My Journey with the Demon King

16 - Practicing Magic

The next morning dawned with me feeling...strange. My mind felt incredibly sluggish and dim, but my body was as just as refreshed as I would expect from a good night's sleep. My only guess was that I was completely and mentally drained.

Zane muttered that it might be the price of how much magic I had accidentally used. He also wondered if it might be a effect of having my mind merged with his own.

This state lasted for three full days. I was so slow, in fact, that the only thing I could really do was sit in my seat of the car and stare straight ahead. Zane was torn between anger and worry. I couldn't blame him. I felt the same way.

"Please," he murmured softly, on the second day, driving down the road. "Don't do that again, if you can help it. And do everything you can to help it. Honestly, I don't think it would be a good idea for you to ever...'time-travel' again."

It took me nearly five minutes to be able to completely understand, digest, and process what he had said. That's how bad my mind had become. Everything around me felt incredibly slow but impossibly fast at the same time. "Yes...I'll do my...best."

On the fourth morning I woke up feeling normal. It was such a relief that I began to laugh. Zane turned on the bed, quickly waking up at the sound of my laughter. It was the first time I had done so in three days. I smiled at him and he silently pulled me into a crushing hug. "Thank the gods."

I nodded, hugging him back. "I'm sorry I scared you. I scared myself."

Ten minutes later I was making a quick breakfast, Zane pacing behind me, muttering to himself. I waited until the food was done before speaking. "Hungry?" At the quick jerk of his head, I turned back to my meal, sitting down in one of the armchairs that had been placed a short distance from the hearth. He was still pacing as I stared up at him, eating.

If he started out as a normal human...How, exactly, did he get to the point that his normal body movements and needs are so different from a average human? There is magic, yes...But what did he have to do to make it so that he rarely had to eat or drink anymore, besides his super-human strength, speed, and hearing?

Zane paused mid-pace. "Magic is capable of anything. All you have to do is adjust your mindset, perspective, and have the strength of will to bend it as you see fit." I hadn't physically asked a question. I opened my mouth to do so, but he sighed. "Link," he muttered.

I nodded, swallowing back a drink of water. "So, what has you so...agitated this morning?"

He stopped, turning to face me head-on. "I'm feeling something's wrong," his voice trailed off.

"Wrong?" I repeated, feeling a thread of worry.

He began pacing again. I finished off my meal, rising to my feet to begin cleaning up. "Link," he muttered. "Link..."

Nearly fifteen minutes later, after I had cleaned everything up and was sitting back down in the armchair, he finally stopped pacing. "Shit!" he growled. "The link."

I blinked up at him uncertainly. "That doesn't sound good."

He shifted his gaze back to me. "It's not. It really isn't. There...there's a lot of stuff going on and I'm not completely sure what it is or what's causing it. This is rare for me and I don't think I like it. But, I do know that part of the problem is our link."

I paled. "Are you saying...Zane, you can't...cut it." My voice fell to a faint whisper of pain. The idea that he might...It was too much for my heart to handle.

His eyes were hot with rage as they glared down at me. "I would never!" he hissed. "Besides, as I said before, it is irreversible. Even if I wanted to, and I would never want to, I cannot destroy the link. I spoke the words and words are as much a thing of magic as anything else I can do. In fact, they are one of the more powerful forms of magic. Everyone else seems to forget that..."