Blessed by Night

"This is crazy... I feel like I\'m poking stone."

"Hissss...."

"So you agree? Almost makes getting your body destroyed seem worth it.... Almost." When Malachi\'s eyes fluttered open, he was staring up at his friend Bianca and contracted beast Shear, who both seemed to be rather interested in analyzing him.

"Can I help you girls with something?"

"No."

"Hisss...."

"....Alright, good talk."

Malachi suddenly sat up and realized that he was inside of a very nice living room. Behind him, there was an open kitchen with a small team of maids who were cowering in fear as they cooked. It didn\'t take long for him to put two and two together, and he realized that they must have been afraid of the large monster hovering above the couch.

"Yea, they\'ve been like that for a while now. Your beast seems to be super loyal and passive but I guess it\'s hard for them to get over how scary she looks." Bianca admitted. She had actually grown to like Shear just a bit. She may have looked super scary on the outside but once you observed her a while, it was easy to see that wasn\'t the case. "I guess I get that. I\'m surprised she hasn\'t gone back inside by now." Mal muttered. He tried to mentally call Shear back into his body, and she first looked him up and down like she was trying to assure he was okay before retreating. Once she was satisfied, her body became a mass of violet light, and she re-entered the mark on Malachi\'s forehead. The maids within the kitchen let out an auditory sigh of relief while Bianca seemed to be slightly disappointed. Shadows engulfed Malachi\'s body and his combat suit was replaced with simple dark sweat pants and a t-shirt. "Come on, we should eat now." Bianca said as she took his hand. "Mr. Morgan\'s only given us four hours to rest."

Malachi would have been more bothered by that information had he not just woken up from a nap.

He and Bianca sat down at the table and allowed themselves to be serviced by Morgan\'s team of dedicated maids.

Their plates were piled high with all kinds of calorie rich foods, a menu that Morgan specifically requested as a means to keep their energy up.

"This is a lot, right?" Bianca muttered in a somewhat scared tone. But unfortunately, Malachi could not hear her as he had decided to check his phone for messages.

He had a few cute ones from Sei, some aloof yet sexy ones from Luna, and some threats of bodily harm from Anna. But the thing that garnered most of his attention, was the pictures that Serana had posted on finstagram.

It was a photo of her and three beautiful women in a pool sipping margaritas. Evidently, her followers were just as shocked as he was and Serana\'s simple caption didn\'t exactly help.

MamaSerana: No caption needed. :) #PoolDay!

YbIsDaddy: Nah bitch you gotta explain this.

ExoticPlaya: Bro is that Luna Autumn!? Drop the lo. RodWaveWife: Okay girl I see youu! You should go live!

CharlieTheProwler: Damn yo momma look good. I\'m trynna play step daddy. 350Yaz: @ the girl with black hair?

Eventually, Mal decided to close the app before he went on a killing spree of random people on the internet. He then went to his messages and sent the girls a group message telling them how beautiful they looked and how much he missed them.

When he finally put his phone down, he realized that Bianca was staring at him with her cheeks puffed out, a clear look of irritation. "Sorry, sorry. I\'m listening I promise."

"Whatever." She said as she rolled her eyes. "I asked you how your body felt since Morgan pulverized you and all."

At that moment Malachi realized that he hadn\'t actually noticed anything different, and his body felt the same as it usually did.

"Normal...? Did I get my ass kicked for nothing??"

Bianca didn\'t even say a word as she continued to chew on her food nonchalantly. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small magic knife with an iridescent hue, and stabbed Mal in the chest without even looking in his direction.

The knife shattered against his skin without leaving so much as a scratch, although there was a small hole in his black shirt. "... I guess I did improve a bit."

While he had always been immune to regular weapons, magical ones were a completely new thing for him. Even if Bianca\'s knife was of a very low grade, it was still a magical item and definitely should have drawn blood.

"What about you? How\'s your little training arc coming along?"

Bianca suddenly had a proud look on her face as she held up a single finger that burned with a dark red flame. "I had something of a breakthrough."

While it was quite hot, the flames did not seem destructive in nature.

"I realized I was trying to be as powerful as you and Mr. Creed without really asking if that was how my powers were intended to be used. After all, Hephaestus is a creator and not a warrior. Maybe I wasn\'t meant to fight directly alongside you, but that doesn\'t mean I can\'t assist you."

Bianca had learned a lot about forcing herself to do things that just weren\'t in her nature.

The only way for her to be truly comfortable within herself was to find her own potential and maximize it, not try to copy someone else\'s. This training would end up being much more helpful for her than she ever could have realized.

