“Take a deep breath.”

Prota was sitting in the middle of the floor with most of the furniture moved out of the way. Quarta had been mildly concerned that an awakening of some sort might cause an explosion, but unfortunately, there was no other place to do it.

“Focus. Picture a small black sphere in your chest. A ball of liquid, shifting and flowing…”

The room was deadly still. Nothing moved, save for the rising and falling of Prota’s chest as she took a deep breath in, then a long breath out. The clouds outside drifted by as time ticked by slowly, minute after minute passing.

“Picture it.”

She closed her eyes, breathing in, out, in, out…

“Maybe this is too hard,” Quarta thought. “She’s only six.”

“Yeah, well, you have the mentality of a six year old and you could probably do it so I wouldn’t be too concerned,” Zero thought back.

“Shut up.”

Prota’s facial expression changed.

“You have it?” A nod, a bit of excitement. There was progress. “Good. Now, picture the room. Close your eyes and picture the room in your mind. Now, you know where I’m standing. Place me in the room. Picture me.”

Some more silence. There was a few dogs barking outside, the sounds of passerbys… but it was quiet.

“...” She frowned a bit in frustration, a small change to her facial expression but an indication that she was very annoyed.

“It’s ok, take your time. As long as you need,” Quarta consoled. There was no point in rushing this.

Quarta was patient. For an hour, he stood completely still, waiting for Prota to do something, but nothing happened. Her frown deepened a bit, and Quarta knew she was reaching her mental limit. He sighed and walked over.

“I’m here. Right beside you, ok? Picture your core, picture it reaching out to mine, taking energy…”

Subtly, Quarta’s right eye, the one that was red, lit up. There was no one around to see it happen.

“...I can’t…” Prota said dejectedly, falling back with a sigh. Her white hair spread out around her like a lion’s mane, her passive face scrunched up in annoyance.

Quarta got up and ran his hand through his hair, also somewhat frustrated.

“Hah… this is going to be harder than I thought.”

He paced around, thinking, wondering… His face would occasionally light up as he got an idea, only for it to darken again as he would realise the idea wouldn’t work. However, in one instance his face lit up and stayed that way.

He practically ran over to Prota, who was still lying down on the carpet.

“Prota. I’m going to take your hand, ok?”

“...” The small girl instinctively shrunk back, but Quarta pressed forwards.

“It’ll be safe, I promise. I already touched you once, remember?” he said, cursing the phrasing of the sentence as soon as he said it.

She nodded, and though she was trembling a little bit she didn’t move as Quarta touched her hand. There wasn’t as much of a lurch this time, but it was still there, a tugging sensation in Quarta’s gut as his soul was ripped out of his body.

“For fuck’s sake, Quarta, warn me next time!” Zero groaned as he was pulled out once more.

“What, weren’t you paying attention? Even a six year old would have understood what I was about to do,” Quarta grinned.

“Yeah, you’re so funny bro,” Zero groaned. “You want me to just stay like this, right?”

“You got it.”

Prota, unlike last time, was now aware of everything going on and swayed back and forth worriedly, unsure what to do and concerned at what was going on. She could not, interestingly enough, see the black tendril pulling Zero out of Quarta’s body.

“Relax. Everything’s under control. Ok, one more time. Picture your core. That little black sphere in your chest.”

She was worried, but there was nothing she could do except master this as quickly as possible. With that thought, once more a familiar rhythm was established as she took a deep breath in, then let a deep breath out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

“I see it…”

Prota’s eyes shot open.

“It’s- it’s reaching out, towards you-” she said, panicked, trying to do something but not really sure what to do.

“Prota, it’s fine. Do you see it?” Quarta said, excited. This was what he was going for. Could she see what he and Zero saw?

“It’s like… it’s like a jelly with an arm,” she said, trying to describe it. “Like a slime reaching out.”

“Yes, yes, that’s your core,” Quarta said. “Now. Can you see it?”

There was a thin line of mana extending from Quarta to Prota through the black tendril, a red line showing the energy going from one person to the other.

There was an undeniable excitement in the air now.

“I see… a little line, it’s red… it’s going from you to me.”

“Ok, ok,” Quarta said, bouncing up and down a little. “Ok, that’s mana. I’m going to start letting Zero go now.”

“Wha- hey, hey!” he exclaimed, but the tug became harder as Zero stopped resisting.

“Wh- what’s going on?” Prota said, suddenly afraid. “It- it’s all- it’s much faster-”

“Prota!” Quarta roared. This was the pivotal moment. “Control it! Feel the flow, control it, bring it under your control!”

