The connection broken, Albaer quickly spoke up. “I really don’t want you going out there.”

Raziel smiled, revealing her row of fang filled teeth. “Then why did you let me do that?”

Albaer had a hard time looking at her, but she waited in silence until he did.

“You asked me to trust you. You put your faith in me even after I offended you, you sleep next to me, and you’re actually nice to me. I should at least trust you when you ask me to.”

Raziel assuaged his fears, “Not to worry, there’s no moon tonight, I can blend into the darkness, I can make it back here without being seen.”

Albaer’s lips went tight. “I really don’t like it. What if you get caught?”

“Can humans fly?” She asked, her fangy smile ever so charming in his eyes, for all its ferocity, Albaer couldn’t help but see her as a fairly normal girl in the way she expressed herself.

“No.” He answered with some reluctance.

“Then I’ll be fine, I promise.” She said with confidence, “This isn’t like before, a rash decision, I’ll prepare for it. I know that computer thing has maps and whatnot, I’ll get a look at the whole area, all the landmarks that I need, I promise, I will be safe.”

“Fine… somehow I think… if you really wanted out of here, I couldn’t stop you anyway.” Albaer gave a little snort and a shake of his head, “Now if that’s done, could you ask your sister to come in here, this really hurts.”

Raziel nodded rapidly and covered her lips with her hand, “Oh… right, I’m sorry!” Her wings fluttered back and forth, fanning him briefly before she shot to her feet.

“It’s fine.” He said with a weak smile before he lay himself down again. “I think I just want to lie here for awhile… this was an unpleasant day and I’m going to need to find another job soon.”

Raziel left the room and went straight to where her sister worked over the stove.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Lialah asked, her bright blue fixed on the red of her only family, she put down the wooden spoon she was using to stir the pot, letting it rest on the rim and focusing entirely on her demon companion and sibling.

“Yes, and then some. I didn’t snoop much… but the fact that he… ‘shared’ with me was enough. I’d never done that before… he was my first.” Raziel’s smile was as weak as the injured Albaer’s. “He doesn’t know what that was for me, so maybe it doesn’t count. But still, it was nice… and a good test. We’re safe here, and I agree with you. I have things to do tonight, but tomorrow...” Raziel swallowed hard, there was no small amount of fear in her eyes despite her words, so much so that she reflexively put her arms up and brought her sister in for an embrace.

“Tomorrow we go back to Square One.” She whispered into her sister’s ear.

The hot demonic breath caressed the soft ear of the angel, “Are you sure?” Lialah whispered. “Shouldn’t we explain it to him first?”

Raziel had steel in her voice when she answered, “He bled for a succubus. A succubus he barely knows just because I’ve got nowhere else. Who does that? Yes I’m sure, and we can explain it ‘after’ the fact. Do it before, and he’ll just try to talk us out of it.”

“Alright… we do it together.” Lialah answered and rising on her tiptoes, she kissed the red forehead of her sister, “Now, I’ll go take care of Albaer, keep stirring the stew for a few minutes while I do this.”

“Minutes?” Raziel asked and her ink black eyebrow rose.

“I’ll do it slowly… I want him to enjoy this, just don’t let the stew burn. I’ll be cross with you if you do.” Lialah stepped away and pointed a finger decisively toward the bubbling pot with the thick brown broth atop the bright red heating coil.

Raziel took the wooden handle in hand, holding it straight up and down, she began to stir violently, the pot began to slide around.

“Not like that!” Lialah exclaimed and grabbed Raziel’s wrist.

“Gentle, slowly. Just keep it moving in the heat, the simmer will make everything taste better-” Lialah stopped, Raziel had ‘that’ look.

“Are we still talking about stew here?” The succubus had a big, wide grin spread over her face and mischief sparked in her eyes.

Lialah threw up her hands into the air, “Why… Why me?” She asked with faux exasperation.

“I’m a succubus, why not?” She laughed at her self effacing humor and tilted her head toward Albaer’s room. “Go on, I can stir a pot for a few minutes without burning everything down.”

Lialah left her sister behind without another word and closed the door to Albaer’s room. A bit of guilt went through her for going behind Raziel’s back, a little pang in her chest that she felt should have stopped her.

