Finley Cai Aies Hall May 1st, 20XX

The first explosion blasted right in my ears as I tackled Askeli out of the way and a second boomed in the distance.

The two of us rolled out of the way, just barely escaping with light injuries but that did nothing to alleviate the stress of the situation.

The explosion had propelled us much further away from the site than was realistic but then again there wasn't much realism in being sniped by a magic bomb or casting a small shield spell to protect oneself from the said magic explosion.

In my panic, the only spell I had been able to think up was a thin casing of magic to shield us from the spell, the same type I usually used to actively process magic whenever I had the time.

I encased two of us as securely as possible but forgot to take into account what being trapped in a giant ball and rolled away in an explosion with another fully grown person actually meant.

I wrapped my wings around myself and curled into a ball in an attempt to protect myself from the flailing mass of limbs that was my companion.

Somewhere mid-roll I managed to release his death-like grip on me and propelled myself out of the sphere to land on my feet; the momentum didn't last though and I ended up falling into a crawling position as I tried to regain my balance.

Askeli failed to react in time and landed hard on his back, sustaining a minor injury to the wings. He stayed immobile on the ground as he tried to recover from the shock but I had no intentions of waiting for him to do that.

Once I regained my sense of direction and gravity I pulled myself up to my feet and started to look around for any clues as to who had caused the explosion but a quick scan only revealed the burning foliage and broken down architecture that littered the ground around us.

At least that was what my eyes showed me.

I sat down in a meditative pose and took a quick scan of my surroundings, not more than 5 feet around me but still found nothing.

I expanded the search a bit more to 10 feet. I knew I was being overcautious but I couldn't risk exposing myself to anyone that happened to have a higher than normal magic perception.

Ah, there they are.

Scantily clad and riding on brooms, a herd of witches flew around us, clearly searching for something.

I quickly stood once again and began to stride towards Askel, wanting to get as far away from here as possible.

It would be a grand political mistake to immediately blame the witches for the attack, on top of that they may have just volunteered to help with the search for me and were flying especially quickly because of that.

But I wasn't going to bet on ‘may have’.

None of their magic signatures matched that of the explosion but the witches were well known for their magic items. It wouldn't be too far of a reach to assume they had used a bomb of sorts rather than casting an actual spell.

I walked towards Akseli and pulled him up to his feet, dodging out of the way when he lost his footing and tried to lean onto me for support.

“ Wake up! The castle is under attack and I don't have time to play around with you. Can you walk?”

His wings looked stiff from the fall so flying seemed to be out of the option. He wobbled up to his feet with a nasty scowl on his face but still nodded.

“ I can stand.”

“ That's not what I asked.”

Again a nasty scowl was directed towards me.

“ I just survived an explosion! can you give me a moment to gather myself!”

“ I just Saved you from an explosion and am perfectly fine.”

He paused and a sheepish expression crawled across his face.

“ …..Thank you. but that's not the point! In cases of emergency, it's better to wait for help to arrive.”

“ The only thing that's going to arrive if we wait around is whoever attacked us in the first place.”

I could see where he was coming from, after all, I had been trained to do the same thing by Corin and Cambridge in cases of emergency.

Though, In this case, that wasn't happening.

In the scenario that I stayed around and was caught, I was sure I wouldn't like the ending. I was also really worried about Corin and Cambridge, the General as well.

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They were probably better off than I was but I couldn't help wanting to go look for them and make sure with my own eyes that they were okay.

I began walking away and made it about halfway across the clearing by the time he finally realized I had full intentions to leave him behind and ran to catch up with me. Well, that and another explosion revealed itself not even half a mile away from us.

Of course, I wouldn't have left him behind but that didn't mean I wasn't incredibly tempted.

The explosion had been too close to us for it to have been a random terrorist attack so it was clear that they were probably tracking the traces of royal magic and where it was strongest. That meant I had been the direct target and in turn meant that the reason he and many others were hurt because of me. I had no intention to empty my treasury as reparation funds of course but I did intend on making it up to them at some other time.

But for now, I couldn't afford him to think that I owed him anything and to have him become even more deadweight than he already was.

As long as he thought I didn't care whether he lived or died, he would be forced to start planning to save his own life ... hopefully.

Still, it was such a pitiful sight watching him trying to walk alongside me, who was more familiar with walking than I was with flying.

It would be the equivalent of forcing me to walk in a handstand next to an experienced acrobat I supposed. Possible but frustrating on both sides.

“ That's Enough! This is ridiculous! I'm never going to get anywhere like this!”

