Chapter 883: Domain Of Truth [Bonus - ]

Chapter 883: Domain Of Truth [Bonus Chapter]

The white swallowed everything.

The river, the moss, the towering trees and the furious crocodilian thrashing on the bank all vanished in a single soundless flash, and when Kara blinked, she was standing in an endless white emptiness that stretched away in every direction with no horizon, no sky and no ground she could see, only a faint pale shimmer beneath her boots that rippled like still water every time she shifted her weight.

The humid weight of the jungle was gone.

The buzz of insects, the smell of rot and flowers, the heat… all of it was gone, replaced by a cool perfect stillness that hummed faintly against her skin.

’A Domain,’ Kara thought, narrowing her eyes as she turned her head slowly. ’A real one… and a big one.’

Then her skin started to tingle.

It began at her fingertips, a strange crawling warmth like stepping into sunlight after a cold night, and it spread up her arm and across her shoulders and down her spine.

She felt something loosen around her body, the way a knot loosens when someone finally pulls the right thread as her purple eyes widened.

’No… no, no, no…’

The disguise was peeling.

She could feel it slipping off her like wet paper, layer by layer, the soft lines of Kara White’s face dissolving, the long black hair shortening and darkening, her shoulders broadening and her height climbing as the borrowed shape gave way underneath it.

The pinned empty sleeve dissolved along with the rest of her suit, and her left arm came back to her in a rush of warmth that made her fingers twitch.

In the span of a single breath, Kara White was gone and Silas Graves was standing in the white, completely naked.

He looked down at himself.

His broad chest, two arms, his own hands, his own skin, the gold rings glowing faintly behind his dark blue irises… and not a single thread of clothing anywhere on his body.

Silas didn’t flinch.

He just let out a slow breath through his nose and lifted his gaze from his own body to the white emptiness around him with his dark blue eyes looking steady.

’So that’s what this Domain does,’ he thought.

“KYAAAAH!”

The shriek came from right beside him, high and piercing and absolutely mortified.

Aki was standing three paces away, and she was just as naked as he was.

Her blue silk dress had vanished along with everything else, and she’d wrapped both arms around herself as tightly as she could, her long royal-blue hair the only thing even pretending to cover her as her face went from pink to red to a shade of crimson that Silas hadn’t known human skin could reach.

“D-don’t look!” she squeaked. “Silas, don’t you dare look!”

Silas turned his face calmly toward the empty white horizon without a word, and Aki slapped one hand over her eyes so fast it made a sound.

SMACK!

Then, very slowly, two of her fingers began to separate.

She peeked.

Her blue eyes darted across the broad muscular shape of his back, down the line of his spine and then quite a bit further down, before she snapped her fingers shut again with a strangled whimper.

’I saw it,’ her thoughts wailed. ’I saw… I saw everything… I’m such a bit perfect…’

Then, slowly, the fingers began to part again.

Across the white, someone else was staring too, and she wasn’t bothering to hide it.

Lara stood twenty paces away with her staff still in her hand, the green gem burning steadily at its tip, and for the first time in a very long time, the protector of the forest looked surprised.

She’d never worn clothes in her forest, so her Domain had changed nothing about her.

She stood there exactly as she had on the riverbank, looking tall and bare and completely unbothered with her long thick black locs falling all the way down to her hips, every one of them strung with tiny gold beads that clicked softly whenever she moved, her deep brown skin glowing in the pale light of her own creation and her sharp jade-green eyes blazing like two lanterns.

And those eyes were fixed on Silas.

She took her time.

They traveled slowly across his broad shoulders and down the hard muscle of his chest and stomach, then dropped lower, and stayed there for a long shameless moment before finally climbing back up to his face.

One of her eyebrows lifted.

’A man,’ Lara thought, and something deep in her chest that had been asleep for a very long time stirred and opened one eye. ’The one-armed woman is a man… and quite the man, too.’

She could see his Core.

Inside her Domain, she could see everything… the truth of a body, the truth of its strength, the truth of what it wanted.

His Gold Core sat in the center of his chest like a second heart, pulsing slowly and every beat sending a deep warm wave of power through the white that she could feel against her own skin.

’Ah…’

She’d lived for centuries in her forest and she’d seen a great many things however she couldn’t remember the last time something had surprised her this much.

“Well,” Lara said at last, and her voice came out low and lazy and very, very amused. “Look at what was hiding under that coat.”

Silas met her stare without a flicker of embarrassment, standing there as easily as if he were fully dressed, and the corner of his mouth curved.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Very much, handsome,” Lara said. She didn’t look away. If anything, her eyes slid lower again. “I’m enjoying the view…”

Aki made a noise like a kettle exploding.

“Stop LOOKING at him!” she shrieked, and with her free hand, she pointed furiously across the white. “This… this domain is perverted! What kind of Domain takes everyone’s clothes off?!”

“Mine,” Lara said, unbothered. “My Domain shows the truth, little thing. The truth of your bodies, the truth of your strength, and the truth of why you came into my forest.”

Her jade eyes flicked lazily to Aki. “Clothes are lies and disguises are lies as well… Neither one survives in here.”

’So it’s not breaking the ring,’ Silas thought, glancing down once. ’It’s just showing what’s underneath. What kind of busted domain is this… Does it have any other effects we don’t know?’

“Then you already know we’re not poachers,” he said evenly.

Lara tilted her head.

The green gem on her staff pulsed once, and Silas felt a faint brush against his mind like cool fingers sorting through a drawer however he let her look.

