by D. Levesque
“Usually, because there are young ones, like me, who want adventure and head away from the safety of our cities,” Sara says with resentment in her voice. “Our parents warn us, but we are young and feel we are smart enough to avoid the slavers. As I found out, that is very much incorrect. If it wasn’t for you three, I would most likely be dead, feeding that evil Portal.”
“Well, as soon as we found out what they were doing with magic users, we rushed here as fast as we could,” I tell her with a sigh of regret. “I wish I had been faster. I ended up getting held up for a week, and I don’t even want to know how many people died in that time.”
“Most likely none,” Sara says.
“None?” I ask, looking straight at her.
“They tended to feed that Portal once every two weeks, once they had large numbers. I was one of the first ones caught in this batch, so I heard the guards saying that they had another eight or nine days before they meant to kill us,” Sara says, nodding. “Now, I can’t say anything for the batch before us, but my understanding is there were hundreds of them killed previously.” There is bitterness in her voice, and her eyes look haunted.
“What about you?” she says, shaking herself out of whatever bad memory she was in.
“What about me?” I say back.
She grins at me. “How was your childhood? You don’t seem to be a typical human.”
“Well, as I told you, I am not from Boromour. I was brought here by my God,” I tell her, opening up some more. The more she talks about her family and life, the easier it is. I still don’t trust her one hundred percent, but my distrust is getting lower and lower as time goes on.
“I grew up with a loving mother, whose job was to look after people who were sick. She worked long hours, and I barely saw her. My father died when I was younger of a sickness that took him. a So I spent most of my teen years alone. I was good at school. Above average, but I never went to school much after I turned eighteen.”
“School after your teen years?” Sara says, disbelieving.
“Yes,” I tell her with a small laugh. “Where I am from, we can go to school until we’re much older depending on what job we want. I know it’s not the same here. I was smart enough that if I had wanted to, I could have been one of those people. But I was lazy and earned just enough to live by. Until my untimely death.”
“You know sometimes it’s hard to believe that you are not from here, until you open your mouth, or I see how you act towards Leeha and Bridget. No human who has lived on Boromour or been raised here would act like you. I am sure most humans would try to kill you for your actions towards us.”
I nod at her in agreement. “Most likely. I know that I never want to step into another City ever again. Once was enough,” I tell her, my mouth twisting in anger and disgust at my memory of how Leeha had been treated when we were in the City of Lomar.
“So, are you really this Elemental Summoner?” Sara asks me hesitantly, eyeing me warily.
“I’m not sure,” I tell her. “I mean, I named myself that before I even knew what that title meant. But my understanding is that once every thousand years, a person on Boromour is born that can control all five Elements and changes the course of history. Is that me? I’m not sure that it is. I think my God is using me differently than he would someone who was born here. Although, based on what I have seen, I hope to fuck the next official Elemental Summoner is not a human again,” I tell her passionately.
“I will drink to that wholeheartedly, if we ever get to an inn,” Sara says with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I have to admit, I would love a beer right now,” I tell her with a snicker.
She gets up and turns all four rabbits on their sticks, and the smell of cooking rabbits permeates the air. Remembering the spices we had found, I reach into my bag and pull out spices I had never seen or smelled before we got to that camp.
“Will these help with the taste of the rabbit?” I ask her.
Sara looks at the spices I have in my hand. They are in a small box, which is separated into small squares.
“Oh, by the Gods, will they ever!” she says excitedly, coming to grab them from me.
She rushes over to the rabbits and sprinkles on three of the spices, turning the rabbits over so that they’re completely covered, before turning them back again. Once that is done, she comes back and hands me the box.
Sara sits back down, but I notice that this time she is closer to me, almost at the edge of the carpet.
“So, can you show me why your Elemental, the small one, looks different from mine? The same way that Leeha’s looked different? Bridget said to ask you,” she says hesitantly. Almost as if she’s unsure if she should ask.
“Hmm,” I say, trying to decide if I should be teaching her.
I mean, I trust her, mostly. But I am not sure I want this secret to get out. Or do I? I It would make her more powerful, as I found out with Leeha, who can now cast four magical arrows instead of two. And it seems even Leeha’s power pool has gotten bigger. I have no way to prove it, but I am pretty sure before meeting me she would not have been able to surround my body with that water skin for an entire week.
“What?” Sara says, looking uncomfortable as I stare at her intently.
“I will teach you on one condition,” I tell her, coming to a decision.
“Hmm. Sure?” she says, sounding uncertain.
“If I teach you this, you must be willing to teach others as well. And that includes humans.” She is about to open her mouth to argue that point but before she can, I say, “I don’t mean if they are forcing it out of you. I mean, if they ask nicely.”
Sara snorts at that, but says, “Fine. I agree with that. Since I doubt any human will want to learn from me.”
“For now,” I tell her.
“For now?” she asks me.
“I might not be the Elemental Summoner that comes every thousand years, but I will be making changes to this world. And one of them will be to reunite all the races, even if it means bringing the humans into it, kicking and screaming,” I tell her with a shrug.
