On my 25th day in the city, and my 27th day in this world, I awaken with a smile on my face. I have grown accustomed to my strange dreamless sleep and now enjoy sleeping. There's something nice about going to bed and instantly waking up the next day, refreshed and ready to go.
The sun shines through the window past my bed, illuminating the room. The various furnishings and ornamentations in the room glitter as the sunlight bounces off of them. I study them, amused by the simple and clear proof of how drastically my life has changed, before I get up and will my regalia to change. The outfit goes from being the simple, thin clothes I wear to sleep to being a more fitting pair of sagely robes.
I quickly grab the magic backpack placed right beside my door and gather my animal friends, as well as the fairy, before making my way down to the office I've been using as my main workplace for the last few weeks. When I am seated behind my desk I throw myself into my work, doing so with a healthy level of enthusiasm.
As I grab and begin to look through various papers I muse on the strangeness of my newfound gusto for work. I suppose it's got something to do with my perks, coupled with the circumstances that led me to this place in the first place. In my old life I didn't love work, but at the same time I didn't hate it. Sadly my health prevented me from doing much work in the first place, so because of that I've only really had much work to throw myself into because of my latest adventure.
I begin to get into a rhythm and work for a few hours before I hear something subtle. One of my perks quietly activates, a strange and hitherto unused thing that has only provided me with the faintest background noise. The perk is named "Song of the Spheres" and it is a strange predictive thing that gives me subtle musical cues when something important is about to happen. The songs are quite things I mostly need to focus to detect, but right now I can hear it without focusing which serves as handy foreshadowing.
I have learned to mostly pick up its cues when something important is about to happen and even though I'm looking at my paperwork and not planning to do anything exciting I can hear faint musical notes picking up in volume alerting me to something coming. I focus on it so much that I stop working right before the event they herald abruptly happens.
Urgent knocking at my door pulls me from thinking about the sounds of the perk. I look up and am surprised to see someone dressed in a cleric's robes looking at me awaiting permission to enter. I momentarily study them and realize that I don't recognize them, though their particular robes reveal that they are linked to me. The man is a cleric at the "Healing Church" item I own; a holy place located in this very building that employs divine healers and offers prayers to a specific, peculiar entity of life and healing.
"Good morning sir… May I help you?" I ask, and the man nods.
"Headmaster Silvertongue, I'm sorry for interrupting your work but I believe we need your specialized skills." The man explains, causing me to give him a curious look.
"Yesterday a group of adventurers stormed a nearby den of conjurers who had been planning an attack on the city. They won, and the lion's share of the summoned beings were naturally banished but one did not disappear. It was a succubus who was one of the figures responsible for stopping the conjurers." The cleric tells me.
"The succubus submitted to our guards and asked to be given permission to stay in the city her summoners wanted to sack and pillage. She submitted to clerics and passed all of the tests we put in front of her to determine if she was harmless and if her intentions were noble and sincere. We were going to tell her that she was in all likelihood going to be allowed to stay before she collapsed. She's been unconscious for hours and we can't determine the cause." The man tells me, giving me a worried look.
As I consider his words I wrack my brain for what I know about succubi. Thanks to "Loremaster" and "Veterinarian" I have a healthy amount of knowledge of otherworldly beings but even I don't know much about demons… What I do know is helpful; demons are not known for benevolence, but it's also a known fact that in this reality demons have free will and are theoretically capable of genuine goodness.
I wonder whether or not I should help before I recall that the succubus passed multiple trials designed to gauge whether or not she was being sincere. I focus on that fact as I realize that there's really only one choice here; I need to help her. Both to keep up my reputation, to make past words of mine ring true, and because it's the right thing to do, I need to step up and help this woman.
I also know that demons need some sort of sustenance to stay in this world, sustenance that some theorize conjurers somehow provide when they bring them into the world so long as they do the conjurer's bidding. I quickly wonder if that's the cause of the succubus's collapse, and I get up while looking at the cleric.
