Stormborn Sorceress: A Fantasy Isekai LitRPG Adventure

Salos watched Cass sleep restlessly. She tossed and turned on her guest room bed in the Delim manor, limbs tangled in her blankets, pillows scattered to the wind. This wasn't unusual, exactly. She often slept fitfully, not that he'd ever tell her. But usually she settled as the night progressed.

She was usually well settled into the oblivion of sleep by now. Instead, she kicked again, murmuring senseless English in her sleep.

It had been worse since her run-in with the cult.

He crept up next to her, curling into the hollow along her side between her chest and arm, and shut his eyes.

The night was quiet. The kind of quiet that left him more on edge than less.

But it was nominally safe. If the lord had wanted Cass dead, he would have done it the night they'd come back. There was little reason to wait. They just weren't powerful or important enough to warrant more effort.

That was less than reassuring, but it was what he had. Paranoia that was right more often than it was wrong and the kind of rationalizations that accounted for their own relative unimportance.

Tomorrow they were leaving Velillia. Setting out on the road. He needed to be sharp for that. Sharp enough to catch the danger before it snapped closed around them. Before Cass wandered into trouble again.

Eventually, sleep took him, and he slipped into the deep dark, settling into the space which made sense only to the unconscious mind.

He was in a hallway of green glass. Tension twisted through his body like a spring compressed. He knew he couldn't stay here, even if he didn't know where here was.

He started walking. Every few steps he glanced over his shoulder. There was nothing here but him.

He turned a corner.

A corpse lay mangled in the hallway.

A scream wrenched itself from his mouth, and he scrambled back. Terror rippled through him.

He turned around before he could look closely at the corpse's crushed bones and fried skin. Before the eyes could look at him accusingly.

He ran. Faster and faster. The halls twisted around him.

A door ahead. He burst through it. He was in an alleyway. The smell of blood was overwhelming. His stomach turned.

He turned around, slamming the door behind him. The spring coiled tighter.

He ran. Green hallways expanded out around him. They did not end. There was no escape. He knew with a certainty he could not explain.

Another door. On the other side was a storage room. A frozen corpse lay in one corner. A scorched corpse sat tied up in the center.

He stumbled backward, back into the hall.

There was a skittering noise to his left. A black cockroach skittered around the corner. The sight of it sent his skin crawling. And then another followed. Then a centipede, long and glistening in the nebulous light of the hallways. Then more. And more.

His eyes widened. He took a step away. Then another.

He ran.

Behind him, the cockroaches and centipedes crashed down the hallway like a black tide. They were always gaining. Every time he looked over his shoulder, they were closer.

There was no escape.

Something grabbed him. Fear laced down his spine. Hands grabbed his arms and legs. They were metal and unyielding. Cold and dark. He screamed.

They pulled him down, into an inky abyss.

He pulled against them. Futile.

He screamed.

Ahead was a dark campsite. Two figures stared in horror as he was pulled away. A man and a woman.

Robin and Kaye.

No.

The scene shifted, like static over his skin.

Ahead was a laboratory of dark stone. Two figures stared at him, one in fascination, one in horror as he was tied down to a table. A woman and a man.

****** and Cerivan.

Salos bolted up from the bed. His paws were drenched in sweat. His fur stood on end. It was still dark.

What was that? A nightmare?

Why was he so scared? The dream had been full of blood and corpses and vermin. None of that should scare him. He was no stranger to any of that. He had made more corpses than he could count. Blood was an occupational hazard. Bugs were an annoyance at worst.

He'd never seen Cass's siblings.

Oh. That was Cass's dream.

He had never seen his previous mistress's dreams, which suggested this was a demon bound to another soul thing. He groaned quietly into the blankets.

Cass would tell him to ask Kelstor since the dragon-knight bond seemed similar, but the idea of telling a stranger about the state of his soul rankled.

Cass rolled over, murmuring in distress in her sleep.

