Sophia did not appreciate my accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong, she was happy that I accomplished something that I seemed proud of, but at the end of the day, it was just clothes right? How wonderful could they be? After dinner and games, I dragged her into our room and stripped, handing them to her for her to try on. And that was the moment everything changed. The moment that I had to fight and wrestle it away from her, as she adamantly refused to wear anything else. I finally managed to get at least the sweatpants off of her with promises of sex and her own set. But this was only a temporary solution. Like the fool Ash took me to be, I’d forgotten the inevitable fate of all hoodies belonging to men. To be stolen by their women.
The next day, I walked from the room that Ash and I were ‘staying in’ to the meeting downstairs wearing nothing but my pair of baggy sweatpants and the elegant silver S pendant that Sophia had given me after the fight with the elemental, which she’d somehow enchanted to directly siphon power from her if my life were ever in danger and protect me. To truly understand how it worked, I’d need to test it, and while I generally don’t mind if my experiments accidentally explode in my face, experiments expressly designed to put my life at risk were just a tad different.
Horizons I through V being carried in Ash’s bag, leaving me with just the dagger in my hands with my vampirism enchantment. I just couldn’t go from wearing a divine piece of clothing such as the hoodie right back to a rough shirt and my bearskin cloak. By comparison it would feel like a shirt made of sandpaper and rocks. Several heads turned my way, but I couldn’t be certain if it was due to my nearly naked state, the blindfold, or the fact that now that I was shirtless, my Markings were completely visible. They were all over my body, including some stray lines on my face and a decent amount of the spiderwebs or cracks or whatever they were supposed to be on my neck, but the ones on my neck were generally covered by….other markings. And something I often forgot was that with the full beard, the long hair, and the blindfold, very little of my face could actually be seen.
Maybe I should ask Sophia to cut my hair and beard. I gave no notice to the awkward stares and walked right up to Mike and the others, lifting up my hand and announcing “Yo, as you can see, I made myself some new threads, but my girl stole the top part cuz it was too dope. How was y’all’s week?” Several of the onlookers glanced at Ash as I said that, no doubt wondering if the top part I spoke of was the very normal looking and way too small to fit me leather armor she was wearing. Mike and the gang knew about Sophia though, so they understood for the most part what I meant.
“And you decided that that meant you should walk around naked, why exactly?” Liz asked.
“I am a simple man Liz. I desire comfort above all else. Now that my body has tasted the freedom of not being in a stuffy ass outfit, it shall stand to be shackled to rough shirts and heavy cloaks no longer. I say to thee Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death.” I responded in the gravest tone I could manage. She merely stared at me for a while, before turning away and continuing the conversation she’d been having with the merchant. Something about how well she expected something to sell during the Bazaar. Oh well, at least Sophia understands. That’s all I can ask for.
Once all of the adventurers were gathered, we were all led outside to a group of excited travelers, loudly discussing the upcoming Bazaar and how much money they hoped to make off of their goods. As they caught sight of us, the noise died down a tad, though still existed as a faint hum. Taking us in I suppose, judging if we were truly capable of keeping them safe.
14 relatively normal looking human adventurers fully decked out in various degrees of armor and wielding different weapons, a short, oddly asian-looking swordsman with pointy ears and high, prominent cheekbones. Is that a damn samurai elf? Unfortunately, he was not wielding a katana but instead carrying a simple looking double edged blade almost as long as he was tall, begging the question how he even unsheathed it. Next to him stood a tall man in full plate armor carrying…was that a wizard’s staff? It looked too thick to be used as a bo staff and was carved too intricately, too detailed for something that would be smashed around like a quarterstaff, so my only logical conclusion was that he was a long distance caster type, but why the armor? Then Three beastkin, one a fox, one a bird, and one a wolf-cat hybrid, and along with them a rabbit merchant, and a basically naked blind dude. Clearly there was nothing for them to be concerned about.
One of the travelers we’d be protecting pointed his finger at me and asked the Guild receptionist loudly, “Is this blind nudist really an adventurer who can be trusted with our lives?” Completely unreasonable. In a fraction of a second my knives were flying out of Ash’s bag, which she’d conveniently opened, as though predicting my response. I then warped directly in front of the man who’d shouted and grabbed his finger, the points of my flying knives all barely an inch from his eye, throat, heart, liver, and kidney. “Y’know”, I responded, tightening my grip so that he couldn’t stumble backwards, “My mama always taught me that it was rude to point at people. Also rude to talk about a man like he ain’t there. Now that’s two strikes, you really wanna swing for a third?”
You know, I often overlook the fact that mana translation works on intent and not direct translation, so I’m 100% free to bust out sports metaphors that no one else could possibly understand. It’s one of those things that just feels like lazy writing, but actually does make complete logical sense. Gotta love it.
The rest of the travelers stepped away from the mostly naked guy with the flying knives, all seeming to be satisfied by my ability to protect them. Space magic was generally considered a guarantee of competence after all, so in their minds, I was probably some sort of top mage. Ironically the flying knives seemed to be almost completely disregarded. I say almost because behind me I could see the eyes of the armored guy with the wizard staff inspecting them intently. I let go of the man’s finger, and walked back towards the adventurers’ side, all of whom were staring at me due to the same misunderstanding that the merchants’ side had had. As I stood next to Ash, guiding my knives back into her bag, the Guild receptionist gave somewhat halfhearted introductions for all 20 of us, and left us all alone to figure out the specific travel arrangements for ourselves.
