Chapter 137 – Getting back on time.

John fell. The tear had been inconveniently located five metres above the ground, which guaranteed his unexpecting ass a painful landing. The impact robbed him of a bit of HP and left him feeling universally exhausted. The creation of the second ring had diminished his health by a fair margin, but it was really the events of the day all around that had him feel well and truly tired.

Hasty footsteps informed him of someone behind him. He turned around just in time to see Aclysia descend on him, her warm arms embracing him. “Master, you are back!” she exclaimed. Her pale face and white hair was in stark difference to the night sky behind her.

“Yeah,” John responded weekly, not really having the energy to do more than weekly pat the back of her head. Connections with his other elementals snapped back into place, letting waves of worry flow into him that felt inappropriately intense. He felt that it had been about a day, but judging by the fact that it was still night, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours at most.

 “You get back just in time, I was about to contact my employer,” Magoi, who was decidedly not looking in John’s direction, said.

“Can you tell us what happened, Master?” Aclysia asked while keeping him close. John was still mildly confused but relayed the whole story of what had transpired. Salamander flew around uncaring for the most of it but showed off her new form to Sylph when asked. That sent the little air elemental into a wild ramble.

“That is like, so unfair. Like, I can’t even. O – M – M. So unfair. I wanna be big too and I don’t need giant tits like you, I just need to be big, then you even fucked him, I wanna do that, I WANNA DO THAAAAAAAAAAAT, Sally, you are so mean! You mea…” There was a fireball that barely missed Sylph “The fuck did you just call me?!” Salamander wanted to know. “What? You don’t like Sally? I also have Sal, Salma, Salda, Zelda, Mandy and Lamany, last one I like ‘cause it sounds like lemon-y and your mood is always so sour!” Sylph dodged the next fireball too, this time with more ease, the air elemental maybe wasn’t the smartest one around but she still was way too fast for anyone else.

“I will set the sky aflame if that is what needs to happen!” Salamander cried out, transformed back into her smaller form and set after Sylph, who was doing loops in the air. A green and a red dash respectively, they spiralled through the air.

“I have a question,” Magoi said, “You say you were abducted by Nathalia, correct?”

“Yes,” John answered.

“Okay, once this is over I will cut all ties with you,” Magoi decidedly stated, “I ask for your understanding.”

“Wait, why?” John was confused.

“I am not going to get on Romulus' bad side and she definitely is, so I am going to stay as far away from her as possible,” Magoi explained.

“What did she do?”

“She burnt Pompeii, an act you should read about on your own, it is too complicated to explain. Now, for a question on my end: how did she get in here? This barrier is untraceable by outside means, I thought it was just a random god jumping around. Obviously, this was not the case.” In the sockets of the raptor mask, eyes glared inquisitively. “There’re only two options here. Either I screwed up or there’s something I did not know about. Which one is it?”

“Ehm, Aclysia ate one of her scales, she probably used that to find us?”

Magoi’s head subtly moved to Aclysia for a split second, before snapping back. “So you had a beacon for her… then this is decidedly not my fault. You will not be reimbursed for the week you just lost.”

“I did what?!” John shouted and looked at Aclysia, who was still holding him closely. Now she outright nuzzled up against him, hiding her face in the curve of his neck.

“Master, I was so lonely,” she sobbed quietly. The misery he felt at those sounds painted over any surprise or anger.

Nathalia had whisked him away to her so-called Sanctum and because that space was only connected to this one, not actually part of it, the time dilation had no effect there. With ash covering the sky he had no way to confirm what time it was and as the day passed by, him being busy training and fucking, Aclysia had to wait an entire week for his return inside her slowed time.

The other girls, the elementals, had been worried about him but at least they also had a connection to the rest of the world. They could just be happy with what they were, Gnome laying on the plain, Sylph soaring through the skies and Undine just losing herself in the bathtub. Even as their intellect grew, elementals were fundamentally simple creatures. Aclysia’s entire routine was gone with him. All she could do was clean an empty house and wait.

While stroking through her hair, John sought eye contact with Magoi. Before a question could be uttered, the Fateweaver laid down the situation. “According to page 67, paragraph 7 of the Fateweaver service agreement the Fateweaver, being me, has no obligation to refund anything if a higher power, being Nathalia, is invited by the contractor, being you, without the Fateweaver’s knowledge and obstructs the scheduled program. Invitations are defined as a multitude of things, one of which is beacon setting.” Magoi took a deep breath, “To put it bluntly, you just lost six days, let this be a lesson in how to fulfil your end of a bargain,” the Fateweaver turned heel and quickly walked away. It seemed like he truly didn’t plan to stay around John more than necessary now.

‘That’s bad,’ John thought, he really didn’t want Magoi to be at odds with him. That just sounded like a recipe for trouble. Nothing he could do about it now however, as the Fateweaver locked the door to his copy of the house behind him.

With nothing else to be done, John whispered, “Let’s get inside.” Aclysia wasn’t hearing him, she was still quietly sobbing, and nuzzling against him.

‘Don’t do this to me again, Master,’ she begged, filling his thoughts as her body was too busy crying to speak, ‘Please, never.’

‘I promise,’ John sent back and after a few more minutes of reassuring her they finally moved into the house.