But that wasn’t to be. Albaer lay on his stomach, the white robe on, and to her surprise, that sense of overwhelming hurt, had faded quite a bit. It wasn’t completely gone, even without touching him or looking into his mind, she felt sure it would never truly be forgotten. But it wasn’t dominating his mind.

He hadn’t said anything. At a loss herself just yet, she held her hand out and activated a healing spell, one meant not only to heal, but to ‘enhance’ the experience. “This will go slower than before,” she finally said as the white light reached his feet, “but please don’t worry, this will feel very good.”

He nodded without saying anything.

She was right, no, she was wrong. A kind of warmth, complete and total serenity, like being bundled up in a blanket by a warm fire on a cold winter night, began to overtake his skin. It enveloped him, surrounded him, and it grew only more intense the further along as the slowly expanding ball of light went up the length of his body.

He sighed, the pain in his knees was completely gone. The bruises to his bones which should have taken months to heal, vanished. His heart was pounding in his chest, but even that began to slow until it was beating at a resting pace, and within minutes he was rendered blind. But not in a bad way, ‘All I can see is an endless light… like walking through the clouds in the sky…’ He thought, and felt very much as if he were in fact floating.

The voice of the angel however, could still reach him, his hearing worked. “Albaer Babtiste Lamark, mashalaen, faosi loa phowa si Raziel, onani toashi rasenshi loam asha sin saleh.” The angelic voice, melodic as any birdsong, penetrated his ears, but he understood little other than his name, and that of Raziel.

“Forgive me,” she said from beyond the radiant glow, “what I said is not something I thought I ever would. You don’t know my sister’s life… and in a way, I didn’t either. Now that I do, my gratitude is beyond measure. So what I was saying was this. “Albaer Babtiste Lamark, in two days you’ve done more for Raziel than people who knew her for a lifetime. So now, let us do something for you.”

“You’ve been nice to me, you’re healing my wounds, you’re doing chores to make life easier… I haven't really done anything. A few dollars, food, and a bag to sleep in isn’t anything.” Albaer answered, and silvery angelic laughter reached his ears.

“We may seem like we’re more than we are, but we feel hunger, cold, loneliness, fear, like you do. Our home has hunger, an angel or demon can starve… we can find other food sources, but in the end… we can die like you. We’ve been hungry before, and it isn’t a good feeling. So of course, even if it seems little in the land of plenty, this means a lot to us. We have no home anymore, I know my sister wants to try to find a way back, she wants to keep my hopes up. But while I’m with her, wherever that is, that’s home. And I don’t think we will ever make it. We may be with you for the rest of our lives… if you’d have us. So the least we can do is offer our skills to you.”

Albaer recalled a time when he sat in an automatic massage chair, the warmth, pressure, the vibration, it was a marvelous thing… and this was a hundred fold better. The dull aches of the day’s torment was slipping away, like sloughing off old, dead skin with a vigorous scrub.

“That’s what you’re doing… why are you telling me this?” Albaer’s suspicious mind tingled a little bit.

“Because… because we’re going to go back to Square One.” Lialah replied, “My sister didn’t want to tell you until after, and she’ll probably be mad that I’m saying anything. But you should know.”

“Okay, I don’t know what that means.” Albaer replied to the seemingly distant voice of Lialah.

“Right… no magic. You know I looked at your myths about angel visitations and I don’t recall anyone enfolded in angel light being snarky.” She answered with fairly obvious annoyance.

“Maybe that’s why they don’t visit me?” Albaer wasn’t sure if he was shrugging or not, his entire body seemed to have blended with the light itself.

Lialah gave an exasperated sigh, “You’re just like her, I swear. Fine. In my world, magic is referred to as ‘Squares’. I saw some of your board games, you move pieces from square to square to advance around… it’s the same thing, but the ‘Squares’ are a diverging path of specializations. How far down each one you can go in a path is determined by birth. If you have a natural talent for summoning, maybe you can go twenty squares down there and summon powerful monsters… but if you’ve got low potential for stealth magic, maybe you can’t ever reach invisibility magic no matter how hard you try.”

“That’s it?” Albaer asked, more lost than before.

“No. Magic potential, and total limits of growth are things too, say you have limited mana growth potential, maybe you could reach maximum summoning squares, but never actually cast above the fifth one unless you found another mana source to add to your own.”

