Chapter 654: Elixir of Life *

Caius scoffed as he grabbed her hand and pulled her fingers off his chin. He sat up while eyeing her as though trying to see something out of place.

Athenodora kept her smile.

"So do I now heal like you?" She asked and there was a flash of steel as she retrieved a dagger from her storage ring.

She dragged the blade across her palm and cut it open, causing her blood to spill out. Athenodora showed no reaction to the cut or her blood spilling to the ground. She just eyed the wound, obviously waiting for it to stitch back together.

Caius said nothing for a while, also curious. And then after a couple of minutes, it was clear she wasn’t going to heal. Not on her own anyway.

"You’ll bleed out if that continues," he said.

"I never bleed out," Athenodora said and flexed her fingers, causing the blood she had spilled to rise from the ground and flow back into her open wound.

"That can’t be healthy," Caius said with an amazed smile, "Who knows what sort of dimensional dirt is in here?"

Athenodora chuckled.

"A blood Mage dying from contaminated blood would be quite the irony," she said, "But no, my magic makes it safe."

"So you can just draw back any blood you spill," Caius said.

"A Blood mage bleeding out would be another funny irony, wouldn’t it?" Athenodora asked, staring at the wound on her palm.

The wound was completely clean because Athenodora’s magic was holding her blood inside her body but the split skin on her palm still didn’t mend.

"That must make it hard to kill you," Caius said, "If you can just keep your blood inside you like that."

"The magic to do it can get exhausting depending on the degree of injury. Plus, I need to be conscious to do it and a killing strike won’t give me the chance," she said.

’Like a decapitation,’ Caius thought as he felt he just got even more insight into the death battle between Lucian and Athenodora in the original canon.

"It’s always been safer just to avoid getting hit. And it seems that must remain the case as I have not gained your Regenerative healing," Athenodora said and turned her palm toward Caius.

Caius reached out for the dagger Athenodora was still holding. She looked surprised and then handed it to him. Caius took the dagger and cut open his palm. He dropped the dagger and grabbed Athenodora’s hand gently as he dripped his blood onto her open wound.

As Caius had drawn out his Regenerative Trait into his blood, it didn’t flake away as quickly as it normally would have. Athenodora’s fingers flexed but otherwise she stayed still and watched as Caius’s blood healed her injury and her skin stitched back together, looking as perfect and unmarked as it normally would.

"Thank you," she said, "But a Blood Alchemy Mending potion could have taken care of that."

"You ran your experiment and now I’m running mine," Caius said.

"Right," Athenodora smiled.

"Was there pain?" Caius asked.

"Nothing worth speaking about," Athenodora answered.

"Then, the pain must depend on the amount of damage that needs to be undone," Caius said with a nod.

Athenodora grabbed her dagger off the ground and cut open her palm again.

"What are you doing?" Caius asked.

"The experiment isn’t over," Athenodora said, "Look."

Caius watched and right after the skin of Athenodora’s palm was cut open, it stitched back together.

Athenodora then sliced open her forearm and that wound healed as well. The next cut healed, but much more slowly. The one after that healed much slower still. The ones after that continued the trend until Athenodora paused with the blade of the dagger barely an inch away from her skin.

"What is it?" Caius asked.

"Your blood has been used up," Athenodora said, "The next cut won’t heal."

"Hmm," Caius intoned.

Athenodora’s eyes were contemplative.

"So about three minutes of immunity to damage after your blood enters another’s body," she said,

"And that might even not be a set duration. There could be factors to be considered such as the amount of blood that’s ingested and the severity of the injury. A few drops from your hand might only be good for a few non-life-threatening cuts.

I got even more when I drank from your arm and that only lasted as long as to get rid of the curse."

"Your eyes are starting to gleam," Caius observed.

"Are they?" Athenodora asked and with a flick of her wrist, she sent her dagger into her storage ring and placed her hand on Caius’s shoulder, pulling him closer.

"Yeah," Caius said, studying her eyes, "They definitely are."

"Well, can you blame me?" Athenodora asked as she drew closer still, "I have before me the Elixir of life. With you close, death will never find me."

"So you’re not thinking of taking the Blood Matrix from me? I’d think you’d prefer to have the effect permanent in you," Caius said, half teasing and half genuine curiosity,

"You know, so you’d not have to rely on me? Freedom and all that."

"I got what I came here for; I’m healed. And I do have the Matrix," Athenodora said.

"Because you ’own’ me?" Caius asked with a scoff.

"Exactly. And since you’re mine, maybe I don’t mind relying on your miraculous healing Blood," Athenodora said, even closer now, "Maybe having you with me doesn’t contradict my freedom anymore than the clothes on my back."

"Or maybe it’s not the healing you want to keep me close for," Caius said.

"Oh," Athenodora said her arm wrapping around his neck, "Such confidence."

"Or simply stating the obvious," Caius said, his eyes flicking to her red lips and back to her eyes.

"There was something in your blood," Athenodora said; they were so close now that her breath, sweet and slightly metallic wafted onto his face, "Something that hasn’t gone away like the regenerative healing trait."

"I know," Caius answered.

"I can’t tell what it is," Athenodora said with a laugh in her voice as her eyes fell on Caius’s lips and stayed there, "Will I be turning deathly white anytime soon?"

"No," Caius said, "I don’t know what it is I passed on to you, but it’s not that."

"Ah, so the mystery persists," Athenodora said with a smile.

The space between their lips was negligible at this point. Neither of the two seemed to care about forming any more words. They just smiled, their eyes looking down at each other’s mouths.

Neither of the two could tell who leaned in but their lips were suddenly pressed against one another intensely. Athenodora must have been riding the high of regaining her true strength because she appeared immune to Caius’s disarming presence, forcing him down until his back hit the ground.

She straddled him, her lips never once leaving his. Caius didn’t bother to resist her overpowering might. It was useless and he also didn’t mind being pinned down and having his lips devoured as they were.

Caius raised his hand to the back of Athenodora’s neck. He could not hold her any more firmly to his lips than she was already doing herself but he let himself revel in the feel of her skin. He brushed up her neck until he was stroking through her silky bob of hair.

Athenodora was insistent. Her tongue trailed out of her mouth and licked at Caius’s lips until they parted and she could enter and explore. It was here that the dynamic shifted slightly. Athenodora had the upper hand in strength most definitely; she even had great technique but Caius was... slippery. He worked around her tongue, narrowly avoiding getting pinned over and over so they could engage in a longer dance.

Athenodora’s knees were pressed against the ground on either side of Caius’s body so she wasn’t laid completely flat on him. As such, there was space between their bodies. She moved one of her hands down into that space, touching Caius’s abdomen.

His abs were as impressive as ever and had her jerking against him, grounding her pussy against his hardening rod, but what Athenodora really dwelled on wasn’t the feeling of the abs beneath her fingers but rather the fact that minutes ago, she had ripped open a hole right here.

The violent image of that injury she caused revved her engines even more. She grew even more insistent, finally pinning Caius’s tongue down as she dug her claws into his stomach. She drew blood and Caius groaned. That only made Athenodora all the more excited as was proven by the moistening of the crotch of her panties.

Caius liked the pain as well but that didn’t surprise him. He had already been going down that masochistic road ever since he started indulging in claw-ravaging during sex with Meline. Now the fact that he could take injury without worry didn’t lessen that delight in sexual pain but rather intensified it.

With one hand at the nape of Athenodora’s neck, Caius moved his other hand down her back, until he was at the arch of her ass where he dug his nails in while grabbing a handful of the supple cheek.