She squeezed her eyes. She didn’t know how she would do that, but…

Quarta had said the power was hers. She thought back to the time she had absorbed her parent’s souls, although she hadn’t known that’s what it was at the time. What had happened?

Fear. Fear of something, that was what she had felt. What had she done? All she remembered was the instinct to push away, to make something go away, to make a big explosion to make everything go away…

So if she could control it that way, then what did she have to do here?

Deep breath in, deep breath out. She focused on the tendril snaking its way to Quarta, focused on the energy flow that was coming out of him.

“No,” she thought. To her surprise, the tendril quivered a bit, but remained where it was.

“No,” she thought again, with a bit more force. Her mind was focused on one thing. Stop. Stop the flow, stop the tendril, stop it from working…

With each thought, the tendril shook more and more, sometimes pulling back but never really letting go.

“No!” she thought one last time with more force than ever before. It almost pulled back all the way, but…

“Hey.”

Prota looked up for the first time in a while. She saw Quarta, sweating but staring intensely at her. She was about to say something, but time seemed so very slow. Then she saw Zero, but he wasn’t speaking to her.

“Hey. It’s ok, now. She’s safe now. You don’t have to protect her this much anymore.”

What? What was this? Was he speaking to the soul itself? Was this something souls could do with each other? The tendril quivered again, but so did the little sphere the tendril was coming from.

“You belong to her. Hell, you are her. Why not work with her? Why fight her?”

Zero stopped talking and indicated for Prota to try again. There was a kind look on his face.

“It’s been protecting you, you know. So take good care of your soul.”

Prota looked inwards. The little orb quivered, stubborn, not wanting to let go at what it thought was trying to harm its owner.

“It’s… it’s ok,” she said softly. “I’m ok now. Quarta is a good person.”

The sphere shook, but Prota understood.

“I’m safe now.”

It shook again.

“Please. Please, stop.”

It shook… and then let go. The tendril snapped back like an elastic band, causing ripples to shake the sphere, and it eventually calmed down and went back to normal. Time resumed and Quarta fell back, panting for air, but smiling.

“You did it!” he yelled, jumping up and pumping his fists in the air. “Let’s go!”

He almost wrapped his arms around her, but she still pulled back so he just jumped up and down some more. She was still a bit sensitive, but it wasn’t out of necessity anymore. It was now a habit that could be broken.

Prota looked around. She could see Quarta’s mana core now. It glowed very dimly, and then stopped glowing entirely. That was surprising, but she didn’t say anything about it. What she didn’t see was that Quarta’s eye had also stopped glowing.

One more time, she closed her eyes and looked inwards.

It’s been protecting you, so take good care of it, ok?

“...thank you.” she thought. The little orb shook happily. “You can stop now. I can take care of myself.”

The orb shook angrily.

“...then… let’s work together?” Prota thought. The orb stayed still, then seemed to nod.

It was a step forwards.

“Ok, one more test,” Quarta said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Reaching out, he touched her hand. There was a brief moment of tension, but nothing happened.

“Ok, step one complete,” he muttered. “Now, can you absorb my energy?” His eye lit up once more as his mana core reformed.

She pictured the tendril, what it had looked like, and it reached out to Quarta, once more sucking the mana out of him. The tendril was listening to her like it was part of her body. Granted, the level of control was rough, but it was there. Upon command, it took a bit of time but it stopped.

“It works! It works!” Quarta yelled, pumping his fists in the air like the six year old child Zero had said he was.

Prota’s eyes were faintly glowing, her snow white hair shining just a bit as mana worked its way into her system properly for the first time. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Hey, you ok?” Quarta said, stopping suddenly out of concern.

“Thank… you…” she sniffled, her heart bursting with joy. The thing that had caused her harm for so long was now her ally. Quarta had helped her do something she never would have though possible.

