Simon

"And he just left?" I demanded.

"Yes, Lord Angove."

"Simon, for the love of God, my name is Simon," I sighed, leaned back in my chair, and threw up my hands, "So he didn't take the bait at all?"

"Yes, er, no my- Simon," the flighty little fey stammered, "The rings you gave us warmed just as you said they would. But Lord Wallace made no attempt to delay us. He even refused my offer to give him a tour of the vehicle."

"But the rings went off?"

"Yes."

"And he still left?"

"Yes-" she hesitated, "Simon."

The dishes rattled when I planted my elbow on the table, and I rested my head against my fist.

"I don't understand. Did we fail you?"

"It's fine," I muttered, "It's fine."

I heard the creak of upholstery behind me as Minki rose from her chair. I turned slightly and watched her walk slowly to the edge of the table. She found it with an outstretched hand and felt along until she bumped into my chair.

Minki laid a hand on my shoulder and turned in a vague direction of the women I'd sent to deliver Wallace's payment, "Girls, I'm sure you're tired. Thank you for the update."

The two took the hint and left, their footfalls echoing as they walked to the doors at the end of the banquet hall. Minki and I were left alone in the vast space, and I stared down the length of the enormous hardwood table, looking into the middle distance.

I heard Minki inhale, and then she patted my cheek, "Your food's getting cold."

I looked down at the dishes laid out before me. There was a whiskey glass with two fingers of forty-year scotch, salvaged by one of my teams. On the plate were garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus, and a six-ounce fillet mignon. The steak alone would have been fifty bucks back on Earth, something I could never have afforded as a struggling medical student, and I could only imagine what a couple of ounces of forty-year scotch would have cost. And waiting to the side on a small saucer was a slice of cheesecake.

I'd already taken a few bites of the steak, but I'd hardly tasted it. And that was before I got the news about Wallace.

"What is it, Simon?" Minki prodded, "Please, you've hardly said two words to me in days. Why does it matter so much that Wally's gone?"

I straightened in my chair and raised a hand to her face to brush aside a stray lock of hair. Though she was a sprite, her hair was darker than the usual translucent white and was instead a lightish grey. She was very slight of build, with round features and a button nose. She'd once had light grey eyes that matched the colour of her hair, but while I'd been able to fix just about everything else, I could do nothing for her eyes. The black of the pupil and grey of her iris were clouded over with white.

"I'm sorry, Mini," I sighed, pulling her close, "I've been feeling pretty terrible over these past few weeks. It's nothing against you in particular. I haven't wanted to speak with anyone recently. When Wallace showed up, I thought it might finally get better, but he was hardly here a day before taking right off again."

Minki found my face with her hands, her touch gentle as she felt my features, "Why do you need the big brute? And why didn't you escort the girls to make sure he didn't use his magic to ferret out what you've been doing?"

How could I tell her the truth?

I'd made such a fucking mess of everything, and for a moment, it seemed that Wallace might be the guy to take it all off my hands.

The air inside the tavern was so thick with pheromones that I thought I could see them hanging in the air. Though there were a few elves and a goblin couple, most patrons were fey, accompanied by their sprites. Yet more sprites carried trays, cleaned tables, and manned the bar.

The sprite girl was almost giddy with excitement as she led me to a table, and it made me thankful for the pheromone blockers I'd worked out the day prior. But without the heady scent of fey to medicate me, the display made me feel nauseous.

These were people, goddammit, but they were too doped up to realize they were being treated like animals.

There, in the corner, were a trio of fey surrounded by several sprites. Their attire marked them as nobles, and I guessed that the two fey women were wives of the man. The fey went in for that sort of thing from what I'd heard, but it could go either way, with the dominant member of the relationship taking several partners.

The fey male was neglecting his wives, enthralled instead with the pair of busty sprites he had clinging to his sides. Neither woman seemed very impressed with the state of affairs, but neither did they seem ready to do anything about it.

I slipped a hand into my pocket and rolled the stem of the flower through my fingers thoughtfully. I couldn't produce pheromones, not that they'd affect fey in the first place, but I could do one better. The fey might have some vague ancestral knowledge about how their emissions worked, but I probably knew more about the body than anyone else on this entire planet. What clumsy control they could exercise with pheromones, I could do a hundred times more with a little mana.

