by D. Levesque
“Yeah, and that is where I am the one who is the jerk. The idea of you being with someone else makes me upset,” I tell Leeha, blushing at my insecurities. “I mean, I know I should share you, as it’s the normal thing in this world, but the idea makes me want to punch that person in the face.”
Leeha comes up to me, presses her breasts against mine, and puts her hand on my cheek, gazing up at me. “Alex. Until I met you, I always wanted two husbands and maybe a wife. But now, as I told you the other night, I only want to be with you. If you do not wish to share me with another man, you do not need to,” she says softly.
I look down at her, and I am still amazed at how beautiful she is. How other humans find her revolting is beyond me. Even Maxil is gorgeous. All the Elves last night who were aiming their bows at me were all the same. I didn’t see one ugly Elf. Yet when I was in the city of Lomar, I saw many ugly people. Some from hardship, some not.
“You truly don’t mind?” I ask her softly, tucking a stray hair back over her ear.
“No, I do not. I already know from talking to you whenever I mention the other races that your pupils widen in excitement,” she says with a laugh. “But,” and she starts to poke my chest with her finger, “I decide who comes into our bed.”
“Our bed?” I ask her, puzzled.
“Of course, you don’t think I will let you have all the fun, do you? I mean, I know you will want some alone time with them, but if they stay on longer, as wives, I will want them too,” she says with a grin.
“Wait, you’re bisexual?” I ask her, with both my eyebrows raised.
“What’s that?” she says, and that is when I notice that it came out as English.
“It’s a word on my world that means someone enjoys sex with both males and females,” I explain.
“Ah, we don’t have a word for that here, at least not amongst us Elves, as it’s normal. I don’t know what the human word for it is on this world, but I do know their idea of marriage is with one person, and it’s always one male and one female,” Leeha says, nodding. “But, shall we go see how my brother is doing now?”
“Yes,” I tell her. I was getting distracted by her body and the topic. I look over at Bridget, and she has a smile on her face. “What should I know about this healing?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. Give me a second,” Bridget says, and she closes her eyes.
I take the opportunity to look at her more closely now, and I see that she has some freckles on her face, even on her cute nose. The top she is wearing is stretched tight, as Bridget is much bigger in the bust than Lahana is, and her nipples are poking through. Not that Lahana lacks in that department. I definitely know where Leeha gets it from.
“Right,” she says, opening her eyes. “It seems that you just need to place your hand over the injury, and I do the rest by controlling which Element will be used, but I use your energy points to heal.”
“Is the amount of energy used dependent on the injury?” Leeha asks.
Actually that’s a good question. I never thought of that. I wonder if healing a scab is the same as healing, say, a broken arm or large open wound. Hell, can I cure diseases?
“Yes. Minor injuries will only use a small amount,” Bridget says, nodding at Leeha, respectfully. Nice question, Leeha! “A large one such as, say, an open wound, will use more as it not only requires repairing the opening but also kills off something that is called germs.” Again, germs is said in English. Turning to me, she asks, “What’s a germ?”
“Well, it’s a word from my world, I can tell you that much. You don’t know about little things in your body that make you sick?” I ask, surprised. I look over at Leeha, Lahana, and Maxil, and they are all shaking their heads.
“Seriously? Wow. Where do I start? So, when you get a cut, you get an infection, right?” I ask around. At everyone’s nod, I ask, “What causes that infection?”
Everyone looks at each other, unsure. “Is it because you have an injury?” Leeha asks with a frown.
“Ah, but something is causing it, right? What is causing it is something that is so small you cannot see it with your eyes. On my world it’s called a germ. It causes the body to get sick. Do you have things like diseases or plagues here?”
“Yes, though the last plague was a long time ago,” Maxil says.
Nodding to him, I say, “Well, a germ causes plagues and diseases. When someone is healthy, the body is able to fight it off, but if they are sick or injured, it’s harder. Take, for example, Marken’s hand. If it’s left to fester, the germs will cause an infection, and he can actually lose his hand, or even worse, it can cause fever in him, and he can die.”
