As I materialized outside the airship, Mike was already a tiny dot plummeting toward the ground. Panic gripped my heart as I lost sight of him for a moment, but luckily his fluttering vest caught my attention even from that distance.

In my demon form, I had no wings, so I quickly transformed back into my human form to deploy my wings and speed up my descent. The air whistled past me as I dove headfirst toward the ground.

For a long ten seconds, I feared I was too late, but then I closed the distance surprisingly fast. Mike was floating with his limbs spread out, seemingly admiring the rapidly approaching landscape below.

I almost missed him, but I adjusted my flight at the last second and slammed into his back. I wrapped my arms and legs tightly around him.

He yelled in surprise, then mumbled, “Lores?” barely audible, as he put a hand over mine.

His hand felt warm over mine. I tightened my grip, interlocking my hands and feet to make sure he wouldn’t slip away. With him securely in my grasp, I raised my head to look for the zeppelin, but it was disappointingly small, far away in the sky. There was no way I could fly back on deck; the ship was much too fast and already too far, maybe a kilometer higher.

Having used a lot of mana for my previous transformations, I was running low. I frantically looked around for a good landing spot, but all I could see was jungle. We were still high in the sky, so I needed to conserve my mana to ensure a safe landing. Far to the right, I thought I could make out some signs of civilization, but it was difficult to be sure. Like a wasp carrying a too-heavy larva, I tried to navigate in that direction.

To my relief, I saw a small group of avians flying towards us. I considered changing direction to meet them, but I dismissed the idea as the place I was steering towards seemed like the best landing zone, and my mana was depleting too fast. I realized I needed to let us fall again for a while and then stop our descent just before hitting the ground.

With my last motes of mana, I guided us through the dense foliage, my ethereal wings remaining unaffected by the branches. We landed on the soft, mushy ground—not quite the perfect glade it had appeared from above, but good enough. We crashed into the grass, and I rolled over Mike, landing on my back. It was a relatively soft landing, all things considered. Exhausted and with a headache announcing its presence due to my depleted mana, I took a deep breath and voiced my frustration.

"I'm going to kill that viscount, that fucking idiot! I'm going to kill him!!" I announced angrily. There was no way he was innocent and this had just happened by chance.

I took another deep breath and looked at Mike over my forehead, almost planting my horns in the ground with the movement.

“Are you okay, buddy?” I asked.

He tried to push himself up, raising his head. His eyes momentarily glanced over my frame, and I realized he was feeling uncomfortable seeing my nakedness. But I was too tired to care; my travel suit and precious ladies' underwear were now lying on the floor in that club flying away from me. He nodded as I slowly stood up.

“I’m okay,” he breathed out, and after a brief pause, continued, “Thank you for saving my life!”

At that moment, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. An avian about twenty meters away, flying above the bushes, had spotted us. I wanted to turn and wave at him, but before I could say anything, he threw a javelin. I could have dodged the damn spear, but it would have hit Mike instead, so I stood there and took it on my right hip.

Luckily, the avian was low-level, under twenty, and his spear only grazed my skin, but it did graze it, and I yelled in anger.

"What the fuck was that?"

I shouted at him in Guaravian to stop, but it didn’t help. More were coming, carrying small bundles of those light spears.

For several seconds, I focused on parrying their throws, but the situation was becoming untenable. While at the moment they didn't seem to be able to really harm me, they could harm Mike. When I saw one of them bringing a net, I decided I needed to react.

I didn’t have enough mana to fly and chase them, but I had enough to shoot a couple of small black bolts. They wouldn’t be deadly, but they'd hurt them enough to make them think twice before coming close to me.

The result was not as expected. All I managed to do was provoke them to fly faster, like an angry swarm of wasps, their spear throws becoming more random and dangerous. My headache grew heavier, and I realized I felt dizzy. Were their spears poisoned?

That was too much. My anger boiled over, and I let out a terrible growl. It wasn’t a human scream but the growl of the beast within me, announcing its presence. To my surprise, they dropped like swatted flies all around me.

I stepped to the nearest avian, lifted its head with one hand, and growled, "Will you leave me alone, or should I eat you?"

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He trembled, still unable to move. I didn’t know if they understood me, but they ceased to harass us.

So much for expecting help from the avians!

I turned towards Mike and sighed. “Come, let's go,” I said, grasping his hand and starting to walk westward, where I thought the road was. His face was as white as paper, and his hand trembled slightly, but he followed me.

