We got a huge influx of followers, so we are almost to 700! Thanks for being such a great group :)

Also, this is the 50th chapter! So, some of you guys wrote reviews a long time ago, like chapter 11 or so. I'd like to ask that you update your votes, so I can see if I got better or worse. Your opinions matter to me a lot.

Enjoy!

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Echo woke Steel up the following morning. He had opened the tent and was shaking Steel slowly, his calm face betraying none of his expectations. Steel groaned, but rolled onto his back and opened his eyes at Echo.

"Five more minutes Echo." He put the pillow over his head. He felt a weight straddling him, and the pillow was taken off his face. It was used to hit his face until he moved. Steel grabbed the pillow and sat up, eyeing the boy in his lap. "Okay, I'm up, what is it?"

Echo's stomach spoke for him, growling like a devil wolf eyeing its prey. Echo blushed, but his hard stare did not waver from Steel's face. "Okay, okay I'll go make some food." Steel said, letting the slave get off of him before leaving the tent. He found the fire already lit and Whisper glowing pink within it, letting its heat soothe her. Rolling his eyes, Steel removed some of the food supplies he had purchases from Mema and skewered them on some sticks. He positioned them over the fire, rotating them slowly so that each side got an even heat.

Whisper complained from within the fire, "Hey! You're getting grease all over my body! Is this how you treat a lady?"

"Fires are for cooking and staying warm." Steel responded, "What you're doing is none of my business, and neither is how I am affecting you. Besides, do elementals even have genders?"

Whisper rose out of the fire, red colored, "Of course we do; well, the contracted ones at least." She amended, "So you aren't going to apologize?"

Steel smiled slowly, "Of course I'm sorry you get dirty, but doesn't the fire burn off the dirt anyway?"

"You're right; I just wanted to tease you because I'm bored. I can't sleep out here anyway, and nothing interesting happened all night." Her words gave off the distinct impression of a sad face emoticon.

"Well, hopefully these skewers will wake up the young miss, and she'll feel good enough to talk some." Steel mused.

"Agreed. This is the first time, I believe, that she's gotten so worked up about something since her mother died."

Steel raised an eyebrow, "So you've been with her for that long?"

The orb shook back and forth, "Sorry, no telling from me. You'll have to ask her if you want to know more, I've already told you everything I'm allowed to. Contracts and all that you know."

Steel shrugged, finishing the conversation. His lack of knowledge prevented him from calling her out, though most likely she was telling at least a partial truth.

A rustle alerted him to Mary's tent. His head turned just in time to it close quickly. Smiling to himself, he positioned his body so he could barely see it out of the corner of his eye, but was not outright looking at it. After a few minutes, the opening opened again slowly, revealing a set of peeking eyes. Steel held on of the skewers out in front of him, sniffing it loudly.

"Echo, the food's almost ready! Hurry and choose your skewer, I only was successful 3 out 5 times, so two of these are poison." Due to the quest from Mema, Steel couldn't learn the cooking skill automatically, which meant even if he cooked perfectly, most of his attempts would result in failure, terrible deadly flavor indeed.

Echo ran over as fast as he could and began inspecting the skewers. The ironic thing was that Steel's attempts all looked and smelled the same, so it was a food version of Russian roulette. As Echo mused over the choices, Steel got up and intentionally walked away from the fire pit to stretch his body. When he turned back around, two skewers were missing from the fire. Echo had one, and Steel had a suspicion over the location of the second; especially with the loud munching noises coming from the tent.

Thinking cruelly, Steel picked up a skewer at random and started pretended to eat it. He waited a few seconds, than he pulled his best Con Artist impression by choking and gasping for air. He fell to the ground dramatically and began rolling around, his limbs lashing around.

"Cough, oh no, I ate a poison skewer! I can't reach the antidote and I'm dying!" To any normal person, that would have comedy gold and obvious. Of course, he wasn't with real people, and they were the panicky sort.

Echo ran over and threw his body on top of Steel's legs, trying to stop his rolling. The poor slave held on for dear life, his eyes scared and nervous. A few second later, a second body joined him in holding down Steel's arms. Mary, in her receptionist form, was sitting on his hands and prepping her fists.

Steel had a bad premonition, but it was too late to react.

"Hiya!" Mary punched Steel's stomach with more force than he thought possible, trying to make him retch up the food. Also, her presence was burning his arms, and now a little burn on his punched abdomen. Steel groaned, and stopped moving to make them let go. Mary, however, gave him two more punches for good measure to save his life.

'Okay, that was possibly my worst plan ever conceived.' He groaned to himself as he clutched his beaten torso and burning arms.

Echo had already discovered the non-eaten skewer, and now the two saviors were giving Steel pitiless eyes. "You idiot, now you're in real pain. It serves you right for lying to us." Mary scolded him.

Steel managed a smug smile, "Yeah? At least you’re out of the tent princess." He shot back.

Mary blushed, but gave a "Hmph" and folded her arms, retrieving her skewer before joining Echo beside the fire. Steel watched them eat until they were finished, thinking about the coming conversation. When they put down the empty skewers, he was sitting up and ready.

Whisper had said something to Mary, but her back was to him so he couldn't see her face. She turned around and took a seat in front of him, her head bowed.

