Mei Ruan May 23rd,20XX

Milo held out a dagger to Cai, the same one that Heloise and Theodulus had specifically denied him possessing. To me, he held out the odd circular object. It was a dull bronze colour and looked stiff like a bludgeon. Still, though, it was something created by Milo, and therefore couldn’t be looked down on.

“Sir, as honoured as I am to receive a weapon from you, I can’t take this in exchange for Cai’s safety.”

The edges of his smile twitched as he resisted bursting into laughter.

“Nor do I expect you to, but I’m curious what you’ll say after seeing this.”

He channelled a bit of magic into the sphere and it began to stretch out, first it stretched into a dagger. Then into a spear, then into a staff. He then grabbed each end by its edges and bent it inwards into a curve where a string popped out of its end and connected with the other. It was already impressive but he wasn’t done.

The string retracted itself and the weapon kept growing until it became my most beloved weapon. A Glaive. I was enamoured already, but a closer look at it made my wings flap in excitement.

“The blade…”

A glaive’s blade was mainly used for cutting and slicing on one side, and the hook on the other was used for pulling the opponent in the direction you wanted them in.

While the end could be used as a bludgeoning tool and the middle could be used as a staff.

I mainly loved the weapon due to its versatility, and when I sized it to myself and not the grossly oversized version I had used to battle Jaya, I used it pretty gracefully.

Milo’s glaive though had a much thicker blade, and the usually rounded edge of the device had been slightly pointed to allow for a stabbing motion. I wasn’t too large of a fan of stabbing since it was hard to get bodies off one’s weapon in the middle of a battle but in combination with all of the other aspects of the glaive, it was a welcome adaptation.

“I see you noticed the difference. Do you like it? Heloise specifically requested it for you. Something about ‘how could my granddaughter-in-law walk around without a proper weapon?’ and such.”

Half-way through his sentence, he suddenly switched over to Heloise’s voice and sounded so much like her that I looked around to see if she had somehow appeared.

“Look Ms. Granddaughter in law. Neither Heloise nor Theodulus expected you could keep him here. I mean, if they were serious about keeping him here, or even about keeping him locked away. Then it wouldn’t be much of an issue to knock him unconscious for a few days right? Or to send him off to an elven circle to play… or well guess we can’t do that anymore.”

It was before my time but back when the elves still occupied a major territory, they would use their innate talents of creating pocket dimensions to serve as prisons or play spots. They had a lot of business with the goblins; who would use these pocket dimensions as training grounds and the fairy royals who would use them as resting places. These pocket dimensions were usually called Circles.

I shook myself out of my reverie for the weapon and turned back to Cai.

“Even so. His safety is a priority and his magic is still stabilizing. He can’t afford the risk of going into a battle like this. I don’t have the confidence to escort him through the battlefield and guarantee he won't have to use his magic, and even if I did I know he wouldn’t sit still and let me protect him as such. That being the case the safest thing he can do is to stay here and observe the battlefield.”

My voice clattered into my ears as I spoke and sounded like they were coming from a different person while my eyes stayed glued to the weapon in its glaive form.

I wanted it.

There wasn’t much more I wanted now than to grab the sphere out of Milo’s hands and fly down to the battlefield myself, but since I had a duty I had to restrain myself.

Not quite resentment, but a bitter feeling sprung up within me as I forced myself to turn away and looked back at the battlefield below. The way Heloise fought was too overbearing, even for a high noble such as myself. Even if I tried my absolute best the most I could create was a single one of those magical bombs she created at a time, and only about five of those a day if I pushed myself.

She was absolutely monstrous with her power and the fact that she maintained a graceful smile only made it more terrifying. After today the witches would need a new capital city and a new ruling government. I didn’t know how she was planning to end things but going by what I read in the history books she would probably end it by poisoning the land, similar to what I had done to finish off Jaya, but on a much larger scale. The area would probably have to be sealed off for the next few decades, or centuries depending on how vicious she decided to be.

Still, even if I went down there and began to fight there wouldn’t be anything I could do. I was best used to keep Cai from going down and putting himself in danger.

“Mei. What if I promised to stay inside a sphere? Like the type I used when I was dealing with Esmeralda? And I’ll take the bow, not the dagger. Would you let me go then?”

He tentatively proposed a plan that I would ordinarily have accepted, if not for the fact that his magic was still unstable. Which was the main issue here.

“Cai, you’re still very unstable, as you know. I know how effective those spheres can be but unless Milo here had a method to stabilize you then we’re right back where we started.”

Again, I knew why he needed to defeat Rubella.

The first time I had been kidnapped and tortured I had made sure to return every favour they had given to me. There was a feeling of toxic helplessness that crippled your actions and confidence and the best way to overcome it was to defeat the source of these feelings, and for Cai, that source was Rubella.

Although I had verbally denied his plan I hoped he would be abler to come up with a proper plan that would convince me. If Cai developed a trauma from this then his ability to use magic may suffer and in a worst-case scenario may even backfire and harm him.

“Well. If stabilization is the problem, then I may have a solution. I gave it to you on your birthday but I never got the chance to activate it since your parents were nigh impossible to track down after.”

