Chapter 18 – I love you, let’s meet up again, let me tell you how much I love you
637 3 31
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

I’m not sure exactly how it worked, but I actually woke up once I decided I did not want to dream anymore. This was a very weird experience, though not in a bad way… To think that even something as disgusting as Nyllia’s Tower would bring me some inspiration is pretty surprising.

In any case, I should hurry, today is the last day of free food I have, so I ought to get everything done right away, or I’ll start wasting precious time foraging for food in the woods when I could be going after Iris instead.

Luckily, it was still early in the morning, so I quickly ate, bathed and set out to prepare for my journey to Iris’ homeland.

The first place I went to was the Heroes’ Guild, Thalia seemed pretty surprised to see me, but I pretended to not notice. Instead, I immediately greeted her and asked if anyone in the guild was specialized in fire magic. She said there was someone, but they happened to be dead asleep within the tavern right now… Why do those heroes drink in the morning? Don’t they have anything better to do?

I sighed and went after this person anyways, since I needed some help coming up with the enchantment. I asked Pierre, the bartender, about who was the fire specialist, and he pointed to a young woman in witch’s clothes that wore an eye patch… I wanted to say she didn’t look like a heroine, but again, I don’t either, so I better not judge. Let’s just be happy I’m not the only heroine in this guild, even if this might be my last day working here.

I approached the sleeping woman, shook her up and called her out a few times, but she seemed dead asleep… This would usually mean I’d have to wait until she woke up naturally, but I was in a hurry, so I shouted her ear, which caused a startled reaction from her that was pretty funny. She then looked at me for a while, got bright eyed, held my hands and started preaching about the holy church of explosions… Well, she is a big weirdo, but if her explosions are half as big as what the tales she was preaching about told me, then she’d be a big help.

I cut her midway and explained that I needed help with fire magic actually. What I needed were clothes with an enchantment that was good enough to protect me against the flames of the Fire Realm, I had a good idea of how to make the glyphs for that, but I needed someone that was more powerful than me to imbue the glyphs with mana, as I would quickly run out if I was powering them on my own.

She didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the idea of protecting someone from fire instead of burning them down though, which made me wonder how is a pyromaniac part of a heroes’ guild… Nonetheless I had to make a deal with her to get her help. She wasn’t interested in money nor material things, which I was thankful for as I was short on both. Instead, we settled on me listening her preaching about the glory of explosions for a day in exchange for her help… The scheduled day was after I got back from the fire realm though, since I was in a hurry. I’m not sure if I’ll follow up on my end of this deal, but for now, I was happy with her help.

It took a few hours to enchant one of my spare sets of clothing with the protection I needed, the explosion maniac seemed bored out of her mind, but I was actually having fun. It was obviously much more fun with Iris, but there was a certain charm in making enchantments… Also, I could distract myself with the whole enchanting process, it was easier to deal with the wait to meet up with Iris again if I didn’t give it too much thought.

Once we were done, I headed out of the city and flew around the forest, searching for some edible seeds that could endure intense heat. I didn’t know many of them, but Iris had told me about a few, so I went after those. It took me a few more hours to get enough of them.

After that I took a nap to make sure I was well rested for the trip, ate my last free dinner at Shaina’s place, and then went to my room to prepare the portal. After making sure I had everything in order, was wearing the fire-resistant clothes and had the seeds within the dress’ pockets, I started drawing a glyph that would create a portal between both worlds. The concept wasn’t too hard to execute, I just had to do the reverse of what I usually did when summoning Iris. There were some complications regarding making something material immaterial while still retaining its properties, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

When the circle was done, I funneled my mana into it and asked for the Fire God’s blessing in my travels. Surprisingly, the portal opened right away, even though I was sure he’d be sick of me by now… I wonder if the god knows about the everyday life of the denizens of his plane and actually wanted Iris and me to make up. It would certainly be nice to have his blessing in our relationship, but not only I had no way of knowing that, but we also needed to have an actual functioning relationship before I could consider getting a blessing. So in order to achieve that relationship, even if it went back to our previous status, even if we did not became lovers… I stepped into the portal and entered the Fire Plane.

My first impression of this realm was that… It wasn’t a pretty place, rather, it was honestly disappointing. What I saw were barren flaming plains as far as the eye could see; there was hardly anything worth note in the surroundings. And it was hot, I knew it was going to be hot, but I was still surprised by how hot it was, I’m sure I’d be burning alive by now if I hadn’t taken enchanted clothes with me… Wait, why am I even thinking about the weather? I need to focus on finding Iris! Who cares if it’s hot or not?

How do I reach her though? Since this is an immaterial plane, maybe it will be easier to find her mana signature in here? It should be floating around after all… I closed my eyes and tried to sense it, but it was impossible. There was too much mana flowing around and it completely overwhelmed my senses. It would be completely impossible to find her through this.