Understanding began to dawn on the floaty feeling Albaer. “Is that why you work in pairs to summon a hero?”

“Yes. The power required was simply too great for any one person, so Potentials are paired off to stack their skills.” She explained to him, but Albaer, being himself, could not resist the urge to ask questions.

“So… why not just combine every magic capable person together to summon one super powered thing to obliterate whatever danger threatens your world?” Albaer asked.

He immediately regretted it, because Lialah’s voice became full of sorrow.

“Because we can’t. The First Law of Magic that we ever uncovered was the Law of Diminishing returns. My sister and I double our skills. Add a third person, and it increases only by one third. Add a fourth, and even if they have equal power to us, or even greater, and it goes up only by one fourth. Before long, you could add the most powerful caster in history, and still not gain even a measurable fraction to the whole. The more you add, the less you get, further, you must be compatible, and it is very rare for large numbers of compatibles to exist.” Lialah replied to him and he felt as if a hand was stroking his cheek, even though he wasn’t sure it was even there to be stroked.

“Now, my sister and I are resolved to square one, we will abandon all of our skills, return to the first square, and start again.” Lialah said, and Albaer, who could not make a face, was nonetheless aghast.

“You can do that?!” He asked.

“Yes, if you’re born with a computation of twenty squares, you can put them anywhere as you learn, but each one you learn is one that you can’t then put into something else. To help protect our world, we put almost everything into summoning, it’s what Potentials do… it’s the least we can do.”

“I-I don’t really understand.” Albaer answered her, feeling utterly at a loss, he wanted to reach out, but he could not will his arms to move.

“We will begin again, we can’t access World Magic anymore anyway, and put our Body Magic into squares of learning that will help us live in your world. And also, into things that will help you. It isn’t without its risks, which is why Raziel wanted to say nothing. But I believe you should know. For a while, we will be weak, not for long, but for a bit at least… we will be helpless as a newborn babe. We will be in your care for that time.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to tell people that?” Albaer offered the rebuking question, but beyond his view, Lialah just laughed.

“Before we knew you bled for us, perhaps. But I don’t think it’s a risk now, I think it’s more dangerous not to tell you, than to tell you. If it isn’t too much to ask… can this ‘school’ be stayed away from for just a few days?” Lialah asked with a hopeful air.

“Yes, just a few days.” He answered, “If that’s what you need.”

The light began to fade away, and his sense of his own body began to return to himself, slowly, steadily, and his bedroom came back into view.

“Wow… how long did that last?” Albaer asked while slowly sitting up and stretching out.

“About five minutes or so.” Lialah answered with a demure blush.

“It felt like forever… that was amazing…” Albaer stood and began to stretch out, but it wasn’t lost on him that she kept blushing. “Uh, is something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just… that spell… unlike the other one, I feel what my magic feels.” She admitted, her face turning almost as red as her sister’s.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Albaer asked while wondering, ‘If that were the case, is a blush the proper response?’

“No, not at all, but it means, every part of you my magic touches, I felt as if I were touching you. Don’t make me say it… pervert.” She covered her face to hide the crimson on her face.

Albaer’s jaw went slack, the robe did not come away to reveal it, but the poking at the fabric certainly did make it obvious. “So you were touching my ah… and also the… oh… ohhhhh.”

“That’s not how that spell is supposed to work!” She eeped out and then half squeaked, “I’m going to go finish making dinner… you just um, stay here, we’ll call you when it’s ready, okay?!” Lialah said and scrambled out the door, slamming it behind her and unable to get that giant boyish happy smile out of her head. ‘I did not think that spell through before I cast it… he seemed so damned innocent I… I’m never going to live this one down!’ Lialah groaned in her head as she got back to the pot so fast that Raziel practically jumped out of the way.

“Perverts… humans are perverts… perverts… perverts! That wasn’t what I meant about making healing feel good!” Lialah snapped at a very confused Raziel and began to stir the pot as if it had offended her, with wet little drops flying out to land with a wet plop on the counter and stove top alike, her white wings flapping hard enough with frustration that pots and pans nearby began to rattle and clang in the breeze she made.

“So… you had more fun than intended.” Raziel began to form a fangy, cheshire grin on her face.

“Raziel… shut up.” Lialah said, and kept abusing the stew until it was time at last to eat.