The Wait is now over! Bwahaha! *Wipes away sweat and blood*

I have finally written back the buffer and boy...you won't believe what I got in store for you! hehehehe

As always all comments and questions are welcomed!

Chapter Twenty Five – Ruler of the Sky

*** Leo Cazador ***

“Look Papi,” Sophia pointed towards a speck far out in the distance excitedly. We were currently aboard one of the Flying Castle Class transports that were taking us towards the new continent. She had decided that it was a good time to use inhuman parkour skills to climb up the flag pole to get a better view. I have learned many new kinds of magic including flight magic, it had been so simple to fly that I had moped around for a week kicking my own self for being ridiculously dense that I had not seen the simple solution for flight. I had attempted using propulsion, gravity, magnetism, and even excessive wind magic to fly, eventually I came to the simple answer that was telekinesis. I willed mana like a vice for control and took control of my body’s mass flinging it about the air as I willed it, I could literally travel at speeds greater than sound considering my mana core’s nature. What Sophia had used to climb the pole had been essentially flight magic.

“I see it,” I gazed at the distant speck.

As we drew closer the details became more and more visible.

The Sebastopol Midway station was a massive flying fortress, it was mostly aluminum and lightweight steel reinforced with magic seals of extreme complexity. The station is a flat top that is one kilometer squared, the perfect landing platform for Flying Castle class vessels. It is supported by a mixture of one dozen twenty foot tall five foot wide vertically standing anti-gravity crystals and five massive helium blimps that are two hundred meters spherically. Atop this flat top are dozens of small buildings, both commercial and residential, the station was more of a flying town.

This was but one of the many of its kind, the Island Class sky ships.

We were now halfway to the new continent, Roya, and the Boraian colonies.

I looked up to Sophia, her white sundress was flitting about in the wind as she balanced on one foot using magnetic force and gravity on a subconscious level to remain unmoving.

“Come on down little on,” I said turning to look towards the restaurant whose deck we were using. My stomach was rumbling.

“Aww,” she leapt off the thirty foot high flagpole, some of the people watching her with concern gasped but were shocked in turn when she lightly landed on the deck floor and glided towards me as if the laws of gravity meant nothing to her. She has taken real well with flight magic, maybe it has something to do with her trauma and feeling free and untouchable. I dared not touch the subject, she has been recovering well, no point in making her take a step back in the wrong direction.

As she reached me her arms wrapped around mine parting away from me only after we reached our table and sat down to eat.

“I still don’t understand why you want to go there Papi,” she said as she dug into her plate of some Italian looking food made of noodles. “There is nothing you can learn there that you don’t already know.”

“Believe it or not I don’t know everything,” I said, playfully displaying false shock.

“Pssh!” she pursed her lips, a bad habit of mine she picked up. “Impossible.”

“Ha ha,” I said with a smirk. “I am actually quite curious at what I will find in the temple. It gets the explorer part of me excited.”

“Eww,” she shook her head giving me a playful reproachful glance. She often said I didn’t take the serious things seriously and the frivolous things not frivolously enough.

Her cheerful and expressive attitude suddenly turned meek and shy as a male waiter approached and asked if we needed anything else. I quickly politely dismissed him.

“He’s not going to bite,” I said after a moment with a grin plastered on my face.

She glared at me and pouted.

“I’m here and I’ll always be here,” I reassured her. I quickly ruffled her hair before she could react.

She pouted even more but I could tell her depressive mood was completely gone.

Her eyes shifted to the five rings on her hand.

She also now wears a silver ankle bracelet, it too is marked with symbols of the moon, and it is designed to keep males of any species with sentient levels of intelligence away from her. It has become a powerful tool in bringing her out of her trauma.

After eating we went to our small cabin room, we could have gotten a luxury room but I have never liked sleeping in large open rooms, instead I was satisfied with a simple room like everyone else. I guess I must say that it is also because the beds are too big, Sophia cannot sleep unless we are in some form in contact with each other, I tend to move around quite a bit as I sleep. A small bed is perfect as no matter how much I move it usually still leaves me in contact with her.

More often than not I find myself waking to find my arms around her and my body wrapped close to hers in a cuddle. Her small hands are always subconsciously griping my arm that wraps over her, her grip is always feasible but never so strong that I cannot peel away.

I was forced to sneak into Sophia’s room every night before we left for the new continent, Roya. I know very well that my sleeping in her room would cause quite a commotion and some drama that would have ruined Sophia’s recovery. Instead of worsening the situation for her I maneuvered things in such a way that I could always sneak into her room and sleep beside her without ever being discovered. One maid did actually discover me one day.

Needless to say I was decisive.

Black sorcery seals insured that she would never be able to speak about what she saw. While somewhat trivial in nature, after all I was just sleeping beside Sophia, if it came to light it could turn into a drama show that she might not be able to handle.

We worked on categorizing some research papers and notes until it was docking time.

On the midway station I showed her the lowest deck where one could feel the strong ocean breeze and hear the ocean waves. There was even a monitor that revealed the proximity of ocean life and its form, an underwater viewer that gave you a perfect image. That was actually a necessary system as the stations usually attained most of their sustainability resources from their surroundings, in this case the ocean and the fish within.

We spent the night on the station as the Flying Castle we were just on went back to its route leading to Boraia. The next ship would be arriving in two days, this one would take us to the buffer island and its newly erected sky dock before heading on towards the academy.

*** Sophia Cazaador ***

“Papi the brush is in the brown looking bag,” I said walking out in to the room after having had my shower. I dropped the towel covering my body and started looking for my change of clothes.

“La di da,” it was Papi’s echo, it always reminds me that he is there, he says it most often when there is a long silence drawn out between us.

I looked towards him as I pulled up my panties and drew on my night dress, it was what Papi called a long T-shirt, it was just a baggy dress that was just spaciously right for sleeping in. He was sifting through the brown bag I had pointed out and after a few seconds he drew out a hairbrush.

“Ok,” he said motioning for me to come closer with the brush.

I sat close to him, facing away, as he turned to face me and took my hair in his hands and started brushing away, it was our nightly ritual.

He brushed my hair as the silence between us slowly grew then prolonged into a comfortable sort of silence. I was completely drawn into the sensation of feeling his hand in my hair as the brush did its work until a sudden though occurred to me. It was one that constantly came to me when we are together but suddenly today I felt the need to ask it.

“Do you miss her?” I asked.

“Hnnn?” he asked.

“Her…”I left the explanation to the air and his mind.

“Ah…yes,” he replied. My heart stung a little, I don’t know why yet it did, but his voice continued. “I have known and watched over her as long as I have watched over you, you know? I will always think about her and watch over her just as I always think of you and watch over you. It would have been great for both of you to have gotten to know each other, but things worked out the way they did. If we do end up meeting her promise me that you will try and be friends with her.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

I couldn’t help feel that I was losing something by accepting her but I also wanted to do it because it was Papi who was asking me to do it.

“Ok,” I said leaning back. He wrapped his arms around me as I came into contact with his chest.

I could feel his lips press into my hair as tingles swept across my head where his lips met me.

He ruffled my hair after a moment and tossed the brush over to the pile of luggage packs that we hadn’t bothered unpacking as we would be leaving tomorrow or after tomorrow at the latest. With a thought I could feel the mana surge from his body and crush the light burning brightly in the crystals over us. He would rewrite the spells on them in the morning for sure.

I made my way over to the head of the bed and crawled under the covers in the dark as I felt Papi do the same.