Sara looks at me without commenting, but her gaze is intense. After a full minute of that, of her she says, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I tell her with a smile. “The time of humans being the top dog on Boromour is about to come to an end. My God might not like the way I do it, but humans have been shitheads for far too long. They are about to learn to live with all the races as equals, or they will be reduced to ash. I might be human, but these are not my humans. In my world, we were slowly getting rid of slavery and segregation. There is just one difference between my world and this one.”
“What’s that?” Sara asks me, curious.
“The difference is me. Someone powerful enough to show them the error of their ways. Now, shall I show you how to bring up that Elemental of yours to look like Leeha’s?” I ask her with a big grin, changing the subject.
Sara’s grin blossoms as she answers. “Yes, please!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was close to two days before Leeha woke up. Even when I tried to contact Bridget, the contact was brief and I could tell she was exhausted. I’m pretty sure I woke her up and she was replying to me while half asleep.
In those two days, I had been teaching Sara how to control her magic. I had also been teaching her one word in English. Well, two. Fire Bullet. So now she has a new spell under her belt, and she is over the moon. I look around at the trees at our campsite, and I feel terrible for them. Their bark is shredded, and they look like they’ve been through a war. If someone came upon this place, they would wonder what the Hell happened here.
“Your language is a magical language,” Sara says for the twentieth time in the last two days.
It had started off as a question, but by now it’s more of a statement. Maybe she thinks if she keeps repeating it, she would somehow gain some knowledge she wasn’t grasping. Trust me. I feel the same way. I wish I knew why God
picked English. I know a smattering of Spanish from high school, but none of the spells worked with that. I had tried using the Spanish word for water-agua-to no avail. Even fire, fuego. I even tried the one French word I knew, feu, for fire. Nothing. But English? Every single time.
I don’t answer Sara, as I know by now that she isn’t expecting an answer. Correction, she wants an answer, I just don’t have one to provide to her, and she knows it.
“So, I keep seeing you pull stuff out of that bag,” Sara asks me teasingly.
Shit. I have been trying to keep it under wraps. “Oh?”
“Yes. And it was odd, how the piece of rabbit meat you passed me this morning was still warm and moist,” she says with a peculiar smile on her catgirl face.
“Maybe it’s hot and moist in my bag?” I tell her with a grin.
Laughing, Sara says, “Oh no. There is something special about that bag. I know Bridget tried to hide the fact that the carpet came out of nowhere, but I saw it disappear in the tent from under your feet. And somehow your Elemental was able to bring it out here?” she says with a raised eyebrow.
I don’t answer her right away, as I try to figure out what I should say. Or do. It’s true, I had shared a lot with her. But would someone kill me for this bag? I don’t know if things are Soulbound here like they are in games on Earth. Could a thief simply walk away with the dimensional bag, as I was calling it?
“Don’t worry, Alex. I am not looking to steal it. The wonders you have shown me in this alone!” Sara says with a laugh, holding up her palm to show me her tiny female body-shaped Fire Elemental, who looks up at her and waves happily. Just as quickly, the Fire Elemental is gone.
“You have shown me things that no one else in this world has ever had. I just want to understand you,” she says with a chuckle.
“Trust me. I wish I could understand myself,” I tell her. “The issue is I don’t have a lot of answers. I only survived the first week on Boromour because of Leeha. My God decided to drop me a long way from any civilization, human or otherwise. If it wasn’t for her, I would have starved. I don’t have any survival skills. I have limited combat skills, except for the Martial arts classes I took when I was younger,” I tell her. At the mention of Martial arts, she gets a perplexed look on her face.
“Martial arts is a form of hand-to-hand combat from my world,” I explain to her. I mean, I did end up getting my brown belt. I only took up jiu-jitsu because of my love for anime, and I wanted to be like those heroes. Getting my black belt was costly and time-consuming, so I had stopped. I still read up about the moves and practiced them in my bedroom before I came here. But I never went for the test. Just too lazy, to be totally honest.
“Ah, we just call that fist fighting,” Sara says.
Chuckling at her, I say, “Not quite the same. There is more to it than that. I studied something in my world called jiu-jitsu. Here, follow me,” I tell her, standing up and walking away from the carpet, to a spot that is flat and sandy.
Sara follows me with a look of confusion on her face. “You know, while I am just a female, we Felinis are quick and are good at hand-to-hand combat.”
“Well then, as I am not sure how I will fare against you, take it easy on me?” I say with a worried smile. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Once I am sure there are no rocks that might hurt us under the sand, I turn to her. “Right, so this is the guard position,” I say, getting into the position I had started in so many times in jiu-jitsu when preparing to spar. “Now, what I want you to do is throw a punch at me, all right?”
Sara nods and comes closer. She lifts her hands up in what is almost a boxer’s pose, but not quite. Then, without warning, she throws a punch towards my face. Instinctively, I grab her arm, pull her towards me, and flip her over my shoulder, faster than she most likely expected. Once she is down and flat on her back, I throw a punch towards her face, stopping just inches from her nose, which I flick instead.
Sara glares up at me and says in a growl, “That was luck. Again.”
