Trusting Strangers

My arms and legs were in serious pain, my eyes and chest felt like burning. I was extremely tired cold hardly remember anything about where I was.

Behind me, there was a confuse scene of fight, frozen in the air. In this painting a large dragon of many heads was fighting a number of warrior-mages in full plate armours made of ice. Nothing was moving in this scene. A head of this dragon was burning fire on three tiny humanoid figures, the flames stopped in the air. On the other side, a warrior had decapitated the dragon with her two hands sword, and the severed head was turned upside down, not falling.

I counted 18 humanoids ****, cut in half, burned, smashed under the claws of that beast. The dragon had lost two heads, seven remained. One was biting the neck from where one of the heads had been cut.

Cleric Eieyeie, the forest elf, had explained to me that Hydras are among the harder dragons to kill. They body bellow the necks is practically invincible. The scales absorb mana, healing the monster even faster and reducing the effect of any spell used around it to one quarter of its power. The Hydra is surrounded by an anti-magic aura that stops any spell used against it from distance, what means that to use any spell against it you must be used at close distance. Very close.

Hydras are extremely fast and powerful. To defeat them you must decapitate all heads, and cauterize the necks with fire to prevent the regeneration. The low, bestial, monsters can be defeated like that somewhat easily, but soon they learn that they can bite the cauterized part of the neck away in order to regain the regenerative potential of that head. Intelligent Hydras know that, of course, and they can also use spells in addition to their breath of fire.

With many heads to speak incantations and a practically endless pool of mana, refilled by the enemies around, the hydra can use many spells at once without worry about run out.

The figures fighting against the hydra had to be the ice elves. Those 9 still alive where mostly the ones far behind. Support enchanters, likely, mostly healers I assumed.

I was looking this scene from above, and realizing it was not a painting. I was hanging from my legs and arms, hold by chains. The frozen scene was in a room bellow. There was another room between me and that scene, with a large hole on the stone floor. Stone had been cut to make that round frame.

I was confuse, dizzy and nauseated, and I realized that Cleric Eieyeie was in that upper floor, wearing an armour like those the magic-warriors bellow had. His head was completely white.

“Welcome back to the world of living, demon” he said, kindly.

“My real name is Yark-Grar. I am the disciple of one of those heroes bellow. The one who just decapitated one head of the beast, she is my mentor. I was only 30 years that day! Hardly more than a child.

As you can see, this fight was lost. Our Divine Patron stopped time in this room, creating a magic bubble. Almost died from the effort, became so weak that our mantle of ice was lost. Temperature in the continent started rising after that day, and my people was **** to flee back to the north! However, time remains the same in that room.

All this time I have been looking for a way to rescue our 9 heroes who are still alive from that bubble. Most of the 24 heroes where males, and all of them are dead, the only women who was frontline fighter here is my mentor. I shall rescue them all, without disturb the spell. Now that I know how. And have finally obtained a infinite source of magic power to feed my fishing spell.

Those chains will keep you alive. While they drain mana from you, your magic potential is growing, and it will keep growing. Providing more and more energy, until I have enough to teleport our heroes from that bubble!

This will take decades, and when it is finished I will kill you, of course. Would be too irresponsible from my part to leave a Evil Demon free on the world with that immense amount of magical energy. Nothing personal, friend. I am sure you would do the same if our positions where reversed.

You told me you are supposed to meet your future mentor in the Central Square of Main Marked tomorrow. She will wait for you there at midday, every day, until you show up.

Don’t worry! I will send someone with a message, explaining that you could not wait for her. I will think about some reasonable justification, that sounds decent enough to not taint your good reputation. No reason to hurt people’s feelings. This beast woman and your father will understand why you failed in follow their plan.

Take my word for it, demon. Everything is going to be alright!“

I was not exactly relieved by that reassurance, not at all.

“Of course, I shall pay any debts you have left in the pension. And see that this person who would have accepted you as her disciple receives monetary compensation for her time. Coming here to Hydra Crossing.

Unfortunately, I cannot give her your personal belongings. I wish I could, so she would send them back to your family. Regretfully, this would compromise our cover story.

Better to leave them with the notion that you got a bright future for yourself. Marring the daughter of some rich merchant from a distant land. Moving to another continent. Don’t you agree that would be best than tell them that you are dead, victim of some sort of accident?

