Dave, one of the only two leads on Names available in this city, and neither of the leads had anything concrete, this one probably less than the lead on the monsters the hunters told tales of, though this one seemed more immediately dangerous. From my understanding a boo hag would sit on a person while they slept, taking their rest until eventually it could take their soul. I wasn't sure what the threshold for soul stealing was, why it needed to take souls, what it did with the souls, or anything else, but what I had guessed, and seen confirmed when I caught a glimpse of the boo hag, was that after it took their soul it would take the skin of their victim and wear it, because the natural visage of the boo hag was that of an old woman sans skin, muscle pulled over bone, none of the fat and folds of skin that makes it recognizable as human, eyelids, fingernails, the only thing that remained was a dark mess of ratted hair atop its head, growing wiry locks directly from the muscle stretched over a stark white skull. Or so I remembered from the legends of my home world, though I expected little to be exactly the same, even if the basic building blocks were the same, the addition of Aether as a fundamental force made massive changes, to life, to reality, even to innovation. What was a legend before was able to become a reality with the suffusion of magic, though why just simply adding magic to a habitable world would have that kind of effect was a mystery far beyond me.

  Either way, the sleep deprived man waving a poker at my friend with clear intent to harm was probably the most urgent matter to attend to, even if I trusted Zerrious to not be in any real danger from someone that clearly didn't know much about combat based on how the tip of the instrument wavered inconsistently.

  "You get away from me! You come with a different face but I know what you are, I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" Dave was raving as he shook violently in front of Zerrious twitching and looking every which way but seeming to not see much as his brown eyes skipped right over me like I was little more than a pile of gravel, which hurt my feelings a little bit to tell the truth.

  "Hey, hey, I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Let's talk, okay? Let's put the poker down, and let's talk. I'm here to help, I really am," Zerrious said calmly, crouched and ready to move out of the way if the frantic man suddenly decided to lunge at the boy and his hand out as if he were trying to gain the trust of a friends dog.

  "It's alright, we're here to protect you. We can fight the monster together," I joined in, my words seeming to have a much more profound effect than when Zerrious had spoken. While he had sown the seeds of doubt, a few words affirming their truth caused them to take root and blossom out like a field of lilies reaching for the sun.

  "Can you help?" he asked as he dropped the tip of the poker to the ground where it ground against the stone like a faint scream in the silent street. He'd said the words with a bit of a sob, as if he'd lost hope and knew that we were in over our heads, which did not bode well for us.

  Regardless of my true feelings on the subject, I projected confidence as I said in a firm voice "we're here because we can help."

  He shook and stepped forward, the circles under his eyes just seeming to grow more and more prominent the closer he got to me as he seemed to simply ignore Zerrious much like he had me just moments prior. "Please, I don't know how to save myself," he sobbed quietly as I watched hope worm its way into his soul and expel the despair that had laid it's eggs inside when he became "Crazy Dave, the guy that claims monsters are after his soul". Hell, if I hadn't seen the boo hag myself I probably would have been ridiculing him alongside everyone else.

  "I know, it's okay. We're here now. Come on, let's get you home, okay?" I said as I came around and put an arm around the distressed man, placing myself at his right where he held the poker so he couldn't easily bring it up and take me out with it.

  He immediately went back to his combative side, pushing against me to try and get enough distance to bring the poker up between us. "I knew it, you didn't believe me! You just wanted me out of the streets, right back into its nest. You never believed me, no one ever believes me, you lied to me! Lieslieslies!" He was hyperventilating now and on the verge of a panic attack.

  "Hey, no no no no, we didn't lie, we believe you, I swear-"

  "That's what they always say, say what the madman wants to hear and at least he'll get out of the way, right? No! I'm not going back, not at night, not ever, never never never!" He was shouting now, starting to make a scene that would surely have someone on us eventually, and that would send Dave over the edge.

  "Dave," I said calmly, trying to get through to him through the panic. Nothing. "Dave!" I called a little louder. It was as if I wasn't there. I wound my Aether with reality stuff from my cane and sent it into the middle aged man's center, forcing him to calm down. It worked a little, he started breathing more regularly but this wasn't really a spell, or even anything exact, I could push down, but it pretty much pushed everything or nothing, but having him feel less of everything right now was exactly what we needed as Zerrious slowly approached behind him, waiting for me to tell him to subdue the man. "Dave! Listen to me!" I commanded loudly, forcing him to focus on me for just a few moments, but that was all I needed to get him back on my side. I was the master of bullshit, after all.

  "I'm listening," he muttered, holding eerily still as he spoke.

  "We wont force you to go back there, we didn't know that was its nest, no one told us. But, we are here to fight it, so we'll keep watch, why don't you get a good nights rest and we can investigate after sunrise, how about that?" His left eye twitched but nothing else moved, he stared as if a focused statue given color. This guy was starting to freak me out. "We will keep watch, and you can get some rest, alright?" I asked again, this time eliciting a response.

