To be honest, if she had said no there, I had no clue what I was going to do. On one hand, I do realize that Sophia just doesn’t want me to die, which is extremely reasonable, but on the other hand, I hadn’t even consciously chosen to save Ash. My body moved in on pure instinct, so if I promised her I wouldn’t do something like that again and the same situation presented itself, how the hell am I going to stop my own subconscious instinct if it happens before I can even process thought? The answer being, I can’t. I would just end up promising not to, then turn around and do it anyway, making me a liar. I am many things, a lot of them bad, but I am not a liar. Well, unless you count stories told for the sole purpose of entertainment, but I don’t really count those as lies.

The pair of ears enchantment wasn’t all that complicated, so the only time it took was actually sewing them. I had one ear on either side connected to the same battery as my eye enchantment, and I put a dial next to each ear. The goal was to be able to change the audible pitch in each ear so that I could hear in a normal pitch with one ear, and detect infrasound with the other. Infrasound is a low frequency sound wave that can be used to detect natural disasters before they occur. I’d have also increased the normal ear to be able to hear in ultrasound, but that isn’t really a naturally occurring thing.

After a few hours, I finished the last stitch and gave it a test drive. “Hello?” Finally, I could hear my own voice when I spoke. Sophia had stayed in a chair nearby while I worked, just kinda chillin and thinking about her own stuff. As a demon who’s been alive for over 5000 years, she probably hasn’t had to worry about mortality all that much, so my brush with death probably made her want to feel close to me without getting in the way of my work.

“Did it work?” She asked, and I nodded, responding, “Yeah, I can hear now. Mind sending me back for a sec? I should at least let Ash know I’m okay. Promise I won’t get into any trouble while I’m down there.”

She bent forwards and lightly flicked me on the forehead. “You’d better not, especially since most of your bones are still broken for the next couple weeks. You really shouldn’t be moving at all, so definitely no hiking.” I agreed with her, giving her assurance that I wasn’t about to push myself, and she sent me back to Earth.

Ash’s POV

After I woke up, the other three had a lot of questions. What happened to Leo’s body, why did I start yelling at a stick, what was that big explosion that killed the elemental? It took a long time to explain about how Leo would leave every night and Sophia’s crazy magic that could teleport him around no matter where he was. Mostly because none of them could believe that a mage that powerful could actually exist. I told them that a side effect of the spell was that when she sent him back, it would be to the same exact place he had left from, so until he returned, we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. I was so intent on explaining everything that I barely even registered that someone had healed the stab wound in my shoulder while I slept. I won’t leave. Not again. Never again.

For the first couple of days they had agreed. After all, they still needed to search for the Elemental’s core, the entire point of why we’d done this. After they found it, they still agreed that we should take a couple of days of rest. But by day 5, they started getting anxious. Liz wanted to get moving so that we could reach a town as soon as possible, with Mike faithfully behind her, agreeing. Aozia was torn, in that he agreed that he wanted to get to a town as soon as possible for safety reasons, but he acknowledged that our journey would be a whole lot safer if we had Leo with us.

After a week had passed though, he started leaning more towards Liz’s argument, and he tried convincing me to leave. But I just couldn’t. Leo had gotten so badly hurt protecting me, I had to know, I had to be sure that I hadn’t gotten him killed.

Of course you did. You get everyone close to you killed. That’s your curse after all. No. I refuse to accept that. Leo wasn’t dead. The days grew long. Every minute of waiting felt like another hour, every hour felt as though days had passed, and by the time the sun rose in the sky each day, it was as though another year had come and gone, while I stayed rooted to the spot, incapable of leaving without knowing one way or the other.

“Yo.” Our heads all snapped towards the familiar voice. There he stood, a tall, broad shouldered man wearing nothing but a pair of baggy cargo pants. His bearskin cloak, leather pants and boots, and his shirt most likely needed repairs. For the first time we all saw Leo’s body and…

It was somewhere between beautiful and horrific. Well toned muscle lay beneath his skin, which, when his height and stature were added into the equation, gave him a feeling of unwavering strength. But all over his body were what looked like black and crimson spiderwebs. It was as though he were completely shattered, and one light touch is all that it would take to make him crumble into pieces. We remained silent, processing the body of the enigma known as Leo.

