General POV

Under the starry sky, a fearsome battle was taking place. One of the opponents wielded two knives of bone, their soft white almost glowing lustrously in the darkness of the night, twin shooting stars that sought to pierce into the body of their enemy. The other wielded a curiously shaped spear, with a blade that curved inwards, designed to catch the enemy, and rip them in twain. If the wielder was asked about this spear, they would call it a war scythe. Between the shape of the spearhead, the alabaster knives, and the stars above, it was as though the night itself had come alive in a beautiful, yet terrifying dance of death and destruction.

The one who wielded the spear thrust it towards the throat of their enemy, yet the one wielding the dual shooting stars made the smallest of movements, causing the scythe to miss by inches, and in a sudden flash of movement, stabbed towards the extended shoulder of the spearman. In a flash of light, the spearman vanished, and the knife wielder seemed to stumble over nothing, as though the ground under them were fighting on behalf of the spearman.

“I see you’re getting the hang of Earth magic Ash.” The knife wielder stated, a wild grin on their face, “But you’ll have to do better to bring me down.” Mana flooded into the earth, forcing a concept of stability into the ground, and protecting the knife wielder from the hidden earth mage. Another flash, and the knife wielder turned towards it, already stabbing towards where he expected the person responsible to be, however… the spearman did reappear, but not inside of the flash of light, but this time as though wearing the surrounding night as a cloak of darkness, thrusting the war scythe towards the back of the fooled knife wielder. Or were they fooled?

This time, it was the knife wielder who disappeared, popping back into existence instantly behind the spearman, placing the point of the blade in their left hand against the spearman’s throat. “You’ve gotten a lot better Ash.” Said the knife wielder.

“Damn it, I thought I had you. I swear Leo, one of these days I’m gonna kick your ass!” spoke the spearman.

Leo laughed, the sound somewhere between genuine amusement, challenge, and mockery, as though taunting a child who declared herself his rival. “Please, you’re about a hundred years too early to speak of defeating one as magnificent as I!”

Leo’s POV

Yes, Ash was the one who was using my war scythe, and I was the one holding the knives if you couldn’t piece that together. Why was she using my weapon you ask? Well…

It’s been a year since the battle against the elemental took place. During the long period of travel afterwards, as I had told Ash, I spent the hours we were on watch together training her in the art of survival. Not necessarily combat itself, as for the most part, she was actually rather skilled. More in the before and after a fight, things like picking out the right battlefield, how to use your environment to your advantage in the event that enemies could see through her stealth spell, how to keep a portion of her mana unused so that she wouldn’t collapse from exhaustion, and how to fight or escape without the use of magic so that she could keep that portion of mana unused.

During one of our sessions of training combat without the use of magic, I had her try out my war scythe. Most of the time, I ended up fighting and hunting with my knives, so it had been pretty neglected in my shed for quite a while at this point. One of Ash’s problems in combat was that her smaller stature required her to get too close to her opponent, and while when she had magic this wasn’t a problem, without it she lacked the power to reliably grapple her opponent to the ground and stick a knife into them. I had hoped that with longer reach, she would have more options in a fight.

What I had not expected was for the war scythe to synergize so well with her Light and Dark magic. She could play around with concealment, or even bend light slightly to give off the illusion that she was approaching from the left, and the scythe would attack from a completely different angle than you expected. This illusion technique was actually even effective on me, as I would suddenly see two copies of Ash, one of her appearance where she was casting the illusion, and one in the infrared spectrum, where she was hiding her real body. On a couple different occasions, she had managed to employ this technique and attack fast enough so that I would respond to the illusion, rather than to her, and end up with a new cut or bruise for my mistake, which she would then spend the next week gloating about.

We also practiced a lot with earth magic, as after she absorbed the elemental core, her use of it was very quickly on par with her use of Light and Dark magic, and within a few months, had surpassed both. Earth magic wasn’t all that useful for offense, as any attacks with it that were powerful enough to actually be useful attacks were also very obviously telegraphed, making dodging them simple. Where earth magic shined were three places. One, defensively. At any moment, Ash could almost instantly form a stone dome around her, a reaction time I had helped her to hone by randomly ambushing her during our travels, until she could block my attack at least 90% of the time.

Two was in the preparation phase of a fight. In the event that there was no battleground that would give her an innate advantage to fight in, she could make one, changing the topography to suit her needs, before leading the fight over to it. This use I had honed by making her the primary hunter responsible for gathering food for all of us. If she failed, I could usually find something and kill it with my flying knives, but the longer we traveled, the more confident Ash became in her abilities, and the more creatively she used Earth magic to accomplish her tasks.

