I hate this companionship thing. First time out of the house and we managed to screw everything up. Ri prepared the bath for us and we are now cleaning ourselves without saying a word. Leon is impatiently waiting for the other man to leave us alone, but it seems he is not planning to do so at the moment. He is instead looking at us with an unclear expression.
"Buy me", the man says out of nowhere. "If you like me, buy me."
Looking at him confused, I am failing to understand where that came from.
"You don't know me, but I know you. Everyone around these parts knows the mysterious woman dominating the Underworld. Buy my freedom. You sure have the money. Did I not satisfy you?"
"I don't want you", I calmly answer while putting my shirt on. "Although, there are some things you could do to change my mind."
"Such as?"
"Tell me, is there any floor under this one?" Leon stares at me angrily, thinking I just ruined our plan. I don't mind his reaction since I enjoy seeing him angry. I'm tired of the scared puppy face anyway.
Ri looks at me and thinks for a second before answering. "I've never heard about the existence of any other floor inside this building and I've lived here for nine years. If there is a door that could lead to such a mysterious place, it should be inside the room of the beast. Nobody would ever go there willingly, I guess that anything they would want hidden, they would keep in there."
"The room of the beast?", Leon says addressing Ri for the first time.
"Yes, that's how it is called. Once in a while, the owner buys a group of new workers and then feeds one of them to the beast in order to scare the others off from running away. Everyone around here knows that I am not lying. The problem is that no new people have arrived in years and as the oldest person here, I might end up as food for that thing", Ri says keeping the same passive face.
"You're lying", Leon says. "Why would you tell us this nonsense?"
He is not lying.
"Look, before you are out of this place, I will be given a truth potion, they will know all about this conversation and I'll be dead. And you will be too. This is the Red Light District, people die around here all the time. Nobody will come searching for you. So are you buying me out or not?"
"I'm sorry, but do you have a plan or not? You're confusing us", I tell him while Leon is judging me harshly with those eyes of him.
"Well, you did buy a whole night with me, so I guess we will go with the flow and see what happens. A night should be enough for a smart person such as yourself", Ri answers giving me a short smile and a wink. Urgh.
Yeah, there is no plan and I am surely not taking him with us. I send Ri back to the room, with the promise I would go back for him. He does what I say without protesting, but his will to cooperate does surprise me a bit. Leon and I manage to sneak past everyone and arrive at a dead end. I open the door and... there is no beast here.
I turn to speak to the immortal, but his worried look catches me off guard. I realize my hallucination magic wore off and I tell myself I was lucky it did not happen earlier. I didn't even talk that much.
I turn around the tiny room, searching for clues. A small breeze can be felt and I manage to find the source of it, behind the only bookshelf I saw here. There is no quick way to move it without all the books falling on the ground, so I don't even bother doing it nicely.
"Leon", I say while turning at him. "I am going to say this now and we need to act on it when the time comes. If we truly find that person, you will take Ri out and I will set this whole place on fire, hiding any trace we might leave behind", I say as a warning.
"Are you insane? You are as insane as that man. What beast? There is no beast. Why are you trusting him?", he cries to me annoyingly.
"I told you I am a fairy, did I not? I used my magic on him! I know if people lie or not!", I desperately answer back. We had some moments together in bed and now this idiot thinks he can boss me around.
After securing the door we entered with magic devices, we can be sure nobody will be able to hear anything or to enter for the next two hours. Behind the bookshelf laying now on the floor, a massive iron door reveals itself. If I had any doubts, now I am sure there is something interesting hidden here.
How do I open this though? First, I try to unlock it using a hairpin, but my trick turns up to be useless in this situation. Second, I try to search for the key around here, but I obviously cannot find it. That would be too easy. Third, I try to hit it repeatedly. All three attempts fail, of course, and I have one option left, sacrificing my precious baby. I take a small round ball from the deepest pocket of my enchanted bag. Leon seems to feel that the instrument is bad news because he steps back without me telling him to do so.