“Gotta say, I expected a bit of a warmer welcome. I had a telekinesis spell ready for Ash running up and hugging me in relief. What’s up guys? I’m alive by the way. Wasn’t sure y’all’d worked that one out.”

Slowly, I gathered my courage and approached him, lightly touching his shoulder, and being both surprised and relieved that he had not in fact turned into a pile of blood and dust. “Is all of that from the explosion?”

Leo looked down and realized that we were all staring at the cracks in his skin, before inexplicably laughing. “God no, this was just Sophia getting a little too rough in bed a few months back. I’m really fine guys, they’ve been here this whole time. Just think of the lines as powerful tattoos. Well, I’m not totally fine. Definitely got a bunch of cracked bones, but they’ll be good in a couple of weeks, and then we can head back out, okay?”

Once the knowledge that he was not in fact about to die truly sank into my head, I couldn’t help myself anymore. I hugged him as gently as I could and said, “I’m so sorry, I almost got you killed. I should’ve-” But I was interrupted by a flick to the forehead.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“You almost got yourself killed too dumbass, don’t forget that. And I don’t really do apologies. You should just expect me to rush in and help you when you’re in trouble. I expect the same thing from you. We’re friends right? Ain’t that what they’re for?”

“NO.” I accidentally screamed in his ear. Calming my voice down, I fixed my phrasing, “If that happens again in the future, don’t kill yourself trying to save me. I’m not worth it. Please I-” Another flick to the forehead.

“I’m also not really a fan of ‘pleases’ between friends. Just tell me what you want or need and I got you. I’ll do the same. And as for your ‘being worth it.’” He then pinched both of my cheeks and lightly twisted them, causing pain and heat to flare up in my face. The hell was he doing? “That’s not really something for you to decide now is it? I am the one who gets to choose who’s worth putting myself on the line for, so if you don’t want me doing something stupid like that again,” he stopped twisting my cheeks and lightly tousled my hair, “then don’t put yourself at risk like that again. During our watches consider spinning and enchantment time effectively paused, I’ll be training you in basic survival instead until I don’t gotta worry about you anymore. Deal?”

“But I” Flick.

“Really just” Flick.

“Goddamn it, fine. Deal.”

The left side of Leo’s mouth lifted up in the same crooked grin he made anytime I did something dumb. Unfortunately I was rather used to this particular grin of his. I settled for just hugging him and sobbing uncontrollably, since he wouldn’t accept any sort of apology.

“Did you say weeks?” Behind us, Liz butted in with an annoyed expression. “We’ve already waited over a week for you and now you want us to stay here practically a damn month waiting on you to be able to walk?”

Mike, to his credit, tried to object to Liz’s words, reminding her that Leo had gotten his injuries saving my life, but crumbled when she shot him a dissatisfied look. Leo tried to satisfy her and Aozia, who looked like he was agreeing with Liz by saying, “I mean, if you guys want to get going I can meet up with you at the first town. Shit, I might actually beat y’all there.”

Mike decided to take that as an insult, not knowing about Leo’s broomstick project that would make long distance travel really easy for him. “Are you saying we’re slowing you down?”

Leo shook his head, calmly stating, “No, the nature of the job is. If I’m traveling alone I have a lot more options for high-speed movement, but the speed of an escort detail is determined by the slowest person, which in our case is the merchant. When it comes to sprinting he’s the fastest of all of us, but when it comes to hiking for miles upon miles of tricky terrain his height and relative lack of endurance makes him the slowest. Alternatively, Liz and I are the fastest in long distance travel because we’re both very accustomed to flying.”