Sophia’s POV
This is quite possibly the most comfortable I have ever been in my life. With the hood up, and my hands in the big pocket in the front, I felt as though I was somehow cocooned in Leo. He wasn’t aware of this yet, as he’d specifically requested I not explain anything to him about his Aspect Manifestation, but it gave off a certain…aura, of him. The fact that it had been condensed like this and woven into cloth had only intensified that aura, creating an invisible and functionally nonexistent cloud of his presence. He had once spoken of making me wear a shirt that said “Property of Leo” on it when I had to spend time with Sean, but basically had already done that with the collar he’d made me. This ‘hoodie’, consisting of so much more fabric? This was basically adding flashing lights to the words.
I arrived at Veronica’s place in my shorter form, as the hoodie wouldn’t properly fit on my true form, something that Leo had promised to take into consideration when designing my own. Veronica was rather stunned at my appearance, especially given how brightly the soft glowing white of the fabric contrasted against my own skin. Sean also took a keen interest in the hoodie when he saw it, asking, “A gift from that mysterious partner of yours?”
I shook my head and pulled on the strings attached to the hood, burying myself deeper into Leo’s presence. “Nah, he made it for himself, but I wanted it so I stole it from him.” Sean laughed at that, and Veronica butted in, “Wait, Partner?! Soph, you have a Partner?? Since when!? And Who?!” I released the strings and glanced at her, answering, “About a year, and Leo, I told you about him.”
She stared at me incredulously. “The HUMAN?!” Sean’s eyes widened as he took a closer look at the cloth I was wearing. “Yes, the human. Though not for long. His soul is bound, so he’ll be a demon soon enough.” Veronica shook her head, “That doesn’t change the fact that you acknowledged a damn human child as your partner!”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Amusingly it was Sean who stepped in to defend Leo. “Well this Leo isn’t just any human. He’s a Titled like us. What is his True Name Sophia?” Veronica glanced back and forth between us, as though trying to see if we were making fun of her. “There’s no way that Leo’s Titled. He was only introduced to magic a couple years ago. Isn’t he like 20 something? No one could be titled that young.” This time it was Sean’s turn to glance between us as though we were making fun of him. He pointed to my hoodie and announced, “Vern, that’s an Aspect Manifestation. He can’t have made that unless he were a Titled, and the Aspect behind it doesn’t align with Desire’s Flame at all, it-” I raised a hand to stop him there.
“Don’t say anything. Due to the soulbond, soon enough Leo will gain access to the information I have, and he expressed the desire to explore his Aspect without my assistance, so I have been refraining from learning anything about it so he can have his fun. And no, he is not a Titled, but he is a Marked.” I glared at both of them intensely. “I trust you understand that this is to be kept secret. We aren’t sure exactly why he can Manifest his Aspect despite his relative weakness, but if word gets out… I’ll know exactly who to kill.” I let my flames loose a little bit, taking care not to damage the house around me and keep them away from the hoodie as well. I wasn’t even sure if I COULD damage it, but I didn’t really want to test it with something so comfortable. Maybe I’d ask for one of the leftover scraps to run some stress tests on tonight.
A new Marked was considered to be a relatively big deal in Hell. After all, it was a fast track into becoming a Titled. Becoming Titled was a huge deal, but at the end of the day, people wouldn’t really care too much about it. The only ones who’d become annoying were other Titled, coming to check out the new guy, but they wouldn’t really interfere with you unless they absolutely had to for some reason. A Marked who could already Manifest an Aspect though? That was something else. That hinted at a possibility that when he became Titled, he’d stand head and shoulders above everyone else, and other Titled couldn’t allow that to happen. They would do something, anything, to stop Leo. To kill him before he could become a threat. The best way to protect Leo was to prevent anyone else from finding out about him. These two, however, would have to know about him.
“I must say, I’m rather interested in meeting this human.” Sean mentioned. “Funny you should say that”, I responded, tossing him and Veronica extra wristbands he’d made so that he could give detailed instructions for his various tests without relying on my being the middleman. “It would seem he feels the same.” I went over the basics of how to use the Leo enchantment.
Hello? Sean sent out into the telepathic link.
“Ahh, perfect timing Soph, I needed a distraction. Judging by the voice you must be Sean, otherwise known as Obscured Tide, correct?”
So you’re the human I’ve heard about. Veronica joined in.
“Hey Leo, what’s happening right now? Who are these guys?” Ash asked.
“Oh shit, forgot to warn you, these are Sophia’s…friends? Companions? The demons who are helping her steal the moon. I’ll be speaking with them somewhat regularly while we run a bunch of tests, so yeah you’ll have a bunch of voices in your head. Have fun embracing insanity, it gets a bad rap but it’s honestly not that bad.”
I have to ask, Veronica butted in, what gives a human like you the right to order around Titled like they’re your damn servants? What’s with all the useless ‘tests’?
