Fall on his face.

John was falling. This was not a metaphor for anything, Nathalia just dropped him off five-meters high, just high enough to realize that he was going to have a painful landing, but not high enough to do anything about it. Intended by Nathalia or not, John planted his face firmly on the floor, felt his spine bend and then he laid there for a moment. Exhaustion, that was his main feeling right now, not only was his HP decreased to a mere sliver thanks to the creation of the second ring but it had been a physically challenging day in the first place.

He heard hasty footsteps and then he was picked up by gentle warm hands. “Master, you are back!” Aclysia exclaimed. Her pale face and white hair were in stark difference to the night sky behind her. “Yeah,” John responded weakly, not really having the energy to struggle against the fact that he was currently being carried like the princess in a kid’s story, just that he was a naked guy instead.

The connection with his elementals snapped back into place, and he felt waves of worry, which he didn’t quite understand. He couldn’t have been gone longer than a day, looking at the fact that it was still night. Aclysia’s green eyes became wet with tears. The clearing of a throat made John rear his head, “You get back just in time, I was about to contact my employer,” Magoi, who was decidedly not looking into John’s direction, said.

“Can you tell us what happened, master?” Aclysia asked while keeping him close. John was still mildly confused but then relayed the whole story to what had transpired. Salamander flew around uncaring for the most of it but showed off her new form to Sylph when asked. This sent the little air elemental into a wild ramble.

“That is like, so unfair. Like, I can’t even. O – M – G. So unfair. I wanna be big too, and I don’t need giant tits like you, I just need to be big, then you even fucked him, I wanna do that, I WANNA DO THAAAAAAAAAAAT, Sally, you are so mean! You mea…” There was a fireball that barely missed Sylph “The fuck did you just call me?!” Salamander wanted to know. “What? You don’t like Sally? I also have Sal, Salma, Salda, Zelda, Mandy and Lamany, last one I like ‘cause it sounds like lemon-y and your mood is always so sour!” Sylph dodged the next fireball too, this time with more ease, the air elemental maybe wasn’t the smartest one around, but she still was way too fast for anyone else. “I will set the sky aflame if that's what needs to happen!” Salamander cried out, transformed back into her smaller form and set after Sylph, who was doing loops in the air. A green and a red dash respectively as they spiraled through the air.

“I have a question,” Magoi said, “You say you were **** by Nathalia, correct?” “Yes,” John answered. “Okay, once this is over I will cut all ties with you,” Magoi decidedly stated, “I ask for your understanding.” “Wait, why?” John was confused. “I am not going to get on Romulus bad side, and she definitely is, so I am going to stay as far away from her as possible,” Magoi explained. “What did she do?” “She burnt Pompeii, an act you should read about on your own, it’s too complicated to explain. Another question, how did she come in here? This barrier is untraceable by outside means, I thought it was just a random god jumping around and unusually persistent but Nathalia seemed to be bent on getting here specifically,” Magoi probed further, leaving John with another note on his list of things in the Abyss he needed to learn about.

“Ehm, Aclysia ate one of her scales, so maybe she used that?” “SHE DID WHAT?!” Magoi stumbled away a few feet, “Well, this makes it decidedly not my fault that you lost this whole week.” “I did what?!” John cried out and looked at Aclysia, who was still holding him closely. Now she outright embraced him tightly against her chest. “Master, I was so lonely,” she sobbed, leaving John to feel absolutely miserable as it dawned on him what had happened in its entirety.

Nathalia had whisked him away to her so-called sanctuary and because that space was only connected to this one, not actually part of it, the time dilation did not affect it. With ash covering the sky he had no way to confirm what time it was and as the day passed by, him being busy training and fucking, Aclysia had to wait an entire week for his return inside her accelerated time.

The other girls, the elementals, they had been worried about him, but at least they also had a connection to the rest of the world. They could just be happy with what they were, Gnome laying on the plain, Sylph soaring through the skies and Undine just losing herself in the bathtub. Aclysia had nothing like that, without John around she was aimless and purposeless, so all she could do was sit in the plain and wait for his return.

Aclysia, entirely unwilling to let her master go, made it pretty hard for John to keep looking at Magoi as the Fateweaver laid down the situation. “According to page 67, paragraph 7 of the Fateweaver service agreement the Fateweaver, being me, has no obligation to refund anything if a higher power, being Nathalia, is invited by the contractor, being you, without the Fateweavers knowledge and obstructs the scheduled program. Invitations are defined as a multitude of things, one of which is beacon setting,” Magoi took a deep breath, “to put it bluntly, you just lost six days, let this be a lesson in how to fulfill your end of a bargain,” the Fateweaver turned heel and quickly walked away. It seemed like he truly didn’t plan to stay around John more than necessary now.

‘That’s bad,’ John thought, he really didn’t want Magoi to be at odds with him. That just sounded like a recipe for trouble. Nothing he could do about it now, however, as the Fateweaver slammed the door shut behind him.

“Let’s get inside,” John decided. Aclysia wasn’t hearing him; she was still quietly sobbing, pulling him in closer. ‘Never leave me alone again, master,’ she begged, filling his thoughts as her body was too busy crying to speak, ‘Please, never.’ ‘I promise,’ John sent back and after a few more minutes of reassuring her, they finally moved into the house.