The third and possibly the largest field in which Earth magic shined was in its subtle use, like how she had just used it in our spar. Gently shaking the ground beneath her opponents feet not only destabilized them and gave her a huge advantage, but it also had a comparatively miniscule mana cost. On more than one occasion, using it in a crucial moment had prevented her from needing me to teleport in and save her life from whatever monster she had been fighting.

She wasn’t the only one who had made significant improvements. My constant practice with both my flying knives and space magic had paid off. I could now control 5 knives at the same time, and my mana control in general had been refined to the point where there was practically no waste. I remembered the first time I had manipulated mana years ago, when Sophia had made fun of me for allowing more than 90% of my mana to dissipate uselessly into the atmosphere, and felt the muscles in my chest somehow both relax and tighten at the same time, creating an illusion of fullness. If I had to guess, I suppose this was a feeling of satisfaction at my own improvement.

Spatial magic however, was where the practice had really paid off. Before, teleporting just once would almost completely drain my mana pool, leaving me basically helpless after I move where I’m trying to go, resulting in me blowing myself halfway to hell in that fight against the elemental. Now however, my improved mana pool, my increased efficiency in controlling mana, and my gradually gained experience and familiarity with the spatial element made it so that I could teleport a short range at least 10 times in a row, and due to the fact that I’ve been practicing both here on Earth and in the subspace, I had finally figured out how to bring myself home after a few months of practice. Sophia had rewarded me…greatly. For my success.

Sophia had been fairly ecstatic, but also slightly preoccupied, often over the course of the past year. She had recently come across a Titled demon named Sean, AKA Obscured Tide, and was guiding him to the house she stayed in with Veronica, so that the three of them could work on stealing the moon. Now, I was not particularly pleased with the idea of her inviting a man to the place she lived in for any sort of reason, but I was slightly consoled by the fact that she didn’t actually ever sleep there. Her home was the little house she’d built for us in the subspace, and Veronica’s place was more like the communal hang out area. Though I’d definitely feel a lot better once she successfully stole the moon and we could say our goodbyes to Sean.

I also had a sneaking suspicion that Sophia was intentionally dragging on leading Sean to Veronica’s house, not because she had any interest in the man, but because she liked the feeling of possessiveness I’d shower her with at night whenever she ended up mentioning him. I considered not actively demonstrating my jealousy at her spending a lot of time with a powerful Titled demon who by all accounts was way more fit a companion for her than I was, but the face she would make when she was tied up on our bed, dutifully repeating “I am yours”....Ahem…perhaps some things should be left to the imagination.

I did make some modifications to the choker she wore though. After 7 months, I finally had enough cloth from my Aspect Manifestation to make a few small things, so I made myself a new blindfold that was so efficient it barely ever needed to be charged, and as for Sophia’s choker and my matching wristband, right next to the lock was a brilliant golden symbol, like a greek omega with the left protrusion forming a circle. It was the zodiac symbol for Leo in my old world, and something I had adopted to be my own personal sigil. And next to the key I had placed a small golden flame, representing Sophia. Also on the choker I had affixed a sizable wooden ring to the back, but that wasn’t particularly relevant right now.

Thanks to Ash’s lessons on how to make my enchantments more aesthetically pleasing, the choker, which had originally just been made of a spare piece of cloth I happened to have laying around, was now a work of art. The softly luminous white and shimmering gold of my Aspect Manifestation contrasting beautifully with Sophia’s pitch black skin. The two together with the dancing flame throughout her body gave off the illusion of a moonlit night enjoyed next to a bonfire. An atmosphere ripe for sharing stories of heroic journeys, of terrors long forgotten, an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. And then she would speak and suddenly the glorious tales of old would shift into a grand romance, her soft voice generating a burning intensity within you. Despite already being baptized by her flame I was not fully immune to the overwhelming charm of a being of pure unbridled Desire.

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The Leo symbol being made of my golden thread was purely for aesthetic purposes. It was technically an enchantment, but when Sophia ran her mana through it to test it out, all it had done was establish a telepathic link between the two of us, which was already covered by our soulbond. Where it was useful however, was when I also made a wristband with the Leo symbol for Ash, as now she could join in our conversations. Sophia and I often still used the soulbond for more private topics, but generally speaking our conversations had mostly shifted over to the open channel. My increased mana capacity and efficient mana manipulation, along with the practice that the new Leo enchantment provided had made it so that I could now send my own thoughts through the soulbond, without needing to speak aloud anymore and sound insane. I often still did though, as it was far easier for me to form complete coherent thoughts when I actually formed them into spoken words.

An interesting quirk of the cloth made by my Aspect Manifestation though, was that rather than taking off these various pieces, Sophia and I could somehow pull them into our bodies to store them, and with another thought, bring them back out. Me discovering this had resulted in Ash accidentally seeing the burn scars where my eyes used to be for the first time, giving her mild issues with eating for a few days.