“What useless tests?” Leo asked with genuine confusion.
Oh please, that whole falling thing? What use could that have possibly had other than trying to hurt us? And I heard that you had Obscured Tide and Desire’s Flame measuring shadows? Or just staying still in the air for random amounts of time? What the hell are any of those ‘tests’ supposed to help you figure out?”
Leo’s response took on a cool, emotionless tone, yet one that also held that certain intensity he got whenever he got really interested in a subject. “First of all, if dropping 100 feet could actually do anything to hurt you, then Sophia would either need to find another person to help her bind the moon, or my job would be a hell of a lot harder trying to keep you safe when it comes to reentry. Second of all, what that test was for was figuring out Hell’s gravity. Hell is huge compared to Earth, so by all accounts, gravity there should be considerably more intense than it is here, as the more mass an object has, the more intense the gravitational pull. However, Sophia and Sean fell 100 feet in around 6 ½ to 7 seconds. While that is technically faster than on Earth, it’s not nearly as fast than I would expect from a planet that size. I had you take the same test to verify my theory that the fact that they can manipulate Aspects of Reality were interfering in some way.
“It turns out, they were, as you fell the same distance in under three seconds, which is far closer to what I expected. I’m not quite sure how, but by manipulating an Aspect of Reality, even unrelated laws of physics will apply differently to them, and I need to know the extent of those differences. My current working theory is that there is a sort of Cosmic Scale of Existence, and Titled rank higher than x percentage of natural laws. Marked, however, do not seem to see the same benefits, as I have performed several similar tests comparing myself and Ash, and there is no difference. It seems that us Marked are more of a fluke than a true ranking on the cosmic scale.
“As for the shadow thing, that was to measure the circumference of Hell. By measuring both shadows at the same time at a distance of 10,000 miles as determined by Sophia’s space magic combined with my world’s measurement units that she pulled from my head, I was able to determine that the circumference of Hell is about 3 million miles. As for why this is relevant? Well that has to do with the waiting in the air test. For Hell to fully spin once a day, leading to the same sunrise/sunset schedule that Earth has that Sophia and I have been tracking, then every second, Hell should be rotating about 35 miles, so just leaving the ground should cause you to end up hella far away from where you started, yet that’s obviously not the case.
“My current theory is that the gravity of Hell is somehow working to anchor you to the position you started in relative to the ground. The problem with that is why does it work for the Titled the same way it does for you? Didn’t we determine that gravity doesn’t affect them as severely? So maybe it’s another force, a magic one that I have no concept of. And if that’s the case, then I need to know exactly how that force operates before it interferes with reentry. Remember, the mission isn’t just to send you to the moon, but also to get you back to Hell safely.
“I need to figure out the rough distance to the moon, so that I can then figure out how long it will take you to get there. Also remember that the moon is moving potentially tens of thousands of miles every second, depending on how far away it is. If I send you up at the wrong time, you might end up missing the moon and just traveling through an infinite expanse of nothingness until you die. I also need to know how big the moon is so that we can make sure that you guys can even steal it in the first place. Then, once it’s stolen, I have to find a way to get you guys back to Hell when you just stole the one thing you had to launch from. Also, you’re going to need pretty much all of the magic you have to actually steal the moon assuming everything goes right, so the way there, the way back, and the measures to actually keep you alive in space can’t afford to drain any magic from you.
“Oh yeah, because there’s no air in space. I don’t understand demon biology yet, so I don’t know how much or what you need to breathe, but assuming you do, I have to come up with a way for you to not die of asphyxiation, and another consequence of no air in space is no air pressure. And a quirk of pressurized canisters in a vacuum? The internal pressure wants to escape, so it explodes the container. In this situation, the container would be your body. Sophia and Sean’s bodies might be tough enough to prevent explosion, but yours probably isn’t, and I’m not about to risk Sophia’s life on ‘might be.’
“There’s also the potential inherent magical laws that space outside of Hell’s atmosphere might have, and how those may affect travel. And then once all of that is figured out, I have to find a way to make all three of you survive the sheer intensity of reentry, and then somehow find your way back home, unless you’re cool with just leaving your whole life behind and permanently living wherever you happen to land.
Long story short, I’m not about to just slap a rocket to your ass and shoot you at the moon hoping it all works out. I may be country, but I ain’t THAT country.” Silence descended as Leo finished his long-winded intellectual beat down of Veronica. I made a silent promise not to let Leo sleep tonight, before he ruined that plan. “Oh, and by the way, Sophia, because of how the watch schedule ended up, Ash and I won’t be home for a few days.”
What?! Why not?! Are you going to be on watch all night? I fired back, and he responded through our soul bond so no one else could hear, “Nah, but I’d have to leave her alone to go home so that she could let me know when shift change goes down or if shit happens, and I made her a promise right?”
I responded back, making him understand that while I understood, I wasn’t happy about it. He laughed and promised to make it up to me when they got to the Capital, then moved back to the open channel and started asking Sean a lot of in depth questions about the ocean in Hell, trying to find a pattern in the effects of magical law on the environment to try to prepare for space exploration, as well as using it as a possible landing site.