Healing Laura

A pair of indifferent sapphire eyes stared into a pair of dull emerald eyes. The sapphire eyes saw a trace of hope and fear buried under the dullness in the emerald eyes, whilst the emerald eyes saw a trace of determination and nostalgia behind the indifference. Laura continued staring into Azraeus' eyes for a few moments in order to determine his intention, to which Azraeus did not look away. Naturally as the only living relative of the chairman of the Golden Circle, a platinum grade fourth circle wizard, Laura had to be careful of unknown people who may possibly be evil awakened who came for revenge due to their inhuman deeds and experiments being stopped by the Golden Circle members. Thus Laura searched his eyes for any signs of malice.

The four individuals watching the staring contest had different expressions. The one dressed as a maid had a frown; the butler understanding; the light element awakened, a look of confusion; and the ice element girl a face covered in shock. Isobel was worried that Azraeus intended to do something rude or harm her young lady whilst Monet suspected Azraeus had understood something after seeing his eyes glow again due to the use of appraisal. Veronica was clueless not understanding why Azraeus wanted to be alone to do healing and Elise was shocked that Azraeus seemed to show concern or perhaps great interest in something, even more so than he did for magic.

Having discerned that Azraeus seemed to hold no malice nor ulterior motive, she asked everyone to leave the room. It took a bit of persuading to get Isobel to leave her alone with an unknown man but she eventually succeeded and turned back to look at Azraeus, waiting to see what he would do now.

"I know the cause of your paralysis."

His sentence was short but the impact it had on Laura was great, were she not paralysed she might have started shaking Azraeus in her excitement to get an explanation from him. The trace of hope in her dull eyes seemed to bloom and the glossy effect on her eyes receded a bit making her look more alive. Before continuing his explanation Azraeus pondered over if he would reveal the secret to the girl, it would require him to explain things that no person on Earth should know and expose a part of his secret. Thus he decided to ask for the system's assistance.

[Sound Insulating Field established]

[EP: 62 -> 61]

An invisible field immediately surrounded the room, it would let no sound in or out until removed, it could also not be broken through with magic or mana, at least not by the people of Earth. Having confirmed no word would leak, Azraeus began his explanation.

"Long story short, your paralysis is caused by your extraordinarily high quantity of mana."

Clearly Azraeus needed to work on his ability to explain. Hearing that short and mostly useless explanation Laura glared at him and demanded he give a proper explanation.

"Just listen to the end of my explanation first, you can ask questions after. Also, don't share this with anyone else, ok?" Laura nodded at Azraeus' demand for confidentiality, confused at why that was necessary, though that confusion was short-lived as Azraeus explained.

"When you were 15 years old you awoke a small portion of the power dormant in your bloodline due to your exceptionally high affinity to the wind element. From what I understand one of your distant relatives was a wind spirit of some kind, don't ask me what a spirit is I don't know. Anyway, when you awakened this power it granted you a boon in the form of an increase in mana capacity, if I were to use the standard of circles, your mana capacity is actually at the peak of what would be the 6th circle. In fact your very close to the 7th circle, but this is where the problem arises, the limit for Earth is the peak of the 5th circle. As a result of exceeding the limit you are suppressed by the realm, you can think of that as the universe Earth inhabits I guess. Anyway, the realm will not allow anyone with mana capacity of the 6th circle or better and since you exceed the limit of the realm it inhibited you to stop you from breaking the balance, thus you were paralysed. At least that is my understanding of it."

After Azraeus stopped his explanation he noticed that Laura was staring at him blankly, she was overwhelmed by what he said. All sorts of things she had never heard of before were mentioned and the explanation was difficult to digest. She hung her head down for a few minutes understanding everything she had been told, before bringing it back up to look sceptically at Azraeus who had waited by her side patiently.

"How do you know this?" She asked, clearly questioning if he was just spouting nonsense.