He casually visited the day Cai had been born and piqued the prince’s interest, but I could see him force it down and focus on the solution that Milo had brought up.

“A solution?”

Milo casually scratched the back of his head, ruffling the multiple red locks around his head.

“Well, I went through a similar process as you right? Although mine failed I did make some preparations for my success. Do you still have the locket your mother gave you?”

Cai looked taken aback for a moment and pulled a locket with a broken chain out of his pocket.

“Rubella snapped it in the dungeon before, but Ion helped me get it back.”

Milo gently took the locket into his hands and carefully balanced it in his right hand while using his left to retrieve an anvil from his pocket. The anvil was only about the size of a knuckle at first but quickly grew to the size of two adult heads.

He placed the locket onto it, as gently as ever and then retrieved a hammer from his other pocket.

“Wait. What are you doing!”

Cai slightly began to panic as Milo lifted the heavy hammer over his head and his question escalated to a scream as Milo slammed the hammer into the locket, reducing it into pieces. He didn’t stop or even falter as Cai yelled at him and focused on his work.

He put the hammer to the side and brought out his wand for the first time that I had seen and began to use it like a blowtorch. Lighting up its tip and concentrating the thin but precise strands of magic that he emitted from it.

The locket began to mould together again, and aside from having a newly fixed chain didn’t look any different than before but Milo looked pleased with his work. He handed it over to Cai, who still looked shocked from his earlier actions.

“It's not my best work but it can keep you stabilized for about 24 hours. I won't go into detail since it doesn’t look like you’re particularly interested but after that 24 hours, you will have to stay in the human world for about two weeks to recover. Al you have to do to use it is to channel your magic through this locket before putting it through your body to cast it. It’ll be a little more difficult to use magic like this but at least you won’t run the risk of passing out in the middle of the battlefield, or even worse, exploding.”

While Cai snatched the locket out of his hands I took issue with.. almost all of his explanation.

“What do you mean he’ll have to stay in the human world for two weeks.”

Thankfully Cai didn’t immediately put the locket over his head and settled for practicing channelling his magic through the locket in his hands. He hadn’t asked any questions in his haste to get out into the battlefield but I needed to understand exactly what that locket was doing to him and why it would be able to take a royal out of commission for a fortnight.

I understood the innate trust he had toward the close companion of a family member, even at the cost of common sense, but I didn’t have such an obligation to trust Milo.

“Hmm. How do I explain this.”

Milo had on a burdened expression as he debated how to explain the locket’s mechanics to me and rifled through his pockets before bringing a few more things out.

I did wonder about the mechanics of that pocket since he was fond of bringing out large items that shouldn’t have been able to fit into the pocket in the first place.

He had out a shallow bowl with slightly raised edges in one hand and a large metallic ball in the other.

“Take this plate to be Cai here and the ball to be his magic.”

He put the ball into the shallow bowl and used a spell to twirl it around. The edges of the bowl just barely contained the large bowl and it was clear that if Milo swirled the bowl a little more harshly the ball would fall out. There was a small magnet at the bottom of the bowl, not strong enough to completely tether the ball in place, but enough to guide its actions toward the center of the bowl.

“And take this to be the magic from the outside that he regularly takes into himself.”

He poured a small amount of water into the plate and the metallic ball began to float, further destabilizing itself. As it swirled around the bowl, the ball would knock some of the liquid out of the bowl and would quickly resume its tenuous stability.

“Now this is the locket I gave him”

He brought out another magnet and secured it to the bottom of the bowl, tethering the ball to the center.

“The locket will serve to forcibly stabilize him for exactly twenty-four hours. But once it's gone…”

He resumed the steady stream of water into the bowl. While the ball was tethered the water filled up the bowl and submerged the bottom half of the ball as it began to overflow. Milo then removed the second magnet, maintaining the twirling motion of the bowl. With its newfound freedom and the outside influence of the swirling bowl, the metallic ball rose to the top of the water and tried to maintain its balance but eventually fell out of the bowl.

“Well. I assume you know what that represents. If we take him to the human world though, then the amount of magic he gets there won’t be nearly enough to cause that much damage.”

I looked to Cai who looked ready to put the locket over his head but looked to me for approval. Now, I didn’t have a single doubt in my mind that regardless of whether I said yes or no, he would put on the locket and head down toward Rubella but I needed to decide whether it would be worth getting into yet another fight where I felt as helpless as usual.

All of the different possibilities and things I could do ran through my mind as I considered the situation and finally nodded.

If he was going to go anyway, then all I had to do was to protect him the best I could.

I grabbed the Circular weapon from Milo and ignored the smug expression on his face as I did so.

“It looks like there’s nothing I can do to change your mind, and I don’t think I could knock you unconscious even if I wanted to. Let’s go.”

He let out a giant grin, probably the first I had seen from him for a while, and quickly put on the Locket and focused on centring his magic.

I on the other hand practiced in switching between the different forms of the weapon. Yeah, like this… I would be able to support him well enough even if I couldn’t protect him all that well.