He finally exploded and plopped down in a rather conveniently placed log, legs quivering beneath him and his still disabled wings drooping down forlornly.

“ I don't think I’ve ever walked this far in my life! and I think I’m better off for it! We’ve tried your way and it's not going to work unless you plan on leaving me behind here.”

Hey, don't make offers that I’ll be tempted to take.

I think he saw my clear intention of taking him up on his offer because he quickly backtracked and said.

“ But there is safety in numbers and we should stick together! as well your royal guards are probably searching for you right now, us moving around will only make their jobs more difficult! I say we should find a safe spot to hide and keep a lookout for the rescuers when they arrive.”

I took a seat across him and tried to think from his perspective. The perspective of a young male that had been raised in this world as well as being from a high-class family and was struck with the revolting realization that I would probably have ended up a much worse version of the guy across myself.

Still, there was no way that I was going to make it across the courtyard in any reasonable amount of time. I hadn't noticed it because we had been flying but there was a solid half a day walk ahead of me if I tried and with the dead-weight to add to the burden I didn't think I would make it.

Or well… I would make it but I couldn't guarantee his safety.

“ Fine. Just give me a second to think.”

“ That's right! I’m sure someone will find-”

I quickly condensed the magic around myself and created a sphere, letting the pleasant sound of magic purifying itself full my ears.

It wasn't a loud sound usually but because I was focused on it occupied enough of my mind to distract me from Askeli’s droning. The other part of my mind was focused on how to move around.

I could create a ball like my own and put Askeli in it, but the consumption of magic was too high and being exposed to too much royal magic would create similar symptoms to Mei’s which I didn't want to happen.

Thankfully Askeli’s magic perception was so low it was downright pitiful so I could do as much as I had without having him trying to kidnap me and lock me away in a dungeon or something.

Even as low as it was he had already lost whatever resentment he had towards me and started to show possessiveness by panicking when he lost sight of me and it wasn't just because we were in the middle of what was virtually war zone.

More of an experiment than any sort of strategy I gradually extended my range up to a mile and searched for any familiar magic signatures. I had kept my range at 10 feet before so I thought it would be safe but alas, life rarely goes as planned.

I got up and as quickly as I could and constructed a half-sphere from magic, more of a bowl than anything, and solidified it as much as I could.

“ Get up”

Askeli looked up in surprise, apparently having given up on talking to me a while ago and had been gazing up at the sky.

“ I thought we agreed the plan was to stay here?”

I thought of the best way to break the news to the panicky mess of a man that was beside me and eventually settled on saying.

“Four foreign magic signatures are heading towards us, I think it would be safe to assume that they are the people behind all this chaos.”

I had taken the pains of remembering all of the magic signatures of the guests that had greeted me in the ball earlier, for me to not remember these meant that they were probably not on the guest list. He got progressively paler and paler as he got up and began to hobble towards the sphere but the signatures were closing in on us at a decent pace and would be here within 10 minutes or less.

In as calm a manner as I could I added,

“You have my magic all over you and not a lot of them know what the prince looks like. They'll probably kill both of us if they get the chance, so pretty much… get in if you want to live.”

I struggled with the ending of my grand speech a bit but I felt it had turned out okay. Askeli would probably beg to differ though as he sped up and all but dived into the ‘bowl’

There was no way that I would be able to fly this thing fast enough to outfly them So I did the next best thing.

“ This was in the textbooks, and my mother did this so I don’t think it’ll be impossible.”

I muttered as I took off the yards of fabric that had been attached to my waist with the excuse of ‘tradition’ and got to work tying it around the two trees closest to one another.

“As was mentioned It's pretty elastic so it should work”

I grabbed the fabric from Askeli’s clothing as well and tied it to the first makeshift sling and then stretched it as far back as I could until both were incredibly taut.

“ Wait! what are you doing? You can't possibly be-”

I tuned Askeli out again and proceeded to load the sphere into the first sling, stretching the fabric underneath it as much as possible.

“ Can you please be quiet while I’m trying to save our lives?”

I climbed in and changed my wand into a knife and then without letting myself think about it too much closed up the sphere so we wouldn't fall out and pushed my arm into the small hole I had left in the ball and cut Askeli’s fabric.

The sudden lack of tension that it had provided made My fabric snap forward and the force propelled us into the sky, helping us travel much faster than I would have been able to move us.

It was a definite achievement but I couldn't even enjoy it thanks to a certain someone's screaming in my ear.

Tch. He really was a dead weight.