So for the next hour, we spar, going around and around. At times, she manages to get past my defense, one time even hitting me in the face. And I find out something interesting . It seems that while my tooth, sharp as it is, can’t break my skin, it can still bruise my lip when I bite down hard enough. Good to know. I noticed something else as well. Sara was mimicking my movements. That little sphinx! She was learning my moves. She wasn’t as fast as I was, but she was getting them.
“Stop!” Sara says finally, wheezing. “How can you keep fighting like that! You aren’t even breathing hard!” she tells me accusingly.
I stop and reflect on what she said. It’s true. I am not breathing hard at all. Typically, if I was in the gym doing jiu-jitsu, I would be breathing hard after just ten minutes of sparring. Yet here, I am pretty sure we have been at it for over an hour, and while Sara is gasping for breath, I am breathing as if I had just been out for a stroll. Not even running. Could it be the bigger heart that Bridget told me I had? She mentioned that it was moving oxygen through my body faster.
“I would say it’s my heart,” I tell Sara, nodding. “I think when my, hmm. My skin exploded. It also blew my heart, and Bridget was able to recreate it.” I had talked to Sara about how Bridget can heal me. I did not mention to her yet that I can also heal. Man needs to keep some secrets to himself, right?
“Wow. That’s just amazing. And this juju you are showing me is amazing too! I never thought of using some of those moves like that. And my Gods, there are a couple I could modify to work with a dagger!” she says excitedly.
“Jiu-jitsu,” I correct her. “But yes. Some of the jiu-jitsu schools teach the use of small or short weapons such as daggers, small swords, or even just a wooden stick. The one I went to, they didn’t. I didn’t know that about the other ones at the time, as I would have liked to have learned how to use something called a Tanto, or a small sword that is about this long,” I tell her, spreading my hands apart around 12 inches. “What I would have really loved to have learned was to use a Katana, but that was a different school of Martial Arts.”
“What’s a Katana,” she asks, stumbling slightly on the word.
“It’s a slightly curved sword that is roughly 30 inches long,” I say, spreading my hands further apart. “In my world, old warriors from a past age would fight with them, and they were deadly.”
“That sounds a lot like what my brother wears, though he calls it a Kron. It’s a sword that Master Swordsmen use. It’s sharp on one side, with a slight curve and a handle that is about this long,” she says, spreading her hands about ten inches apart. “It’s usually wrapped in leather. And it comes in a sheath made of wood that is worn over their backs or on their hips.”
“Damn, that sounds like a Tsuka, or the handle does. And the sheath sounds a lot like a Saya,” I tell her. Odd how the Japanese words are coming out in English. Does that mean any word that is unknown here on Boromour will come out like that? Interesting.
“Well, I am no expert,” she says with a laugh. “But maybe one day you can see one. Right now, I need water and some more of that rabbit if you have any left in your magical bag. I might also need a dip in the Lake to rinse my fur off from all this sweat.”
“I think that can be arranged,” I tell her with a laugh, but in my head, I am fanboying on seeing one of those swords. They sound so much like a Katana, but I would need to see one to verify.
I turn back towards the carpet and see that Leeha is awake and is sitting up and watching us with a smile.
“Leeha!” I shout in surprise, rushing to her and wrapping her in my arms after dropping to my knees in front of her.
Leeha hugs me hard and whispers, “Don’t you ever do that again, Alex!”
“Do what?” I ask her, pulling back to hold her by the shoulders and look in her eyes.
“Explode like that,” she snarls. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Hmm. Well, I can tell you that I never, ever
want to experience what I did again. It hurt. A lot,” I say with a smile.
“Good, you deserved it for making me worry so much,” Leeha says, and there are tears in her eyes.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her softly, wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes.
“Sore,” Leeha says with a sigh. “Here.” She points to her head. “I used up all my power and then some, to keep you cocooned in water. I couldn’t look at you,” Leeha says, blushing and looking down. “It was too hard to see you in that shape.”
“Hey,” I tell her, lifting her head back up to look at me. “I would have trouble looking at myself in that shape, with no skin. But thank you for keeping me alive in that. Bridget said that if you had not done it so fast, and for so long, I would have gotten an infection and died, no matter that she repaired my heart.”
She hugs me once more and then pulls back, looking at Sara, who is watching us with a smile on her face, hands on her hips. “So, it seems you have been keeping some things from me,” Leeha says to me pointedly, with an arched eyebrow.
“What? That?” I say, pointing to where Sara and I had been sparring. “I just never had the need to use it. I mean, I had magic,” I tell her with a grin.
“I think you will need to spar with me one day so that I can learn those moves. I saw that Sara was picking them up pretty fast,” Leeha says, looking at Sara with a big grin.
Sara blushes and blurts out, “I have always been a fast learner.”
“Well, whatever the case,” Leeha says with a laugh, “I am starving. Please tell me you have some more of that beef jerky!”
“Even better,” I tell her with my own laugh. “Sara caught four rabbits the other day, and we cooked them. It seems that my bag-” Leeha’s eyes widen, so I interrupt myself and tell her, “She knows. Sara apparently figured it out. But anyhow. It seems that my bag keeps food warm, which means I still have warm rabbit meat cooked with the spices I found, and it’s amazing. Not as good as Macoa,” I tell her with a chuckle, “but still good.”