"Okay, take me to where she's being held." I inform the man, who nods gratefully at me. We swiftly depart from the office, and in moments are in the elevator, accompanied by my animal friends and the fairy.
"So… What's the deal with the bear?" The cleric asks, causing me to let out a small chuckle.
"He's my friend. I saved him a few years ago and he's stuck by me ever since." I remark. The response is true, that's the technical backstory for how my bear friend came to be one of my compadres.
"The best I can do for keeping him away is telling him to stay somewhere. But sooner or later he joins me again." I add, and the bear lets out a happy grunt. The cleric, to his credit, smiles at my remarks and gives the bear a soft smile. The elevator dings and begins to open, letting us out onto the ground floor of the tower. We swiftly exit it, and make our way out of the building.
The cleric is an able guide and we quickly navigate the winding streets of the city. Guards note us and greet us as we slip by them, offering polite and sincere greetings and tell them we need to get going. They understand, sensing the urgency in our actions. We slip through the winding, busy streets of the city and quickly approach a small but still elegant looking tower. One I immediately recognize as the city's prison. I nod curtly as I realize that that tracks, even if it's unpleasant.
We quickly make our way to the courtyard leading into the prison and I get to see the cleric introduce me to some of the guards standing watch outside of the small entrance to the building. The figure is quick to tell the guards my name and when they hear it they nod and stand aside, letting us into the prison. We step into the prison and I am quickly introduced to a portly man with gray hair and a lopsided smile. "Mr. Nathaniel" the prison's warden. My muse frowns at the man and makes mean remarks about him, but he can't see or hear her, so I feign a smile and ask the man to tell me about the succubus.
"Ah, her. She said her name was 'Ilia' and she seemed… As benevolent as a member of her kind as I've ever seen before." The man tells me, thoughtfully. He begins to guide the cleric and I past the prison's intake area. The prison is surprisingly modern, with magically powered lights and a variety of other such modern conveniences but I suppose that's fitting enough seeing as my institute has a variety of magically powered modern conveniences.
We step into a long hallway and when I study it I feel a subtle pounding in my head and I wince. This gets clocked by my traveling companions who look at me curiously.
"Master Silvertongue… Have you got a headache?" The cleric asks, and I shake my head. The man sighs and then frowns at me.
"Hmm… Well if you did have a headache that'd be curious. We're in a spatially distorted place right now. Anyone who has the soul of an explorer, and is thus resistant to such places, would naturally react somewhat poorly to this place but I don't know what else would cause this place to be the cause of any spontaneous cranial pains." The cleric states, and internally I note that the man is perceptive. Even as unpersuasive as my lie was, to see through it when it is powered by acting and persuasion perks isn't the easiest thing to do.
What he said is interesting, because I do have the "Soul" of an explorer and have perks that give me immunity to personal scale spatial magic aimed at me. The warden doesn't seem to pay any mind to what the man has said, and I note that while the cleric is perceptive the warden is not. We proceed down the hallway and with every step I take the headache lessens in intensity, my resistance to the magic and my ability to recover from damage and pain building each other up.
We reach the end of the hallway and the warden turns to one of the two doors to either side of us. The door has a small window that is about head height for me and when I look through it I see a dingy, ill-lit room where a single woman is fast asleep on a cot.
The woman is almost hypnotically beautiful with long brown hair. She has a curvy, currently sweaty body, and I can faintly see the edges of a pink, softly glowing tattoo on her exposed stomach, one of the ones you might see in risque fantasy artwork of demonesses. She is wearing an unbuttoned shirt and has plain trousers on. Other than the glowing tattoo she has no obvious supernatural features, and in seconds the warden opens the door.
As soon as the door opens the music I can faintly hear changes. It has been extremely subtle, to the point that I have to actively close my eyes and listen for it to hear it, 99% of the time before today but now it has changed twice in one day. The tune I can hear is a romantic, intimate one, one that reminds me of R&B music back on Earth. There are no words but there is a beat I can feel reverberating throughout my mind, and as I look at Ilia's sleeping form it grows louder. It feels like music that people have in the background when they have sex.
