Light and wind and translucent fire erupted out of Parry, instantly blowing out the candles and lantern, filling the room with ineffable pressure, as if the very sky had entered the room, grown a throat and learned to scream.

Behind the pain of the spell came the lethal sensation of all his magic draining away. More, so much more, the hungry enchantment sought power Parry did not have. Instead of killing him and failing, the spell fished through his connection to his familiar. It drew on Styak, not caring the source was demonic, burning up every drop of mana the demon had accumulated in decades of waiting.

His human throat burned with screaming, an agonizing counterpoint to the demonic wails boiling up from Styak's shelter deep in the stacks of his memories. It seemed to go on forever.

Parry might have lost consciousness, he couldn't tell. Blinking awake was the same, total blindness. There was a scent in the room of lilies, almost overpowering. Styak was still screaming in his mind.

Time, place, everything felt unmoored, like reality had skipped a step and was trying to find purchase.

Numbness receding, Parry felt around him, reassured by the faint sensation of wood, the floor, the wall behind him. At last, the demon ceased howling in his thoughts only to whimper in agony.

Feeling around in blindness, he touched his pack and tore into it, wrapping his hand around a storm candle. He held it up and broke it in half, igniting a flame from each end, filling the room with blessedly normal light.

The hiss of the flames in his hands and the ragged wheezing of his own breath told Parry the silence had been dispelled, and a visceral relief flooded through him--he could see! The room was...white. All white. Everything was white.

Everything was white.

The walls. The window sill. The table. The stool. The three clear puddles that a moment ago had been three thieves. The cot, Parry's pack, everything in his pack, his clothes, white. Beyond white, a spotless, radiant white that drew supplicating tears from his eyes, made him want to lay down and offer thanks.

"...Styak..." he croaked, throat still raw. He set the storm candles down carefully, their white light--designed to be clear and bright in even a hurricane, looked profane compared to the white of everything in the room.

"Styak?" he tried again, in his mind, where somehow even that felt strained and exhausted. "What...what...?!"

It took everything Parry had to push aside relief, panic and shock.

"Styak, that was the Word of Consecration. I can't cast...I couldn't possibly cast that now. I should be dead. Do you live? Are you insane?"

It wasn't a comment. Parry truly wasn't certain if the Word had driven the little demon insane. All he knew for certain was that Styak was at least alive, curled up somewhere among his memories like a hedgehog.

"Say something!"

"Gone," came a voice almost as kittenish as its form. "Every scrap of magic I'd saved for four decades. You stole it!"

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Parry felt the demon's dawning horror and outrage, but it was utterly empty, everything taken from it.

"Why, in the name of every Hell, did you slot that spell? It's meant for a battlefield. It's meant for a continent!"

Parry quickly called up his stats to see the damage.

Strength: 5 / 40 Maximum: 105 Dexterity: 27 / 74 Maximum: 108 Fatigue: 8 / 105 Maximum: 105 Magic: 0 / 36 Maximum: 124 Health: 117 / 117 Maximum: 117

Weak, of course; he felt a bone weariness that made even kneeling difficult. His hands fumbled and felt dull, like he'd just overcome the worst illness in history. Exhaustion and absolutely no magic left, unsurprisingly.

But he had full health. Every wound was closed, there were no scars. Not even old scars remained, ones his body had acquired long before he reincarnated into this life.

"Styak, that was the Word of Consecration," he repeated, marveling through the peculiar and awful pain of total magic depletion. He checked his spell list:

[Point Towards Home] Cost: 1 [Angel at My Shoulder] Cost: 5 [Finders Keepers] Cost: 1 / day [Repeater] Cost: 1 [[Friend of Fabric]] . [[Friend of Wood]] . [[Friend of Metal]] . [Word of Consecration] Cost: 500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eyes glazed, Parry tried to make sense of the bizarre state of the room. A ramshackle, impoverished cheap boarding room with a stool, a cot, sheets, blanket, a couple of candles and a lantern tossed over...all white, and not painted or bleached. The white was internal, integral, everything in the room had been scoured and transformed. The fireplace. The ash in the fireplace. It was surreal.

"Don't come out."

That cut through Styak's daze. "What? Why not?"

"You'd be destroyed instantly. This is now holy ground. Everything in the room is consecrated."

Parry reached over and carefully touched the clear pool that had been Mr. Knife. It was now holy water.

It was too much. Parry started to giggle hysterically.

"Holy ground! Holy...hotel room!" He laughed too loud. Arms around his stomach, clamped over his all-white clothes. "Holy--"

The door opened and the little girl, Sean, peeked in, eyes very wide. She looked utterly out of place, a foundling dropped at the steps of a cathedral.

Parry's laughter stopped abruptly as he stared back.

How am I going to explain this?