Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of a … Darkness … Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of a … Darkness … Slowly, he opened his eyes to look into the concerned eyes of a beautiful … Darkness … Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the face of two young … Darkness … Slowly, he gathered his thoughts and asked himself … Darkness … Somewhere far away someone shouted: ‘Aether’ … Darkness …

“There was something, I can kind of”

… Darkness …

“Aether, why do I think of aether. Should I”

… Darkness …

“Why did I think about aether? Can it”

… Darkness …

The fear of knowing something is wrong with you, but not knowing what it is rose in his chest

… Darkness ….

Instinctively, he pulled at something - anything to get him out. Sound was the first thing to come back. “Bro, can you hear me? Please don’t tell me you are disabled?”

He gathered all his concentration and rasped out. “Jason.”

He felt elation and joy through their mental link. “Brother!”

“What … Where …”

Connecting thoughts and emotions felt difficult, but it got easier the more aether he pulled in. “You fucking drew aether from your brain, you dimwit! I can’t fucking believe that you are breathing and talking.”

Images of the battle with the reaper shot through his mind. “Did I win?”

“You fucking pasteurized him, bro. After that, you lost most of your mental capabilities and your senses. I was cut off from the outer world too, but you already saw Serafina and Xenia, so I suppose we are safe. You should pull in aether as it repairs your brain.”

For now, Res put away the information that he should know a Serafina and Xenia and opened his eyes. He was greeted by two excited female faces at his bedside. When he tried to sit up, he felt a piercing pain in his leg and stomach, so opted to stay put. The two girls wanted him to say something, so he asked: “Who are you?”

Judging by their expressions, that wasn’t what they had expected. The blonde one leaned towards him and pointed to her face. “I am Xenia and that is Serafina.”

He shook his head. “Never heard of you.”

The more conserved brown-haired girl cried: “It is like the doctor said. He is retarded.”

The blonde girl collapsed on his bed and wept. “Bro, can you pull in some of that beautiful energy around you? It would be wonderful if you could store that in your brain.”

“You don’t have to talk to me as if I am a child. Fine.”

Fueled by his confusion, he grabbed aether and pulled it in his brain. To his surprise, his brain could store so much aether that he had to reach farther and farther around him. His reach found a square barrier, but he pushed through. Even the wave of aether that assaulted him was only barely able to fill up his entire brain. Memories and emotions flooded back into his head and he seized up. He shivered when he remembered living without parts of his memory.

“Bro, you are back! If I were you, I would talk to the two girls.”

When he opened his eyes again, fresh morning sunlight pierced his eyes. Xenia and Serafin were sitting on his bed with expressions of fear on their faces. All the walls around them had vanished and their room was now open to the outside, revealing that they were in Xenia’s manner.

A servant that had been passing their room, dropped her tray in shock which pulled him out of his musings. “Sorry for the wait, ladies. At least we can now say that we all have been in bed together.”

The two girls’ gaze snapped onto him and they slapped him simultaneously. Xenia was the first to rant on about how he couldn’t just destroy her manner. Serafina chided him for making her worried and ashamed in front of their servants. Several of Xenia’s guards poked their heads into the room, but Serafina ordered them to leave.

After both girls had let off steam, servants dragged his bed to Xenia’s room. With a melancholic smile, Res looked around the room and gave Serafina a mischievous wink. “I still remember our first meeting as if it was tomorrow.”

Serafin reddened at his comment and shot back. “I will have my revenge one day.”

Xenia flopped down on his bed and pulled back the covers. It revealed various bandages and wounds on his legs and torso which were not healed. Xenia stroked his bandaged foot and said: “You have reached your potion limit for today already. The doctors say that you will need to stay put for three days. Enough time for you to tell us what happened.”

Res tried to dodge the question with a small compliment: “Three days fly by with you”, but was caught up in Xenia’s whirling blue eyes.

On closer inspection, they looked like gleaming sapphires. When a knock resounded on the door, he realized that he had been staring into her beautiful eyes for more than a minute. While he was flustered, Xenia only caressed his bandaged legs and called out: “Come in!”

A maid pushing a small cart filled with all sorts of foods entered the room. His stomach growled at the sight of all the beef, vegetables, and bread. Xenia laughed and stroked his stomach as if it was a purring cat. “No worries, you will be fed.”

The maid blushed deep red and scurried out of the room as if she had seen something fascinating and horrifying. Serafina scowled at Xenia: “Don’t misunderstand me. I would have liked to do the same, but the king and your brothers will know that you have intimately touched Res.”

