Page 89 of The Misfit Mage and His Darling Demon

Wally stopped moving, his body limp in my cradled clutches. Still, his grip hadn’t released his dagger—valiant and vigilant to win this fight. A fight I should’ve shielded him from. Delicately, I unwrapped his fingers one by one until the blade clinked against the metal grates. Fatigue had washed over Wally’s body, but he didn’t have any injuries. Nothing external at least.

Every single cell in his body came to a halt, steam seeping from his pores releasing the final traces of Diabolic essence he had coursing through him. What was he doing with so much essence? What was he doing with essence to begin with? I clamped my jaw. This was my doing. My inability to stop Eligos.

Burying my doubt, I focused on what I could donow. I would fix this. Had to.

I channeled my own essence into my fingertips, piercing a tiny hole into Wally’s chest and sending my essence to repair the damage. Closing my eyes, I fixated all my attention to the piece of essence swirling in Wally. There was so much damage.His heart had rips and tears, bits of muscle tissue floated around the organ, lost chum after it stopped beating. Blackened decay ran along the veins and arteries leading to liquified insides. Every part of Wally had been riddled with damage, from melted organs, shredded muscles, to rotted bones picked clean. In a matter of minutes, the essence he took had devoured what little mana he had and feasted upon what remained soaked into his mortal coil.

He had died.

Dead. Gone.

No. I shook him.

“Walter.” My voice cracked. “Wake up.”

Nothing.

I pressed my hands to his chest, forcing a beat to stir, to waken.

Nothing.

I struggled to breathe, calling out his name again.

Nothing.

I poured more essence into his body, commanding it to stitch together what remained, willing it to make the chunks of his heart beat again, and using it to create a flow of circulation as a way of accounting for the lack of blood he had left.

It didn’t work.

His hazel eyes were glossy, hollow, and empty. There was nothing I could fix, nothing my essence could heal. He’d taken his final breath. All my essence did was stir a corpse.

“W-w-ally.” I pulled him into a hug, crying inconsolably.

I’d failed him. I’d lost him. The nightmare Eligos locked me in was right—I would be alone forever.

“Where’s that damn knight?” Mora’s feet dragged as she shuffled into the engine room, subtle but there was a pained ache in her steps. “Way to leave me with those three demons.No worries, though. Naturally, I made a game of it before slaughtering—”

Mora silenced an almost audible reaction. The stiffening of her posture lessened, either too exhausted from her battle or no longer finding the need to present herself with poise.

“Bez, I’m…” Mora knelt beside me, blood seeped into the fabric of her clothes, and trickled out of deep slashes. Wounds that would heal given the host body she’d picked.

That’s it.

“We can bring him back.” Gently, I set Wally down onto the metal grate floor. “Give him your blood. He’s not a Mythic and there’s no essence so Maurice’s blood will resurrect him.”

“Bez, I can’t. It won’t work.”

“You haven’t even tried.”

“Vampirism is a dice roll and requires a mortal to die with the blood in their system. Walter is… Wally’s already dead.”

“I might have a spell.” Kell wheezed, dragging herself forward with each step.

Mora darted to her wife in a haze, wrapping an arm around Kell’s back and steadying her shaky stance. “You don’t have the magic to cast anything right now.”

“Might need a little more essence, then I’ll be right as rain.” Kell had a weak smile, her somber eyes locked on Wally.

“No. Any more essence and you risk…” Mora swallowed hard. She wouldn’t say it but all three of us knew what she’d stopped shy of warning. She wouldn’t risk Kell being consumed and killed by ingesting too much Diabolic essence in one go. A failure I hadn’t protected Wally from, a failure that killed him so I could live. Fact was, it was probably only the half-century of regularly sharing in Mora’s essence that offered Kell such immunity to the effects when taking in larger doses like what she required after being set ablaze.

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