Leeha grabs my arm forcefully and says, “Then you need to heal him, Alex. He might be annoying at times, but he is my little brother.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, putting a hand over hers. “I will try to heal Marken with the help of Bridget.”
“Yes, we will!” Bridget cries, jumping up into the air and pumping her fist.
I look at her oddly and ask her, “Are you sure you’ve never lived a life?”
She looks at me and blushes. “As I said, I have the experiences without the contexts. That just felt like the right thing to do. Was it wrong?”
“No,” Leeha says, laughing and hugging her close. “That was the exact right thing to do.”
Watching them both, I can’t help but notice that their two large chests are squished together, and in my eyes, that is a beautiful thing to see and puts a grin on my face.
Leeha looks over and sees my grin, and she throws a kiss my way as if to say soon. Bridget, on seeing what Leeha did and probably guessing at the reason, blushes. Who knew that an Elemental could blush?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Once we are all gathered around Marken, we see that he is still sweating heavily, and his breathing is labored.
“Shit,” I say, crouching down next to him quickly. I put my hand on his forehead, and he is burning up. “Crap, let’s hope we aren’t too late. He is already burning up.”
Marken has his hand tucked into his stomach. I slowly pull it away from his body and even out cold, he is trying to fight me. Once I do, I turn the hand over, and I hear gasps from behind me. The hand is swollen to twice its normal size and some of the blisters have opened up. Shit, I can see dirt in them.
“Fucking hell,” I say. Turning to Lahana, I say to her quickly, “I need hot water. Not too hot. Can you use your magic to heat water to just above room temperature? I need to clean his wounds. I also need a large bowl to pour the water out of—” but I stop as I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look up and it’s Bridget.
“Alex, you can use your magic for that. Or me. What are you trying to do?” she asks me.
“I want to sluice water over his hand, so that I can clean it from the debris that is there. I know we can heal him, but it might be a good idea to clean the wound first. Maybe, I don’t know, it’ll use less of my power?”
“Then call up what you need using your words,” Bridget says reassuringly.
I nod, close my eyes, and take a deep breath, and imagine what I want. Once I think I know, I say, “Earth, Fire, Water. Oh, and just in case, Mind.”
Then, I say, “Water, use Fire to heat up to just above the temperature of the surrounding area and then run over his hand. Earth, absorb the water and purify it before running it over his hand again. Mind, put him into a deep sleep.”
You have used a Spell command. You have used 1,000 points of power.
Bridget, who was standing next to me, is suddenly gone, but in her place is a fountain pouring water into a small Fire Elemental globe and then gently pouring over Marken’s hand. The water then hits the ground but gets absorbed before it can splash him, even though Marken is still on the sleeping mat, as we had not felt comfortable moving him to the area with the packed earth.
Suddenly, another water line flows from the ground and connects to the water fountain, but its introduction makes me jerk in surprise as it c
omes from over my shoulder.
“Do not worry, Alex. That is me re-feeding the water through the dirt as you wanted, to be purified through the earth. How did you know to do that?” Bridget says in my head.
“I figured we could use the earth as a filter. I am glad it worked, since we need pure water for this,” I tell her.
“Well, because it is going through Earth magic, it’s as pure as can be,” she says proudly.
I look at Marken’s hand and see that the dirt is starting to clear from the open blisters. Once it’s all gone, Bridget speaks before I can say anything.
“Now is the part that we need to do together, Alex,” she says cautiously. “I have not done this before, but I have the knowledge. Start by putting your hand over Marken’s hand. Then you need to call up the energy in your body to heal. Though, I don’t have a trigger word for you to use. Can you think of one in your language?”
I have a thought, but it cannot be that fucking easy, can it? I put my hand over Marken’s and I take a deep breath, since I have no clue what this will feel like. Bracing myself, I whisper, “Heal.”
I feel an almost ripping sensation inside me, causing me intense pain, and I almost fall over, but Leeha is there to keep me up. The pain leaves me just as quickly as it arrived.