“I don’t care. Why do my brothers care if I stroke someone else’s stomach?”

“You are their little sister.”

“I don’t want to be pampered. It is not like I am a child anymore. I can do whatever I want.”

The argument went on, but Res was too preoccupied with shoveling as much food into his mouth to follow. He would wash some of the bread down with water and then continue devouring the platter. With a heavy heart, he picked up the last piece of bread and saw the two girls staring at him. “What? I am hungry.”

Serafin looked at his stomach with some interest, too. “How can so much fit in somebody. Are you teleporting it away?”

Res pulled up the sheets and asked: “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but am I halting any important princess business by any chance?”

Serafina got a stool and sat down in front of him. “There is no business today. Instead, we wanted to ask you something. You know so much about us already, but I don’t know anything about you. I tried to dig up reports about ‘Res van Coventry’, but most of them filled with blank pages. Even your teachers wrote: ‘He participated in the class and comes late.’ They wrote five lines at least on every pupil, except you. Tell us your story.”

He chuckled and tried to derail the conversation. “Is this a job interview?”

Instead of the humor, he had expected to be there, he saw only serious consideration. Now a bit unsettled, he added: “Are you considering …”

Xenia interrupted him and punched him lightly in his side. “Being too humble is also no good. Tell us about you.”

Res groped for any options that could get him out of the situation. After a five-minute staring contest with Xenia, he had finally found one. “I don’t know how your culture exactly works. What is Serafina exactly to you?”

Xenia took the bait and turned to Serafina. “She is my blood servant.”

She turned to him as if it would mean something to him, but he only shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

“We have exchanged blood and both of us have lived through it. That means that our souls are now intertwined - We are more than sisters. I still command her, but she can retort if she wants. We share the same food, the same kind of clothes and the same bed. We share the same friends and the same family. We can’t do that here because we are watched by Trianon’s nobles. They think those customs foolish and that is one reason why living here is so hard.”

Jason dryly commented: “What would those two think of their ceremony if they found out that it is a hoax. You need certain blood antigens and antibodies and you always survive blood injections.”

“So, this blood sister business is bogus?”

“99.999%”

With the new revelation, Res couldn’t stop himself from grinning when they told him that they could feel other’s emotions. They were compiling a list of what they can do because of their blood relation when Serafina added: “If you behave, you can become her consort and satiate her carnal pleasures. You are only her toy or pet at most. Nothing more than that.”

The entire room went deathly silent at that. His jaw dropped lower and lower until it was wide enough to fit in an entire loaf of bread. Xenia was staring at Serafina with the same expression of horror and widened eyes. When she realized what she had said, Serafina turned redder than he had ever seen her before and she put her hands in front of her face. The awkwardness lasted for too long, so Res acted like that had never happened.

“Nice weather today, isn’t it?”

His comment was so unfitting that even Xenia flushed red and grabbed Serafina by the arm. With a snort, Xenia dragged her out of the room. Yet, when Serafina turned while she was being dragged out of the room, her face was completely changed. Instead of the shame and horror he had expected, she looked at him with a face of sorrow and another emotion he couldn’t quite place. The door slammed shut and Res was left alone in the princess’s private chambers.

Jason conveyed feelings of surprise through their mental link: “Well that escalated quickly.”

“Jason, what should I do? I need your advice as a woman expert right now.”

“What do you want me to say? Go with the flow and always keep in mind that there won’t be anything serious. Both of us don’t want to turn into a rent boy for only one princess.”

Outside the door, he could hear the angry shouting of Xenia and occasional sobs from Serafina. When he replayed what had happened, he realized that Serafina must have buried her face in her hands to hide her true emotions. Jason and Res discussed the unusual behavior and he mused: “I don’t want her to cry.”

“Generally, I would say that you will acclimate to crying women. They do it if they want something and I have had to distinguish fake from real crying many times. Serafina’s crying sounds fake to me, especially if you look at the regularity of her cries. If someone cries for real, they cry in waves. Still, Xenia is fucking harsh on her.”

Jason’s comment didn’t calm down his racing mind. Another servant came into the room with yet another tray of food. Due to Serafina’s comment, his appetite had worn off, and he only drank some water to pass time. After another thirty minutes, they finally returned. Serafina’s eyes were red-rimmed from rubbing, but she watched him with her usual sharp gaze.

They sat down on their previous places in silence and Res tried to soothe Xenia: “I won’t hate you after this.”

Xenia shot Serafina an angry look and she said: “That is very unlikely.”

