Connection Evolved

The pounding in Atlas's head felt like a military band's percussion section invaded his brain as it broke him from his sleep. He wondered what he had drunk to get this bad of a hangover, but when he tried thinking back, all he could remember was a strange dream where he'd fought alongside a being that shared his name against creatures from his scariest nightmares. Obviously, that couldn't be right, so he decided to just get up from his unusually uncomfortable bed and see if his phone would give him any answers.

Only to lift his head and open his eyes to one of the Lieutenants from his dream staring down at him.

"Holy shit!" He screamed, instinctually flinching backward to hit his head on the hard ground. Sparks flashed across his vision as his headache lashed out with fury at the impact, and the pain seemed to set off a chain reaction across his whole body. Atlas wanted nothing more than to scramble back, but the pain and an unnatural weakness in his muscles prevented him from moving.

"Amy back up a little! You're scaring the poor kid," a voice called from behind the blank-faced woman above him, who Atlas now realized was Amaryllis, though something seemed different about her.

As Amaryllis pulled back out of his vision with what Atlas could have sworn was a slight pout, Big A leaned in from his other side. "How you doin' kid?" He asked with a slight smile.

"Big A? What's… the lieutenants? What's going on?" Atlas couldn't even put together a sentence between the headache and the shock of the lieutenant's appearance.

"Hold on, kid. Let's get you sat up, and I'll explain what I can," Big A said before reaching under Atlas and lifting his torso enough to push a boulder behind the human closer to brace him as Big A set him down. Atlas hissed in pain at the movements, the shock of it keeping him from being overwhelmed. Sure that Atlas wouldn't fall, Big A backed up and sat down in a lotus position so the much shorter man wouldn't have to crane his neck quite so badly. That wasn't bad by itself, but when Amaryllis and Verian sat down next to the Titano, it almost sent Atlas into another panic before Big A held out his hands in a placating gesture to stave off his reaction. "Easy there, Atlas. They're not going to hurt you. Things have changed quite a bit while you were unconscious."

Atlas looked at the two suspiciously as he tried to confirm what Big A said. He partially succeeded as they had gone through some serious physical changes at the very least. Both women's armor had morphed from the unnerving combination of scales and chitin into form-fitting bodysuits with a subtle texture reminiscent of threaded metal wire but far more flexible than any similar material Atlas knew. The cores that had sat in the middle of the old armor remained, but instead of the vile green they had been before, they now had a purple glow that matched Atlas's aura during the fight, though he could see flecks of yellow now and again that tickled something in his brain.

Ignoring the feeling, he observed that Varien and Amaryllis's eyes had regained their scleras and changed back to what Atlas guessed were their original brilliant colors of green and blue, respectively. However, they still had slitted pupils, and Atlas felt like he saw flashes of the same electric purple as in their cores but he couldn't be sure. The rest of their faces had also lost some of the harsh angles he'd seen previously, though they still had a few scales that framed their faces and trailed down under their armor.

Each one had also changed in a few unique ways. Varien had lost a few inches, but that hadn't affected her physique negatively. If anything, she'd gotten more ripped, the new armor revealing her toned biceps and legs and an eight-pack of abs that could grate cheese. Atlas could also see that past her flowing red hair she'd recovered her weapon while he'd been unconscious, and its head had shifted from the double-headed war axe to a war hammer-axe combo with a spike protruding from between the two heads. Atlas wondered what had caused the weapon of all things to shift as he traced the serrated blade and octagonal hammer combo weapon.

As he switched his attention to Amaryllis, Atlas saw her sitting down with her legs crossed and hands folded. Whatever shift had come over the formerly Tainted woman, it hadn't affected her expressionlessness as she sat there calmly. At first, Atlas couldn't see any changes in her compared to Verian, but then Amaryllis tilted her head. Behind her rising in the air and swaying slowly was her tail. However, it had changed far more than Atlas could have expected, especially when the memory of the grotesque and colorless scorpion tale that had stabbed into his heart not so long ago.

Instead, her tail had changed to a beautiful gold color, with shimmering veins of pearlescence breaking it up. The chitin composing the exoskeleton of the tail might also have changed, though Atlas couldn't tell for certain. The change that drew his attention the most was Amaryllis's stinger. The area where the stinger met the rest of the tail gradually shifted from gold to darker and darker shades until it reached the base of the injector where it abruptly moved to a constantly shifting rainbow. Atlas would have found it rather pretty if bugs didn't completely petrify him.

The pair blushed after having him staring for so long, and Atlas realized that if he were in one of the LitRPG books he liked, it would've made a shitty exposition chapter. He cleared his throat. "Is it true?" He asked. "You two aren't about to kill me?"

Amaryllis shook her head in an enthusiastic no, though Atlas wasn't sure which question to ask. Verian answered it when she asked, confusion visible on her face, "Kill you? Why would we kill you? You saved us after all."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, thanks to you we're finally free. You even made the pair of us an all-new race I've never heard of before," Verian said as Amaryllis nodded enthusiastically behind her.

"I DID WHAT?!"