“Alex!” Leeha screams.
“I’m good,” I tell her, keeping my focus on Marken’s hand. I can see a green energy flow going between the palm of my hand and his.
You are healing your target. Time to fully heal, 00:00:10:00.
“It says it will take ten minutes to heal him,” I say out loud.
“You’re doing good,” Bridget says. “What you felt was one of those energy balls in your body opening up for the first time. Sorry I didn’t warn you,” she says gloomily. “I didn’t know.”
“No worries. But fucking hell, that hurt. Will it be like that each time I heal?” I ask Bridget.
“No. Though I think it will be each time you open another one of those. The bigger the heal you do, the bigger the energy it needs, so that means-”
“The more energy balls that will open,” I tell her with an internal sigh.
I decide to make myself more comfortable, since if I stay on my knees for ten minutes, I know I will hurt. This might be a new body, but that’s still a painful stance. I re-adjust myself without moving my hand from over Marken’s. Once I’m sitting, I put his hand in my lap, with my arm resting on my knee and my hand over his. I look up to see how everyone else is, and they are all watching me raptly as I heal Marken.
“Can I get you anything, Alex?” Leeha asks me worriedly.
“No, I just need to get more comfortable if I am going to be doing this for ten minutes,” I tell her with a thankful smile.
“Look!” Lahana shouts suddenly, pointing down at Marken’s hand.
I look down quickly, expecting it to be trouble, but instead, I see why she shouted. There is visual evidence that it’s working! The hand is no longer as puffy, and I can see the swelling going down. The blisters are also not as caked with the yellow puss and infection as they were earlier. Even as we keep watching, we can see the blisters start to heal over and close up.
“That is just amazing,” Maxil says softly.
“It is, isn’t it?” I say, looking up at him. “In my world, for us to heal what has happened to Marken would take months of therapy. Sorry, it seems it’s another word from my world. Months to heal with help. If left on its own, I think the infection in his body would have killed him. I honestly do not wish to do this to anyone ever again,” I say with a sigh.
Leeha comes up behind me and puts her arms around my neck, kissing me on the side of my neck. “I am glad you were able to heal him, Alex,” she says softly in my ear.
Then I hear Bridget say quietly, “You can stop healing him now, Alex.”
I glance back down and see that Marken’s hand is now healed completely, so I close my hand into a fist, and the green light stops. Without warning, I feel a massive pain at the top of my head.
You have healed Marken.
You have broken through your first of seven points of energy.
You have received 1 Heavenly Token
Heavenly Tokens: 9 of 200.
“Alex!” Leeha shouts as I end up falling forward on top of Marken, who is thankfully still out cold.
“Sorry, Alex!” cries the voice of Bridget from above me. “I tried to reduce the pain, but I wasn’t expecting it to enter you that fast.”
I feel a soft, warm hand on my forehead, and the pain eases off enough for me to focus. The pain that had hit me was so bad that it almost blinded me. Easing myself off Marken slowly so that I don’t hurt him, I sit up and look at Bridget.
“What was that?” I groan.
“That was feedback from breaking open one of your seven energy points,” Bridget says uneasily. “I wasn’t aware it would do that ‘til after you were done healing and I stopped the flow of energy. I tried to catch it, but it was like trying to grab something slippery and wet,” she says with a pout. “I am sorry, Alex.”
“It’s all good. But will that happen each time I break open one of those energy points?”
“There is something odd about those energy points, though,” Bridget says instead of answering me. She kneels in front of me, places one of her hands on my forehead again, and closes her eyes.
With Bridget kneeling in front of me like that, her bountiful breasts are right there, and I want nothing more than to reach out and caress them again. It felt nice this morning, waking with my hand cupped around one of them. I hear a snicker next to me, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Leeha with a grin on her face as she shakes her head at me. I can’t help but grin as well.
“Can’t help it,” I whisper.
