The next morning, I awoke with her sitting on my lap her hands on my chest and a voice in my head, 'Master I know what I want to wish for'
'What's that?' I asked while reaching down to take one of the hands up to my mouth and kiss it. She craned her neck down and kissed the tip of my nose teasingly.
'I want one of those… I can see your arousal through the call.' "way to kill the mood… not you, my pet lich is calling me." She got off with a sigh and went to go make breakfast. "What do you want? I was about to be in the middle of someone."
'I… what?'
"I just wanted to let you know you're interrupting me."
'That is not my problem dude this telepathic link was your idea.'
"Just tell me what you want, and I'll see to it."
'I want one of those teleportation amulets you have.'
"I'll give it to you as soon as you have proper clothes to wear outside."
'Really?'
"Yeah, the spell for it's in my space-time grimoire, I just need to get enough components to make it, but that should be easy enough."
'So, you'd really let me leave the dungeon whenever I want? Just like that?'
"I did say I'd grant you a wish within my power and though I hate to admit it that is something I can grant."
'I didn't figure you to be the honest type.'
"I'm honest about my desire to live. And in so far as you help me stay alive, I will ensure your eternity with me isn't one you'll regret. Regret comes with disobedience. As long as I'm pleased with you, I don't care what you do."
'Thank you.'
"Hey, do you mind if I use a space-time spell to make you less repulsive so it's not painful to look at you when I have to see you naked?"
'And there you are. I almost didn't recognize you.'
"That doesn't answer my question."
'Do whatever you want I honestly don't care.'
"Wonderful."
I immediately cast the spell. Her body though in a dungeon in a separate dimension began to glow with a faint dark light and her body began to change. Her skin which was riddled with acne cleared up. Her knotted tangled and disgusting mess of a head of hair was straightened, lengthened, and removed from everywhere except her scalp and eyebrows/lashes. Her face was changed to look more like a receptionist as she had the tired expression for it already it just seemed fitting. Her gangly anorexic looking figure was made to look healthier and any other tiny blemishes or imperfections were removed as her appearance was permanently altered by my hand.
I'd have made her a mirror to look into, but I didn't change the way she looked for her I was just tired of seeing it. It's just too bad this spell requires consent, or I would have cast it sooner. I got up from the bed and went down to eat breakfast wearing all the nothing I went to sleep in. we had our breakfast and after getting dressed we teleported back to her hometown.
We were both wearing incredibly rare dragon scale capes except she was wearing the dragon scale armour to match. Her muscles got a bit bigger, so she adjusted it to fit her better but other than that her form-fitting clothes fit her just as perfectly as before.
We stood now at the old village square. This old-timey architecture really brings back memories. We stood before the old fountain of the town founder on one knee trying in vain to court a mermaid that was actively ignoring his love letter of cheese. I've heard his friends erected this statue of him after he died to make fun of him, for they saw the event from a ways away and told him they'd never let him live it down. The fountain resembled a waterfall and fell down from the cliff on which the founder had decided to build city hall.
So, there's just this huge white stone building with a fountain coming off the back. The mermaid is sitting at the top while the frozen statue pleads frozen forever in time as his love looks off with her hair in the breeze. For some reason, I relate very strongly with that mermaid right now. Around the fountain was a park where the mayor occasionally comes out to address the town. And of course, behind the fountain was city hall but you have to climb a flight of stairs to get there.
Instead, we went the opposite direction back to her old house where her paranoid parents lived. She climbed the steps cheerfully and knocked on the door. We heard a bump and then scrambling after which a few seconds of silence came then the door was opened a hair's breadth and a weak fearful voice came trembling from inside.
"Who's there?"
"Your daughter and her suitor."
"[insert name] is that you?"
"In the flesh."
"Just a moment."
The door closed again, and the sounds of several mechanisms being undone resounded from the door. The door being opened just enough to be able to see outside while not being wide enough to let a blade through was by design. A locking mechanism they'd devised while I was still here to stop solicitors from forcing an entry because they always feared the worst in everybody. They only trusted my parents and me because I hear they used to be in a party of six with my parents back when they used to adventure.