Supposedly, the enchantment also somehow allowed the two of them to form their own separate channel, or maybe I had just missed Sophia teaching Ash how to form one on their own, but regardless, it ended up with the two of them often working together to make fun of me. A part of me regretted giving Ash access to our communication for that but alas, she and Sophia got along too well now for me to rip them apart. Any time Ash successfully landed a strike against me in training or learned a new application for Earth magic, the first person to congratulate her would always be Sophia. It did feel somewhat odd to hear your girlfriend root for your best friend to cut you, but I decided to just be content with the fact that the two most important people in my life were getting along.

“The thousand years estimation will actually have to be pushed back a bit further. This’ll be our last training session for a little while after all.” I spoke to Ash as we made our way back to the campsite. In order to prevent her from accidentally waking everyone up, we would generally move a few hundred yards away from where we set up camp before battling. Close enough that I could still have my knives flying around, making sure that nothing was going to attack the other three, but far enough away that our fighting wouldn’t spill over to affect them.

“Why do you say that? You getting scared? I suppose my progress is just too fast for you to keep up with. You need some time to build yourself something new to keep winning?” Ash taunted, darting around me as though pretending she were lining up for an attack, ducking low to my left and speaking upwards to target under my ribs, sliding back and around to target my spinal column, dancing up to the right to target my head and neck.

“Please, as though I need any assistance putting you in your place. Nah, we’re gonna be hitting the first town soon.” An interesting thing about the next series of towns was how many there were in such close proximity. Generally speaking, each town in this world was similar to its own country, with its own laws and customs. However, the towns in between the underground town where I had met Ash, Mike, and Liz, and picked up the merchant, and the beastkin town we were escorting him to were all part of an honest to goodness Kingdom. I didn’t know the name of the Kingdom, due to the side effect of mana translation, any time someone would speak the name it would always get translated in my head as “That Kingdom”, and a vague sense of where it was in my map diary would fill me. Interestingly enough, whenever one of my four companions mentioned the underground town where we’d met I would just here the words, “That town” and in my head I would be reminded of the tunnels, the caverns where people built their houses and shops, the labyrinthian three dimensional layout causing outsiders like myself to easily become lost.

I showed Ash on my map where we were and how the first town of the Kingdom was less than a day’s walk from here. Inexplicably, she seemed to become somewhat subdued, quiet even, as we continued walking back. Fortunately, she seemed to get her energy back once the fire was within sight, the feeling of security brought about by my flame seeming to drive away whatever had been bugging her before. I wanted to ask what it was that made her seem so uncharacteristically downcast, but now that she was back to her bubbly self, I didn’t want to ruin it for her, so I left it be.

I glanced towards the other three tents where Mike, Liz, and the merchant were sleeping. Normally, there would only be two tents, one for Mike and Liz, and the other for the merchant, but there had been some trouble in paradise over the past couple weeks. I didn’t really keep track of drama, as it really had nothing to do with me so I could not possibly care less, but from what tidbits I’d been forced to learn while listening to the two of them argue, it seemed as though while Liz had accepted a courtship from Mike, their sex life was utterly nonexistent. Despite being a couple for over a year now, they still hadn’t done anything, and Mike was feeling neglected, asking her why she had agreed to be with him if she had no intention of actually being with him, and Liz arguing back that Mike was shallow and only after her body, and that his repeated advances and attempts to ‘set a mood’ were unwanted. They hadn’t broken up, as Mike had told Ash that he was intent on fixing the underlying problems in their relationship, but Mike had asked the merchant for a spare tent he could use to put some space between him and Liz for a couple weeks so that they could both cool their heads and reconvene later to have an open discussion about their feelings and other crap I didn’t really care about.

This was somewhat of a bad habit that I could completely own up to. If something failed to interest me, I would mostly put it out of my mind and completely disregard its existence. For example, Ash had told me the merchant’s name quite a few times, but I could never seem to remember it. It was as though there was some part of my brain that deemed it useless information, given the intentionally temporary nature of our relationship, and kept throwing it out every time I learned it. It was something that I knew I had to work on, but did I really have to dive right into another couple’s relationship drama to do it? Especially when it seemed so simple from the outside?

As far as I could tell, the only one actually interested in and committed to the relationship between Mike and Liz was Mike, and Liz was just leading the poor boy along, getting as much use out of the devoted puppy as she could get. As for this separation? I had a feeling that when Mike came back for that conversation to work out the kinks in their relationship, he’d find her completely unwilling to open up or compromise in the slightest. What did that mean for the two of them? Well, either Mike would have to completely submit himself to his role as her dog rather than her equal partner, or he’d have to man up and end things once and for all. Honestly, in my opinion he should’ve ended the relationship before it even started, since it was entirely built on him being subservient to her. But hey, what do I know about love? With my damage my opinion is probably worth less than Lucy’s.