I pulled the petals off the flower and held one between thumb and forefinger, letting it disintegrate as I drew the Control mana within.

I resolved to keep the spell simple. While the fey women were looking at their husband, I stimulated feelings of disgust. I didn't press too hard, but it amplified the resentment they already felt, so I didn't need to. When their gaze was focused elsewhere, I quickly returned to baseline, except when their eyes fell upon me. Then I would tickle feelings of arousal and force the release of oxytocin and dopamine.

I didn't see results right away, not that I was expecting to, but I had plenty of time. Lili had told me to meet her here, but she was not one for timely arrivals. She'd teach me when she pleased, which often left me to entertain myself for hours at a time.

I ordered a meal. Enjoyed it even, despite the surroundings. Neither fey women had risen from their table, but both were stealing frequent glances at me. If they were going to play with the sprites' emotions, then I reasoned that turnabout was fair play. I already had a way to block pheromone receptors. If I could turn the fey's own tricks against them, then maybe I could do something about this whole slavery business.

I kept up the game, punishing them for looking at their husband and rewarding them when their focus strayed to me.

It was nearly midnight when one finally rose. The husband hardly noticed, too enamoured with the sprites, when she came over to sit next to me. I was maybe a little clumsy, amping up the reward as she approached, but how was she to know what I was doing? I gave her another hit when she sat down and again when I 'accidentally' brushed her thigh.

Her... sister-wife? Made jealous by the attention I showed her companion and spurred on by my continued interference with her body chemistry followed not long afterwards, taking the seat on my other side.

When Lili finally deigned to grace me with her presence, she found me feeding the two fey noblewomen strawberries.

Lili stood across the table from me, eyebrow raised, an amused expression on her face, "I was planning some early morning lessons, but perhaps mid-day will be more appropriate."

I went suddenly still. With trepidation, I turned to look at the woman on my right. If she'd noticed the sudden change in my demeanour, she didn't seem to care. Instead, her eyes betrayed naked desire, and her breathing was best described as 'panting'.

"Simon, tell your friend to go away," she pouted.

"Oh, let her stay," said the voice in my other ear, "Our husband paid for a separate room for the two of us. Why don't we give him the tour?"

Understanding crystallized at that moment. Until then, it had been a game. Best of all, a game I was winning. The husband's ignorance hadn't gone on forever, and the prick had been staring daggers at me for the past several hours. But he was a slave-owning motherfucker, and it felt good to take something from him. But my self-righteous fury melted away when I realized what I'd come within a breath of doing.

"Ladies," I had no idea of their names. They might have told me, but I honestly didn't care to remember, "Excuse me, but I mustn't keep my teacher waiting."

"Simon," they pouted in unison.

"I'll be around," I promised, as I struggled to escape their clutches as gracefully as possible, "Now behave yourselves and stop pawing at me."

Another hit as they began to comply eased my escape. Lili beckoned me a finger, and I followed her upstairs.

And it had all been downhill from there, not that I'd know it until years later. A couple days later, I'd find out that I would never use anything other than Body magic, and my efforts to rid Pelignos of slavery would quickly spiral out of control.

Looking back, meeting Minki had been the high point. I'd been safe, stable, and secure. Admittedly I'd started to convert some fey by that point, but I kept my hands off them, and it was a necessary step.

The decline really started after Minki was killed, and I had to bring her back. I fixed everything aside from her eyes, but it was never the same after that. I decided that I'd never let such a thing happen again, and I tightened my grip. When once I would have sighed and found an alternative when a gnome, elf, or goblin refused to aid me, I began to use on them those techniques I'd once reserved only for fey. I told myself it was worth it. Yes, what I was doing was wrong. I accepted that, or thought I did. But it was all in service of a higher goal. After all, what could be nobler than freeing an entire species?

Besides, it wasn't as if I was forcing them to do anything. Once the enchantments were on long enough to fade, I wasn't even unduly influencing them any more. It was just how their minds worked.

No, I could fool everyone else, but not myself. In time, even those allies that had come to my side willingly had received a few tweaks here and there. All except for Minki.

