by D. Levesque
“No,” I tell her with a chuckle. “In my world, you all don’t exist. To me, Elves and catgirls, sorry Felinis like you, don’t exist except as stories and make-believe. You call yourselves monsters, or the humans do anyway, but trust me, I don’t see you that way. I have even seen a Rabinis and I find them beautiful as well.” Sara doesn’t say anything at first. She simply stares at me, and there is disbelief on her face. But then that changes to a look of longing.
“If only that were true,” she says with a sigh, finally sitting down. I sit down with her, facing her.
“I find it odd,” I tell her.
“What’s odd?” she asks me.
“Well, humans hate you all and treat you like shit, and yet Leeha has mentioned that she finds them attractive. Do you find humans attractive as well?”
“Hmm,” she says, blushing. “Not all of them. Many of them are ugly. But those humans that are beautiful make me feel like I would love nothing more than to be with them,” she says awkwardly, without actually stating she would want to have sex with them.
Hmm, I think to myself. Is it like that for all of the monster or non-human races? Do they all find some of the humans attractive?
“And you never had a human look at you with lust?” I ask her.
“Gods, no,” Sara bursts out with bitter laughter. “To humans, we are animals. No better than dogs. Though,” she sighs. “There was a time when it wasn’t like that. There was a time when even we Felinis lived in harmony with humans, and we even had children together.”
“You mean before the last Elemental Summoner?” I ask her.
Sara gets a hard look on her face and nods. “Yes. He changed all that. He destroyed the harmony that all the races had. Since then, we have been outcasts from society, living in the wilds. Even someone like me, a Fire Mage, is no better than a slave.”
Deciding to find out if I can trust her or if I will need to kill her, which I really hope I don’t have to since I am starting to like Sara, I tell her, “What if I told you that the next Elemental Summoner is back, and his plan is to reunite all the races, even if it means bringing the humans into it kicking and screaming against their will?”
Sara looks at me and laughs before answering. “As if that would ever happen. The next Elemental Summoner will most likely be another human and nothing will change.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” I tell her with an enormous grin on my face.
She looks at me as I grin at her like an idiot, and frowns. Then, something in her brain finally clicks, and her look changes to one of amazement.
She whispers to me, almost in trepidation, “That’s you, isn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“But you’re human, and you love an Elf,” Sara says, with utter confusion on her face.
“That’s because I am not from here,” I remind her. “But aren’t you afraid of me? When Leeha found out who, or what I was, she attempted to kill me.”
“Honestly, I should as well. But I’ve seen you in action and I’ve seen how you treat Leeha, and even your Elemental, which is still amazing in its own right, so I don’t fear you. Don’t get me wrong,” she expresses, and suddenly the dagger she found is out of her boot and in her hand faster than I can blink, “I still don’t trust you one hundred percent.”
“Fair,” I tell her, and shrug my shoulders. “I feel the same about you.”
“Good. At least you have a good head on your shoulders,” Sara says with a smile. “She must love you,” she suddenly blurts out, nodding down at Leeha’s sleeping form.
“Why would you say that?” I ask her, curious. I mean, she isn’t wrong, but I am curious about her thoughts on it.
“She used up all her power to use that spell on you, which means that she stayed awake for a week for you.”
“She did?” I say in mild surprise.
I guess I never put two and two together for that. When Bridget mentioned that it took a week for my healing and that she had focused on my heart first and the skin last, I just assumed Leeha had cast her spell, and that was it. But now, looking back on it, it would have needed to be kept up constantly. Holy fucking Hell, I owe that woman a lot. I owe Bridget as well.
“But the very fact that she bottomed out on power and took the hit is pretty impressive,” Sara says, looking down again at Leeha with respect in her eyes.
“What do you mean bottomed out? I know Leeha mentioned to me once how as Mages, you learned numbers to sort of make sense of your power pool, but she never told me what happened if you used up all of your power.”
