“Well, look what we have here”

I hear a sudden voice from the side.

I look towards the direction the voice came from, and discover a person.

He looked young, hardly more than a teenager, this unassuming character in ragged clothes. He wore a dirty velvet cloak, dotted with holes near the bottom where it was apparent, he had tripped on the garment, causing it to rip a little more each time. His hair was slightly unkempt and he seemed scattered in thought as he went from looking at us, and sometimes backtracking to pick up something he'd forgotten. If I hadn't known better, I would have taken him for a normal person, but one feel of his magic and I knew that the work this person had done was not normal in any way.

There was an air about him. He lived in his own world, often not noticing things or people around him, but there was an aura that surrounded him. When he looked at you, which was not often, but when he did, it was as if he was looking into your very soul. He could see the very things you wanted to be hidden.

As he made his way towards us, a confidence seemed to grow in his step. It was as if he was drawing strength from the very stones that surrounded him.

“How did you get here?”, he asked, with a smile on his face. Didn't seem like he got many visitors here.

“A stone teleported us to here”, I answered, while trying to show the confidence that I did not have.

“A stone? I haven't given those out in ages!”, he said, with an excited smile. He looked towards the mage, and asked him: “Glautru, is that you? How have you been?”

Glautru didn't answer. He was unconscious and was slowly bleeding to death, so he had quite the excuse.

“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that”, he said.

He began waving his fingers around while chanting in a low voice. I couldn't hear what said, and even if I could, I would probably not understand it.

I looked over to the old mage and was surprised by what was happening to him. The blood he had bled was slowly disappearing. No, not disappearing. They were going back inside his body!

It took a few seconds for all the blood to get back in. There was silence for a few seconds, and then there was a loud snap.

The old mage awoke with a gasp. He looked around, with a dazed gaze, looking like he didn't know where he was.

Then his eyes fell on the other mage, and his eyes instantly focused.

“Hel”, he said, with a glare.

“Glautru”, Hel said, with a smile.

That's Hel? Would have expected someone older.

Glautru continued to glare for a few seconds, before just stopping, and sighing.

“I need to check out the favor you owe me”, Glautru said, in a serious tone.

“You already did when you came here at death's door”, Hel said, with a still smile.

“Then, I just need a favor from you”, Glautru said, his tone still serious.

“Sorry, I only give out favor, when I want to”, Hel answered, while turning to me.

“Would you like to owe me a favor?”, Hel asked, with a questioning smile.

“Yes, I think”, I answered him.

“Great! What do you need from me?”, Hel said, in an excited voice.

I looked over towards Glautru, in the hope he would answer for me.

Luckily, he took the hint.

“My student and his friend have a problem. His friend tragically died a few days ago, and my student used a spell called Emergency Resurrection on him. The spell is not supposed to be used for a long period of time, so there have been a few side effects. The most notable of them is probably the effect on their souls. If you would please take a look at them, you should be able to clearly see the problem”, Glautru explained, in a serious tone.

Hel looks over at us for a few seconds, before showing a face of distaste.

“I can see what you're referring to”, Hel said. “Nothing I can't fix”

“What exactly are you going to do?”, I ask him, with a little-concerned face.

“It's very simple. Your friend here has no life energy and is feeding on your mana to stay alive. The spell you used to make him feed on your mana has qualities from a raise zombie spell. Because of that, the qualities of a zombie are slowly filling up your friend here. Because of your connection, you will soon be affected too, and someone doesn't want that to happen. I will be cutting the bond between you and your friend, so you will be saved from becoming a zombie. Simple”, Hel explained to me, with a smile.

“Wait a minute. If you cut the bond, won't Eros die”, I asked him, with a distressed voice?

“That is correct”, he answered, with a smile.

That is not gonna happen!

“Can I owe you another favor?”, I asked him, in an almost desperate voice.

Hel thought about it for a few seconds, before he finally answered.

Please say yes.