With the strain on their relationship, during the past few weeks of travels, Mike had ended up separating from the lead group and walking in the back with me and Ash, the new odd one out in our telepathic conversations. Ash took pity on him and would relay what Sophia said though, so he did tend to jump in and offer his take on things from time to time. Through this, he ended up learning a little bit about my otherworldly origins and Sophia being a demon, though not really enough to fully understand what that meant. Ash did though, as once I’d made her wristband for her, Sophia and I both kinda accepted that we wanted her to be friends with us for a long time to come, not just for this job. We’d spent a few of our nights on watch telling her all about the Earth I was from, Hell, demons, and answering the millions of questions she’d asked the both of us.

Ash and I chatted while we let the others sleep for a while. Mostly about the preparations I was making to help Sophia get to the moon and back to Hell, which were a complete nightmare. God, rocket science back on my old Earth was already considered one of the most difficult fields to be in, and now I have to do rocket science on a world that I’ve never been to with magic and completely different natural laws? The sheer scope of the assignment in front of me made my head spin, but I was determined to push through nonetheless. This was what Sophia had spent millenia planning after all, and if I failed, it would be like showing an alcoholic the inside of a brewery, then cutting off his tongue.

After a while, we determined that it was our turn to sleep. We didn’t really have a way to keep time, so most nights we just approximated with the location of the moon in the night sky. On nights with clouds, rain, or new moons, it was just kind of a vague sense of how long you think it was, rather than any sort of concrete measurement. I’d tried using enchantments to make a clock, but instead of telling time, it had started warping time in a weird way, sometimes making an hour zip past in a second and sometimes making each minute last days, so I would have to go back to the drawing board on that one. For now, approximations were good enough anyway.

Ash and I headed back to our tent, I told her good night, and I warped myself back home to the subspace. Upon my arrival, an 8 foot tall pitch black demon stared down at me and asked, “Mike, Liz, and Aozia already know of my existence and the existence of this subspace, so what is the purpose of you continuing to pretend to share a tent with Ash?”

It was times like this that I really missed having eyes, as out of habit I hadn’t yet broken, I tried to squint at her in a playfully antagonistic way. “I told you, as long as you’re spending everyday walking around with Sean, I’ll be ‘sharing’ Ash’s tent. If you don’t like it then hurry up. Surely two Titled demons can travel fast enough to have reached Vern’s place by now?”

Luckily Sophia understood the vibe I was going for without the accompanying facial expressions, shrunk down to her more manageable 5 foot form, wrapped me up in a hug, and shot back, “Well we would have reached it by now, but someone keeps sending us random places and telling us to do random ass stuff. I swear it’s like he thinks that I’m a video game character and he just keeps sending me side quests.”

I returned the hug and kissed her on the forehead, “Sounds like a smart man. Everyone knows you need to complete all the side quests before starting on the main task, it makes everything way easier in the long run. Gotta get them levels, y’know what I’m saying?”

She laughed, grabbed my hand, and led me inside, where she’d already started preparing dinner for the two of us. “Not really. Do remember, you’re the one who taught me all these terms, but I really don’t understand what any of them actually are. And from what I gather, you never even really played a lot of video games either, which begs the question: Why would you bother teaching me those expressions?”

I shrugged as I helped clean off last night’s game off of the table, and set out plates for us. “I may not have played a lot, but they were kind of a big deal in my old world. There’s a lot of expressions and terminology originating from video games that made their way into normal speech, and rather than just brushing past them and you not understanding what I mean, I’d much rather just explain them so I can keep speaking normally. Easier for me that way y’know? And once I have enough control over the soulbond to learn demon languages from your head, you can return the favor and teach me a shitload of useless phrases, deal?”

Sophia portioned everything out onto the plates I’d set up, and we sat down to eat. “Deal”, she said, as our conversation died down so that we could focus on stuffing our faces.

“Damn, that was good as always Soph. Thanks for cooking. Getting off work and coming home to a freshly made home cooked meal, remind me to wife you up sometime. Gotta get this shit locked down you know.”

Sophia gave me an odd sort of expression in return. “You already did though? For demons, given our race’s tendencies for fast attachments, marriage how it was in your old world isn’t really a thing, so there’s no real differentiation between girlfriend, boyfriend, and spouse. Instead, it’s just your partner. For demons with attachments to people other than their mate, they get introduced as friends or companions, rather than as another partner. For example, you are my partner, and Ash is our friend. So yes, for all intents and purposes, you have already, ‘wifed me up’”.

I had no idea how to respond to that.