She was still in the middle of it. Had it restarted, or was her mind dragging her through something else unpleasant?

An impulse to do something about it rolled through him. It pinged painfully off his broken Concept. He pushed the thought aside.

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There was nothing he could do for her. He was not comforting. He never had been, even before he had been a demon.

And now he was a demon, he reminded himself. As if he needed reminding. He was Cass's servant. He did not need to care.

He did care. It was pointless to pretend he didn't care. It was pointless to try not to care.

But he didn't want to care.

There was only heartbreak in caring.

Caring made it so easy to fix his broken Concept.

[Broken Concept Loyalty can be repaired. Would you like to repair it?

- Swear allegiance to mistress to reinstate Concept as Loyalty.

- Betray mistress to reformat Concept to Violation]

He pushed the notification aside. He would not swear his allegiance to anyone again. He liked Cass, he really did, and he was her servant because the system had made it so, but he would not willingly endorse this relationship.

And he didn't want a Concept of Violation. It wasn't just that he didn't want to betray Cass. Definitely, it wasn't about Cass. He just wasn't interested in making such an idea a core part of who and what he was.

It was bad enough he was a demon.

Cass moaned again.

He settled down next to her, hoping his meager warmth might be enough to help her relax.

She moaned again, and he knew it wasn't.

[Skill available: Unlink Previous Growth to Accept]

He glared at the window. This was not the first time he'd seen it. But it was the first time he'd been at all tempted.

As things were, with his growth linked to his previous, non-demon state, as he gained levels, all his skills leveled up with him. That was a massive advantage. The biggest power spikes were on the stage milestones, like the First Step at level 9 or the Gate at level 27.

Partially this was from the bonuses gained at these levels, and partially it was from one's skills hitting these milestones too and receiving additional bonuses. Getting all the bonuses for his skills as he hit the threshold level was an unmatched power spike.

The only downside was that he could not gain new skills or alter his existing ones. Doing so would unlink all of his skills, and he would have to level them up like everyone else.

And some of his skills would be difficult to increase at this point.

He denied the window.

Any skill offered now was likely to do with his wish to comfort Cass. And there were lots of reasons he did not want a skill like that. To begin with, leveling it would be a pain. He did not have any interest in comforting anyone else, so he would only use it on Cass, restricting opportunities to gain familiarity and experience with the skill to highly limited times.

Second, he very much doubted Cass would appreciate anyone else touching her mental or emotional state. She likely would repel an attempt with Contrary Will and/or her Liminal Concept.

In short, taking a skill like that would be a major waste.

Cass thrashed.

He sidestepped her flailing and waited for her to settle again before crawling back to her side.

He could wake her up. That would end this set of nightmares. But then she'd have to fall back to sleep, and he had seen the trouble that had been. And there was no guarantee the next set of dreams would be kinder.

In short, he was helpless.

Not—he reminded himself sharply—that it should matter to him. She wasn't dying. She wasn't a child.

She would live.

He repeated it to himself as if it would make a difference.

She twisted, mumbling something in English. It might have been 'stop.' English was harder to understand when he couldn't use their bond to catch her intent under it.

"Salos," she moaned.

His hair stood on end. There was no mistaking his name, though.

Her arm stretched out, reaching for something. Her legs kicked wildly.

He dematerialized, slipping into the necklace.

Or, that had been his intent. Increasingly, his attempts to slide into the necklace landed him in her soul well instead. Like now.

Increasingly, that felt like a natural place to be.

Her soul well was a campsite. He was given to understand it was the last place she'd been on Earth before being kidnaped to the Fractured Skies. Perhaps it was the last place she had felt safe.

A campfire burned low in a metal ring in the camp's center. A collection of cleverly folding chairs and stools sat around it. Tall trees, like the lightningwood of Uvana, stood tall over the dark campground. Behind him, he could hear the rumble of water falling over stone.

A tent made of strange, smooth fabric stood on the far side of the fire. Cass's consciousness slept within it.