Just looking at her made me feel guilty, and looking into her eyes only reminded me of the failure that had killed her and the failure to put it right afterwards. She knew of my dalliances with some of the city's noblewomen, of course, but was never resentful. Never raged or threw things. Instead, it was, "Oh, aren't you supposed to see so-and-so tonight?"

Helpful. She was blind and yet always eager to help however she could. Part of the reason for my illicit rendezvous was political, so she helped where she could. Coordinating, arranging my schedule to be open, and reminding me when I forgot. It made me feel all the more guilty when I'd return to our chambers, fresh from bed with a gorgeous noblewoman or two, only to be greeted by a cheerful Minki, happy to see me and asking if it went well.

Sometimes I just wanted to walk to the edge of the city and wait for the tide to sweep over me. Either the mists would take me somewhere I could start fresh, or none of this would be my problem anymore.

But I couldn't leave Minki, and as much as I hated it, I couldn't leave the city. God only knows what would happen to my people if I left, and as much as I hated it, they were 'my people'. I also had an obligation to the sprites in the city. I'd crossed some serious fucking lines since first learning magic, but even Wallace couldn't deny I'd made progress. Pelignos was better off now than when I'd found it, and I couldn't, in good conscience, leave it to backslide into tyranny.

So when Wallace had asked for a vehicle to replace the one he'd lost, I chose the one I thought most likely to get a rise out of him. I looked through all the women I had at my disposal and found the one who looked the most like some horny teenage boy had rearranged her features with magic.

And the son of a bitch had left. I know the bastard had picked up on my enchantments, and still, he left. He fucked right off and took Valentine with him, escaping even a scrap of responsibility.

More than anything, I was jealous. I wanted what he had. A few close friends, someone who cared about him, a base to work on, and some clever magical puzzles. It was everything I'd wanted when I arrived here from another world, and he had it.

It came to me in dreams, idle thoughts, and impossible daydreams. The hope that one day, I could take Minki and leave. Leave Pelignos, leave Caniforma, leave Parabueto, leave it all. We'd find somewhere new, where no one knew who we were, and where we could discover the magic to fix Minki's eyes.

And if it had been an impossible dream, it might have been safe. But it wasn't impossible. When Wallace had mentioned the radio, telling me how much better his little magic book was, I wanted to slap him. Not for being such a smug prick, but for reminding me of the radio in the first place.

The beacon atop Dungeon Disney World hadn't been the only radio signal I'd picked up. Far from it. There was more out there. Not close, but it was out there. And if I was going to go looking before I was old and grey, then someone else would need to finish my work in Pelignos.

Wallace had been ready to kill me that first time we'd met. I'd seen it in his eyes, saw it chiselled into his face. No waffling, no due process, if I'd done what the rumours had said, he was completely okay with killing me right then and there.

Wallace was obviously fucking crazy.

No normal person thinks like that. No sane person would find the decision so simple. But not for Wallace, and I could trust that. I knew my heart was black. There were certain lines I'd never crossed, but that was little consolation. But Wallace? Him I could count on to do what was necessary. He was the man to see this through.

But he seemed content to play house with Valentine and their friends. That would have to change. If I was ever going to run away with Minki, I needed Wallace in Pelignos.

But he's not in Pelignos, is he?

He was on his way to Caniforma, in a vehicle I'd given him. Valentine was safe, none the worse for wear, despite the attempted kidnapping. I'd been jealous of her flight suit, wanting one for Minki, but she'd not even been wearing it. Nearly naked, she'd somehow stabbed a man right through the heart, paying no heed to the man's breastplate.

To me, there was no comparison between Minki and Valentine. Given a choice, I would choose Minki every time. And yet, I couldn't help but wish Minki had Valentine's strength, confidence, and independence. Minki, I could hardly bear to let out of my sight, and the very idea of her facing what Val had been subjected to filled me with dread. Damn, but I was a fool. Even if I did run away with Minki, was I also going to bring the half dozen servants who tended to her?

"Simon, Simon," Minki fretted, "What's the matter?"

I felt Minki's fingers on my cheeks, wiping away the tears. I let out a ragged breath, unable to speak, and bowed my head.

Minki hugged me tight, holding my head to her chest, "It's going to be okay," she soothed, "Please, tell me what's wrong? I promise I can help."