Mal didn\'t really know what to say. While it felt good to know that Bianca was always thinking about him, there was a part of him that wanted her to do things of her own volition and as her own source of motivation. "So, what\'s her name?" Bianca suddenly asked.

"Hm?" "Your contracted beast. It is a girl right?" "Oh yeah, that\'s Shear." "Shear...? I cold see that." Bianca admitted. "Do you know anything about her? I have never seen anything like her before."

Needless to say, Malachi didn\'t know much more than she did about the strange creature he had acquired on accident. His belief that it was a beast of terrible catastrophe, was truly no more than a hunch. All that he could do was wait for Nyx to appear before him again, and hope that he could ask her for answers.

-

After eating, Bianca led Mal to their rooms upstairs. Just as Morgan had promised, their rooms were indeed right beside each other with a door connecting them. Almost being burned alive had never felt so worth it. Malachi wanted to take a shower once he got inside, so he and Bianca parted ways for the time being. Even the bathroom was sparkling and pristine with a golden shower head and soaps from brands that he couldn\'t even pronounce. After getting out of the shower, Malachi slipped on a pair of briefs before falling onto the cloud-like bed haphazardly. "I said I wasn\'t tired but this makes it kinda hard not to be." He said sleepily. Not only was the room the perfect cold temperature, but the sheets and comforters were obviously freshly washed and still smelled of the dryer. To not fall victim to such temptations would render him a monster incapable of feeling. Just as his eyelids became heavy, he heard a buzzing sound from the dresser on the other side of the room. Holding out his hand, he called his phone into his palm and saw that he was receiving a video call from Anna. A small smile spread across his lips and he answered in a heartbeat, excited to see the face of one of the women he loved most. But unfortunately, he only got Serana instead. The pink haired girl was teary eyed and clearly in distress though as for why, he was sure that it wasn\'t anything serious. "M-Mal!! Nobody cares about me or thinks I\'m hot!! All they care about are your stupid girlfriends and their huge boobs!!!" Malachi merely rolled his eyes and turned over to lie on his back. "Serana... why do you have Anna\'s pho-"

Sei: "Is that honey?"

Anna: "Mal called? Give me back my phone!"

Luna: "Let me see him! Morgan better not have ruined his face!"

"Kyaa! Wait, I\'m talking to him!"

Mal suddenly heard the sound of splashing and the camera angle became a blur as the phone was wrestled from Serena\'s grip. Unsurprisingly, Luna\'s superior physical body and telekinetic abilities allowed her to recover the phone first, and she held it in a way that allowed Mal to see all three beautiful women. But Mal admittedly had to do a double take because for some reason his girlfriends did not look quite the same as he had left them.

"Not sure if I just miss you guys or what but you look even more beautiful than the last time I saw you. How is this possible?"

Ignoring the fact that the girls were currently soaking wet and wearing bathing suits, their skin and hair seemed to be literally glowing.

"Luna has a magical body." Sei explained.

14:08

And it wasn\'t hard to tell that the camera was in no way doing them justice. "Luna has a magical body." Sei explained.

"It\'s true, It defies common sense." Anna added.

"...I think I need a better explanation cause the mental image that I have can\'t be correct." He was met with giggles combined with rolled eyes before Luna explained how Rowan had told her a story about Changg\'e cleansing other\'s body through the use of her bathwater. Since they were swimming today, she wanted to know if she could do something similar and decided to use the girls as a test subject. "My body feels great and all but my boobs didn\'t get any bigger..." Serana said sadly. Sei merely offered her daughter a consultative pat on the head and did not comment. Nôv(el)B\\\\jnn

"But enough about that, how are you, love? Is training going well?" Luna asked. Malachi told the girls about everything he\'d done on the island so far using as little detail as possible so as not to scare them. It seemed to have worked sufficiently, as when he told the girls that he could no longer be injured by low grade magical weapons their eyes took on a visible sparkle. Because Mal was so comfortable, he ended up falling asleep on the phone with the girls, but they were not particularly upset. Though they missed him, they could understand that he must have gone through quite a lot and must have been tired.

They said their loving goodbyes as he slept, before hanging up and promising to send him more pictures later. As Mal slumbered, the door between his room and Bianca\'s opened, and she hesitantly poked her head inside.

Seeing bad kids in the barbershop will forever be the funnist part of being a man. This little boy told his momma \'Don\'t tell me what to do\' loud asf in front of a room full of grown ass men and he had like six people trynna whoop him. AnathaShesha