There must have been some poison on those spears because numbness was spreading from my hip. I had a certain resistance to poison—or at least I should have. I halted briefly and checked myself. With my mana starting to recover, I circulated it through my body, and indeed, I felt better, as if being cleaned bit by bit.

I turned to Mike. “Did they hit you? Are you wounded?”

“No, I'm okay,” he said again.

As we had already covered some distance from where we fought the avians, I judged that we could take a short break. The way forward was getting more difficult, and we might need to fly over it.

“Now, tell me what happened,” I said while putting on a pair of shorts and a blouse. I decided to spare the fine shoes, as they would only get destroyed, but the blouse and shorts were probably needed. Since I had that beast in my brain, I tended to see clothes more as unnecessary, fancy accessories.

He explained that he had only leaned on a balustrade that seemed solid. Other people had done the same thing before, but when he did it, it broke. That was all. It sounded so stupid! I tried to think of some logical explanations.

“Maybe that viscount sabotaged the balustrade? But how could he time it to break right when you or one of our guys would rest against it? Alice would have noticed something like that!”

“What if it’s a curse, as Elenia said?” he wondered.

I shrugged. “You mean the viscount cursed you? Or who else could and would have done that?”

“But Elenia's aunt spoke about the curse even before we had met the viscount,” he pointed out.

That was a valid point.

I needed to consider that! Where could the curse come from? Could it have originated from the fight with Ju? But if that were the case, wouldn’t Ju have mentioned something?

Could I even check if it was a curse? White Flower had been able to detect and remove curses. Maybe I could find something in my memories to help me at least determine if he was truly cursed.

“Oh well, I'll try something. Sit down and let me concentrate,” I said.

I placed my hands over his head, trying to recall what Flo had done during the fight with the warlock at Tim's party. She had repeatedly removed curses from me. I tried to remember her movements and replicate them, first on myself and then on him.

At first it did not work and I only felt silly, but I persevered, doing it again and again and again, until once, when I did it on him, I sensed something there. It had a strange, familiar 'taste.' I repeated the process on myself, then on him again. Yes, the same difference. It was as if something loomed above him, but that something was very familiar!

My eyes went wide.

“Mike...”

He looked at me. “Is there something?”

“Damn it!” I fell to my knees. “No, no, no! It can't be possible!”

I closed my eyes, trying to come to terms with what I had realized but still didn’t want to believe. Could it be?

“Why did I accept it? Why! Mike, did you talk to anyone about my magical abilities?”

He watched me, puzzled. “Why do you ask that? I don't understand. We do talk from time to time about your magic aptitudes with the boys and Ju!”

I shook my head. “Do you remember that vow we took with Tom? I think it was his initiative, or was it Hew's?”

“When? At Hew's cabin?”

“Yes, at Hew's cabin! Did you talk to anyone about me after that?”

He shrugged.

“No… or maybe… I did have an argument with my mom about you after you stayed with us. Sandra had told her that she likes you because you’re a witch. My mom said witches are bad and insisted you’re not a witch. I argued that there are good witches too, and if you are a witch, you’re a good one. It was a silly argument and didn’t go much further than that.”

“Was that all?” I asked, still not seeing the reason for the curse.

“No. After that, I talked with Sandra because she kept pestering me and asking questions about you being a witch, and I confirmed it.”

I took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “Why did Sandra come to the idea that I was a witch?”

“She spied on you when you slept there. Your room and hers are connected by a huge double door that can be opened to make it a party room. The door is normally covered with heavy draperies and looks like a regular wall, but it isn’t. She just spied on you from under the drapery. I always wanted to ask, what did you do? She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Oh, fuck. I did try transformation spells and worked on my wings and claws at that time. If she saw that, she had enough to think I’m a witch.”

"And that vow we took triggered the curse because I talked with Sandra?" he wondered.

I sighed and shrugged. "It looks like it did."

He cursed under his breath. "Can you uncurse me?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I can barely touch the spell that looms over you. I don't have the level, but I think I was able to postpone it or delay it for the time being."

"How come you don't have the level?" he asked, puzzled.

I sighed and raised my hands. "I think I can delay it. Somehow the spell reacts, because it is my spell, but I don't have enough power to modify it. If we do this regularly, maybe once a day, we can keep it at bay until we find a permanent solution."

After that, we just stood there, looking at each other in silence for quite some time.