"I'm sorry for lying to you." She bowed her head.

Steel grunted. It was a start. "That's great and all but apologize as the real you." He ordered.

She looked up defiantly, "Why should I?"

Steel sighed. He was going to have to teach her a few things. "Listen Mary, this whole ordeal has been about you lying about your true identity. Right now, you’re still hiding yourself from me and to a lesser extent yourself. Talk to me with your true personality in your real body, or this apology you give me will be worthless."

Mary pouted, but nodded and let the disguise fade away. She was back in her extremely attractive body, but her clothes hadn't changed. Steel's heart felt a slight jolt seeing Mary the receptionist's clothes on Mary the Archmage’s daughter. He shrugged it off; after all it was a worthless feeling.

Mary bowed again, "I'm sorry Steel for lying to you about who I really was." She looked up, her eyes pleading with him.

Steel nodded his approval, "It's a good start Mary, I'm proud of you for taking the first step." She gave him a little smile at his words, but cocked her head questioningly.

"The first step?"

Steel nodded, "Yes, because this problem is a lot deeper ingrained in you than you may realize. Think about it, you spent so much mana keeping up a facade for days in order to hide yourself from the one traveler you have a relationship with. Someone, mind you, that you have known for a little over a week with no prior knowledge and minimal interaction compared to others. Now, can you explain why?"

Mary's mouth opened and closed a few times before she could get any words out. With slumped shoulders, she said, "Well, mainly because you're the first person my age I could talk to and enjoy being with." She confessed, "Everyone I know in the tower is older than me and focused on their jobs. Whisper was my main playmate, and she spent so much time with me she actually developed a personality. Most elementals are little more than servants to be ordered around."

Whisper flew over and bounced, "Yup, I'm kind of unique in that regard; outside of elder and royal elementals anyway. Point is, I'm the one she has the closest relationship with, in or out of the tower. Well, until you came along anyway."

Mary nodded, "You interested me, and I felt like I could talk to you. Also, you left me with that infuriating impression after our first meeting, making me unable to forget you." She and whisper giggled a little at the memory, "So then I was waiting for you to get some payback, but you come in and say such nice things about me I forgot my anger and came to meet you. Then, I find out your an amazingly special person with a uniquely rare class and abilities, so I decide I have to make you my ally no matter what. That was when I decided you were to be my ticket out of the tower. However, you go off and I don't hear from you again. I was really worried about you, both for my escape and a little bit of feelings for you."

She grumbled a little, "And then you come back and we have that big fight. I felt really bad after that, and feelings start to change a little bit. I wanted to see you again, not to use you but to actually talk some more. You came in when I was disguised as the receptionist at the counter and give such a warm apology that I feel really sad about trying to use you. Ironically, you did end up being my ticket out of the tower, even without me doing anything. I felt really guilty at that point, so I used my mana to give whisper my form so I can enjoy being with you and slowly introduce my real face to you. We failed though because we didn't communicate well enough and you're really observant. Thus, leading to our current predicament here."

She sighed and hugged herself, "I'd understand if you were to take me back to the tower right now and never come to see me again. Just, please, don't leave me alone again."

Steel understood her now. She was just a lonely girl who was finally feeling companionship for the first time, and had no idea how to approach the concept of friends outside servant relationships. The receptionist and Whisper were both subordinates, so the friendship could never supersede her authority. That explained her arrogant stance when she got really happy; no one had ever told her it was the wrong thing to do. Steel was torn now between what to do.

On the one hand, a part of him wanted to get rid of her and never see her again. His pragmatic side was telling him to milk her for all she was worth before abandoning her to fate. However, the old him wanted to heal her, the same way he was trying to heal Nina now. Both were broken in their own ways, and their situations were similar enough to his that he wanted to help them through it.

"Okay then, here is what I'm going to do." He began, "I'm not going to take you back to the tower now. We have a job to do, and I promised you we would complete it." He watched her begin to perk up happily, "However!" He pointed his finger at her, "When we get back to Rostwood, we will separate."

Mary's eyes widened in tears, "No." She muttered sadly.

"Yes." Steel said, crossing his arms, "You are going back to the tower, and I will not visit you again. That being said, you are going to teach me the disguise spell first."

She looked up with confused tears, "I am going to use the spell to disguise myself, and I'll visit you as someone else. You will have no idea who I am, so you’re going to have to be friendly with everyone. You cannot have an arrogant crap or haughty attitudes, because if I see either one I'll leave and never come back."

He smiled encouragingly at her, "This way, you'll learn how to interact with other people outside the tower, meet some other travelers, and learn how to act your age. When I feel like you've learned enough, I'll reveal myself, and you can come with me if you want. In other words, when I leave Rostwood, you can join me in my adventures. Is that satisfactory enough for you?"

Holding her hands over her mouth, Mary nodded and let happy tears fall from her eyes. She scouted over and hugged Steel, Echo soon following from behind him and Whisper lying on his head. It was the perfect moment of peace.

Except for the burning, the ever present burning.

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Well, enough with all the mushy crap, time to get back to the action! Nice thing is that this type of chapter is shorter than the action ones, so expect larger chapters this week!

Thank you for reading.