Nodding, Sara thinks before she answers. “Imagine having the mother of all headaches. But then add pain all over your body, as if being pierced by a thousand needles. That is how it feels. Then, you also get this,” she nods down at Leeha again. “You pass out from the pain, and then you are out, incapacitated for days. This is Leeha’s second day out. She won’t come around until at least the morning. This is the worst of it. Being out like this. You want someone you can trust nearby, since you are vulnerable.”
“Damn,” I say with a whistle.
I knew that reaching the bottom of your power was bad, but I never looked at it this way. I guess I don’t think about it that much, with my power pool. Which of course makes me think about it, and so I bring it up.
Power Remaining: 879,000 /995,000
Divine Energy Remaining: 5,000/5,000
Damn, I am down 116,000 points of power! Mind you, I am pretty sure that there are no Mages on Boromour who come even close to the amount that I used, never mind the total of what I have.
“How is it you are able to cast so much? Is it really true you are this feared Elemental Summoner?” Sara blurts out suddenly.
I look up at her and smile at the memory her words brings up. “Yes, I am. However, I called myself that by accident at first. When I first met Leeha, I didn’t want to tell her my last name, so I thought it would be funny to tell her my name was Alex, the Elemental Summoner. Yeah,” I say with a sour expression. “That did not go as intended.”
Sara laughs, and the sound is airy and cute. She slaps her thighs at the hilarity of it. “Oh, Gods. Is that when she tried to kill you?”
“Yep, pretty well,” I say with a blush at that memory.
“Leeha had tried to kill me when she saw me, a human, watching her sing, and I had to encase her in ice. Then, after I told her I was Alex, the Elemental Summoner, she tried to get out of the ice that her wrists were trapped in, to the point that she had been drawing blood. I finally had to use a Sleep spell on her.”
“I can’t blame her, really,” Sara says, shaking her head. “If I had just met you, without knowing you first and what you did to save us slaves, I would have done the same. I will be honest, you still scare me,” she says, but then she quickly amends that. “I mean the Elemental Summoner! Not you, the human!”
“So, can you tell me about yourself and where you grew up?” I ask her, changing the subject.
Sara smiles at that. “Sure. I grew up at the edge of the Desert of Iliam, near the mountains near the Lamor Forest. I had two brothers and one sister. One of my brothers died when I was 12 years old from lung sickness. My siblings are older than me, and I am the youngest. Let’s see. My father was a Fire Mage like me, but my mother was a seamstress. My oldest sister is an Earth Mage. And my living brother, at least last I heard he was still alive, is a Swords Master.”
“Swords Master?” I ask her, intrigued by the title.
“Yes. He was trained and proficient in all forms of swords. He was a trained warrior and at times the humans would hire him as a guard, at fucking low wages of course,” she finishes bitterly.
“So, are there such things as human Sword Masters?” I ask her, taking a piece of beef jerky out of my bag by just thinking of beef jerky. I take a bite of it and notice Sara eyeing me as I eat it. Oh right, she might not have food. I take another piece out and offer it to her, and she takes it with a big grin of appreciation.
> “There are,” Sara says, taking a bite and chewing it quickly before continuing. “But most humans tend to look at Mages as the powerful rulers on Boromour. Most humans who are Sword Masters are just soldiers for a City. Since most races that aren’t human cannot join the armies of the Cities, they tend to join caravans and such. My brother brings in good coin. He has been known to even take down human rogue Mages during battles.”
“Human rogue Mages?” I ask her with a raised eyebrow. “Aren’t they strictly regulated by the Mages Society?”
“That is what they want you to think,” Sara says, shaking her head, which causes her black hair to blow from the slight breeze coming off the Lake of Ruins. “There are times that they go rogue and so they need to be taken out, but in the meantime, they join bands of brigands to get rich.”
“Yeah, I remember there was this one soldier that had a mana stone. Took a bit to kill him,” I tell her, remembering the shield that the soldier had.