“Thank you,” she whispered one more time. And for the first time ever, Quarta saw something close to a smile on her face.

~~~

The bar re-opened the next day, with a few changes. For one, it now opened at noon instead of nine, the reason for which being Quarta would rouse Prota at eight in the morning for training.

While she had achieved a sort of synchronization with her soul, it wasn’t perfect. Currently, she could only absorb one’s power by physical contact, although Quarta had already seen some mild progress when she took a bit of someone’s mana by accident from a distance. It was possible, he was sure, he just didn’t know what to do to train it.

For now, mornings were spent with Quarta providing small amounts of mana to Prota through physical touch. That was all. He didn’t make her practice magic, he didn’t make her do anything except practice her control over the absorption of mana from others. She was getting better at it. Over the course of a week, she could turn the flow on and off as easily as she could blink. She was even getting to the point where she could control how much mana she could absorb, although Quarta had told her that that wasn’t necessary. It was better to just take as much as she could, as fast as she could.

“In a fight, you’re going to want all you can get,” he’d said. “You can store mana, right? You don’t need to use it as soon as you get it?” He was concerned with bringing up fighting already, but it seemed to be something she wanted to do, and based off her story it wasn’t all that surprising. He, too, would have wanted to take revenge.

She nodded, her glowing hair lighting up the room.

“Then it’s better to just take as much as you can all at once.”

The other part of practice consisted of knowing when someone was out of mana so that she wouldn’t start absorbing their souls. There was, according to her, a slight tugging sensation that felt like she was pulling on something stuck when the soul started to come out of the body. Because Zero could resist the pull, they practiced that until she could do it in her sleep.

A week later, an opportunity presented itself.

“Oy, Quarta,” Harold, one of the regulars, called out. The bar was fairly empty, and only a few regulars that Quarta was friendly with were left.

“I heard you got in a sort of kerfuffle with the royal guard. You good?”

“If I wasn’t good, I’d be in jail, dumbass,” he replied, wiping a glass. “Did you think of that?”

“Good point.”

There was a bit of awkward silence before Harold continued.

“So it’s true, eh? You took in the demon girl?”

Quarta froze.

“Oi, sorry if I said something wrong, I just-”

“...no, it’s fine,” Quarta said. Honestly, he wanted to punch Harold, friend or not, but he held himself back. It would just cause more problems if he punched him.

“But it’s true? Did you take the girl in?”

“...” There was a devious glint in Quarta’s eye. He thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.

“You wanna see for yourself?”

Harold leaned forwards, interested. “What you got in mind?”

~~~

“Ok, Prota. You got this.”

The three other familiars in the bar had all come forwards, interested by Quarta’s proposition. He’d proposed that they touch her hand, and see what happened next.

He hated presenting Prota like she was a freak in a circus show, but this would be good in two ways. One, it was practice for her one someone other than Quarta. The customers might die but he wasn’t really all that concerned about that. The other was that if they lived, rumours would spread.

The rumours, as far as Quarta planned, would go either one of two ways: the demon girl wasn’t really so demonic after all, or the girl staying with Quarta wasn’t the demon girl at all. Preferably it would go the second route, but he didn’t think it would be as easy as that. More likely the public would hopefully generally start to accept her. He was sure there would always be some who would never accept it, but it would make travelling in public easier.

“Oy, Q- Quarta. Y- you sure about this?” Harold said uneasily.

“Yeah. You want me to show you?” He took her hand, which she now gave with relatively little hesitation. She knew in her mind that touching him wouldn’t kill him but out of habit it was still hard.

“H-hey! He’s not dead!” one of the other regulars exclaimed.

“Yeah, but the guy’s always kinda weird. You guys ever notice how he looks like he’s been seventeen for, like, five years straight or something?”

“Yeah, he wears the same set of clothes every day, too.”

Quarta turned to them with a dangerous smile. “Hey, shut up.”

The other two shut up.

Harold was still hesitant, wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead.

“Ok, man, I’m trusting you,” he said, shaking as he reached out. “If I die, this is on you, ok?”

Prota pulled back, but John looked at her.

“It’s ok. It’s fine.”

Trembling, she reached out and touched the man’s shaking hand. One second passed. Then another. Then another.

“...hey,” Harold said quietly. “I- nothing happened?”

“Oi, you’re still alive!” another of the regulars said, clapping him on the back. Prota quickly retracted her hand.

“Hey, maybe she’s not really demonic after all!” Harold exclaimed, then remembered who he was in front of. “Uh, sorry, no offence.”

Quarta was so ecstatic he didn’t even get mad. “It’s fine. She’s just a normal girl, right?”

“Hey, let me try!”

“No, me!”

Prota started trembling at all the people around her. Thankfully, Quarta came to her protection.

“Guys, guys, stop. She’s six, ok? You sound like child predators right now. That’s pretty messed up.”

“...” The men looked down in embarrassment, but this was a great victory for Quarta.

“Alright, alright, get outta here,” Quarta said, shooing them away. The bell rang as they all left the bar, leaving behind tips.

“All right,” Quarta smiled. “We’ll give it a week or two. Then…”

“Where to next?”

~~~

Unfortunately, things weren’t as up as Quarta imagined them to be. The drunkard they’d met earlier still couldn’t get the feelings of humiliation out of his system and went to the church.

“That man,” he gasped. “He is sheltering the demon girl.”

“...demon, you say,” the head priest said thoughtfully, stroking his beard.

“Yes! She’s a demon!”

“...very well. We shall look into it.”