I step past him and into the room with zero hesitation, causing the music to grow louder. He and the cleric both stop short, and give me a confused look before calling out to me. I can see the way their muscles twitch as they try to approach me thanks to "I can see forever!" even without looking at them but I do turn and give them a once over. Their knees are twitching and they clearly want to move, but they can't get any closer.
"Headmaster Silvertongue… I don't know what's happening. How can you move into the room but we can't?" The warden asks, and I give him a confused shrug.
"I'm not sure… Are you in pain?" I ask, looking at both men. They both pause and quickly check themselves before shaking their heads. I am silent for a moment before I add a second question. "Can you move back?" I ask, and they are both delighted to find that they can take a step backwards from the door. They flash me relieved looks and while I smile happily at them when I turn back to look at the succubus I note that the glowing from the tattoo has increased in brilliance. I am about to take a step forward when my fairy friend flies off of my shoulder where she's been perched this whole time and flies towards the sleeping beauty.
"That's… weird. She looks familiar." The fairy remarks, and I look at her curiously as I walk closer to the sleeping demon. I study the demon and use my abilities to give me valuable information about her.
I study her and I sense her depleting lifeforce. With every passing second she grows a tiny bit weaker, untethered and lacking some vital protection that allows her to stay in this reality. She still has enough strength to stay here without much difficulty but apparently not to stay here and be conscious at the same time. Her tattoo is glowing vividly, and now that I'm closer to her I can see that it's a strange thing in the shake of a womb but stylized to make it quite pretty.
I walk until I am beside the cot and when I am I set my backpack down and reach into it. In seconds I retrieve a large bag with a red symbol in the shape of a cross on it. I open the bag and sift through it until I pull out the equipment for an emergency blood draw. This surprises my companions, but not as much as when I skillfully insert the needle I have chosen for the blood draw into my own arm. I cringe as I feel a twinge and I quickly retrieve a tiny bit of blood from myself.
"Silvertongue, are you sure that's… wise?" The warden asks, his shock causing him to drop the formalities with me. I let out a laugh as I extract the needle from my arm and watch the very slight mark I just inflicted on myself heal up nearly instantaneously.
"I suspect it is. If I'm wrong… Well, then I'll try other measures, I suppose." I reply, without looking at the man. I quickly position the needle I have just used to draw blood over the succubus's mouth and I gently part her lips. I then drip a single drop of blood into the demon's mouth.
The blood lands on her tongue and begins to glow. It glows a strange purple color and then vanishes, and when it does I feel a strange heat in the back of my head. The succubus's mouth closes and her head trembles slightly before a breathy moan escapes her lips. The sound is arousing, and when her eyes flutter open she immediately locks them onto me. She is about to speak when my fairy friend moves between the two of us and the succubus's eyes widen in shock and recognition.
"Daisy!" She utters, her voice soft and gentle. I look at the two in confusion and I see the subtle shift in the fairy's body-language. I never gave her a name, so I don't know why the succubus seems to recognize her, but "Daisy" doesn't respond in confusion, she is instead stunned into silence.
"I… I don't have a name, but 'Daisy' feels right." The fairy, Daisy I suppose, replies in confusion. Ilia's eyes fill with sadness when she hears the fairy's response.
"Daisy? What is she saying?" Mutters the cleric, who manages to muster the willpower needed to step into the room. He walks until he's right beside me.
"Silvertongue, what is going on?" He asks, standing beside me and reaching into his back pocket to pull something out of it. I spot the vial and motion for him to stop.
"Stop. It's okay, no one is in danger." I reply, and the man hesitates but doesn't fully reveal the vial. Ilia looks past Daisy and spots the cleric. Her eyes soften in recognition, and the cleric recognizes the look in her eyes, relaxing a little bit as well. I step forward and reach out a hand towards the succubus.