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“…You’re telling the truth,” she admitted. “No poacher’s greed in you and no hunger for my beasts. There’s just a lot of arrogance, a disgusting amount of power…”

Her lips curved slowly. “…and a little princess who’s very much in love with you.”

“WOMAN… or whatever your name is!” Aki wailed. “Stop reading things!”

“Lara,” the woman said. “That’s my name and I don’t stop anything, little thing. I’m centuries old so I do what I like.”

She set the butt of her staff down against the white floor.

TOK!

The staff stayed standing upright on its own, and Lara stepped away from it, rolling her bare shoulders, cracking her neck from one side to the other and flexing her long fingers into two loose fists.

Silas watched her do it without moving.

“You know we’re not poachers,” he said. “And you still want to fight…?”

A slow dangerous smile spread across Lara’s face, and her jade eyes glittered.

“You’re the most interesting thing that’s walked into my forest in three hundred years, handsome,” she purred. “I want to see how hard you hit…”

She moved.

WHOOSH!

She crossed the twenty paces between them so fast that the white floor rippled behind her in a long shuddering wake, and her right fist came straight at his jaw like a falling tree.

Silas caught it.

SMACK!

His palm closed around her knuckles, and the impact sent a shockwave rolling across the white emptiness that knocked Aki’s hair back over her shoulders however Silas didn’t move an inch.

Lara’s eyes widened.

She’d thrown that punch hard enough to cave in a cliff face, and he’d stopped it like he was catching a tossed apple.

’Strong,’ Silas thought, feeling the weight of the blow hum faintly through his palm. ’Really strong… If that had been anyone else, their arm would be gone.’

Lara grinned and drove her left fist into his ribs.

THUD!

It landed square, and Silas let it.

The blow rolled through him like a deep drumbeat… but his body didn’t give an inch.

Lara blinked at her own fist resting against his side.

“Oh?” she breathed.

Silas looked down at her, calm and unhurried, and then he hit her back.

He pulled it. He kept most of his strength locked away, because he’d seen what his fists did to monsters and had no intention of doing it to her, but he let a little of it through.

BOOM!

Lara flew backward three full paces across the white with her bare heels carving shallow ripples into the floor, and a sharp breath burst out of her.

She looked down at her own stomach, then back up at him and her eyes lit up like a child’s on a festival morning.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, that’s good… and you’re holding back, aren’t you?”

Silas didn’t answer.

He just tilted his head slightly, as if to say ’come on, then.’

She came at him again, and this time she didn’t stop.

’No… We really shouldn’t be fighting…’

It turned into a brawl.

There was no magic, no staff and no spells… It was just fists, elbows and knees in the endless white with shockwaves rolling off every blow.

Lara fought like nothing Silas had faced before, with no style he could name and no rhythm he could easily read, just centuries of instinct and the raw strength of someone who’d wrestled monster-beasts with her bare hands for longer than he had been a Lord.

She ducked under his hook with her locs swinging and the gold beads clicking and came up with an uppercut aimed at his chin.

Silas leaned back half an inch and let it whistle past his jaw.

WHOOSH!

He caught her next punch on his forearm and slammed a palm into her shoulder that spun her halfway around.

WHAM!

She used the spin.

Her heel came whipping around at his head, and he dropped under it, and her other foot was already sweeping at his ankles. Silas stepped over it without even looking down.

“I’ve killed jaguars with my hands, you know,” Lara said, her jade eyes dancing as she circled him. “Wrestled them, mostly. They’re very cuddly once they stop trying to bite your face off… a bit like you, I’d imagine.”

Silas just smiled faintly.

She threw a straight right at his nose, and he slipped it by a hair and snapped a short hook into her ribs that made her grunt. She answered with an elbow that clipped his cheekbone, and he barely turned his head with it.

’Centuries of this,’ Silas thought, watching the easy loose way she shifted her weight. ’She isn’t even using her Domain against me… she’s just having fun.’

Lara licked a drop of blood from the corner of her lip and smiled like he’d given her a present then she drove her knee at his stomach.

Silas caught it with one hand.

’Well… I’m sure she’s much stronger but why is she taking it slow like this? What am I supposed to do…?’

She grinned, grabbed his shoulders and threw all her weight forward.

Silas could have planted his feet and thrown her across the Domain however he was curious to see what she’d do so he let her take him.

They went down together.

THUMP!

They hit the white floor and tumbled across it, rolling over and over in a cloud of shimmering ripples, and when they finally stopped, Lara was on top.

She settled across his hips, straddling him with her knees planted on either side of his waist and both of her hands flattened on his chest.

Her black locs spilled down around them both like a curtain, the little gold beads clicking softly against his collarbone, and her jade-green eyes hovered inches from his face, looking very pleased with themselves.

Silas lay there beneath her.

Under his palms, where they’d come to rest against her waist, he could feel her Core. It was humming like a storm under her skin… vast and deep with centuries of power coiled tight beneath that easy smile.

’Fucking hell…’ Silas thought. ’This woman is on the same level as the World Council.’

His mind turned it over.

’If Amazonia had a powerhouse like this sitting in its own backyard, why didn’t they bring her out before? During the tournament, during the invasion… Valeria would’ve had half the world on its knees with someone like this behind her.’

“You’re thinking too much, handsome,” Lara murmured.

She leaned down until her breath was warm against the side of his neck.

“You’re pretty when you’re thinking,” she whispered. “But I’d rather you didn’t right now.”

And then she nibbled his ear.