My older siblings used to tell me stories about how they were raised on the road and taught to live off the land as they went. When my parents settled down here with my girlfriend's parents in this village it was known for being fairly peaceful. They wanted a place to retire early for their adventuring had made them fairly wealthy, but a census came, and my parents were found to have committed tax fraud and, though they hadn't, a great deal of their wealth was taken from them and they had to go back to work.
Thus, we had to move to a place where adventuring was a more profitable profession around the time, I was seven. These old memories came flooding back as I heard the familiar sounds of old rusted metal scarping against metal and her father cursing under his breath as the door got stuck again.
The door was eventually swung open quickly and he held it out for us. "Quickly now, quickly come inside." We entered the familiar doorframe. Not much has changed of this old house. "It's been years can I get you anything?"
"Since I'm here do you have any nostalgic local cuisine?"
"Ah, pig's feet pie then? We do have a slice of that lying around somewhere."
"I haven't been gone that long."
He laughed a bit, "sorry, sorry we've been trying to get rid of it for a while now, but no one wants it."
"I wonder why."
"Anyway, thank you for bringing our daughter back home to us."
"We've been so worried about her." His wife said. He'd led us into the dining room as we were talking his wife was still putting away unused ingredients from the morning meal. It wasn't long before my girlfriend spoke up
"I'm not staying I just missed you guys and we have a way to travel to meet each other very easily now."
The two looked a bit downtrodden but I reassured them. "Don't worry I taught her a ritual spell that makes her very hard to kill. I know four such spells but don't know if she's ready to learn the rest of them yet. The one I taught her was the easiest of the four."
"While it does reassure us, our daughter is under the magical protection of a fine young scholar such as yourself." Her father said lifting my chin, reminding me I forgot to re-hide my marks. "How can we be so sure she'll be safe when we have no way to see to it she's safe every day?"
"If you can get me these components listed, twenty times the amount listed, I can make you one similar pendant as this and you can meet us or my parents whenever it suits your fancy? Though I'd have to bring you there once or the spell in the pendant won't be able to take you there as it can only send you somewhere you've been before." I handed him the list and held my spell focus behind my back silently casting the spell to conceal my marks.
"Teleportation pendants is it? I might have these components lying around somewhere but I don't want to leave the house to get them." He said as he watched my marks disappear. I pulled the spell focus up from behind myself and handed it to him. "You know the spell?"
"Completely and perfectly… hm…" he looked at my spell focus. "I've never seen a spell focus that amplifies four domains of magic… let alone necromancy."
"I made it myself."
"Remarkable! Have you ever considered becoming an artificer?"
"Once or twice… I promised this pendant to someone for a favour they did to me, I assume you already have one, but I still need another one."
"Right sorry." He took the spell focus from my hand and made two teleportation amulets. These looked more like Space-Time magic themes items than my necrotic chronometer looking pendant. It looked nice it was almost like the spear I made in the dungeon, but it still had mass and didn't go liquid at will. He handed me both and said, "I know you meant to give me one, but I already have it now you have one to give to your parents so they can come to visit us on occasions."
"On their behalf, thank you."
"By the way… how long do you intend to stay?"
"Oh, just until the effects of the spell we recently cast wear off"
"Which spell was that?"
"The one that lets you spend a year in a day."
He looked at me as though looking at an insane person, he felt my arm the muscles hidden beneath layers of fabric. "You two didn't use that spell to exercise, did you?"
"We did."
"What were you thinking?! People have become permanently disabled for trying to do that before!"
"We have recovery spells that don't interfere with the production of muscles."
"People are in such pain after that happens, they stop thinking entirely."
"They are passive spells."
"Of all the stupidest childish reckless things you could tell me. Why that?"
"Mom and dad also want to spend a year in a day and I said yes."
"Of course, those thrill-seeking fools would hear the words 'pain worse than death' and run headfirst into it. They may have been the reason we made as much money as we did but there's a limit to recklessness."
"Not all of us can build a house the tax collectors can't get into though."
"Not all of us think protecting ourselves is the smartest thing to do either." He let out a long sigh and I could tell he was remembering the past too but he had a more sombre look on his face like the thousand-yard stare of a man who'd seen one too many battlefields.