While One Sleeps

Xinyi awoke not to the smell of salt and shit, but to the sound and smell of deep, dense forest, limbs still intact but duct taped together. He is ashamed to admit that this kept him in place for the worst part of three hours, wiggling and attempting to magic and or bullshit his way out of the situation. The duct tape was magic resistant, and when he finally got it off he discovered there was a sealing array sharpied onto it. The little brat was probably hoping that it would stop him from waking up. Ha, jokes on him, he had tried that before and was abundantly disappointed when it failed, only slowing his healing instead of stopping it completely.

Looking around at the vast expanse of trees, he was unsurprised to find himself outside of the city, the hustle and bustle of daily life that he had grown used to hearing over the years absent, leaving behind a silence that was quite peaceful. Or, it would be, if he had willingly chosen to be here. Having no idea where he was wouldn't stop him from going home either, cause he could fly.

He ended up having to walk back to the city, as the child had figured out the correct seal to stop him from being able to use his wings, and he had sharpied it onto his back. Though, walking wasn't entirely correct, because he had to catch a boat across the ocean, as he had been moved to an island while he was out of commission. This only served to piss him off further.

Once he stepped foot back on the city docks and made his way home, it became exceedingly clear that not even the saints took pity on him as he found everything turned upside down, even his genius hiding spot in the bathroom where he kept all his important shit in a lockbox in the walls was open!

It took him hours to fix everything and find new hiding spots for when they got their new documents. It took him even more time to get the smell out. By the time he was done all he wanted was a sandwich and a nap, but he'd have to go to the store for that, because he had to throw all of his food out, as a precautionary measure, and because the bastard child unplugged his fridge. They sighed as they trudged their way back into their room where their wallet sat on the nightstand, empty besides his debit and credit cards. Well, Xinyi had to give the kid one thing, he was smart. He couldn't get an accurate read on him without a location history, and his own cards would have been rather obvious.

He really has to debate with himself over whether or not the sandwich was worth dragging his overtaxed and exhausted body to the store. In the end, the answer came up negative and they just dragged their body into their sheetless bed and passed out, a mistake.

" XINYI! AWAKEN CHILD, NOT ALL OF US HAVE ALL DAY TO WAIT FOR YOU TO FIX MINOR INJURIES AND WASTE VITAL ENERGY!"

Xinyi shot up and hit his head almost immediately, not even making a full right angle before his body was violently smacked back down by the force with which he hit the…ceiling? They felt along the space they were in, and recognized it as a rather shoddy but sturdy attempt at a coffin, complete with three arrays, a metal roof, and multiple chains. The arrays on this coffin felt different from the one on the duct tape, and proved their use when even as Xinyi rammed themself into the lid of the coffin, it budged not even an inch. It seems the brat had chosen to seal him in this time rather than trying to permanently keep Xinyi dead. Xinyi will admit that that was a better angle to come at him from, but strength was not where Xinyi's power lay heaviest. But as none of his spells worked, the realization that he hadn't eaten since the first time the little shit killed him, which was weeks ago at this point, maybe even more than a month with the amount of time Xinyi had spent dead, hit Xinyi like a ten ton brick wall.

Xinyi usually made a fuss about his food, he was an overeater after all. They took in more than they needed so that they had reserves for situations like this, but they had drained energy they didn't have healing minor injuries and wiggling through and out of arrays. They were drained, and making it out of this coffin on their own would take months even if they went to sleep right at that moment to amass and conserve energy. Xinyi hissed at this, thinking of ways to get out as he settled in for the moment. Their pockets were empty, and all the hidden things they usually kept on their person were also removed. Illusion and shape shifting wouldn't help; he couldn't change mass, after all, only shape. Shadow warp only allowed him through open spaces, so he couldn't move through the dirt. Most of their powers were too high in energy costs, but, in this situation, Xinyi was probably going to have to take a gamble, especially if he wanted to be back in the city before he was reported missing or dead. He did want anyone in his den, house, whatever you wanted to call it.

" So what happens if I run out of energy?"

It wasn't something they had dealt with in the 13 years they had had access to their powers. Ailbe looked contemplative, looking at all the memories Ailbe held of previous hosts and personal experiences.

" WELL, IT DEPENDS ON THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY USED. MINOR ENERGY EXHAUSTION RESULTS IN NEEDING LONGER REST PERIODS. MAJOR EE…ISN'T SOMETHING I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT WITH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE."

Xinyi nodded as they weighed the pros and cons of what he was about to do, including the consequences that might occur because of the array. The final conclusion they came to was that a prolonged nap above ground where he could then just fly home was better than an unspecified amount of time trapped in such a terrible place.

He gathered all the energy he could, piling it up as fast as they could to outpace the array that was the most effective in keeping him down, the draining array. As thye worked they wondered how such a young child knew so much about arrays, but as the exhaustion and dehydration started to set in from his draining more power than his body naturally produced, he had little time to contemplate it. His cells started to die and regrow more rapidly than they did normal, and then even that slowed as the supply of energy he used to heal was sapped from. His hair dried and withered a little, turning gray in parts as the aging he didn't experience started to creep up on him, wrinkles starting at the corner of his eyes. Before he could drain himself completely though, they stopped and finally deemed the energy collected acceptable. Xinyi imagined his living room, his favorite place in the entirety of his home, and he thought of where that was, and he let the energy envelop him as he yanked himself from the coffin and over many miles. The only thing left to ever signify he was there was the field of empty, dead grass and the dying trees that whither to accommodate Xinyi in his desperate need to not die and return home.