Mike seemed like he was about to argue back but I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be waiting here for him until his body is ready to go. Aozia, it’s up to you whether you want to go on with just Mike and Liz or wait here with me.”

“Aozia?” Leo muttered above me. It occurred to me that he had never once actually said the merchant’s name. Was this his first time hearing it? Wait, did he travel for months protecting a man without even bothering to learn his damn name? I couldn’t tell whether to laugh or scold him.

Aozia took a moment to decide, before sitting down and saying, “If it’s alright with you two, I’d prefer to wait for Mr. Leo to heal up before carrying on. His scouting alone is enough to put me at ease, and the end of the battle with the elemental clearly demonstrated that he had the means to end the fight without any of our assistance. I will be waiting here.”

With the job requestant making his decision, Liz and Mike had no more room to argue. Dissatisfied, they settled down, and prepared to wait the weeks that it would require for Leo to get back on his feet.

“Oh yeah, that reminds me, what happened with the core? Did I blow it up?” Seemingly dissatisfied that Leo had remembered its existence, Mike tossed it to him, and Leo caught it with telekinesis.

“It was buried a little under where you were standing. Your body probably took the brunt of the explosion, so it ended up only a little damaged. The perfect condition to absorb it.”

Leo looked at it for a short period before turning to me. “You wanna learn Earth magic?”

Bewildered, I stuttered, “L-Leo, that’s yours. You killed the elemental and prevented the core’s destruction, by all rights that’s for you to absorb.”

He just shrugged nonchalantly and stated, “Ehh, Earth magic ain’t really my bag. It’s cool and all, but I’m pretty sure anything I could learn from this I can do better through enchantments or other kinds of magic anyway. Why throw rocks when I can just send exploding flying knives? Why send my senses through the dirt under my feet when I can just look? Sure I could make rock spikes and stab people with them, but again, flying knives. Just all in all, not really something I need. You, on the other hand, could absolutely use some magical ways of attacking and defense. Your magics are Light and Dark, right? Specializing in concealment? Well I could see you the entire time, and if I can, then someone else can, so you need another way to protect yourself.”

I started to shake my head, but he pushed the core into my chest, saying calmly, “If you don’t want me to be in danger again, then absorb this, so I won’t have to worry about you.”

I realized that he wouldn’t be changing his mind about this, so I did as he instructed. Instantly I felt…not knowledge, not even understanding. It was simply overwhelming familiarity with the ground under my feet. As though my entire life had been lived right in this spot. With time, I knew I would be able to take advantage of this familiarity, and completely alter the layout of any battleground to my favor. I desperately wanted to thank Leo for this, but I remembered what he said about politeness, so instead said, “The first elemental we find that you can use, I’ll get it for you.”

Leo nodded in acceptance, an easy, confident grin on his face.

Sophia’s POV

A little after sending Leo back to Earth, I received a notification from one of my Avatars. With no hesitation, I swapped places with it, and in the blink of an eye was standing before a man. His body was a deep green, almost black, swirling cerulean water flowing throughout him just as my flames raged through me. This man was a Titled. “Hello my dear.” His voice was smooth and hypnotic. A calm ocean concealing torrential currents hidden in the depths. It was as though listening to this man would drag you down into an abyss of chaotic slipstreams, crushing you underneath its pressure. That is, if you weren’t strong enough to resist the tide.

“I am not your dear. You may refer to me as Desire’s Flame.” I stated coldly. Perhaps it was not the best idea to potentially antagonize the first person I’d found who could help me with my project, but Titled were generally used to getting what they want, as a result of our overwhelming power. If I didn’t establish clear boundaries early, I risked him thinking I was something attainable for him.

“I see,” he sounded slightly disappointed, “I do hope that we can be friendly. I’ve never met another Titled after all. The name is Obscured Tide, but do feel free to call me Sean. Your avatar mentioned that you have a problem you need help with?”

Finally, I had everything I needed. Soon, the moon would be mine, and I could get started with the project that I had been planning for thousands of years.

End Of Book One