  Dave blinked twice and shook himself, his eyes moving from me to the floor. "Some rest. . . some rest sounds nice," he said quietly.

  I looked to Zerrious, silently asking a question. He nodded and I slowly approached the disturbed man, noticing offhandedly the erratic patterns in the Aether around him as I prepared to pull open a hole into that area of pure magic. I didn't have time to ruminate on those however, I had to convince this man that jumping into the hole that would lead most people into oblivion was somehow safer than staying on the streets at night. Yeah, I was in for a challenge no matter what my abilities were.

  "I haven't told you everything, Dave," I started. "My friend behind you, he's a mage, and one of the strongest warriors I've ever heard of, in stories or in real life," I said as I saddled up next to him, holding him close like a dear friend and whispering conspiratorially. "Don't worry though, we work together. You see, it's my job to find the monsters, to find out how to kill them, to know everything about them, and it's his job to keep me safe, and kill the monsters before they can hurt anyone else," I said as I slid around him, whispering into his other ear like an anime villain, an approach anyone from home would have recognized in a heartbeat and rejected whatever I said outright on principle, but there was a reason the villains did it in the movies, because it worked wonders combined with the world itself agreeing with me.

  "He protects you. . . you help protect everyone. . . I should have heard. . . but. . . no, people don't see it like me. . ." he muttered to himself, clearly trying to work out his logic through an addled mind.

  "I'm sorry, Dave. No one believes you because of us. Ours isn't work that makes us heroes, it's work that makes us fools. Most people never see the monsters we hunt, so they call the ones that do see them before we can get to them crazy," I lied through my teeth, truly feeling bad for the guy because I'm sure something like that really was happening, some kids out doing the good work with no rewards. Every society had them, the true saints to combat the despicable aspects of man.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Right. . . They never know. . ." he said, still slow and almost like he was under a spell, but I couldn't see any weavings about him and my spell that forced calmness had worn off already, so I could only guess that he was finally letting his exhaustion catch up to him as he came to terms with us being able to protect him.

  "Well, do you know much about magic?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't so he couldn't tell that I was about to lie right to his face much more straightforwardly than I had when I mentioned that we kill monsters, which we at least planned to do.

  "No. . . It does what it needs to. . . I think. . ."

  "Well, my mage friend here, he goes by Zerrious, he has a spell that makes a sort of sanctuary, a place we can go that will always be safe, somewhere no monsters can get to," I said. The only truth there was that nothing would be able to get us there. I was sure. Pretty sure. Okay, I had no idea, but nothing had before so statistically it was one hundred percent safe. Even though statistics lie like a rug.

  "I can sleep there," he said, leaning into me and letting his eyes half shut.

  I grinned in victory and pulled the curtain between us and nothing opened, and forced the world through into the void. I wholeheartedly expected a treehouse in the middle of a rainforest, so I got a beautiful treehouse, nonexistent birds chirping faintly in the distance and the sky permanently resting just after the sun went down, the sky lit with pinpricks of light and a faint blue light outlining the endless expanse of trees on the distant horizon. Interestingly, the light was even across the entire horizon, as if the sun had set in every direction at once.

  "Get some rest, we'll slay your monster when you wake," I said as I walked in, holding the door open for Zerrious before disconnecting this bubble from the physical reality it had originated in and letting us float in the nothing that was the Aether.

  Dave wasted no time, falling immediately asleep on the large bed under a window in the corner.

  "That was impressive," Zerrious said as he walked up to me, the first time he had spoken since I had started talking to Dave. "You were so persuasive I was worried I'd ruin it if I'd tried to help."

  "He should be a bit better after he gets some rest. People are unpredictable when they're in survival mode for that long," I said as I collapsed onto a plush chair on the other side of the small house where another was right next to me for Zerrious to sit in. "I will admit, that was intense though." I laughed a little as my heartrate started coming down from the high stakes bullshitting.

  "You're exhausted." Zerrious wasn't asking, he was telling me. He knew, there was no question.

  "Fill up your center, we have no way of knowing what we'll need for this monster." I avoided the question, but Zerrious understood.

  "I should tell you something. There aren't very many combat spells." That was surprising, but I wasn't sure why it mattered. "It's kind of a taboo after the Child Empress. Unfortunately, I'm going to need more, what I have wont do much for me if push comes to shove. People are still afraid of mages, but we don't really have teeth any sharper than anyone else. I can do both, but I have a feeling that wont be enough in the times to come. Maybe for this, but what the hunters are dealing with?-"

  "Just make more," I said, cutting him off as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

  He laughed. "I know how smart you are, but spells aren't easy to make, not from scratch."

  "Than stitch parts of other spells together to make new ones. Or, spend time and make something completely different, trial and error. And if you don't want to do any of that, than find new ways to use the spells you already have. Make new weapons. You aren't stuck with what you have, no one ever is. I should know that better than anyone. I was stuck, I thought there was no way to go up, and then I came here and I met the next god." I stopped for a moment, considering. "That watch would be nice right now."