"Hello Ilia. My name is George. George Silvertongue. I fed you some of my blood and it seems to have confirmed my suspicions regarding your conditions." I tell her, flashing the woman an awkward grin. Her eyes widen when she hears I fed her some of my blood. She begins to blush slightly and I instinctively realize that I have done something significant but I decide to power through as she buttons her shirt.
"I heard about your heroism and how you helped stop a group of conjurers who were going to destroy the city. You did something kind and I wanted to do something kind in turn. Please tell me, are you in pain?" I exclaim with a soft voice. She considers my question for a second before shaking her head and responding.
"No, Mr. Silvertongue. I'm not in pain. I helped kill the conjurer who had called me to this world and in so doing broke the covenant he tricked me into signing. That dissolved the connection I had to this world until… Well, until just now." She states, and I immediately pick up what she is telling me. I let out a soft sound almost like a laugh and I offer her a hand to help her up. She takes it and uses me to pull herself up out of the bed. The cleric beside me laughs and puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Well Mr. Silvertongue… I think your life might be about to get a lot less lonely." He tells me, and I let out a derisive sound. This causes the man to nearly cackle, and Ilia gently hugs me. I am shocked by this, but I don't mind and I quickly hug her back, pressing her body against mine. I admire her warmth and the softness of her body for a few moments.
I break the hug after a few moments but when I spot her smile I don't miss the way it differs from her earlier smile. Daisy returns to my shoulder and she keeps her eyes on the succubus. The warden is finally able to step into the room and approaches the group of us.
"Ah well… Good work, Silvertongue. I suppose for the time being it's probably best to let miss Ilia stay in your care. We got a good deal of testimony from her before she collapsed, and you have resources and contacts we don't. Do you object to watching over the succubus for the time being?" The warden asks, and I shake my head at the man.
"Excellent. In that case I think we can consider this wrapped up." He tells me brightly. And then he spends the next five minutes speedily escorting my motley party out of the prison. In no time at all my companions and I are traveling through the city to the tower we live in.
I appreciate the streets more while Ilia clings to my arm. She excitedly studies the city, her eyes vividly taking in every detail she spots.
She comments on them in a language that seems to confuse my companions but is understood perfectly by me thanks to "Polyglot" and "Speaking in Tongues". She is also weirdly modern, making comments that explicitly include things like "Airplanes" and "Televisions", which I have flatly not seen in this world even using "My" memories. Hell, I haven't even seen such devices in books or through "Loremaster"! This begins to raise my suspicions a touch.
When I look at her, her eyes are also more alert than they were before, but she also seems happier. It's hard for me to stay suspicious when she looks so happy…
Nonetheless, despite me having questions about Ilia I find myself enjoying the time it takes the lot of us to get home. The streets seem more vivid, louder, and altogether more filled with life as I explore them with my new friends at my side. We grab some food on the way home, which I pay for using money for the first time since I entered this world. My new friends express gratitude for my actions and after we eat we make our way to the tower. As we step inside of it I glance at Ilia and think of what to say. The cleric, a man named Antonio Mondragon, bids us adieu and heads to the chapel. Left alone with Daisy and Ilia I glance at the two of them and grow seriously for a second.
"Well Ilia I've been thinking of what to say for some time now. I suppose it's a good thing that the person you've 'contracted' with is me, as I'm the headmaster of this organization. This is the 'Silvertongue Institute for the Healing and Performing Arts'. With me as your contractor you are able to live here freely and have a stable home and access to assorted meals." I tell her, causing her to look at me admiringly.
"So you're the headmaster of an 'Institute for healing'... Are you a doctor? Do you have a PhD?" She asks, again using out of context terminology. I decide to try something, purposefully saying what I say next in human, Earth, English.
"Are you a jumper?" I flatly ask, causing her to laugh and respond in the same language.
"No, I'm a special sort of companion." She reveals before freezing and replaying what I said to her in her head. Her eyes widen in alarm as I relax a touch.
