Crawling toward her as fast as he could, he noticed she had crashed into a broken branch, and it impaled into her left side. Blood was trickling from it, and he could hear a small whistle when she breathed in and out.
'Punctured lung, maybe a few cracked ribs, and she's bleeding a lot. I need to help her,' he thought.
"Quite the landing you stuck there. This will hurt, but I have to remove that branch to heal you," Astaroth joked, trying to calm her breathing.
Instead, she coughed up a bit of blood as she snickered.
Astaroth didn't hesitate and yanked the sharp branch out of her side, simultaneously drawing a scream from her.
He rapidly chucked the branch away before applying both hands on the wound, golden light shooting out of his hands and into her left side.
Phoenix groaned as she felt her closing, her bones snapping back into place, and her muscles reattaching themselves. The process was far from painless, like when a priest did this.
But after a few moments, which was much quicker than a healer usually would heal such a wound, the pain stopped, and she took her first full breath in a minute since getting here.
"Thank you…" Phoenix whispered, catching her breath.
Astaroth didn't even respond, grabbing onto her with a hug.
Phoenix froze momentarily, her mind going to that situation earlier before the thought melted away when she felt Astaroth's trembling chest.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't think things through before acting, and I scarred you. It's not what I wanted to do…"
She hugged him back, realizing this was the real Astaroth. Not the monster she thought he had become.
"It's okay. I'll be alright. Just don't ever do that again…" she said, pushing her face into his chest.
They sat there for a while, taking the time to calm down their flaring emotions and their breath. Until Astaroth asked Phoenix, "What are you doing here, anyway?"
She separated from his chest, looking at him with a confused look.
"Same as you, I assume. I came to see what that massive beam of light was and why it suddenly appeared here. When I got in visual range, an ungodly pressure knocked me out of the sky. I almost fainted directly. What was that?"
Astaroth looked at her with a wry smile. Novel Fire - novelfire.net
"I didn't come here for that. I was looking for you."
She smiled at him.
"You were looking for me and stumbled into it? You really are unlucky. What was it, anyway? I didn't get a good glimpse of it; my vision blurred when I got close enough."
Astaroth chuckled.
"I didn't stumble into it. I was looking for you, and it seems it reacted to my aura when melded to Geminae. That was a god. Gaius, the supreme god, he called himself."
Phoenix's face went stiff.
"You're kidding, right? A god? While the hell would a god descend here? And looking for you, too?" she stammered.
"Not looking for me," Astaroth corrected.
"Looking for Psyche. I told him I didn't know who he was talking about."
"But you…"
Astaroth put his hand over her mouth.
"We don't know who that is. Never met them, barely even heard of them. No need to trouble ourselves about it."
She quickly understood what he was doing when he glanced around and nodded her head.
Astaroth removed his hand and forced himself to his feet. But his body felt like it had been used as a punching bag by Mike Tyson, and there wasn't a muscle in his body that felt okay.
"Urgh… That aura was dreadful, and I feel like shit. What do you think about returning to the palace and calling it a day? We can do some boring paperwork. I'm sure there is plenty to do…" Astaroth said, looking at Phoenix with a wry smile.
"I concur. It felt like I was getting crushed by a mountain. It's a miracle I didn't die on the spot. The crash, the branch, and even the pressure were dealing damage to me every second. A bit longer, and I would have pixelized…"
Astaroth chuckled at her statement, helping her to her feet, and he looked at the sky.
"Alright, west it is. But there is no way I'm walking there, and I don't have the strength to fly. Let's see if I can get an Uber here," Astaroth joked.
It made Phoenix giggle, but she trusted he could do it still.
Extending his aura out again toward the sky, Astaroth found what he was looking for and smiled.
Connecting to the mind of a griffin rider hovering above the clouds, Astaroth spoke to him directly.
"Tell your commander that the king and queen need rides. We are right under you."
He didn't give the rider time to identify them or recover from the sudden message in his head and severed the connection. His mana was running dangerously low, as most of it had instinctively reacted to Gaius's pressure to keep him from fainting.
So, holding a connection was tiring, and he risked passing out.
Phoenix heard a sudden screech above them as a bird-like form dove toward them before arcing back up and heading west.
"Was that?" she asked.
"Yup. Probably sent here to check on the beam. I asked him to get us rides. It shouldn't take too long. Griffins are pretty fast. I'm sure Mary will tear me a new asshole for using her majestic mounts as taxis, but I can deal with that later."
Phoenix laughed at the thought of Commander Kadmus riding Astaroth's ear into the ground, but she agreed with the idea. She could barely feel her legs under her, and walking was out of the question.
As for her mana reserves? Glancing at her status bars, she was at around three percent mana remaining, and it was slowly recuperating.
"Remind me never to piss off a god," she joked, looking at all the negative statuses under her health bar.
"Yeah, haha. That would be a terrible idea," Astaroth replied.
'Not like I have much of a choice in the matter anymore,' he thought.
He would need to talk to Nemus sooner rather than later and keep her in the loop with what happened. But he assumed she already knew part of it.
'Things are bound to get more complicated…'
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