Res asked: “We could do your blood thing to show that I am not angry?”

A glimmer of hope shown in her brown eyes and she shot forward and hugged him. It was unlike Serafina, but he still stroked her long black hair. “I may have destroyed our relationship because … of my carelessness.”She wept once again into his chest and clutched at his shirt. Xenia looked as if she considered to actually go through with it.

“Bro, take some of the blood from the two and let it drip onto your throat. If you have a matching blood type, I don’t see why you shouldn’t make them happy.”

Being thrown a lifeline, Res turned both of the girl’s heads to meet his gaze. “A spirit has spoken to me and it tells me that it may be able to start a blood binding if it gets a test of your blood and approves. I will need a drop of your blood placed on my throat-”

Serafina immediately stood up and got her Katana out. “I will do it”

Before he could protest, she had slashed her entire hand and let pools of blood drip onto his throat. The sheets under him were stained red, but Jason shouted out in glee: “She is an A-Positive. You two are compatible.”

Res grinned and told Serafina so, to which she smiled shyly. Hesitantly, the princess put some of her blood onto his throat and Jason reported that she was compatible as well. Only after Xenia marched him through a lie detector with the necklace, did she crack a grin. “Our fate is still intertwined even after Serafina said what she said. It must have been strong.”

Res sighed out in relief. Social Interactions were stressful. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she took a seat on his bed. “We knew that you wouldn’t divulge your secrets, so we would like to play a game with you.”

When he saw Xenia’s look, he felt like he was being sized up and it didn’t feel pleasant. “I will pass on playing the game.”

“Luckily, you can’t. We are your hosts and we invite you to play it.”

He knew that there was some obscure law in the code of the court that didn’t allow guests to deny a game. Yet, he wasn’t anyone to care about codes of honor. Before he could object, Serafina added: “If you don’t play, I will be forced to feed you snails for the next three days.”

The thought of snails alone gave him chills, so he quickly agreed. “There is this new game where you ask ‘Truth or Dare’ and you will …”

“I know what truth or dare is, but the last time I played it was when I was six years old. Even back then, I knew it was a game where everyone lost.”, he interjected.

An evil grin stretched across Xenia’s face. “Do you want to eat snails?”

“Fine, but I will count you two as one person and I begin. Truth or dare?“

They exchanged looks and then answered: “Dare”

“I dare you to stop playing this game.”

Their outraged faces were comical. “Hey, you aren’t allowed to do that.”

“Who said I couldn’t?”

“Illegal move. Now it is our turn. Truth or Dare?”

Res groaned, but grumbled out: “Dare.”

Xenia smugly said: “I dare you to tell the name of your love.”

He found himself bound to a bed, captured by a princess who wanted him to profess his love to her. If he didn’t, she would feed him one of the most disgusting animals in the world. Even his frantic calls to Jason’s dreamworld were only answered with amusement. Defeated, he looked into the eyes of the two young women perched on his bedside and answered: “I like your company.”

The next four hours were occupied with Xenia and Serafina asking lots and lots of questions. By noon, they were both lying snuggled up against him. Res tried to extricate himself, but was, as always, silenced by mumbling protest. From far away, he could feel Jason talking with the necklace and the sword. He didn’t feel comfortable listening in, but as he was pinned down by the two napping girls, it was his only occupation.

The voices of James and the other ghosts got clearer and clearer the longer he listened. The image of a translucent green clearing appeared in front of his mind’s eye. The beautiful nature scene pulled him in and in and in and … *POP*. Accompanied by the feeling as if he had been sucked through a hole, he found himself in the same clearing. He was standing in front of a young man who looked eerily like the prince, a nymph, and a young lady with scales as skin.

When the woman saw him, she bolted away into the forest. The nymph gave him a warm smile. “Hello, Res. You have come to visit?”

The young man, presumably Jason, next to him had his hands balled into fists. “Bro, you had to come at the worst possible time. This was the closest I have ever been to her.”

Res realized that he had entered one of the ghost’s dreamworlds that Jason had told him about. Feeling like he had breached Jason’s privacy, he held his hands up and tried to concentrate on leaving. “I am so sorry for intruding on your personal talk. I swear it was an accident.”

Jason’s expression relaxed. He grabbed Res’s hands and pulled him in for a manly hug. “It is all right and I know that it was an accident, bro. I didn’t know you could do that.”

Face to face with Jason, he added: “You have a punchable face. Too similar to that of the prince.”

Jason laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “I would say that it is the other way around.”