What you think, demon friend?”

That was really something to consider, but I was too weak to answer his question. The words would not leave my mouth.

Probably for the best, not one of those words was adequate for polite conversations between civilized people.

My cleric friend must have realized that he would not extract an answer from me. Because he walked away after that. Leaving me alone with the combatants down below.

I tried to escape those chains the same way I had dodged the wolves, but those chains sucked the mana from my body too fast for any spell to take form. I was not able to pass through them, like I ghost, like I had walked through trees and wolves that night.

The more I tried, faster the effect became. Was a pleasant sensation, to my surprise, instead of pain I felt it as if someone was sucking my cock. Except the blowjob was not in my sex, but in my arms and legs. Was a strange kind of orgasm, but I could see myself getting addicted to it by some point. Still, what a miserable life it would be!! I would grow mad before this body reached maturity, and I would die before accomplish anything of what I wanted to do.

I lost conscience some time latter. Felt like hours, but may just as well have been a couple minutes.

Last thing I remember is the sound of fight in my nightmares.

The fight gradually was bleeding from my head to the room where I was suspense by chains above that large hole on the ground.

Nothing was making sense. I though I saw elves fighting elves. Red tattoos glowing in the dark, mixing their light with the light blue light coming from the bubble of paused time bellow. Blood red hairs, explosions of dark energy, against the cold white magic of ice elves.

In a moment there was only five figures moving. Five red haired elven girls, with black lips and mantles.

Two were hurt, one was healing them with whispered incantations. The other two examined the metallic structure holding the chains that imprisoned me.

“Do you understand this?”

Asked the one who I assumed to be the leader.

“Yes! This is a sacrifice ring. This thing in the middle must be an Evil Demon.

I need time to safely dismantle the hermetic geometry in this room, before we can kill the energy source”

The “energy source” if I was understanding the conversation well was me. I wondered what they could mean by “kill” in this context.

“How long?”

“Hey, hello! How about you two just open those chains and let me go?”

My manifestation caught them by surprise.

“This thing speaks our language??”

“The machine is stealing a little of the mana from every living thing in this room. The universal translation is a common collateral effect in those circumstances. It is probably speaking the local human dialect”

“Well? That is all very interesting. Still, I would ratter continue this conversation on my feet, if no one objects…”

“Answer my question!”

“Nine days, possibly more. There is some nasty High Arcane architecture going on in those copper cables up there! Look the iron links, do you know what those runes are? Only time I saw that one…”

“We don’t even have nine minutes! The guards in this level are dead, but that damn cleric escaped. We don’t know how many of his men have replaced the local monks in the monastery above! I will not risk a large fight here. This hole operation is a mess already! No one told us anything about that.”

“We cannot change the facts. This is the situation, what you want me to do?”

“Cut his throat! We will see that he is really dead, then we leave this place”

“The ice elves can start all that again from where they started, with another Evil Demon. Besides, I am not sure if that solution is safe anyway”

“I from my part don’t think it is safe at all! We should came up with some alternative plan, if you ask me. How about…” the elves didn’t show interest in my insights. For some reason.

“Those things do not spread like flowers every spring. They are rare and hard to catch alive, fortunately. We buy time. Whatever the risks are, we don’t have the luxury to avoid them anymore”

Before I could say anything the mage specialist obeyed the command given by her superior. Jumping on the chains and running to plunge her knife in my neck.

The blade entered deep, me blood jumped from me, and this time there was nothing pleasant about the experience.

Whatever I was feeling was interrupted by a flash of light and an explosion.

“Who are you?? Are you responsible for that?”

My blood was stopped in the air, not falling. The blade was paralyzed in the air too, and a little more distant the elf lassie who had been holding it. Looked like as if she had just being pushed back by the impact of a explosion coming from bellow. From the point where my blood touched the bubble of frozen time, taking by the looks of it.

Everyone else seemed to be equally paused in time.

The feminine voice inside my head sounded more curious than angry.

“No, I cannot take credit for that, whatever that is. I am a prisoner here”

“We both are prisoners here, then. My sisters are silent, but I am the magic expert in our family. I can still think, feel the passage of time. What are you?”

“I am human”

“Lier!”

