Hidden Secrets

If you are going to demand from me a list of smart ways to die, I will kindly ask you to give me a brake and/or go fuck yourself, whatever suits you the most. That last line in the previous chapter was only a word. When we last saw each other I was running from screaming panthers, a lot of them, big angry males unhappy about our presence here blocking their access to the only entrance to a cave with a female screaming panther in heat is waiting for the victor who manages to reach her.

I was running to a wall of magic fire, mind you. By the heat coming from it that magical fire has easily hot enough to melt any sort of steel. Not the sort of heat you get from burning wood in the opening but the thermic energy industrial ovens on Earth are build to produce.

Those animals here moving behind me, I had no other direction to go but the wall. No panther nearby was using his sound weapon to melt my internal organs, yet, but in my imagination their fangs and claws would be more than enough to finish me. I was in panic, too confuse to remember which spell I could try now to escape this situation. Then I tried to look back, miscalculated, the nearest wolf was a few couple meters more distant that I had imagined it.

Was stopping its running.

I turned back to see where I was going, my feet failed me, and was too late. The wall of fire hit me and my entire being submerged in a Hell of liquid floating fire.

Next instant I was on the floor, hardly bruised from the fall.

From this side the huge wall of fire was just a small line of oil burning slowly, hardly taller than my knees.

Illusion magic! The burning oil must have been magic catalyst to amplify the effects of the basic illusion at the lowest cost of mana possible. Now that I was paying attention, if that wall of fire was real the effect should have spread already. The tree at the centre of the oil circle was the only one burning, and it was isolated enough for the fire not to spread. Was not entirely safe, actually, a strong wind could still turn it in a large fire eating the entire forest, but didn’t seem the most likely development.

There was fights braking between the frustrated, horny, panther males. Fortunately the first scream I heard was too distant to cause damage, and I remembered the silence cloak spell immediately after that.

Was not the time to worry about keeping my magic secret.

I found my captor a moment latter, on the other side of the burning tree.

She was in bad shape. Not literally, she was still that fricking hot half elf brown skinned lassie. What I mean is that there was a lot of blood on here, and by the looks of it too much of that had come from her years, nose and mouth.

The magic had protected her, but some wolf must have hit her before the silence cloak was up, either that or she didn’t know that specific spell.

Clearly she wasn’t defenceless. Some extra-endurance and healing magic kept her on her feet for long enough for her to open the throat of one big cat with her sword and hit another four with earth attack spells. Flying spikes of stone, by the look of it. Also, she managed to somehow draw the oil circle, ignite the tree, set the oil in flames and pronounce the illusion enchantment.

Finally, the blood lost and the injuries surpassed her capacity to self-healing.

She was alive, but ****.

I found rope laying next to her backpack. That reminded me the fact that I was her prisoner. Kidnapped and kept hostage, as part of the plan of her mother to **** my father.

So, I stripped the half-elf girl naked, in the light of that burning tree. Not because I am a pervert, albeit I am not denying the possibility that I could, be. Or not, to be. One.

I just remembered some passage of those Books of Gor, that I read on Earth, during my past life. The idea is that is safer to strip people naked before you bind them. That’s the only way to be sure they don’t have a blade hidden somewhere in their clothes. Safety comes first!

That woman was really in great shape! Professional sportiest, easily. If this was not a medieval fantasy world.

She as, after all, some sort of magic ninja assassin. That counts as professional sport as far as physical preparation goes, I suppose. Ratter the equivalent to military special forces, probably.

I realized her body was hot, and not in the metaphorical sense. I would be just repeating myself if that was what I was saying. Stating the obvious.

There was fever, but also some magic going on. By what little I knew about magic healing, her injuries must have been too severe for the healing spells she had. That was something keeping her alive, postponing her **** possibly.

I was a nine years old boy in this world, for all practical purposes. Only my mind was much older, due to an entire life on Planet Earth. That I was born remembering and needed to hide from people in this adoptive world of mine.

On Earth I never killed anyone. Here, the though never really crossed my mind, until that moment.

That young woman was a sadistic psychopath, the moment she could free herself and recover, or vice versa, my life would be in danger. I could hardly hope to match her in a fight. Those corpses of big panthers with heads of giant bats proved that beyond doubt.

I could easily cut her throat with her own dagger and end that risk.

Well, I would be the 9 years old boy who killed a defenceless prisoner in cold blood. I rationalized. Not the best way to avoid unwanted attention. And I could not say if her mother would take offense in that or not, by their conversation, most likely she would.

Besides, once I saw myself in the situation, actually contemplating that possibility. How I can explain that to you?

I realized that actually go through it would not be as “easy” as just decide to go through it. The mechanical aspect requires little explanation. I do not think I cannot kill someone, man or woman, even a young girl like her. Under different circumstances.

In a fight, kill or be killed, hot blood. I, like, to believe I would not hesitate. However, someone naked, tied, and **** on top of that.

No, I realized that night would not be able to do that. Even if that was the safest path to achieve my escape and survival through the night. Only way to be sure I would have time to reach the village without being recaptured.

While I was examining the naked body of the girl, trying to imagine how to immobilize her with ropes, how to keep the knots beyond the reach of her fingers and teeth, and not cause her any additional damage or avoidable discomfort. I was not caressing her to satisfy my lustful impulses in any way, let me register that! Explicitly. Because I was the only person awaken there, and no one would know if I neglect mentioning that victory of self-control over natural impulses.

I, of course, cleaned the girl a little, because there was blood, and that could not be healthy. Was one of those life-defining moments when character is shaped, or revealed perhaps. Believe you or not, I found myself to be someone who do not take advantage of a situation like that so caress the nipple of a prisoner, taste her inner pussy and head of her clitoris with the tip of my tong, even knowing that no one would ever know…

Now, I digress.