The nymph morphed into an old woman and a table with piping hot tea appeared out of nowhere. “Take a seat. We have some things to discuss.”

Her serious tone shut up all the retorts he had prepared, and he grabbed a cup of tea. “Do you know that what Jason and you are doing is illegal?”

“I only know that he has failed a possession and we are now living in one body.”

The old woman scrunched up her face. “You can call it that. You are a somewhat special case because both of you didn’t want to actually form an equal bond. Yet, as always, you aren’t the first one to find out that you can share your body with a ghost. Indeed, there are an uncounted number of people living on this planet that have a ghost in their body. Most of them use them to enhance themselves. Do you know that if either of you were to assert dominance, the opposite party would have to submit?”

Res looked at Jason, who was staring at the ground. “I thought the possession had failed?”

The old woman gave off a raspy laugh. “There is no such thing as a failed possession. Jason had the option to possess you, but he didn’t when he realized what consequences that would entail. I am only telling you this because this is the only thing keeping you two alive and I wouldn’t suggest you do otherwise. With my contract, but most importantly your trust, you have built a symbiosis I have never seen before. There is more than one planet out there and binding ghost to body parts is pretty common. You surely have hundreds of questions about that, but Jason can answer them much better than me. In my lifetime as a king-level alchemist, I have only managed to meet one other species from a different planet. It told me that people who use ghosts to enhance themselves are wanted. There are still those who have them, but they are regulated by a large society. There are smaller sub societies, but the biggest is called ‘ghostbound’. I may not give you information that I got after my lifetime, so that is all the advice I can give you.”

For the first time, Jason raised his gaze to look at Res and both stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Res held out his hand. What they both needed now was trust. Jason’s expression lightened, and he grabbed his hand and pulled him in for a bearhug.

“Brother.”

“Brother.”

Res whispered: “I will treat you better than a brother, help, and protect you until I die. Maybe I can join you as a ghost.”

Jason chuckled and patted him on the back. “I will do the same. I doubt that you will turn into a ghost, though. Let’s turn your life into something worth living.”

The old woman cleared her throat. “My owner is getting somewhat restless at your side. You may need to return and, to give a last piece of advice, I would advise you to train, the …”

Suddenly, she broke out into a coughing fit and convulsed. She waved their helping arms away and stood back up. “My old mouth ran ahead of my brain and I got a friendly reminder.”

To Res that didn’t seem friendly, but he indeed felt someone stirring far away. “Thanks for the talk. I will train, even though it pains me.”

Res felt for the connection to Jason and concentrated on it with the intent of leaving. As before, he got sucked back into his body. The jarring experience left him shivering, which awakened Serafina, too. He remembered that the old woman had talked about other species and other planets. Excitedly, he thought about the possibilities that new worlds would entail. His murmuring stopped when he realized that both of the girls were looking up at him with concern.

Res grinned as thousands of different questions he wanted to ask the old woman sprang up in his mind. The knowledge of the old woman was far too valuable, and if he was honest, he didn’t hate Xenia and Serafina. Remembering the old woman’s advice, he asked: “Do you have some sort of cellar that I can cultivate in? It might turn the cellar into a cavern.”

Serafina looked horrified at the thought, but Xenia had a thoughtful look on her face. Finally, Xenia settled on: “No, if you were to cultivate, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you. My brothers cultivate all the time and it is boring.”

Remembering the weird blood rituals, Res offered: “I will inject some of your blood and spend the time I recover from cultivating with you two.”

For some reason, Xenia reddened and squealed out: “You would do that?”

Xenia and Serafina began to whisper, and when he strained his ears, he heard: “My brother won’t kill him. That will validate him as my consort and bodyguard.”

Shivers ran down his spine and he tried to interject. Xenia clutched his arm and interrupted him with a pout on her face. “You said it and, like me, you can’t take it back.”

Xenia took his arm and got close. Too close. Still, it didn’t change the facts. There were better occupations than turning into a male prostitute with permanent employment. Some parts of him weren’t even that disinclined to the job, and that frightened him. Xenia rubbed her entire body at his side and he could feel her body heat while she breathed deeply.

Not being able to cope with that for much longer, he cried out. “All right, let’s do it.”

He would go through with the farce and wriggle his way out somehow. The princess shouted something incoherent, and a maid opened the door. Judging by her beet-red face, she had been listening at the door for a long time. Serafina gave her an annoyed look and stated.

“I hereby request that the blood ritual utensils are brought to this room.”