"I have an ability to see the information of things, and that's what it told me about you. You can consider it a special form of magic or something," he said, shrugging his shoulders to indicate he wouldn't explain any more than that.

Laura fell back into thought again before eventually her blank expectant expression, which had been frozen since a few minutes ago due to shock, turned into a deep frown.

"If what you said is true, doesn't that mean it's my fault and that there is no solution."

Her dead eyes had lost the hope Azraeus had seen in them and were now full of despair as they started to get watery at her last hope being shattered.

"I didn't say there's no hope, also it's not your fault it was simply an unfortunate coincidence." Azraeus tried to console her with his rather blunt words.

"Then how? What should I do? Tell me. I'm so fed up with not being able to do anything. What's the point of living if I can't do anything!"

The water in her eyes had now formed into tears that ran down the side of her cheeks, as she vented her emotions which had boiled over due to the rollercoaster of ups and downs Azraeus was unintentionally putting her through due to his lack of eloquence.

"You cant be healed by light magic because you are not wounded, in order to stop the suppression by the realm and remove your paralysis you would need to reduce your mana to the limit of the fifth circle. I guess."

"But how, how do I do that?"

"Can't curses do something like that?" Azraeus asked basing his thoughts on curses he had read about in works of fiction.

"I don't think so, at least I've never heard of it." Laura replied, her head hanging low hiding her face with her long hair.

Azraeus thought for a moment about what he should do before consulting with his system, asking if it could reduce her mana to the level of fifth circle. He had not really relied on his system for anything except getting information before meeting Laura as he did not really know what to do with it, nor had any desire to ask of the system. However, he realised that the system was able to set up a sound insulating barrier for him, so he asked if it was possible to make a curse using EP.

[It is possible to create a seal that will limit her mana capacity, however, it will only be effective whilst in this reality fragment.]

'How much will it cost?'

[Cost of mana limiting seal: 24 EP]

Azraeus was shocked by the cost of the curse. It has to be remembered that the cost for initiating the system and creating the perfect body for a human on Earth cost him 22 EP. The cost for this seal was 2 EP higher. Surprised by the cost, Azraeus asked the system why.

[The greater mana a person has the more mana it would require to curse them due to their natural resistance, this increase in cost does not change when EP is used instead. Additionally the quantity of Laura's mana exceeds the limit of this realm thus it is more expensive to seal using EP's from this realm.]

Azraeus still did not understand where EP were coming from, or even what they were for that matter. He did, however, understand the explanation, but the reality that he could use EP to make a seal made him wonder just what else he could do with EP, which made him question the system.

[You can do almost everything with EP, at least on earth. When you return to the main reality the functions of the system will be updated and you will understand more about its purpose.]

The system's answer was simply too mysterious. Whilst the things he could do with the system seem like magic, it absolutely does not follow the way magic works on Earth. Azraeus felt an even greater desire to go to the so-called 'main reality' quickly in order to understand what the system was. Deciding to ask the system later on how to leave Earth, he looked towards Laura and decided he might as well use his EP on her. There was not much point in just leaving them lying around in the system especially when he planned to leave Earth and his current EP would be useless. He also considered that it would be valuable to have the granddaughter of the Golden CIrcle's chairman and a peak 5th circle mage, owe him a big favour for his remaining time on Earth.

"I can help, I can cast a seal that will limit your mana to the peak of the fifth circle," he told her, returning her hope.

She stared at him in shock before asking, "how can you do all this, you aren't like any other awakened I've ever heard of?"

He simply shrugged indicating that he didn't know himself, although she perceived it as him not being able to tell and pouted a little at her curiosity being denied.

"Fine, do it then, anything is better than my current condition."

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Azraeus then asked the system to apply the seal only to be told he needed to touch her chest where her heart was. Telling himself that it was medical treatment to keep the naughty thoughts at bay, he rested his hand upon her chest. He felt her small yet elastic breasts deform slightly as he pressed down but what caught his attention was the weakness he felt, there were almost no muscles on her chest due to six years of deterioration. Laura heard the rustling of Azraeus' clothing and brought her head back down to see what he was doing only to be surprised.