Suddenly I feel a warmth throughout my body, almost as if a pain that I didn’t know was there is now gone. I glance back at Bridget, and her eyes are open.
“What was that?” I ask her, pleasantly surprised at feeling so much better.
“I healed you,” she says smugly.
“What? Did you use my own energy?”
“Yep!” she says. “As I am your Elemental and I am the one that controls the flow of your healing power, all I did was reverse the flow. It looks like when you open one of your energy balls, it causes some mild damage. But what’s odd is, the energy from that ball-”
“Is it just called a ball?” I ask, interrupting her. “Can we call it a Chakra at least? At least then I will know what you are talking about?”
“Well,” she says, frowning. She puts her soft hand back on my forehead and suddenly I get a message in my head.
You have broken through your first of seven Chakras.
“Oh! I got a message that said it was now called a Chakra!” I tell her with a grin. “Now, you were saying something odd about my energy from my Chakra?”
Bridget nods, sitting back on her heels. “Yes. The energy is somehow slowly seeping into your body.”
“What?” I ask her worriedly. “Is that bad?”
“Is Alex going to be all right?” Leeha asks Bridget, sounding just as worried as me.
“He should be. What I mean is that the energy that is seeping into him is changing him, on a level I cannot see.”
“On a genetic level?” I say, but the word comes out in English.
“What’s that?” Bridget asks me curiously.
“So, wow. Where do I start? So, we are all made of smaller parts of us. So small that we cannot see them, but trust me, they are there,” I say as everyone starts to look at me oddly.
“So, an example is your blood. In your blood are small things that keep you alive. Well, they are alive as much as you and me. God,” I say, laughing out loud at the faces they are making towards me. “Trust me. On my world, we have seen them. We know about them. So what you are saying, Bridget, is it’s changing me on a level you cannot see? I would say it’s on that level. The genetic level.”
Bridget looks at me s
uspiciously, as if I am lying. “It’s true!” I tell her with a grin.
“Anyhow,” she says, continuing on but still looking at me like I am bullshitting her, “the Chakras, as they are now called, are leeching energy into your body, so I’m not sure of the changes that will cause.”
Shit, well let’s hope it’s not radiation poisoning or something like that. But I doubt God would do that to me. Oh, here Alex, have a new life, and you can heal other people. But you will die from radiation poisoning.
“Can we try to wake up my brother?” Leeha asks me, concern for her brother in her tone.
“Of course,” I tell her reassuringly.
Since I am already sitting down next to him, I put my hand over him and say, “Mind. Wake up.”
Marken had been lying on his side, but suddenly he groans, not in pain, but more like someone who is getting up from a deep sleep and is about to stretch. He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is me sitting next to him, with Bridget still sitting on her heels in front of me.
Without moving, he says, “Hi?”
“Hey. How are you feeling?” I ask him with a smile.
“Good,” he says, skeptically. But then his eyes open wide and he sits up quickly, bringing his hand up to his face. On seeing that it’s not blistered and red, and realizing that he is not in pain, he looks shocked. He looks back at me and says, “How? What I remember is being in so much pain because of my hand. How is it gone?”
Leeha is the one who answers. “You can thank Alex for that, you idiot,” she says, but there is a grin on her face. “Not only did he give you magic, but he also healed you as well.”
“I caused the pain in the first place,” I say, glancing up at her.
“But that is because you didn’t know,” she responds.
“Magic!” Marken cries, getting up on his knees and looking at his now uninjured hand. He looks at me, and so I nod at him to go ahead and try. He takes a deep breath and then says, “Fire,” and in his hand appears a rotating globe of Fire—a Fire Elemental.
Marken begins to cry as he looks at his Fire Elemental. Leeha puts a hand on my shoulder, and as I look up at her, she nods towards the exit. Understanding that right now might be a good time to go outside, I nod. Standing up, I take Bridget’s hand and help her up as well. I nod to Maxil, who is standing over Lahana, who had gone to comfort her new mage son. Maxil nods back and mouths, “Thank you.”