The utter confusion on the maid’s face was painful. The maid had a duty to follow the princess’s wishes and the interest of the royal family. Finally, an elderly servant stepped forward and Res realized there must be more servants behind the door. There might be even some guards to step in if something inappropriate were to happen.

The old man cleared his throat and said: “I cannot fulfill this request. I have already sent for a runner to the royal family, which explains your unfitting behavior. Your brother will arrive in two days from a military attachment near Trianon’s border.”

Res remembered Xenia’s story about how her brother had incapacitated three elite royal guards. A cold sweat ran down his back and he added: “I shouldn’t be here at all.”

The old man gave him a surprised, pleasant smile while Serafina held a hand over his mouth. Xenia stepped forward in her practiced princess walk and commanded:

“I hereby relieve you of any responsibility you would have had. I demand that you bring me the blood ritual utensils. We don’t want to perform any blood magic. Instead, we want to show our curious visitor what the utensils.”

The old man’s head turned redder and redder from the inability to stop something precious from being destroyed in front of his very own eyes: “The boy doesn’t even want to be here.”

Res couldn’t answer as Serafina had one of her callous, yet delicate hands pressed against his mouth. The princess snorted in anger and the servants scattered in all directions. A moment later, the maid appeared carrying an enormous chest and shut the door. Serafina and Xenia opened the chest as if it was their birthday and pulled out some nasty-looking syringes. They propped up hundreds of small vials and powders and dipped them in each one. Res looked at them with slight amusement as they followed a strict ritual while gesturing in the air. To pass the time, he felt for Jason’s bond and found him still in that other dimension. The singing had been building up and Res focused his gaze once again on the two girls. He felt a weird pressure emanating out from them which felt like … Aether? When he focused on the aether spectrum, he saw that the two girls were alight with aether. They were spinning complex knotwork into wide nets that interlocked to form an even greater net. He tried to get Jason’s attention, but Jason was still relaxing in his paradise. Panicked, he looked around for an escape and spotted guards looking through the window. When they saw the two girls waving their hands around in the air, the guards panicked and screamed. Now, Res knew that something wasn’t going as it should. From outside the door, he heard shouting and Serafina paused her chanting to put a giant latch in front of the door. Someone strong hammered on the door and the room vibrated with every hit. All the while, the two girls continued to sing and to coat the syringes into powders and liquids. On closer inspection, Res realized that they had prepared four syringes, which meant …

“Xenia and Serafina, I don’t think this is a good idea. Your brother won’t be pleased.”

Xenia scowled and responded hotly: “I hate being bossed around. Why should my brother, who is whoring and drinking, give me morality lessons?”

He still didn’t believe that the blood potion would do anything but didn’t want to say it right in their faces. All those powders gave an official look, but it still was a farce. He only didn’t want to risk offending another prince for exchanging blood with his sister.

Yet, when he saw Xenia’s hurt expression and she said: “Do you don’t want to do this after all? Don’t you love me?”, he gave in. It would be bad to tell them now that he had actually never said that he loved them, only that he enjoyed their company. He watched the whirlwind of emotions he felt. “I might have already felt love and I only don’t know how it feels?”

With practiced ease, Serafina slid in a syringe in her right arm and filled it with her blood. Xenia did the same and signaled Serafina to insert the blood. Res felt nothing as Serafina’s and Xenia’s blood was injected into him and gave off a relieved sigh. A part of him hadn’t believed Jason that there was no such thing as blood magic. Yet, this felt wrong and a deep instinct was telling him to run, but he let the two remove his blood with the two syringes.

A loud thump resounded through the room and the face of the guard captain appeared near the window. He hammered at the window with an aether technique which made countless vases topple over. The window couldn’t withstand the onslaught and Res hoped that they would stop this charlatan business. The pounding on the window redoubled when the guard captain saw that they were close to finishing the ritual. The two girls gave each other a deep look and then injected his blood into their veins.

First, nothing happened apart from the window finally breaking. Then, an enormous network of knots materialized all around the room. When he looked closer at the spell, he realized that the light was actually concentrated aether. In fascinated horror, he watched as the net spun faster around the room. It condensed until it was had turned into a spinning blanket of brilliant white aether. The guard captain was now lying on the floor and weeping at his failure to stop the ritual.

The guard captain's cries tore him out of his trance and he realized with horror that blood magic was real. The blanket of aether formed into a triangle and with a humm, the triangle stopped spinning with each edge above one of them. Xenia had opened her arms to the triangle while Serafina was watching his every movement. The humm intensified until it was unbearable, then everything went black.