Wandering Agent
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Elevation of Mana Chapter 219 Another Return
🕑 Added 2025-09-13 21:36:59 +0000 UTCI spent far too long sitting in that field, trying to get us home, but for the life of me I couldn't make it work. Isha was getting more and more displeased with me as we waited, quite unhappy I'd taken us away from the city without setting up something at least for our daughter first. It wasn't like I'd actually planned this trip, but she wasn't consoled by that at all.
She did try not to pester me while we were sitting there, but it was a bit of a lost cause. She was too unhappy, I was too distracted, and the spell I'd used was too new for me to replicate it in any real amount of time. I still had no idea how it worked, which was refreshing, but meant that I couldn't exactly repeat what I'd done.
After an hour or so I gave up, picked her up, and launched us into the sky. I burned through mana like water, speeding us along over the forest below, a small invisible sphere zooming through the night.
“The stars are beautiful,” she said after a time.
“Yes, I suppose they are,” I replied, looking up. “So bright here, so brilliant, better than in the city.”
“Maybe something about civilization takes something like that away, presses it back.”
I knew it was light pollution of course, which had been getting worse and worse over the years, but why ruin the magic for her? So I didn't, I smiled, said nothing to it, and let her enjoy the beauty of the twinkling sky. After all, it was a beauty I'd never seen back on Earth to this extent.
While above the sky shone like diamonds below the ground seemed to rise and fall like the sea. We were high, and we were going fast, and right under us the trees blurred into one another, looking more like dark peaks and troughs than single standing trees. Ahead still looked like a black forest though, cool and shadowed with the wind rustling the leaves.
“That is terrifying,” she said, nails digging into me as she looked down and saw the ground moving fast.
“You get used to it,” I said calmingly.
“I don't think I will, but we really do need to get home...”
The sun was coming up by the time we finally returned, and I was exhausted. We were also seen coming, and Chien met us on the roof, looking worried.
“Boss you scared the fire out of us, what happened? We've been looking for you for a few hours now.”
“My husband found a new spell, one that he can't yet control,” Isha said, not pleased.
“Yes, bit of a magical mishap, nothing to worry about Chien.”
He gave me a skeptical look, but said nothing.
“Where is Adia?” Isha asked.
“Still asleep, didn't want to worry her for nothing...”
“Thank you for that at least.” She pointed to me. “You, don't do that to me again until you're able to undo it.”
“I am sorry love...” I tried.
“Hmm.” Yes, she was certainly going to be peeved at me for awhile yet.
Once she'd left I turned to Chien. “Can you handle things today?” I asked.
“Sure boss, gonna try apologizing again?”
“No, I need to sleep I'm exhausted.”
He laughed at that, patting me on the shoulder. “Don't imagine your wife will like that at all,” he said.
“No probably not, but I'm too tired to care much.”
She didn't like it. I wasn't sure what it was but women in almost every world seemed to have something against seeing a man asleep, some primal hatred of watching it. It had to be ingrained somewhere in the laws of reality. I remembered it from Earth vividly, my mother and girlfriends always waking me up if the saw me napping. Isha may have been less prone to that, but she was mad, so let me have it.
Eventually though it was time for Adia to nap too, and my child decided that the best place for that was for her to come and join me where I'd passed out in bed. Angry at me or not my wife wasn't one to wake a napping child, and so I got off a little lighter than I might otherwise have, at least getting a few hours.
As I woke up in the middle of the afternoon I could have gone to continue sorting out the mess that was the current administration, but instead I left Chien to it. My daughter had weeks of things to tell me, happy that I was finally really back, and that was more important to me at the moment.
She went on and on about her day, drinking tea with me. It was an old ritual, but one I had missed while I was away. One day these little meetings of ours were going to end, I knew that, but I wanted to savor them while I could, and missing them for weeks had made me realize just how good I had it.
One day she would be grown, and what then? Would she still want to come and see her father, tell him about her day over tea, about all the little things that she'd seen and had made her happy or sad. No, probably not, or not as often as she did these days.
Nor would her problems be so simple for me to understand. A broken toy was easy to fix, a broken heart, not so much. I could answer most of her questions, and wanted to, to help her where I could, but one day, one day they would be something only she could find the answers to. I mourned the coming of that time, the time when I'd no longer be there to fix her small problems or answer her little questions.
So I would savor it, I would savor what I got, the time I got. Even though we didn't age we still lost time, still missed things. Our children as well, at some point they'd leave us. Perhaps that was why Isha had wanted me to stop adventuring until Adia was grown, yes probably, she'd been wiser than I in that demand.
“Something wrong?” Adia asked, stopping in her endless stream of consciousness as she watched my face.
“No, nothing at all is wrong. I'm just sad I missed so many days with you,” I told her.
“Well, mommy says no more going to chase monsters for now didn't she?”
“Yes, and you know she's probably right on that.”