"Are you a jumper?" She asks, in the same language. I grin victoriously and nod at her.
"That… That explains it. If you're a jumper that explains why Daisy doesn't know her name. She's with you because she's an 'Item' isn't she?" The succubus asks. I ask her to pause this conversation and for us to head to my room. We do so in silence with Daisy flitting about around Ilia's head, obsessively studying her and looking at me protectively.
When the elevator door opens I step out of it and quickly guide my new friend to a living-room-like area where she quickly sits on a couch.
"So… I think we need to have a talk." I tell her, in English. She smiles and giggles as she nods at me.
"I agree. There's a lot we both need to tell each other since we're kind of stuck together. After all when I first arrived in this world I was told to look for you." She states, causing me to look at curiously.
"I have a suspicion that we were both dropped here at the same time, by the same being. But first I need to know do you have a method of checking your stats? Some fiat-backed method of looking into yourself and seeing your perks?" She asks, causing me to pause. I study her, and listen to the subtle sounds of my music perk. The music is different again, now it's gentler and softer.
I wrack my brain for the descriptions of perks I possess and pause when I spot one that is perfect for what she's saying. "Bootstrapping", an explorer perk that I can focus on to gain perfect awareness of my abilities. I shut my eyes and focus on it, which transforms the darkness behind my closed eyelids into a perfect replica of a pause menu with a full list of my perks and their descriptions. I nod at the succubus.
"Awesome. Memorize it," She tells me. "And then sit next to me. And keep your eyes shut." She says. I can hear the smile on her lips as I do what she says. I wait a second and then tell her I have my perks memorized. She moves forward and kisses me, her lips luxuriously soft and warm. Daisy immediately reacts to her actions, darting forward and beginning to rain tiny blows on the fairy.
I almost melt into her kiss, as I feel my whole body react to the action. The music in the back of my mind is a tangled mess of discordant notes, and grows more confusing when her tongue slips into my mouth. My body begins to heat up and I pull Ilia into my lap on instinct, which she responds to by gently purring, the sound making her body vibrate. Right as she renews her assault on the inside of my mouth new words emblazon themselves onto the bottom of my mental list of perks, giving me enough willpower to push Ilia away.
One of the new words is "Loyalty". The thing's description is not short, but it is comprehensive.
"Loyalty: Your summons are entirely yours. No power or magic can allow someone to usurp your control over your summons, effectively rendering them immune to any attempt by another to influence them. This includes banishing them. Similarly, your abilities are loyal to you alone and cannot be stolen, suppressed, or erased in any way, shape, or form unless you allow it.
As an added bonus, your summons are incapable of harming you with their actions, at least not directly. A blast of fire laid onto you from a summoned dragon would feel like a warm breeze and the lingering flames would be harmless, but the fire causing the building you're in to collapse would still harm you. You can extend this protection to your other summons as well."
I read the description and my eyes snap open as I flash her a strange, stunned look. Daisy flies to my side and glares at Ilia. It takes me a moment to find the words I need to speak and she looks at me flirtatiously the whole time.
"That's not a perk I have. It's… I'm not sure but is it from 'Generic Summoner'? How did you even share it with me?" I ask, absolutely stunned by what's just happened. She is quiet for a long time, but even as I wait I feel my awareness of my stats changing. More words appear in my mental list, with one of them being rather fascinating.
"A Familiar Friend" turns a "Summon" of mine into a "Familiar". "Summons" are beings from other worlds that I can call to my side through magic from "Generic Summoner"; another "Generic" class jump. Ilia is classified as a "Summon" but has automatically been buffed into becoming a "Familiar"; a special type of summon that can remain beside me indefinitely and that doesn't consume magic for me to keep active. Ilia finally decides to speak after a full minute of silence.
"So I have a jump slotted into my soul." Ilia begins, causing me to lean back in surprise.
"As you have figured out by now, or at least somewhat correctly identified, the jump in my soul is 'Generic Conjurer'. But I'm not a jumper. I'm a… unique type of companion. And I'm not the only one." She states, looking at Daisy.