What do I do now then? Walk around aimlessly? The portal was made with the same base circle as the one I usually made to summon Iris, so I must be close to her, but betting on the chance of finding her by walking without a specific destination in mind doesn’t seem very wise… But again, my time is limited and it would be pretty troublesome to come here again, I have no idea what kind of favor the pyromaniac girl would ask next time, not to mention I’d need to find a place to sleep and gather food… And I don’t want to wait even longer to find Iris! I need to find her now!

Alright. Let’s go forward and pray for the best! I came here looking this way, so Iris must be this way!

However, as I was about to start walking, I heard a scream. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” I covered my ears with my hands to try toning the noise down a bit… Dear gods, who did that? Can’t she see that my ears are sensitive!?

I didn’t have to wonder for long, as a small fairy collided with my belly at high speed flight, I winced in pain while she energetically flew around and then hugged my waist. She was about the same size as iris, but had bright orange hair up to her feet, she also seemed extremely energetic. “A newcomer! Who are you? Where did you come from!? You don’t seem from here! Are you a traveler? What did you come here for!?” She bombarded me with questions.

After recovering my balance, I slowly pushed her away with my fingers, I didn’t feel comfortable with having another fairy hugging me, I was meant only for Iris. “Calm down a bit, okay?” She nodded, but didn’t seem any calmer… “I’m Aria, and I’m…” I didn’t get any chance to continue, for she shouted again.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Dear gods, please warn me before you do that! I hurriedly covered my ears, but she flew around them while shouting, making it even worse on me. “You’re her! The catgirl! Iris’ girlfriend! I can’t believe you’re here! To think you came all the way here to meet her! She’ll be so happy, I can’t wait! I’ll take you there right now! Come on, come on!” The hyper fairy held my hand and started dragging me around, but I was totally lost here. It seems like she knows who I am, and while I felt happy being called Iris' girlfriend, I seriously doubt she introduced me like that… This crazy fairy does seems to know where Iris is though, so I believe it will be a good idea to follow her, even if I doubt that Iris will truly be happy about seeing me.

Still, if I can apologize, I’ll be fine… Just let me tell you my feelings for you one more time Iris, it’s all I ask… Let me love you with all my heart. Let me be with you once more, please…

I followed the super energetic fairy through the plains, as we walked however, I could notice there was a sharp pain running through my legs that steadily got worse with each step I took. This is strange, I don’t have a material body right now, so I believe I shouldn’t be able to feel body parts aching this easily. Is this also because I lost too much life force? In this case… It was truly a blessing to find this girl in my first trip here, for I don’t know how many times I’d be able to come here. Let’s make this voyage count.

It didn’t take too long to reach our goal… In the middle of a heavier-than-normal-for-our-surroundings’-standards concentration of flames, I saw Iris sunbathing… Or flamebathing I guess. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be blissfully enjoying the peaceful blazing hot environment around her. It was such a beautiful sight that I could stay all day looking at her and would not get tired of it.

Alas, all good things come to an end, though this time it was not for a bad cause… After all, my time is limited. The hyper energetic fairy flew towards Iris while shouting, “Iris! Iris! She’s here! She’s here!”

Iris opened one eye and replied with a somewhat annoyed tone, “Who is here, Freya?” Hearing her voice again made me jubilant, I couldn’t express how happy I was to see her again, it felt like a dream come true… No, it was a dream come true, I flew away from my home plane to find her, and here she was, right in front of me… I thought I had lost her forever, I thought I’d never see her again… And she was here, Iris was right here…

I started crying, the tears evaporated as soon as they left my eyes, but I was just so happy. I couldn’t stop myself… I didn’t try to hide them though, as long as Iris saw me, as long as I could talk to her again, nothing more would matter…

“Her!” Shouted the hyper-energetic-fairy-that-is-apparently-named-Freya as she pointed towards me. Iris looked with half an eye at first, but quickly opened both eyes wide when she saw me. She blinked a few times and then rubbed her eyes before looking at me again… She seemed to be in complete disbelief.

I wanted to run after her and hug her, I wanted to profess my love to Iris and wanted to apologize with all my heart… But my body didn’t move, the words got struck in my throat, I was finally here, I was finally right in front of Iris again, we could finally be together again… But I was so scared, I was scared of what she would say, I was scared of her, scared of the possibility of her running away from me, scared of her turning me down a final time… The fear froze me, and I could not do anything but watch, watch as my tears kept evaporating from my eyes, and Iris uttered a single word. “Aria…?” She asked.

I nodded many times and forced myself to make a reply, it was supposed to be meaningful, it was supposed to be special, it was supposed to be a show of my love for her… But my mind was blank, nothing came to me, and nothing came out of my throat either. I had to say something though, in my desperation, the only word that came out was… “Hi.”

31