“All right, alright. They call people like me ‘Evil Demons’, I believe”

“That is believable. We are the only minds conscient her. I checked. Do you know what is happening?”

“There is a spell that stops the passage of time in a room bellow the place where I am. My blood touched the limit of that spell. An explosion seems to have happened. Now no one in this room can move. There are ice elves here, fighting against some sort of redhaired elves that use dark energy spells…”

“Blood elves”

“I am chained to some sort of hermetic device”

“Can you move?”

“Nope”

“But if you are a demon, you should be able to do spells without speak the incantations. Don’t you? Don’t you know any spell capable to free you from this situation?”

“This thing I am chained to. It sucks all magical energy from my body before I can use it to shape spells.

The ice-elf who build this mechanism wanted to use my energy to fish the ice elves from inside the bubble with teleportation spells”

“Damn ice titans and their time-freezing spells!! This is far beyond what any elf could achieve. But I am full of magic! Perhaps we can use this situation. Describe this device where you are imprisoned to me.”

“Am I right to assume you are one of the heads of that Hydra in the room bellow?”

“Correct”

“You have been in prison for dozens of thousands of years. Have you been conscient all this time? How you managed to stay sane??”

“I am talking with a voice in my head right now, am I not? Who can tell you I am sane or not, fake human demon? Until proven otherwise you are nothing more than a symptom of my insanity. I was used to talk to my sister all the time, is hard to endure their silence.”

“I am convinced that I am real. 99% sure.”

“That makes one of us. So, we can stay here waiting for something to change. Or you can indulge my request. Which one will be?”

I decided to cooperate with this laide.

Time didn’t seemed to pass. We kept debating the situation, and eventually she found a flaw in the device holding me that she believed we could explore.

“I need your mind to do that. Full connection. That way I can use spells without incantation from here. Would be pointless to send you my magical energy, those chains would consume it until they explode and kill us all. Probably. I am not risking it”

“What are you planning to do them?”

“I will use that fishing idea, to take us both from the range of the time manipulation“

“What happens to me after that? Most people in this world don’t seem to like the prospect of let an Evil Demon free on their world.”

“That’s something to consider. Good point! Your kind is really powerful and dangerous. Do you intend to destroy or conquer this world of mine?”

“Neither. I just want to have children and a family”

“Well, when I link my mind with yours I will know if you are lying and if you are lying to me I will leave you behind. If you are not, I will honour my part of this bargain. We have a deal. Besides, I am a High Hydra, we are not exactly weaklings. Even when compared to demons such as yourself.”

We moved forward with that plan, and the next thing I saw was the sky above us.

I was on the ground, on top of that huge dragon statue in the middle of Hydra Cross.

A woman dressed only in her long black hair was standing next to me.

She was gorgeous.

“Welcome back, husband.

When I accepted to marry you I didn’t knew you are still that young in this incarnation. The part of me who closed that deal would not mind consummate our union right now, so we can start working that child making project. However, most of me will not entertain conjunction with a human puppy. You must grow and get strong! Then I will be your wife.

Meanwhile, I gave you some of my blood, to help your recovery. And used some of that metal chains to make those bracelets and anklets you are wearing. They will allow your mana capacity to keep growing without you need to make spells. That way Demons Hunters will not recognize you for what you are, even if when they stand face to face with you. We don’t want you to be killed before I can honour my side in our bargain”

“Your part…?”

“You are two months late for that meeting with your future mentor, I’m afraid. Fortunately she didn’t believed the lies our enemy send in her direction.

Unfortunately, the ice elf cleric escaped. What means there is at least one person in this world who know you are a demon. Be careful about that!

Oh, and the owner of that pension sold everything you left in the room to pay for the days she kept the room waiting for you. Since you disappeared without a word. From her perspective that is fair enough. I leave to you decide if you agree or not. Either way, everything you have on this world at the present is the clothes you are wearing.

The sun is about to rise. I suggest you start climbing down this statue immediately after that happen, because otherwise you may not be able to be in the Central Square of Main Market in time. That is an awfully big statue of me, is it not? Too large on the hip as well. I am not that fat! Am I?”

She looked back to me, waiting for me to say something.

When I didn’t, the dragon laide in human form gave me a long, wet, kiss and smiled.

“Good luck to you, husband”

Then I was alone, on the top of that statue. Under the morning sky.