Aclysia recovered quickly once he was inside again, returned to purpose. She vanished in the kitchen while he went to get something to wear. ‘A shame that I fed the enchanted pants to Aclysia,’ John thought as he got into his mundane clothes. The item he would miss the most of the things that Nathalia had destroyed would be the Earthen Shirt. Sure it was a short-lived possession, but he so rarely got useful gear that this really stung. Weapons, rings and necklaces, stuff like that dropped in masses but for the other slots he rarely got anything.

When he got back down, wearing comfy black pants, blue socks and a plain t-shirt, he felt decidedly better. He even heard Aclysia humming something in the kitchen. When she returned to the table she had prepared a piece of bread. “I am sorry, everything else spoiled,” she apologized.

“No problem,” John said, he was famished and would eat just about anything. “We have anything left to drink?” “Water or orange juice, master.” “I’ll take the latter.” Following his instructions Aclysia quickly walked to the kitchen again.

John started eating when a blue mass wobbled into the chair to his right side and took the appearance of a girl. Undine stared at him. ‘Welcome home,’ she communicated in her musical voice.

John smiled after gulping down the food. ‘Thanks, how are you doing?’ he asked, he was happy that Undine talked to him on her own, it meant that she was slowly warming up to him again. As her answer Undine sent him a picture of the bathtub, the feeling of water running through her body in an endless stream, cleansing her. ‘You do look shinier than before,’ John commented, causing Undine to send him a happy little melody. He mentally instructed Aclysia to get a glass of water as well.

John felt a tug at his left sleeve and turned in the chair. Gnome was standing there, quickly retracting her hand as she blushed. Feeling her summoner’s gaze for the first time in a week was somehow incredibly embarrassing. It could have to do with the fact that John was a pervert. She averted her eyes for a moment but then clearly looked at him, blushing even harder, her whole face turning from pale white to beet red. “W-w-w-ww-w-welcome back!” she finally got out and kissed him on the mouth. It lasted for two seconds, then she pulled back with enough force to stumble over a chair behind her.

Eyes spinning, she remained on the floor. When she recovered, she followed John’s gaze down to her skirt and to her clearly displayed, naked crotch.

“Ah!” she quickly pushed her skirt down, “I, later, see, you, I, maybe, ehm…You didn’t see nothing!” she exclaimed.

“Right, I did see something,” John answered in an amused tone. Gnome froze for a moment, then she started to stammer more excuses. He just stated, “You got some bread there,” and picked it from near her lips where her clumsy gesture of affection earlier had left it.

Gnome’s twin tails developed a life on their own, weaved around her head and hid her face from him. They didn’t muffle the “Uwuwuwuwu,” sound she was making.

“Ahahaha, still the same frustrating piece of work,” Salamander said and landed on the fallen chair, dangling her crossed legs from the edge while she clicked her tongue. “See, if I were you I would just say, ‘Yo, John, let’s fuck later,’ speaking of that Yo, John, you brat, let’s fuck later.”

“I feel that adding an insult there was unnecessary,” John said.

“Yeah, SALLY!” Sylph, who suddenly appeared behind Salamander said. Now that he saw them side by side, it was evident how much Salamander had physically grown. Sylph was still just thumb sized and she greatly lamented that fact. “I mean, if I could, which I can’t because I am tiny, I would be much nicer to John when asking him to put his penis into me!” she exclaimed. Salamander tried to smack her over the head but Sylph quickly ducked away and appeared at her other side again. “Speaking of which, Johnny,”

“That is not his name you know?” Salamander interjected

“It’s not? Ehm, Jonathan!”

“No.”

“Juan.”

“Does he look Spanish?”

“Jane!”

“That’s his girlfriend.”

“Joon.”

“Close.”

“Jezus?”

“That is a holy man.”

“Alexander?”

“HOW?!”

“Johnnie Gat?”

“Saint’s Row, stop rummaging in his memories so much.”

“How do you know it then?”

“Cause you never stop talking about him and that other video game character called Pacman.”

“Wacka-Wacka-Wacka-Wacka!”

“Exactly, now what is our summoner's name?”

“John, silly, how did you even forget that? Silly Sally, you are so stupid.”

“I WILL FRY YOU INSIDE OUT!”

Salamander launched a miniature fireball. With a double pirouette, Sylph dodged, and stopped under the ceiling.

“How I loathe that you are the fastest of us,” Salamander growled, causing Sylph to let out a triumphant laugh.

“You will never catch me!” and then she flew over to John, “Hey, Hey, listen!” she said, giving John a slight headache in the process, “Can I maybe have a gummy-bear? I wanna try one!”

“Ehm,” John was fairly certain giving Sylph sugar was one of the worst ideas one could have, but the little elemental looked so pleading he could barely resist. ‘Do we have gummy-bears?’ he asked Aclysia.

‘We do not,’ came the answer, giving John an easy out.

“Sorry, can’t, we don’t have any.”

“Nuuuuuuh,” Sylph sniffed, “Promise me I will get a gummy-bear when I become this Tier 2 thing. Promise, promise, promise, promise, promiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii….” A high-pitched tone was filling the room as Sylph stretched the ‘I’ to infinity. With any other person he could have waited until they went out of breath but Sylph didn’t need to breathe, she was her own air.

“Okay, okay, I promise!” John almost shouted to overcome her permanent noise.

Stopping, Sylph victoriously put her hands on her hips, “Haha, see my superior negotiation skills!”

“”Whatever Sylph,”” everyone said as one.

Aclysia finally returned from the kitchen as John finished his bread. Normalcy was setting in. Which meant that it was time to deal with what he had lost and gained.