“You fought someone with a mana stone and survived?” Sara says, her mouth open in amazement, beef jerky halfway to her mouth. “What did you do with the mana stone!?!”
“Nothing. It essentially exploded. There wasn’t anything left to recover. Too bad, I would love a mana stone,” I tell her with a sigh.
“Yes, they are very hard to get. This soldier must have been working for the Mages’ Society. They pay well enough, and when they send their Enforcers, they equip them with weapons or armor that carry mana stones.”
“Yeah, I would say that was what he was. Big guy, with a large shield, full armor, and he had a big ass sword. Although we never saw the sword until after he was dead, as he hadn’t had time to take it out before I overloaded his shield with 36 magical hammers,” I tell her with a grin.
“You threw 36 magical hammers at him?” she says with a whistle. “He must have been blown to smithereens.”
“Nope, he survived,” I tell her, shaking my head.
“How did he die then?” she says in disbelief.
“She,” and I point to Leeha on the ground and say with a scowl, “stole my kill and shot him through the forehead.”
“Damn, I would have loved to have seen the look on his face!” Sara says, laughing and slapping her leg.
“So how did you get caught in that?” I throw a thumb towards the empty slavers’ camp.
Sighing, she says, “I wish I could say I went out fighting tooth and nail and fireball. But it wasn’t so grand,” she says with a grimace of distaste, and I see she is also blushing. “I got caught drunk while sleeping in the City of Proper. I had some money and had just finished a job, so I decided to celebrate with a drink, or eight. I had a room, but it seems that they must have paid off the innkeeper, since my room wasn’t the only one that was raided. From the inn I was in, they got me, three other Felinis, two Rabinis, and six Elves. They only grabbed those who were known magic users. There were seven Elves at first, but when one of them tried to get away, they killed him and said if we tried anything, we would be next, or the person next to us would be,” Sara says, rage in her voice.
“That’s where this Brakan was from. Or I assume that is where he was from since I was told he had soldiers from the City of Proper,” I say to her, remembering that tidbit of info.
“Yes. He was well known in the City of Proper. His brother is the ruler of the City,” she says with revulsion. “Good riddance.”
“You’re saying his brother is the King?” I ask her.
“King? No, Prithgar doesn’t have a King. We are ruled by the Cities. The country of Prithgar, except for the Cities, is lawless,” Sara says, shaking her head. “I mean, you can travel across the oceans and the seas, and there are lands where they have Kings. But not here.”
“What do they call him, if not King?” I ask her, curious what the political landscape here is like.
“All Rulers of the Cities are called Sovereigns. So, for Proper, they would call him the Sovereign of Proper.”
Hearing a moan, I look down quickly, but Leeha doesn’t wake up. She simply rolls over and cuddles against my leg.
Sara lifts one eyebrow, looking intrigued. “So even asleep, knocked out and what we call Power Drained, she knows you are here. She must truly love you,” Sara says, and I think I almost catch a hint of jealousy. Then again, I might just be projecting.
“Well, I can tell you that I love her dearly,” I say, reaching a hand out and brushing Leeha’s hair out of her face. “She was the first person I met when I came to Boromour, and I am not sure how I would have been if I had met a human first, knowing the plight of non-humans on this world. I think my God did that on purpose. I think he wanted me to meet a non-human first. But I’d like to think that I would have been disgusted by the treatment you were all receiving, regardless. Meeting Leeha though, falling for her, and seeing her as a person, not as a thing, truly made me understand her. She is my wife, and it was witnessed by the Gods of Boromour.”
“Wait,” Sara says suddenly, sitting on her knees and looking at me in astonishment. “You married an Elf?!?”
“Yes, I did,” I tell her with a grin. “You see, I am not a human you should fear, even if I am the Elemental Summoner.”
Sara sits back down with a thoughtful look on her face. “Fine,” she says slowly, as if coming to a decision. “I shall trust you, on that alone, at least until I hear Leeha tell me the story herself. I shall follow you and decide what needs to be done about you. You might seem to have a head on your shoulders, but let’s hope it doesn’t get too large.”
