“You have got to be kidding me. A fucking princess come on why could I just have some homeless girl be bound to me for life. That would have been far less complicated than this mess.” He stayed as still as possible so as to not show his latest damsel in distress any sign of hostility. “I found her in the bandit’s base to the north last night. She was collared and inside what I assume to be the leaders tent.”

She circled around him to get a better look at Cassy. “Princess can you hear me? Are you alright?” She didn’t get a response. “Like I was saying earlier I don’t know when the last time she’s eaten or had anything to drink.” He holds up the rations he’d taken from the bandits only a few minutes ago.

“This isn’t hunger or thirst this is some kind of magical affliction. What have you done to her” She forces the blade against his throat forcing him to get up and back away from Cassy. “Look I don’t know what happened ok. We had just walked out of the tree line when she fell and has been like this since.” She quickly kneels next to Cassy not taking her eyes off him. “Princess. Princess Cassandra.” She shakes her shoulder trying to awaken her. Cassy groans and her eyes flutter open. “Mhmm Emma is that you?” She tries to sit up but Emma stops her. “Yes princess I’m here. I’m glad I caught you before this man could steal you away to gods know where.

Cassy notices Dominit is being held at sword point and her eyes open wide. “Wait Emma don’t hurt him please.” This caused Emma to lower her sword momentarily. “What do you mean my lady he obviously has nefarious plans for you being the princess of a kingdom.” Cassy slowly shakes her head “No Emma you don’t understand he saved me from “them”.” Emma gasps at the mention of “them”. “What happened they didn’t do anything to you did they?” Emma began to fuss over Cassy like a mother hen. “All they did was collar me with a master work grade collar. That’s why I’m having problems right now.”

At this point Emma drops her sword to the ground and begins to look at the collar attached to Cassy’s neck. “No that can’t be” She slowly spins it around. “My lady how is it you are so far away from them then if this is a masterwork piece?” Cassy blushes slightly and looks over at Dominit. “The only way I could.” Emma gasps and looks back to Dominit. “You don’t mean a blood oath?” Cassy simply nods. Emma shakily rises to her feet trying not to look at Dominit. He uses the opportunity to ask her what happened to her body.

Apparently after negating a powerful enslavement spell like the one that was in her collar by using a stronger magic like the blood oath the weaker magic has to dissipate and the only way to do it is to use the person’s body as a conduit. Dominit knowing nothing about magic other than that he could use it just had to accept her words.

She wasn’t in any danger for the time being she’d just be tired for a few days. Dominit breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Then a thought came across his mind. “Cassy er Princess Cassandra after you collapsed I left you safely hidden away to find you food and water as I was sure that’s what you needed. But I’m not sure how far away I was. Wouldn’t that make the blood oath cause you harm?”

Cassandra looked at him strangely after he began calling her Princess Cassandra “Well it all depends really. There are certain conditions that would cause the spell to activate its punishment. One would be if I tried to make an escape thus the fifty foot radius. The second is attempting to harm the owner directly or indirectly.

As I tried to injure you earlier today I was expecting the full backlash from the spell since I had even drawn blood. For some reason however it never came.” Dominit thought that might have had something to do with the fact that he knew he’d crossed the line and didn’t blame her for her reaction even if in his eyes it was a little extreme.

“The third condition is if you or I are in trouble the other party is able to travel any distance to get help. If however the slave decides part way through their journey to instead run away the very thought would cause the same pain as the first condition would. There are some myths of people so powerful when it comes to a slave’s oath that they can manipulate it in any way they see fit.

If they wanted to let their slave roam free for the rest of their days with no restrictions other than the blood oath already being bound to their master. And other stories of vile men and women who love to see slaves wail in agony making it to where for every breath they’d take it would cause them unimaginable pain. Thankfully none of those stories have ever been proven truthful.”

Dominit was relieved to hear in his somewhat mad dash to try and help the Princess he hadn’t inadvertently caused her any harm. Emma still stunned and spacing out seemed to catch snippets of their conversation. “Princess what’s this about a slave. Did you not perform an equal’s contract with this man to escape from those awful humans?” Cassy nods “I had but the morning after I’d found that the magic had mutated into a slave oath. I am now bound to this man as his slave.” “Crap this isn’t going to end well is it?” Emma glares at him but ends up sighing. “So he saved you as well Princess. Such a strange man to help others with no mention of a reward. Very strange in these times. I was sure he had planned to ransom you back to your family.”

