*-Rudeus-*

"Do you really have to go?"

Sylphie clung to my arm as I sat with my back to our tree.

"It's just a month Sylphie. Besides, you can call and talk to me as much as you want through our Kumus. Plus this'll give you some time to put your knowledge to the test. Read ahead in your books and learn as much as you can while I'm gone. I wanna see how much you can learn on your own, so you're not allowed to ask the others for help. I told Sara the same thing."

In three days I'd be leaving to go to the Boreas estate in Roa. Sylphie didn't like that. She'd gotten extra clingy and didn't leave my side no matter what, unless it was time for her to go home. Though she's been pushing closer to curfew the closer we get to my departure.

"I'm still gonna miss Rudy."

"I know, but it's all gonna be fine. If you ever want hugs or head pats I'm sure Phoebe would be more than happy to comply."

"She would, but it's not the same like when Rudy does it."

"Well then I'll be sure to give you plenty once I return. That better?"

I rubbed Sylphie's head as I asked my question. She smiled and pushed her head up into my hand.

"Mhmm! You better make sure you do!"

"I will. Now let's go join the others on the island. I wanna see you run through your spells again."

Today was the day. I was standing in the front yard with mom and dad as a carriage walked towards the house. Phoebe, Kuroi, and Pin had already joined us as well. Sylphie and Sara were sleeping inside. We threw a party last night to celebrate me getting a job, but I'm pretty sure Phoebe put it all together so that I'd be leaving on a good note.

The carriage stopped and a tall brown skinned beast women with silver hair stepped out of the back. She was buff and her clothes didn't do mulch of anything to cover her chest. It was a simple string bra with 2 small straps of leather to cover her nipples. She also had a brown leather jacket on her shoulders.

"Good to see you again, Rudeus."

"Same to you Ghislaine. How've you been?"

"I've been-"

"Ghislaine!"

A black blur shot past me and slammed into Ghislaine. Pin wrapped her arms around Ghislaine and tightened her hug.

"Pin? Good to see you. Your scars are gone and you've regrown an arm? Zenith isn't able to cast Healing magic that high of a level. How'd you do that?"

"Thorn made me a new body! Not only did I get my arm back, but Kuroi was able to give me my wings back, and I can age again! Isn't that great?"

Ghislaine picked Pin up with one hand and placed her on her right shoulder.

"It is. And if you've regrown your wings then am I right in assuming that this is your brother?"

"I am. The names Kuroi Hane. It's a pleasure to meet you Miss Ghislaine."

"Just Ghislaine is fine."

"Alright then. Take good care of her for me please."

"I will."

Yeah. Once Pin heard I was going to Roa for a month she begged to come with me. She really missed Ghislaine, but didn't want to fly there alone. With Kuroi busy with deliveries and staying with his family she didn't want to ask him to go with her. Once she heard I was going she jumped at the opportunity.

Philip was fine with her coming to visit so long as she didn't cause trouble.

"Alright then. Let's go. We should be able to get to Roa before dinner."

"Sounds great."

Pin and I hopped into the carriage.

"You don't have any luggage?"

"I do. Yoko has it. See?"

Yoko appeared beside me and started pulling out a variety of items from his coat.

"Oh. Alright then. We'll see you when we get back."

Ghislaine spoke to the others and then we were on our way. The ride was long and wasn't filled with much talk. We all like riding in silence. Not too long after the ride started I got a call from Sylphie. We spoke for a while, but she eventually left to go study. Sara called to, but she only called to get my advice on her arrow design.

The only reason I let her talk to me about this when I said I wouldn't be helping them in their studies while I was gone, was because the design was something I thought of. I agreed to help her with the arrow and nothing else. Since the arrows she made with magic would be made of stone they'd be heavier than wooden arrows, so we made the arrow hollow and added 2 small slits in the arrow head that allowed air to pass through easier to decrease wind resistance. Once the call ended I decided to nap as Pin started a conversation with Ghislaine.

I slowly opened my eyes as we hit a big bump in the road.

"Ugh. What was that?"

"There was a stone in the road. It wasn't here when we passed through earlier though. Did a magician fight through here?"

"Who knows. How close are we?"

"Not much longer, less than half an hour. You can see the city if you look outside."

Pin and I both looked outside and we saw the imposing walls of Roa looming over us. We sat back down and chatted about nothing in particular as we rode through the city. The smell hit hard so I used space magic to give the inside of the carriage a floral fragrance.

"Pretty useful magic. Many beast-folk would pay good money for that. Sometimes those with weaker bodies get overpowered by the smells of crowded spaces. Especially when the space is filled with commoners. They don't exactly have a reputation of smelling nice."

"I can imagine. I might be able to whip up a magic circle for it. It's been I while since I drew one, much less made one of my own, so that could potentially take a while. Could you imagine it? A bracelet or necklace that you wore that could make you smell like flowers."

"Not only would beast-folk buy that, Commoners and Nobles alike would spend a fortune for it. You've got some good ideas."

"Thanks."