I can’t help but laugh at her. “That’s pretty well what Leeha told me.”
Sara looks down at Leeha, and there is even more respect in her gaze. “She is a smart Elf, then. But wait, are you married to Bridget too?” she asks me suspiciously.
“No, not yet,” I say.
As I think about it, I realize I truly do mean yet. Although, can I marry my Elemental? I mean, I can have sex with her. Fantastic sex, by the way, but why can’t I marry her?
“Shall we check the surroundings? I would love to see some of that cave that Bridget created using my power,” I tell Sara.
“What about her?” she says, pointing at Leeha.
“Give me a second,” I tell her and think Fire. Suddenly in my palm is a small Fire Elemental, not Bridget.
“Hello, little one,” I tell it with a smile. It waves at me happily. “Can you protect Leeha here while she sleeps? I want to go check things around here.” The little Fire Elemental looks down at Leeha and looks back up at me and nods. Then it jumps from my hand and starts to walk around Leeha as if it’s doing guard duty.
I look over at Sara to say we are ready to head out, and she’s gawking at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head, and she leads the way towards the newly formed cave.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The cave was amazing. We didn’t go all the way through, but Sara confirmed to me that it went through to the other side of the mountain. Though, she mentioned that the other side was charred. I would guess that’s because of the laser beams that Bridget used to cut through the stone. It was almost a perfectly round tunnel with walls as smooth as glass, and it was about seven feet in diameter in height, and probably eight feet wide.
I am sure if someone stumbles across it at some point, it won’t take long for news to spread of a mystery at the Lake of Ruins.
When we were done there, we checked out the beach and the camp. We even found a rucksack for Sara to use to store her items She had found more clothing to change into, another dagger, and a small bag of coins. She tried to split them with me, but I told her I was good, seeing as I had a bag of jewels worth close to a thousand gold. Also, I had over 500 gold from our Dungeon crawl, not including all the silver and bronze coins.
We were now back at camp with the little Fire Elemental, who had lit a fire for us using the wood that I had placed in a firepit that we built. She waved to us after she was done, and disappeared. How I
knew she was female, I had no clue.
Sara had seen a rabbit while we were out exploring, and had expertly thrown her dagger and killed it while it was running away. By the time we got back to our campsite, she had four of them, all killed the same way. She was skinning them now and putting them on sticks, to be cooked over the fire. Not as clean as what Leeha can do, but still better than I can do. Fresh meat will be nice. Too bad it’s not a Macoa. Damn, I am getting addicted to those things. They taste so damn good! I wonder how they would taste battered and fried?
Once Sara has the rabbits going over the fire, she sits back down and sighs contentedly.
“So, what’s home like?” I ask her, leaning back until I am laying on my back, propped up on one elbow.
“Home was an amazing place. Or at least I know that now that I have had a chance to compare it to what I have been experiencing since I left three years ago when I was 19 years old. I had always thought of home as boring. I lived in a small city that was on the edge of an extensive mountain range called Mountains of the Elements. We butted right up against the Lamor Forest and the Desert of Iliam.”
“We were far enough away from humans that we rarely ever saw them. That was fine by us. We traded mostly with the Elves or the Rabinis. We lived in a fortified city, only because we tended to live near the monster races who would attack us.”
“Wait, what is the difference between your city and the City of Proper? I can hear the different way you use the word city there,” I ask her.
Sara smiles. “The human cities have thousands of people. Our cities have only hundreds. We have walls made of large logs to keep monsters out. They have walls made of stone, where they feel themselves safe.”
“Oh, so your city doesn’t look like the larger Cities?”
“Mostly no. Our city is ruled by our Elders. We don’t have a Sovereign like the human Cities do. But we do have things like inns, shops, and such.”
“So if you are protected by walls, how do humans end up capturing you as slaves? I saw some Felinis slaves in the City of Lomar,” I ask her, remembering my time in that City.