Point being that, while I was examining that half-elf girl and stripping her, to bind her, some passages about healing magic and non-humans came back to me. They where associated to healing magic.

The elves in this world, they are more resistant than humans. Less D&D elves, metaphorically speaking, than the actual original Tolkien material.

That passage in my mind, that I wasn’t fully able to remember, says: “People got the habit in the Central South of Weasel Continent to say elves are ‘The Lesser Race’. In human lands that expression spread like fire. Human scholars caught the term from ancient texts and translated it from Vungar, the vulgar low-draconic dialect from the river-ports of Central South. The expression is objectively true.

Elves are indeed the ‘Lesser’ among the Void Races. Category that starts with the Forgotten Elder Gods, those who according the ancient myths turned their backs on this world long before the first human was born.

The High Dragons are in that category bellow the Primordial Spirits abandoned by those forgotten deities, albeit some dragons are said to be listed among those Primordial. The other high dragons are above the Titans. The Royal Fae are there too, right above the elves. There are a few more, and what all those beings have in common, along with their immense talent for magic, is that neither of them decays with the passage of time. They can grow mad, and they can die from ****, but they never suffer from sickness of the body, or weakness caused by advanced age.

Elves may look like humans and other ephemeral humanoids but they belong to the same category of High Fae, Titans, High Dragons, and the Elder Gods themselves. We may have forgot that, because the elves we know today are a shadow of what they must have been in their origin. Still, elves enjoy considerable advantages over the rest of us.

They are much harder to kill, not just more nimble, agile and elegant.

That’s the most likely origin of that well know opposition of feeling between elves and dwarves. Since the dwarves are the higher among all ephemeral humanoid races. The elves being the lowest among the Void Races are closer to the dwarves in merit and perspective than any other race. On the same time, the elves enjoy an unfair advantages the dwarves cannot ever hope to match”

So, I suppose a pure blood human would have died in that situation.

What was keeping this girl alive, was probably something related to her elven heritage.

I took what I could carry and though that could be useful to me. Left her rapier and her sword too, both being too heavy to be used comfortably by 9 years old me, Particularly now that my arm was much weaker than it used to be until recently. I got a small crossbow with 30 bolts. But I left the girl her boots and her clothes. Too the dagger, a small knife. But left her sword in a place that seemed to me likely close enough for her to reach. Even if my rope work proved to be good enough to hold her for a while after she open her eyes. I could not know if she would awake or not.

Or how long she would survive after the illusion spell end. The tree would likely keep burning all night and most the morning, but would that be enough to keep the animals at safe distance?

I was hopping that spell would last until morning. And maybe the girl’s mother would rescue her in time.

Whatever happened, was not by business.

My obligation was to run back home, find help if possible, and in any case do my best to keep my family safe. I was probably the only person in this family who knew what those magic assassins were looking for. I had not found the box described by the older woman, but if there was any clue about where to find it in our house, it had to be in the chest where I found grandma’s magic books.

If there was no way to keep my secret and also save my mother, father and siblings, then I had only one alternative. Expose myself and face whatever consequences had to follow.

I uses a combination of silence cloak and walking through solid objects, to get pass through the panthers still around. Seemed to be more of them, but I walked up to a tiny river path nearby, so I would be able to hide my smell from the animals, plausibly. Then I risked using a spell to actually hide my spell from the animals, while I pushed myself to the limit, running as much as I could to put distance between me and that burning tree surrounded by screaming panthers.

Then, I used the location spell to find my way back home in the darkness of the forest. I was hopping that could still be taken as luck, but by this point my main concern was to reach home in time. Before some irreversible tragedy happen to my family.

When I started actually thinking about this people as “my family” here? When that stopped to feel like a fantasy setting and started to feel like real life?

I could not forgive myself it this people died because I was too worried to hide my exceptional magic powers. I didn’t knew them much, I realized, running back home.

Didn’t understood them half as much as I should, being born and raised in that village, By those parents. They, didn’t knew me at all. Had to be that way, or my life would be in danger, and if they decided to help me keep the secret, then they would be in risk too. Hiding an Evil Demon Invader from another world.

To my relief everybody was fine. There was a military company from the capital going to the village. 600 soldiers and more 5 battle-mages. By happy coincidence they crossed the path of the magic-assassin and she decided to run away while she could. Leaving my father behind.

My father was telling them what he knew. Took some time for them to decide to trust him, apparently but the battle-mage commander was in the process of organize a searching party when one of his soldiers caught me trying to sneak my way closed to their camp, with the crossbow prepared to shoot.

I collapsed from exhaustion, and nothing in that was fake.

When I recovered enough to give explanations the military already had recovered my sword from the place close to the smoking rests of that tree. What little was left of my original hand was still holding the weapon, they said. As if I should be proud of it.

The two women were long gone. Most signs of that night erased.

I did my best to pretend some confusion and deep ignorance in regard to the situation. I admitted being aware that the half-elf women had a big, hot, piece of ass. Didn’t expressed myself in so many words, but the message was clear enough.

Seemed the kind of detail a 9years old could, possible, retain in the memory after an incident like that.

Their conclusion in the end was that the cultists allowed my escape on purpose. For some reason. Probably assuming the forest would finish me, and because my **** or survival would not affect their plans in any way.

A battle-mage at some point referred to my father as “commander” what sounded strange to me, since my father was a simple hunter. He was never in the military, proper. Just worked as mercenary helping the city guard in our village. The man could be mistaken, he was the youngest among them.

Maybe military here in this country use “commander” as a colloquial expression to refer to anyone who has combat training and isn’t a criminal.

I decided that was the most logical explanation, and it satisfied me.