling of hair or smacks on the behind.

The maddening nature of Talents was it was incredibly difficult to train them, which was usually the best way to get to know a new Technique or Skill. For a Talent, the best you could do was insert yourself into a situation where it might happen again and explore.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.