Thanks as always to Lady_Sith with her editing work and advise. Thank you as well, to anyone who messaged me, to everyone who rates and favorites and all that good stuff. Love hearing from people reading my works, it truly means a lot to me.
Axle.
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Confucius was wrong. Patience isn't a virtue... It's a fucking torture technique.
Two days of waiting. Two days of staring at my cell phone waiting to see Evelyn's name pop up. Two days of doing nothing but that. My mind was dwelling on nothing but Victoria and getting her back. Besides bothering me, I couldn't even tell you what my pets had been up to these two days.
I could feel their presences before they made themselves known. Like me merely thinking of them caused them to appear. That could very well be the case; I wasn't sure how my enslavement of them actually worked. I didn't know anything about the long term.
Not back then.
"Mistress." Came the seductive tone of my omnibus. I tore my eyes away from my phone to look at her, and blinked in surprise. She donned her battle armor, a long thin sword resting on one hip. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Oaer, my angel, was dressed in her armor as well, but no flames sprouted from her wings nor halo over her head.
"Is there news?!" I asked, practically jumping up from my seat, reaching for my magic.
"No, mistress. Not yet." She said quickly, holding up her hand to stop me. I paused, narrowing my eyes.
To be honest, by this point, I had been on edge about everything. Victoria being gone did things to me that I hadn't expected. I know now it's our connection to each other as soul mates. "Then why are you here?" I said, louder than I truly needed too. "Why aren't you out there? Getting information, finding Victoria?!" They took it. They took my anger as I shouted at them. The three of them were calm and collected, letting me rant. I would be dead without the support of my pets.
"Mistress, you need to go do something. You are not the type to sit at home and mope." My omnibus said, I opened my mouth but she cut me off with a look. I felt my lips form a pout as I closed them. I was supposed to be the one in charge. "Our Dog will shadow Evelyn, and I have your enthralled slave shadowing the President. They have both agreed to keep us informed." I was about to say something else, another look, another pout. I'd take it out of her ass later, I sent her exactly that through our connection. She blinked at me, but smiled at it. "You are going to come with us." She finished, my angel nodding.
"Coming where?"
"Unimportant, my mistress." Oaer said to me, bowing her head. "I regret to announce, but we have come to agreement that this is nonnegotiable. The human, demon, and I have agreed you need to come. The human will contact you when the information comes."
I blinked at her, then at my Pet, then at my Dog. I was about to say something before the soft touch of my pet gripped my arm tight, then the world folded around us.
I loved being able to transport myself. It's not that it was easy, or that it rubbed against the sloth in me, it was just fun. The power you controlled was wonderful. When I was forced into it and I had no control, I did not like that. And I did NOT like this very much.
The first thing I noticed was the blinding sun, the burning heat, and exactly how dry it was. The saliva in my mouth was gone within a second of my feet hitting the sand. The wind, dry and burning like everything else, pelted at my skin hard enough that I had to squint my eyes or risk being blinded. I could make out very little in front of me, but the armor of my pets shined in the unforgiving sun.
"Where are we?!" I shouted out, the dust storm building around us.
"I believe you call it the Sahara Desert, mistress." Came the omnibus' voice in my head. I focused on the needle feeling in my mind to speak.
"Why are we here?"
"To train."
"I don't want to train!" I screamed, both in my head and outside. I was angry. Transporting back would be easy, but a part of me knew I needed this and needed to be here.
"Your anger will be the end of you and all of us Mistress. You need to control it. Fight us."
And then I saw something through the sand, a blast of fire coming towards me. I didn't have time to think, and I wasn't in the right mind to call upon my own magic. The fire hit me in my chest, forcing me flying backwards. That hurt... that hurt a lot. The flames licked across my skin and I cried out.
Another flash, and my Angel, burning wings and halo, was flying towards me. She had drawn her sword before diving towards me. Reaching out, my hand grasped the sand, my magic flowing through me performing an action I had done many times in my training with my Pet. A long thin sword formed in my grasped hand and I barely managed to deflect the angel's attack, right before another blast of flame hit me in my shoulder, forcing me to the ground.
Pain was a good motivator for getting angry. I felt my rage flare up as my teeth ground against the sand around me. I could feel the magic around us, the universe. It was teeming with possibilities. It would answer my call if I but whispered to it, and the world would bend around me. I realized at that moment that I could destroy the world if I wanted it.
I don't know what scared me most, the fact that I could very well possibly die here, or that the thought of blowing up the Earth was so close to the top of my mind.
"Mistress!" Came the demon's voice. "Mistress, control your anger! Anger is fire, it burns at everything, and destroys!"
Control fire? I yelled wordlessly into the ground. I needed to think. I needed to calm myself.
I needed this fucking storm to be over.
A part of me sensed my omnibus' pull on her demonic magic, not the human she stole, it was different. Demonic magic felt like it had some type of slime over it, and made you not want to use. Human magic was addictive, it felt like pleasure no matter what sin you coveted. The demon released it, and something covered my body. Something was poking at my sin; pain seared through my mind as I pulled at something, anything.
This storm was biting away at me as my pet's spell tore at me. I pulled at that magic I held, and the storm stopped. It simply ceased to exist. This was a large storm, spanning miles and miles, and I stopped it simply with a thought. It should have been impossible. That should have scared me, but at that particular point, it didn't.
I didn't know then, but there are rules about what we can do. Not rules placed there by the Council, but rules placed upon us by the universe and magic itself. Think of it like magical law. There is no higher order. Well, I rewrote the magical laws that day. I twisted them to my fit my will. I didn't stop there. There was still disgusting demonic magic boring into my being.
My hands grasped at my chest as I forced myself to my knees. I was unfamiliar with true demonic magic; I only knew vague notions from snippets of conversations with my pet. It worked differently than what I controlled, but not entirely alien. As I focused, I could sense it. I could feel the inner workings of it. I pulled and prodded at it. I let my anger pound away searching for a weak spot; searching for something I could extort to stop the pain. Something...
There...
A place where the magic weakened. The best comparison would be the knot on a circle of rope. Where the two ends met. I gathered my magic and hacked away. Pain, it took unbearably long to do what I needed while pain blinded my thoughts. Then I was free. Gasping in relief I fell back on the sand, breathing in the fresh air.
"Mistress! We aren't done!" My pet shouted.
I had one second to relax before I felt magic racing at me again, at the same time I could sense my angel speeding towards me. My mind worked and the anger welling up inside me. How dare they? I owned them! They're mine! Slapping my hands to my sides, I commanded the sand around me. It shot out of the ground, in pillars reaching to the clouds. I could hear whatever blast my omnibus threw at me, and the gasp from the angelic voice of Oaer as one of my pillars struck her.