I stick the ball on the iron door and tell Leon to hurry up and hide behind something. He curls up behind the couch, while I stay as still as a statue, planning to take the full force of the explosion, in order to make sure the destructive magic does not reach my new friend. He may be an immortal, but he never mentioned anything about regeneration. I'm not planning to carry around a limbless body or, even worse, a bodyless head. No, that would be too much.
Save yourself, Leon. I shall be fine.
As the noise and the smoke temporarily deafen and blind me at the same time, I feel my skin burning and my internal organs bleeding. I am pretty sure I did succeed to shield Leon, protecting him from the catastrophic power of magical sphere. After all, I invented this object. If I don't know how to use it, then who will? I never sold it to anyone though. It is mine and only mine.
I am now growling in pain, waiting for my body to be restored to its previous form, slowly gaining my senses back. Next to me, a handsome idiot is crying and trembling, as the smoke fades away and the walls turn black from the dust. Seeing how sad and slightly disgusted he looks at me, I realize that my face must look terribly disfigured. I don't care too much. It's going to be back to its previous shape soon enough.
As I regain most of my strength, I look to my left and point towards my bag that flew on the other side of the room. Leon brings it to me, while wiping his tears with his sleeves, looking a bit like a child. Thankfully, I always carry an extra dress on me and the bag can never be destroyed due to the strong amount of magic I hold inside it. Who knows when I will explode next? Can't risk walking around naked. The hallucination cloak is burning in some corner of the room, but there is no time to think about that right now. What is lost is lost.
I jump on my feet, take the dress on and hop inside the tunnel that was just revealed. Unfortunately, it goes straight in front of us and not underground. I assume the beast would be soon revealed and I am not wrong.
A chained dog with six, no, seven heads is staring at us. It is drooling all over the floor and I am guessing the animal is starving. Leon stumbles and falls on his face somewhere close to me. I assume that he is deeply scared and I make a stupid joke about feeding him to the animal, but I soon regret it. Stupid sense of humor I have. Well, I am not scared. While this beast might feast on any human that finds themselves defenseless in front of it, I am not human and Leon is not defenseless. My blood is still protecting him, the smell not faded away yet.
"We are safe", I inform the man on the floor calmly. "Animals do not attack me, did you forget?"
"Even this thing?"
"Even this thing. Can't you see he's not even barking at us? If it weren't for those chains, it'd run as fast as it could. Let's go, there is another door behind him", I inform him carefully sniffing the air. I touch the black wooden door, there is no magic lingering around it. I carefully open it and step in first, making sure it is safe. A strong rotten smell hits me and, not able to control myself, I throw up.
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
We go even deeper inside until we reach some stairs and rejoice thinking we are close to our goal. Leon grabs my hand and I am surprised to feel his fingers intertwining with mine. He doesn't even look at me while doing it, but there is no time to ask about his reasons. As the stairs come to an end, we step into a room covered in mirrors.
"I think they are cursed, Leon."
"I think so too", he says and I realize the man in the mirror is slightly different from the one next to me. Not only his true form can be seen, meaning hallucination magic is useless here, but he looks younger too. Images of his past, I think, reveal themselves as he stares in silence, looking even more shocked than I do. The castle, the expensive clothes, the boat on the lake, yeah, he is of noble blood.
I would like to see more, but the scenes in the mirror are replaced by images from my past. Blood. More blood. Death. More death. Slavery. Fighting. Cannibalism. I can see myself being fed by force with fairy flesh. I want to shatter the mirrors to pieces, but Leon pushes me from behind and we safely pass the room of terror. I am wondering if he did so to help me or because the images were too much to handle.
The rotten smell returns, stronger this time, as we enter what seems to be a lab. Jars with different body parts, coming from different animals and humanoids, lie on shelves and instruments I can't recognize the purpose of lay on tables. The room splits into two tunnels and I am thankful Leon is with me, since he knows which way is the right one. As we walk, the only source of light seems to be a green one shining in the distance.
"He is here, right in front", Leon tells me. Looking closely, I approach a huge tube filled with a green fluorescent liquid and knock on the glass instinctively. Behind it, two eyes are staring down at me and I understand now that the man we search for is kept in this gigantic test tube.