Aclysia recovered surprisingly quickly once he was inside again. She vanished in the kitchen while he went to get something to wear. ‘A shame that I fed the enchanted pants to Aclysia,’ John thought as he got into his decidedly normal clothes. The item he would miss the most of the things that Nathalia had destroyed would be the Earthen Shirt, sure it was a short-lived possession, but he so rarely got useful gear that this really stung. Weapons, rings and necklaces, stuff like that dropped in masses, but for the other slots, he rarely got anything.

When he got back down, wearing comfy black pants, blue socks, and a plain t-shirt, he felt decidedly better. He even heard Aclysia humming something in the kitchen. When she returned to the table, she had prepared a piece of bread. “I am sorry, everything else spoiled,” she apologized. “No problem,” John said, he was famished and would eat just about anything, “we got anything left to drink?” “Water or orange juice, master.” “I’ll take the latter.” Following his instructions, Aclysia quickly walked to the kitchen again.

John started eating when a blue mass wobbled into the chair to his right side and took the appearance of a girl. Undine stared at him. ‘Welcome home,’ she said in her musical voice. John smiled after gulping down the food. ‘Thanks, how are you doing?’ He asked, happy that Undine talked to him on her own, it meant that she was slowly warming up to him again. As her answer Undine sent him a picture of the bathtub, the feeling of water running through her body in an endless stream, cleansing her. ‘You do look shinier than before,’ John commented, causing Undine to send him a happy little melody. He mentally instructed Aclysia to get a glass of water as well.

John felt a tug at his left sleeve and turned in the chair. Gnome was standing there, quickly retracting her hand as she blushed, feeling her summoners gaze for the first time in a week was somehow incredibly embarrassing. It could have to do with the fact John was a pervert overall. She averted her eyes for a moment but then clearly looked at him, blushing even harder, her whole face turned from pale white to beet red. “W-w-w-w-w-w-welcome back!” she finally got out and kissed him on the mouth. The poorly thought out act was quick, clumsy and ended with Gnome stumbling into the chair to the left and fall to the ground once she hastily retreated.

She laid there with eyes spinning for a moment before looking up at John. She followed his eyes down to her skirt, between her open legs John could clearly see her lack of panties underneath. “Ah!” she quickly pushed her skirt down, “I, later, see, you, I, maybe, ehm…You didn’t see nothing!” she exclaimed. “Right, I did see something,” John answered in an amused tone. Gnome froze for a moment; then she started to stammer more excuses. He just stated, “you got some bread there,” and picked it from near her lips where her clumsy gesture of affection earlier had left it. Gnome’s twin tails developed a life on their own, weaved around her head and hid her face from him. They didn’t muffle the “Uwuwuwuwu,” sound Gnome was making, however.

“Ahahaha, still the same frustrating piece of work,” Salamander said and landed on the fallen chair, dangling her crossed legs from the edge while she clicked her tongue. “See, if I were you I would just say, ‘Yo, John, let’s fuck later,’ speaking of that Yo, John, you brat, let’s fuck later.” “I feel that adding an insult there was unnecessary,” John said. “Yeah, SALLY!” Sylph, who suddenly appeared behind Salamander said. Now that he saw them side by side, it was evident how much Salamander had physically grown. Sylph was still just thumb sized, and she greatly lamented that fact.

“I mean, if I could, which I can’t because I am tiny, I would be much nicer to John when asking him to put his penis into me!” she exclaimed. Salamander tried to smack her over the head, but Sylph quickly ducked away and appeared at her other side again. “Speaking of which, Johnny,” “That is not his name you know?” Salamander interjected “It’s not? Ehm, Jonathan!” “No.” “Juan.” “Does he look Spanish?” “Jane!” “That’s his girlfriend.” “Joon.” “Close.” “Jezus?” “That is a holy-man.” “Alexander?” “HOW?!” “Johnnie Gat?” “Saint’s Row, stop rummaging in his memories so much.” “How do you know it then?” “Cause you never stop talking about him and that other video game character called Pacman.” “Wacka-Wacka-Wacka-Wacka!” “Exactly, now what is our summoners name?” “John, silly, how did you even forget that? Silly Sally, you are so stupid.” “I WILL FRY YOU INSIDE OUT!”

There was the smallest of flames as Salamander forgot herself. Sylph dodged with a double pirouette and hung in the air. “How I loathe that you are the fastest of us,” Salamander growled, causing Sylph to let out a triumphant laughter. “You will never catch me!” and then she flew over to John, “Hey, Hey, listen!” she said, giving John a slight headache in the process, “can I maybe have a gummy-bear? I wanna try one!” “Ehm,” John was fairly certain giving Sylph sugar was one of the worst ideas one could have, but the little elemental looked so pleading he could barely resist. ‘Do we have gummy-bears?’ he asked Aclysia. ‘We do not,’ came the answer, giving John an easy out.

“Sorry, can’t, we don’t have any.” “Nuuuuuuh,” Sylph sniffed, “Promise me I get a gummy-bear when I become this Tier 2 thing. Promise, promise, promise, promise, promiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii….” A high pitched tone was filling the room as Sylph stretched the ‘I’ to infinity. With any other person, he could have waited until they went out of breath but Sylph didn’t need to breathe, she was her own air. “Okay, okay, I promise!” John almost shouted to overtone her. “Haha, one see-eth my superior negotiation skills!”

“” Whatever Sylph,”” everyone said as one. Aclysia finally returned from the kitchen