The Wizard
I stabbed the test tube repeatedly, but I couldn't do much damage since my knives broke in half almost immediately. Leon, desperately and mindlessly, punched the glass until his soft fingers started bleeding. Behind the glass, the floating man is staring at me with fierce, haunting eyes.
A part of me fears he would attack us once we release him, but I brush these thoughts off for no reason I can understand. I press my hand on the glass and the mysterious presence does the same on the other side. The air feels so dense and nauseating, but I need to gather the strength I have within. I am a psychic fairy. I can talk to him.
I raise my other hand and stick it on the glass too and with telling eyes, I convince the man on the other side to do the same. An invisible wave of electricity leaves my body, penetrating the material of the tube.
"Lend me your strength", I whisper into his mind. He seems to nod as a sharp pain enters the tip of my fingers. First it burns, then a chilling feeling takes over my body and at the end my arms start shaking under the pressure. This amount of magic, it is truly ureal. Raw. Dangerous. Pure and strong.
Leon hugs me from behind, trying to ease my pain and I thank him quietly as soon as I regain my senses. I press my hands harder on the tube, trying to redirect all the magic into its walls. Soon enough, the hard material fails to absorb it anymore and it starts breaking into small pieces that become bigger and bigger. The green liquid spilling onto the floor, I take my hands away, fast enough to dodge a huge chunk of glass that almost landed on us.
Leon falls over me, but jumps away hoping I was not hurt. He gives me a quick hopeful smile before he turns back and watches the man who is now laying in the floor. The tube is now completely shattered and the other immortal seems to have cut himself after falling on the sharp pieces of glass. I am shocked to see his wounds closing off with my open eye.
The man looks back at me, with two tender eyes, and yet his expression unclear. His purple irises and silver hair make me hope he might be a fairy too, but his smell tells me he is purely human, leaving me a bit disappointed and some faint feeling of loneliness comes and goes.
"Leon", I say. "Give me your clothes."
Leon tries to refuse me, but he knows the hallucination magic will hide his nakedness from the others. This man, in return, will be completely exposed to the outside world and we can't risk attracting people's attention as we travel back to the Forest of Poison and Venom. He gives me a sad look and starts to undress. I support the other man as I lift him up and then help him take the clothes on. He seems almost unaware of us, but I believe he will regain his mental abilities back in no time.
We hurry to exit the tunnel and I ask Leon to go in front of us. I beg him to be fast and find Ri as soon as possible. I ask him to not waste time and just exit through a window because I am planning on burning this whole place down to dust. The other man waits next to me as I unchain the scared beast I meet again on the way back. With gratitude and fear in its eyes, the seven-headed dog disappears and vanishes like a surreal dream.
Mechanically, I light up my magic infused matches, trying to dissociate myself from the reality that people might die today. I image a naked Leon running away in the dark and I manage to smile for a second. Not understanding much, the man with silver hair doesn't show any thoughts, emotions or feelings.
The fire suddenly takes over the place and we run, we run for our lives. I only have one oxygen mask and I pass it to him, covering my face with the top part of my dress. We manage to get out using a backdoor I haven't noticed before and run to the nearest shadowed corner, hoping to not be seen.
I cough uncontrollably as I gasp for air. The man takes off his mask and forces it on my face. I recover in a matter of minutes and I stare at him. He stares back at me with a blank, annoying look. He does not speak, he does not flinch, he does not smile. But this time I can tell he is here with me, mentally, not just physically.
I make sure to avoid the crowd that gathered around and sneak into the darkness, finding Leon hiding not too far away from the fire. Ri looks at me with curious eyes, as he realizes I look different from before. Oh, yeah, we did all that before the magic that turned us into other people wore off. I curse myself in my thoughts thinking how expensive making one of those again would be.
It takes around 10 days enchanting the spell. 5 more days to perfect it and one full day to prolong its powers for just less than an hour after the cloak is removed from the body. I take a few seconds to think and I decide that I don't want Ri to be conscious of what I am going to do. He lets himself hypnotized knowing he has no other choice and I tell Leon we need to find a mage in the Underworld and get teleported at home.
"Won't he know where we live if we do that?", Leon asks me proving he is smarter than I first expected him to be. We can't risk taking the same way back either though.
"There's no other choice, I can't perform teleportation magic!", I say begging him to understand there is no time to chit-chat about it.
"But I can", the man with purple eyes says.
"If this is a trick, I'll cut your head and feed it to wild cats", I threaten him ignoring the fact that those were the first words he's ever said to me.
"If you are afraid I am planning to teleport you in pieces, don't worry, I am not willing to die like this, after spending years in a huge recipient", he mocks me. I felt his powers and for this reason I allow myself to risk my life once again.
Without even asking for his name, I give him the coordinates of the place, that I had to search for in the past in order to be teleported at home in case of emergency. Thankfully, I only had to do it once and I had it right, so we are good to go. Ri is currently still under my spell and he is innocently looking at the stars, unaware of what we are doing.
How come Leon lost his memory while this new guy is perfectly aware of his powers? I wonder about it as I blink once and find myself, and the rest, in my living room.
"Who are you?", I ask trying to act tough.
"I am Xayan, a wizard", he says. "My mind was numb, but I regained my conscience soon after we were outside. Thank you for saving me", he adds and kisses the back of my hand.
"Ok, Xayan... Would you like some tea then?"