  I hadn't intended to be rude, more just talking to myself with the last sentence, but he seemed not to take it that way. Oops.

  "Oh," he said, pulling out his notebook and he started writing. I guessed he was working on a watch, and I recognized him writing numbers down but I wasn't sure what the calculations would be for or what kind of calculations he would need to do. He wrote a lot of numbers. Big numbers before he swore and scribbled them out. "There has to be an easier way. . ."

  He looked at me for a long moment, more specifically staring at my wrist then nodding and writing some numbers down. That unnerved me a little bit but I ignored it as he made and remade what seemed like the same calculations again and again. "I can't do that. . ." he seemed dejected as he slammed the book shut without letting the ink dry.

  "I'm going to practice magic and let that rest. Thank you," he declared and stood up, tucking the notebook away in one of his rings.

  In moments I was alone with a sleeping man as Zerrious swung down the tree to the ground far below. That left me with all of nothing to do. That was far from ideal, I would much prefer an obvious task, I was starting to get sick of staring at the maddening twists and turns in the Aether. Not that there was much else to do. Perhaps actually take the time to find a proper name for the reality stuff? I was sick of calling it that. Maybe I could find a way to separate it better for Zerrious.

  I tried to remember how I did it before my wedding mishap but I couldn't for the life of me recall how I actually did it before. It was more instinct than anything else and instinct was hard to study after the fact.

  I closed my eyes and dove into my center, staring at the book turning eternally as it struggled to absorb the Aether fast enough. Fast. I had figured out that people don't have control of Mana, or Aether. Not naturally. Or, maybe it was natural, even I had it and I wasn't born here. But, not everyone can control all Mana, they can only control their own. And I'd found that when you separated it, a persons Mana had three parts to natures two. The first two were the same, Aether and reality stuff, but then there was the third thing, the me stuff as I'd been calling it. That was what people could actually control. When it mixed with Mana or Aether it gave the person a measure of control over that, but it doesn't work with anything else, it's a function of higher energy, or so I guessed, so Mana, Aether, and reality stuff were really all it could work with, unless some other higher energy form was found.

  I wasn't sure where to start though, I could spin it, but it would just be filled with more Aether and nothing would change. It had to be done in a place without Aether, Mana, or reality stuff unless there was some way to isolate it, or keep it from mixing with other energies. I couldn't do it with force of will, really it was just because of how Aether was absorbed into my center, there wasn't a space where the Aether wasn't being pulled from all directions into the book at my center, which had grown quite large with a massive number of pages. I guess I wasn't casting much these days, and spending so much time in the Aether had made my center good and plump. I had to be reaching a limit soon, it was already far more dense than it ever had been before.

  I tried it a few times but quickly confirmed that it wouldn't work, just like I'd guessed. After a short moment of staring at the book struggling to absorb the storm around it I opened my eyes to the imagined world I had been forcing to exist offhandedly while I did some failed experiments. I hadn't gotten any system messages, so I guessed that either Zerrious was unsuccessful in making new spells, or he was just working on incorporating his magic into his sword fighting, or just on using his magic. Either way, he didn't make any massive leaps so far. Or maybe he did and it just wasn't unprecedented like so much of what we did.

  The two of us together was starting numb my ability to see skill growth in a normal way as I either invented a new branch of study, or Zerrious learned and mastered a skill so quickly that it seemed like mastering was the bare minimum for having a skill rather than the highest goal of a skill. It was scary to think that Zerrious probably wasn't even unique in his rapid mastery, although I was quite confident I was unique. The gods said something about not being able to pull anyone else or something. It was hard to remember that long ago, there was a lot going on at the time.

  I wasn't sure how long we'd been here, but Dave was still sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake him up, he'd clearly gone a long while without and needed it, but I didn't want to try and find the boo hag at night where it was (probably) stronger. Though I knew it moved around during the day, I also knew it was a night hunter, so it probably stayed in its nest for most of the day, which if Dave was to be believed was in his home. That had to suck, can't be there at night, can't be there during the day, and on top of that no one would do anything about it.

  I heard Zerrious making his way back into the treehouse, sweaty with soot stains about his person. I had hoped he didn't start any fires, but I quickly realized it wouldn't matter as none of this would exist as soon as we left. Regardless, it started raining outside at my command, though no clouds marred the sky.

  "Go wash off, that's gross," I said as I looked at the young man.

  "Right." he walked out on one of the tree limbs and started scrubbing himself with the water. "We should probably get back, it's probably close to morning by now." Zerrious made a great point, even though I could barely hear him through the rainfall.

  I nodded, more to myself than to him. "Dave!" I shouted, much louder than the rain. He shot upright, instantly awake, though not necessarily aware. "I think it's about time to hunt the monster. Are you ready to take us to it's nest?" I asked, this time a bit more calmly.

  "Yeah, let's do it." The words were much less manic, now just tired, like a high school student during their first period class. "Let's finish this."