He laughs at this causing the princess the glare at him as well. “And what’s so funny” He shrugs and starts walking towards her. “Oh you know just the fact that you’d think I would walk a princess of all people into her land and demand a ransom. I mean come on how dumb can people get.” Finishing his laugh he bends down to Pick Cassandra up. “What do you think you’re doing to the Princess now human?”

He looks back at her “Well if it wasn’t obvious enough to you I’m picking her up. Daylights wasting and I’m sure we have a long way to travel might as well start now.” Emma begrudgingly nods in agreement and slowly leads the way southward talking to Cassandra every once in a while to make sure the “human” wasn’t getting to grabby.

A few weeks passed as they travelled together through rough terrain and eventually crossing through ha large desert. Luckily being two natives the girls were able to easily point out Oasis roads. Which were path ways that were well maintained to keep every traveler with half a brain on a path that would eventually take them to a town village or city. It looked a lot like someone had come and melted the sand into a glass walkway to travel on.

It took them only three days to make it to the nearest town to resupply for their long trek to the capital city of Blazen called Fierane. The weeks after this were much easier in comparison to when Dominit had first woken up. They passed many other travelers on the oasis roads. Dominit took the time to get to know Cassy and Emma. After the third day of him finding out she was a princess she’d had a fit about the way he called her. Much preferring the comfortable nickname opposed to the long winded title that she always had to hear whenever she was near people who knew her.

So he stuck to it and found out a few things about them. Cassy was an only child of the King and Queen of Blazen. Being treated like a lady and nothing else had made her grow tired of palace life. Instead of follow in her parent’s footsteps she instead began to train as a warrior after the age of seven. Her parent’s seeing her enjoyment when it came to the discipline when it came to the sword decided to find her a friend and guard.

Thus she met Emma around a year later and they’d been practically inseparable since. Training, eating, sleeping, and bathing together for over twelve years. Two nights ago they had been guarding a caravan heading towards the city of Ilada the city that was founded at the corner of all four empires.

After the raid had begun Cassy had sent Emma on ahead to guard the rear and allow as many of the other travelers to get away. She and fifteen other individuals had sacrificed themselves for the good of the group. The five men were killed and the women were the ones Dominit had seen later that night in the pit being slaughtered as a form of entertainment. The conversation had stop for quite a while after that as none of them wanted to remember such things.

As they traveled the girls shared a tent while Dominit had chosen to instead sleep outside. The girls tried to talk him out of it but since they only had the one tent as much as he’d love to sleep next to two young women he really didn’t need to wake up to claws in the face for petting one of them in their sleep.

Every night he fell asleep he’d cross over into Nyx’s realm and would talk to her about a variety of things. He wanted to know everything a normal denizen of the world would know so he could pass himself off as one. That along with controlling his powers and trying to practice his fighting as all the things he’d done was by pure instinct.

Over time he had grown to understand his two abilities much greater. For the sense life one he could tell where anything living or not was within a forty foot radius around him whether it was through the sand or stone wall it didn’t matter. This gave him an outstanding advantage against anyone trying to ambush him. As for his other power it was his shadow melding ability.

When he’d asked Nyx about it she gave him some vague answer. Which might as well been a “Practice makes perfect so get busy”. After he spent the weeks traveling to sneak up on other people to see how close he began to grasp what to it was he was doing. He wasn’t drawing shadow to hide him. He was actually merging with it becoming one with it. When he talked to Nyx about it she gave him a knowing smile and began to explain how all shadow’s where made up of the same substance.

If a high class water mage was able to merge with the water in a pool they could travel anywhere in the water and reappear as a form of defense and travel. What Dominit made of it was “so if you merge with the shadows of a tree in that forest and wanted to travel anywhere else in the world you could.” Of course that would take a large amount of training as something that strong would surely kill you if you were unprepared for it.

Understanding what he could do with it Dominit began jumping from shadow to shadow as he traveled. His first attempt was only from five feet away and within eyesight not though a wall or a few miles away and still he passed out for a few hours exhausted. He’d have to learn to control how much mana he used to merge and un-merge his body as well as travel. If he used all of it for all three tasks then he was sure to never be able to master this magic.

Finally they’d reached Blazen and upon making it to the gate were immediately granted access to the city and escorted to the royal palace. It was here Dominit found himself lead by a maid to a large open air bath meant for the king and queen to share. As he was soaking his worries away he began to hear two familiar voices walking towards him. All he could think was “Please for the love of god not this cliché I don’t know if I’ll survive it.”