“What would I need to do for it?”, he asked, with an excited voice.

“When separating Eros and me, you have to give Eros life energy, so he can live.

Hel said nothing for a few seconds, but I could see that he had an idea. His smile had grown wider.

“You don't have to owe me a whole favor for that. We just have to include a little trade in the other favor”, he answered, in a voice that showed he had thought it over many times.

“And what would that trade entail?”, I asked him.

“I want a soul to save your friend”, he answered, with a smile.

In an instant, I became pale and was beginning to become a little panicked.

He wants my soul!? Why would he need my soul?

Upon seeing my reaction, he began laughing. Not the evil villain laughter. Just normal kind of laughter.

I think I may have misunderstood that.

“Don't worry, I don't need your soul. I just need another soul of a strong beast”, he reassured me.

What would he need a soul for?

“What would you need a soul for?”, I ask him.

“While I am a master manipulator of souls, I can only manipulate. I can't create. To fix you and your friend, without killing your friend, I will need the life energy generation of a creature. While I can just take the life force from a mouse, it will stop your friend´s growth forever. I also can't wait for you to get a suitable creature's soul for it, so I will make a deal. I will give you a creatures´ souls´ life energy, so you, and Eros, can survive, but you will have to pay me back with a creature's soul that has life energy similar or better quality to it. Now, do you accept this trade?”, he asked, with his hand reaching out for a handshake.

What choice do I have? Its either let him die or let him live.

“I accept the trade deal”, I answered, with my hand too reaching out for a handshake.

We shake hands, and they glow for a few seconds. Its almost as the trade was now Sealed.

“Good choice”, he said, as the glow faded.

Hel cracked his knuckles and took a step back.

“Okay, prepare yourself cause here it comes”, he said.

And that's when the separation of two souls began.

The experience was sad, to say the least.

The sad thing about this is something I realized when it happened.

Nobody knows how much anyone else is hurting. We could be standing next to somebody, who is completely broken, and we wouldn't even know it.

We wouldn't know, because we couldn't see their soul. We couldn't sense it.

But I could see Eros´. I could sense it.

I could see he was broken.

He had been hiding his feelings. Feelings of grief, feelings of anger, and feelings of sadness. He had hidden them deep inside and bottled them up.

He didn't want to think about it. Any of it.

The spell worked with him and helped him with this goal.

People who are affected by the spell slowly get their feelings taken away from them. Eros didn't want to feel anything at all. He gave into the spell. He welcomed it.

When the bond between us was being broken, it was the most sensitive that it ever could be. Eros was just getting his mind back.

That's when he began to feel again

If we had done this later, he would have died almost instantly from the sheer toll on this brain

.

I felt everything he felt. I felt his grief, I felt his anger, and I felt his sadness.

I did not know what to do with it. These feelings had been bottled up for days, and they had grown strong.

My body had lashed out, but it seemed as if I was being restrained.

I couldn't see, but I could hear.

I could hear his screams. They filled every crow and cranny of my mind. I could not figure out which feels the screams were from. It was like it had every feeling possible inside itself.

And then it stopped. The bond had broken.

I could see again.

I looked over at Eros. He was lying on the ground in the corner of the room. It seemed like he was crying.

It tried to get to him, but Hel stopped me.

“Need to finish my part of the deal”, he told me, as he walked over to Eros.

He looked at Eros´ back for a few seconds, before he started to chant.

He chanted for 2 full minutes before slowly raising his hand. In his hand, there was something that emitted a bright light. I couldn't make out anything about the shape of it, due to the light.

I'm guessing that the life energy.

Hel stopped chanting and plunged his hand into Eros´ back. The hand just went through the skin, without even damaging it.

Eros gasped and fell over to the side.

I was about to ask Hel if he had been successful when Eros started to glow with a golden light.

“By the way”, Hel says. “There something special about the soul that the life energy came from”

He turned around, and stared at me, with a wide smile.

“It's from a unicorn”