"Let's get out of here. Shall we?" he said and rummaged through his fanny pack at his hip, he pulled out a crystal, with me in his arms, he tapped it once.
We were instantly teleported outside, just where we had used the rope to climb down. I was so distracted that I had little time to watch the theatrics for the spell teleportation magic.
After I had calmed myself a little, Neso threw up a little fire for us to camp for the night.
"You're brave you know that little one, I get to live free, and yet another day thanks to you, I owe you my life," he explained with tender words.
"That chain Zomearon had you tied you too, that was inhumane,"
"Chain?" he said tilting his head.
"Oh - Uh - Never mind sorry, it was like it materialized out of thin air," I said trying to make it make sense.
"Oh! I see," he said.
Really?
"Spells can sometimes take visual form for another caster, but it depends on one cognition and if the original caster has not placed a filter over that truth,"
"Filter? Like the other caster can beautify the spell?"
"In a sense, if they're skilled enough they can make it seem like something that isn't to another cognition, that's usually if they want to hide something," he explained with great detail.
He continued
"I bet Zomearon never took the time to do that with our bond,"
"But you're free now? Right?"
"Thanks to you," I just shyly put on a smile.
There was a small quiet like there was something that we had to talk about, but it was hard to do so.
"Do you wanna know?" said Neso, curling up into a ball.
"That's okay - you don't have to tell me if you don't want to,"
"But I do - " he said
"Okay then tell me," I said reassuring him.
"It's not a very long story - when I was just a Grimalkin boy, soldiers under Zomearon's will showed up one day in our village. They claimed our village was now under the protection of the king, we had to pay taxes and bring 5% of our harvest to Zomearon; However our elders denied him the right, Grimalkin land has been in our family for thousands of generations, too us this was complete bull."
Neso continued.
"But Zomearon didn't like this, and he burned our village down, the next day he showed up with a thousand-man army, we were outnumbered, as an apology to him, he asked for land, and a child warrior, they threw a lottery between the young trainees, and I drew the short stick, I was sent off to his castle, were I was forced to make a contract under his chain, I knew he was using void magic even then, but a Horokin, that's taboo levels of blasphemy,"
That was quite a long story…
"So what's Zomearon's endgame?!"
"Zomearon is one of the timekeeper lords, if he wishes he can ascend into different states of consciousness; however it requires an intense amount of mana, and that's one of the reasons he's turned to the void,"
"So you're saying he can ascend to godhood?"
"It's more than that - Zomearon is not interested in communing with the gods, but breaking free of them."
When Neso says gods does he mean the mods?
"So Zomearon looks at the void for infinite mana?"
"Both sources have enough to go around, people just don't want to share," explained Neso.
"So they're the same?"
"Not quite, they're just different types of communion with mana,"
"And where does man come from? Sorry - am I asking too many questions?" He laughed with a hearty laugh.
"Not at all - and well - that's the tricky part, we don't quite know where it comes from, some say it's like an ocean out in space and that we just so happen to be inside one of the high currents, the bigger truth of the universe is explained by some scholars as the root of all, the one true explanation, the true path, there are many words for it, but essentially everyone wants to reach it, whichever way possible,
"But you should stick to just earth-mana for now, the void is far too dangerous," he explained.
I reassured him I wouldn't touch the void anytime soon, that experience had been enough to scare me to death.
We slowly delved into other random topics, forming our bond even more, with light conversation, our worries washed away until Neso was finally yawning.
He lay down, next to the fire, and I asked if I could cuddle up with him tonight.
He said it was all right and opened up his arms to be close, eventually, he treated me like a giant pillow, embracing me from all sides.
The night got cold - Neso's snores rose soundly and fell lightly, one after the other, with peacefulness to them.
The fire went out eventually. Neso clamped up and I could tell he was almost freezing.
I cast a boiling spell and the water rose in temperature inside of me. Warming him right up, not disturbing his sleep.
The bubbles pop-ing inside of me fell into white noise.
Morning came, and I stayed with Neso until he rose.
I couldn't even sleep a wink.