"Wha-!" She started to explain but her voice was quickly cut off by the feeling of the seal being applied. It felt like her heart was being grasped and she grunted at the pain, which lasted only a moment as her mana resisted being sealed, but was quickly suppressed under the power of the system. Laura was left with an odd feeling in her chest once the pain had subsided, it was similar to the feeling of being wrapped up under a duvet or a being in a sleeping bag, the feeling of being enveloped and slightly restricted but not so much that you couldn't move.

Her consciousness of the strange feeling made her unconsciously move her hand towards her chest in an attempt to feel the sensation. Laura gasped in surprise at seeing her hand move, she then tried to bring her hands up in front of her face to take a look at them. Her movements were uncoordinated and clumsy but that was only natural for someone who hasn't moved them for as long as she had. She stared blankly at her hands as tears began falling from her eyes again, this time though they were tears of joy and surprise, rather than sadness and defeat.

Azraeus quietly stood by the side, having removed his hand as soon as the seal was complete, watching her reaction to her regained mobility. She experimented with moving her upper body, raising her arms above her head, waving, bending over and turning from side to side. Her movements were very jerky, similar to how a robot moves, but that was understandable given the lack of practice. She moved on to trying her lower body, she tilted her feet under the blanket before trying to move her legs in their entirety, in her exuberance she almost kneed herself in the face when she bent over and tried to bend her legs. 

After having experimented in moving her body she turned back towards Azraeus with a beautiful smile on her face, her eyes now reignited with hope glistening due to her tears, made more pronounced by the trails left on her cheeks. She twisted her lower body, awkwardly by relying on the railings on her bed, until she was dangling her legs off the side, she slowly put pressure into her knees and used her arms to lift herself up off the bed. She stood there for a few moments, using the support of the bed to keep herself steady as her smile grew so wide it started causing the skin around her eyes to bunch up. She then tried to take a step towards Azraeus, only to immediately lose her balance and fall forward.

Azraeus, having watched her stand on her own only to fall at the first step, instinctively stepped closer and reached out to catch her. She headbutted him in the stomach as her flailing arms wrapped around his back and legs as Laura, in her panic, grabbed on to anything that could stop her fall. Azraeus stiffened at the sudden contact with Laura even though he was the one to move to catch her, he only relaxed a little when he felt her arms contract hugging him tightly. He looked down to make sure she was alright as she pulled herself back up into a standing position using Azraeus as a support. She moved her legs up to right beside him as she moved her arms up from his legs. When she was fully standing she suddenly tightened the arms that were still wrapped around him rather than letting go, she didn't manage to apply much force due to her atrophied muscles. Azraeus once again stiffened up at the tightened hug before relaxing as he heard the sniffling sound coming from the face Laura had buried into the bottom of his chest.

"*Sniff* tha *sniff* thank you, *sniff* s-so much."

She cried like a child as she held onto him, struggling to get her words of thanks out amidst her tears. Azraeus cautiously wrapped his right arm around her shoulder giving a light support, he wasn't too sure what he was supposed to do in this situation due to the lack of intimate interaction in his life. He felt as her strained muscles started to give way due to their weakness and quickly increased the pressure of his grip, assuming it was ok due to Laura not saying anything, not that she could through her crying though. Laura, fully relaxed now, feeling secure in his embrace and trusting in Azraeus to support her weak body, continued crying as she released all the negative emotion she had built up over a long time and the happiness she felt at the feeling of being free again.

Azraeus felt the warmth and softness of her frail body as he returned her hug, holding her as she cried. A few moments into the embrace Azraeus began gently petting her head and stroking her long, silky blond hair, waiting for the girl to calm down. Had Elise been here she would have been surprised to see the smile on Azraeus' face, it was the first genuine smile he had shown since waking up in his new body, and it was a very gentle one at that.