System Of Desire: The Mage's Burden

Chapter Five: Morpheus 2

When Morpheus gave his answer, Greg's eyes had bugged out almost ready to turn down the offer on his teacher's behalf. Still, he'd suppressed the impulse and delivered Morpheus's answer. "I'll have to scrub any evidence you were ever in this town not just in the minds of the townspeople, but also in the temporal sense as well. Even one who can scry into the past will be unable to find any traces of you. All that will need about five hundred cycles of her life," Morpheus had proposed.

Greg had expected his teacher to balk at the answer. Even outrage at the answer would have been understandable. But other than a slightly displeased twist of her lips, the healer didn't show that much of a reaction to the declaration. Unable to help himself, Greg asked. "How are you okay with that?"

"I don't think you understand the kind of threat we face Roka. If my former alliance finds me, I won't be alive a cycle from now," she replied in a grave tone. The look in her eyes quietly reinforced the fact that nothing of what she was saying was in any way exaggerated. "Don't get me wrong, five hundred cycles is a steep price. But considering the alternative, it's a price I'm willing to grit my teeth and pay. I just need to know one thing. Can he be trusted?" She asked.

Greg could understand her reservations. Even if one didn't consider the fact that she was already weakened by her damaged core and mana pathways, she'd still be allowing a foreign entity far more powerful than she was to flood her with his power. If Morpheus had any evil intentions, he could do a serious amount of damage to her. The healer might have trusted Greg. That trust, however, wasn't extended to the entity he was linked to. After a short three-second pause to consider the question, Greg had nodded. Capricious and whimsical as Morpheus's constantly shifting form may have made him out to be, Morpheus hadn't shown any malice or inclination to harm others this far. There was no enmity between Morpheus and his teacher and so he had zero reason to harm her.

"Okay then, let's do it," was his teacher's simple reply.

Over the following three days, Greg got to see what it was his teacher lost when she was betrayed by her friends. How it was that Morpheus managed to keep his power from completely destroying his teacher's mana pathways, Greg couldn't even pretend to begin to understand. Still, the effortless ease with which she controlled the flood of power that flowed through her when a connection was established between the two of them was like a fish being released back into water or a bird taking flight. She was back in her element.. Whenever Greg let Morpheus take over, he'd always have the feeling of a feather caught in a violent whirlwind as his power surged like a toddler put behind a steering wheel, even if Morpheus could somehow relinquish control back to him, Greg wouldn't have been able to take hold of and control all that power. More than likely, it would all spiral out of control and harm Greg along with anyone around him.

The same, however, wasn't true of his teacher. Greg had a very distinct memory of the deep breath that she took even as power flooded her. It was as if someone who had been suffocating had finally gotten a lungful of sweet air. Unexpectedly, the first thing that she did when she got all that power from Morpheus was reach out and touch Greg's face. "You aren't going to need this little disguise of yours anymore," she said. At the time, Greg thought that he'd somehow donned the Charming mask and forgotten he had it on. Instead, he felt a warmth spread over his facial muscles, and parts of his skin that had felt tight all this time finally relaxing. Greg could feel the parts of his skin that looked like they'd fused with his skull, fill out once again and turn healthy again. When they first met, his teacher hadn't been able to heal his disfigurement and yet now, with a simple wave of a hand, she fully restored him.

A mirror had materialized before Greg shortly thereafter. It was a small thing, but it struck pretty deep when Greg realized that he'd never really seen his unblemished face since coming into this world. For a long minute, Greg had just stared at his reflection taking in the handsome face that was staring back at him. Although Greg had always told himself that he would heal the damage later on, he couldn't help the warmth that filled him when the first act his teacher did after gaining power was to heal him.

Morpheus didn't just stop at sharing his power with his teacher. Be it the formations she would use to modify the memories of the townspeople or the spells needed for scrubbing their existence even from the past, a few words from Morpheus had been enough to take his teacher's knowledge to the next level. What his teacher had been planning to do would have muddied the waters delaying any pursuers after them. What Morpheus offered was a way to ensure that, short of a miracle, there was zero chance their pursuers would catch their trail. Greg knew that Morpheus wasn't acting out of charity. His primary goal was to ensure the safety and continued survival of Greg, the new information he gave out was just an unintended result of pursuing this primary goal.

Still, his teacher had a voracious appetite for anything that had to do with magical knowledge. A wild look of desire would enter her eyes any time Morpheus offered a piece of information to improve either her spells or formations. The desire wasn't sexual in any way, but a more primal hunger for knowledge. There was probably nothing that his teacher would have loved more than to just sit and discuss magic with Morpheus for hours on end. It got to the point that Greg feared that the healer would be willing to trade away more of her longevity just to get more knowledge. By the end of the three days, however, they were done scrubbing any trace of their existence from the mountain and were flying away from it when Morpheus withdrew his power and his teacher crashed.

The healer was out cold for two weeks straight. As much as Morpheus had tried to moderate the amount of power he was passing over to his teacher, it was still far above anything she was meant to handle. Even now, all these months later, she was yet to fully recover from the ordeal. Still, Greg never noticed even a hint of doubt or regret in her. The information she gained from Morpheus was invaluable as far as she was concerned. "How are you feeling?" Greg asked even as he came to settle on the edge of his teacher's bed.

"Sick of airships," the healer stated lightheartedly. The first month of their escape had largely been on a flying vessel that Greg had bought from the magic shop that could hold all six of them, the healer, Greg and his family, his familiar Olivia, and Lothar. When they got to the first city with an airship, they boarded it and made for the next city with an airship. Much like planes in his old world, there were public and private airships in this new world. What Lothar had arrived in the town with was a private airship that he had chartered for three months. There were, however, several merchant groups that ferried both people and goods within and across continents for a f*e. Ever since that first month. They had been on the ground for only brief periods as they moved between one airship and the next. Now, six months into their escape and three continents away from home, Greg didn't even dare to guess where they would find themselves at the end of their journey.

"I'm also thoroughly fed up with feeling this weak," his teacher added, the levity leaving her tone of voice. The reason why his teacher was still weakened all these months later wasn't because Morpheus had gone overboard in any sense. Rather, it was the fact that her mana flow system was already so badly damaged even before he empowered her. This made it so that recovery was unbearably slow. At the current pace that it was currently going, the healer would need another three years before she was back to where she was before Morpheus supplied her with his power. "I think you are ready," she stated, a serious look on her face.

Greg's eyes went wide as he immediately understood what she was trying to say. "I... I don't think..."

"You've been practicing for the past six months. You've even managed to cycle your mana through my pathways for the past month without any major issues. What's the saying from your hometown, no matter how good the training..."

"Words won't throw the spear," Greg found himself unconsciously answering.

His teacher nodded in confirmation. "Eventually training has to be put into practice. At our next stop, we'll stop for a while so you can dissolve my mana pathways before we resume our journey," she said...

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