He was humanoid here, still looking like the Nyxdra he had once been, all lean muscle and dusty purple skin.

He didn't know what he could do here—if he could do anything.

Cass groaned again, turning over in her tent.

But he needed to do something.

He stepped closer to the campfire. It was a representation of her Hearth Concept. It was her bleeding heart and her need to care for others. If only it could be her need to care for herself too.

Logs were stacked by the fireside. Carefully, he lowered one into the pit, resting it on an already burning log. It caught quickly, and the camp grew warmer as the fire grew.

Cass whimpered. Quieter than before. Had feeding the fire helped or was he deluding himself?

He added another log before dragging the stool to Cass's side. He sat just outside the open tent flap. If he reached out, he could touch her.

She rolled toward him, her arms flopping off the side of her cot.

He should just sleep.

Sitting here wasn't going to change anything.

Cass would be fine.

He took her hand.

He didn't know why he did it. It couldn't change anything. He couldn't sleep sitting like this.

Her hand was warm in his. Her skin, soft and smooth. It was the hand of someone who had never held a weapon. Someone who did not do hard labor.

If she had a physical body, these hands would likely already be calloused, but her image of herself was unchanged.

Even mages usually had calluses along their fingers from writing. Her hands had only the ghost of such a callous, like it had been a long time since such tasks had been asked of her.

How could a world be that soft, Salos asked himself again.

She twisted again, her face scrunching in a fitful scowl.

He shook his head. It couldn't be this easy. As he'd thought, this changed nothing. His presence did nothing to stop the nightmares around her.

And for some reason, that bothered him.

He didn't owe Cass anything, he reminded himself. Her comfort was not his responsibility. She would not want him to feel like it was.

Was it just knowing Cass would hate seeing him like this? That soft, bleeding-heart Cass would hate seeing anyone like this?

Was it knowing Cass would look for someway to make it better? That stubborn Cass would probably find an answer regardless of what common sense said should be possible?

Fine, he'd keep thinking about it. What could he do?

He didn't want to wake her. He wasn't going to take a new skill. Feeding her Hearth hadn't helped. Sitting beside her hadn't helped.

Really, he wanted some way to end her nightmare, but he couldn't manipulate dreams.

Could he?

He'd fallen into hers. Could he drag her into his?

Logic suggested the first step was to fall asleep, so he'd have a dream to pull her into, but that left him wondering how he'd manage step two while asleep.

No, that couldn't be it.

He could see her dream because they shared a soul well or because their souls were joining. Due to the nature of their relationship, he tended to float into the parts of the well which were more hers than his, namely this campsite.

But what if he moved her to the part that was more his? Would that be enough?

He was flailing in the dark and hoping for the best, but worst case, moving her would do nothing.

He picked her up.

She was probably bigger than he was. If they had physical bodies in these proportions, she would almost certainly be heavier. But they were spirits in a soul well and he had more than enough Str to lift her, regardless.

Slowly, so as not to jostle her, he carried her from her tent to the ravine at the edge of her camp. To the dark pit that was what remained of his soul well.

It was a long ravine, dark and cold. Water poured down the sides into a still pool at the bottom.

Looking down into it, he hesitated. Between the warmth of Cass's campground and the darkness of his ravine, it was hard to imagine this was a good idea. Every bit of common sense said this shouldn't work.

What was he doing, thinking he could be a comfort to her?

Cass wriggled in his arms, her head thrashing back and forth.

But what did he have to lose?

He hopped down the ravine, the water splashing around his thighs as he landed.

Now what? Set her down? In the cold water?

There wasn't anything else down here, so he did.

She floated in the dark water, her robes billowing around her like a silken ghost. Her face was still scrunched in a scowl, but her body seemed to relax in the water. Maybe this was working.

He lay back in the water beside her—feeling increasingly silly—and closed his eyes. He let himself drift, holding only to their bond and her hand.