"Daisy also has a jump inside of her. And before you ask, we have similar conditions to what you have; creative mode builds, though something must have happened with Daisy that didn't happen with either of us since she's an item and doesn't have her memories. I… I don't even know what jump she has tucked away inside of her." Ilia tells me, somewhat cryptically. She looks at the fairy sympathetically before looking back to me and smiling sadly.
"I didn't know there'd be a jumper here. In the world I came from jumpchains are an imagination game, a writing prompt that people play with on the internet. I was told that I'd be a companion and that I'd get a creative mode token. I wasn't told if I'd be dropped off near a jumper, and I got to select my starting location. I woke up right after we left the prison." She reveals, flashing me a shocked smile. This surprises me.
"So you've only been you for a few hours? I've been me for a month." I reply, and she nods at my question.
"It's weird! I WAS a succubus in my birth world, but we existed openly and were not extraplanar beings like we are here. Humans and magic existed side by side, and magical creatures were full citizens. One night I fell asleep after work and when I woke up I was in a weird white place. I met Daisy… and a few other people who I haven't seen yet, and we were given a chance to leave our worlds. I don't know who did what, or if we were all given the EXACT same offers, but I do know we were all offered 'Creative Mode Tokens'. Daisy was there and just by looking at her I can sense that she is like me, sort of. She's something else, not truly an item." She tells me, prompting me to laugh out loud.
"My world was a lot more boring than yours, but we evidently had some similarities. I heard you muttering about airplanes and televisions back when we were with Antonio. And on my last day in my old world I went under for a surgery, as I was… sickly before this," I tell the succubus, before gesturing to the air around us and then to myself. "When I 'Woke up' I was also in a white place. I was given an offer to go on something like a jumpchain and given the power of three jump documents. I accepted because the alternative did not seem great. I woke up on a road to a distant town. "I" had accepted a job. I went and completed it and came back here a few weeks ago. I've been here ever since." I tell her, before realizing something strange which I immediately pounce on.
"Wait a second. You said you woke up when we were outside of the prison. 'You' recognized Daisy and said her name before that." I exclaim, which causes both the fairy and the succubus to stop and look at each other. Daisy looks at Ilia really intensely and then gives up before turning to look at me sadly.
"I'm sorry. Both of you," She tells us, turning to look at Ilia. "I just don't know. I don't know who this person is, beyond what she's said to us now. I don't recognize her." Daisy tells us, and I can hear the frustration in her voice. I gently pat her head, using a single finger, a gesture she's responded to affirmatively in the past. Ilia also looks at me with an equally sad expression.
"I also don't know how 'I' recognized Daisy before I woke up. I remember everything, but sort of impartially? It's like I watched a movie of something rather than actual memories." She explains and I nod at that explanation. My memories are like that as well. I tell her that, and she smiles softly at me.
"In that case it looks like we're all in a similar boat. So… would you mind if I stuck around?" She asks, brightly. I look at her and remember the kiss. I am silent for a moment and then I nod.
"For now we can do that. You sticking around makes sense. You're a companion, I'm a jumper. Us working together feels right." I tell her, and this causes her to smile radiantly at me. She is delighted by this news and throws her arms around me excitedly. Daisy mutters more annoyed words even as I allow Ilia's soft body to press against my own. Ilia promises to share more with me in the days to come, and I wonder what she means before she asks about going to shower, and then pauses and wonders if I even have a shower. Her excitement builds further when I reveal we have a bathtub.
To Antonio's credit, his words about my life growing less lonely immediately prove true. Ilia slides right into my life and in days I have almost forgotten what it is like to not have her around. In weeks my earliest days here feel like a lifetime ago. And Ilia is delighted to keep her word, allowing the two of us to develop a mutually beneficial relationship wherein I make sure she has what she needs and protection, and she teaches me about the creative mode suite of perks that are now an indelible part of her soul.