Once we arrived at the estate we were greeted by some maids. They offered to take our luggage, so I just summoned Yoko and asked him to set up my room for me. The maids led him away as they walked oddly close to him. He was in his beast-folk form, so I guess they were trying to get close to him.

When we got inside Ghislaine brought us to a waiting room. A butler introduced himself as Thomas and poured us some tea. Ghislaine went and stood in the corner. After a few minutes passed Philip and Sauros both came in.

"Sir Rudeus. It's a pleasure to see you again."

"Same to you Sir Philip."

"Oh please, I don't deserve to be called sir by someone of your caliber. Just Philip will suffice."

Thats one way to suck up to someone I suppose.

"If you say so. Good to see you as well Lord Sauros."

I gave the standard noble greeting to Sauros.

He huffed at me and greeted me as well. He then left shortly after.

"He's got a bit of a grudge against you I'm afraid. He's not very happy with Eris's soon to be living situation."

"I see. Well that's too bad. He's always welcome to come visit her if he wishes."

"I'm sure he'd love to, but he's been quite busy as of late. He's been bogged down with work every since an entire forest was blown up, and then reappeared a couple months later. Then there's the added bonus that hardly any monsters were appearing in the forest. Adventures have been begging him for work and he's been struggling to please them all."

"I see. Well it's such a shame that we can't do anything to help. So where is Lady Eris."

"Was that sarcasm? But back to the point I suppose. Eris is currently in her room with Raion. Shall we go to them?"

"Sure. You coming with us?"

I looked over at Pin who then looked at Ghislaine. Ghislaine nodded so Pin gave me a thumbs up as she hopped on Ghislaine's shoulder.

As we approached the door to Eris's room we started hearing what sounded like a heated conversation coming from behind the door.

"Why won't you teach me that magic?!"

"I told you Eris. My eyes let me cast it with minimal mana use. If you want to learn Blood magic then you need to increase your mana pool so you don't pass out."

"But I have been increasing my mana pool! It gets bigger and bigger everyday, but you still won't teach me!"

"That's because magic from our old world takes a lot of mana. Your mana pool is pretty big, but it's still not big enough."

"And when will it be?!"

I walked forward and knocked on the door.

"Hello? I'm here to teach a certain red headed girl how to increase her mana capacity by five times in one day. Anyone here?"

The door immediately swung open and Eris looked at me with a blazing fire in her eyes.

"Will that be enough for me to learn my big brother's magic?"

"It should be, and if it isn't then I'll make a magic item so you can."

Eris immediately grabbed my arm and started dragging me back down the hall.

"Than let's do this! I'm gonna be the best Blood mage you've ever seen!"

"Lady Eris you do realize that it's quite rude to drag people around right?"

"Ah! Sorry!"

Eris immediately let go of me.

At that moment Philip, Ghislaine, and the nearly maids could only think one thing.

'Did Eris just willingly apologize to someone?!'

I followed Eris down to the courtyard. Since there was a rack of training swords I assumed this was where Eris did her swordsmanship training with Ghislaine.

I sat down and crossed my legs and I motioned for Eris to do the same. She did and stared at me.

"So based on the conversation you and Raion were having it sounds like he told you how to increase your mana pool."

"Mhmm. Like this!"

Eris then quickly pushed out almost all the mana she had. She kept the bare minimum to not pass out. It was a pretty impressive amount. She'd be able to cast Cumulonimbus with this much, but she wouldn't be able to hold it for very long.

"Good. Do you know how to pull it back?"

Eris shook her head.

"Just do what you did just now in reverse. Instead of pushing the mana, you're pulling it instead. Give it a try."

"Okay. Here goes."

Eris made a strained face as she tried to pull the mana back. She wasn't doing really well, but the mana was slowly coming back to her.

"Don't imagine it like you're forcing the mana back. That works when you force it out, but it doesn't work vice versa. Imagine that you're opening the door and inviting the mana in. Mana is alive, and what we're doing is effectively either kicking it out and letting it in."

Eris relaxed her face slightly. She still showed small signs of strain, but the mana started coming aback to her much faster. Before long she had all of her mana back.

"I did it! Woohoo!"

I heard a small giggle as I looked over. Pin was covering her smile while she sat on Ghislaine's shoulder.

"H-hey! What's so funny huh?!"

"Calm down Lady Eris. There's no need to be angry. Now that you can pull your mana let me teach you how to compress it."

"Fine. And don't call me 'Lady.' I'll allow you to just call me Eris."

"Okay. Now I'll give you a short visual demonstration of what you're trying to accomplish."

I used space magic to create some pieces of cloth and a small glass cup.

"Imagine this cup is your mana pool."

I put three small cloth pieces in the cup. It left a bunch of free space, but I didn't squish it at all.

"Now it's full, but you see all this free space?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"Now watch."

I took some more cloth and pushed as much into the cup as I could. There were now 9 pieces of cloth in the cup.

"Now it holds more. What you're trying to do is push your mana down so that you can hold more. Can you do that?"

"Yeah! Watch!"

Eris closed her eyes and started concentrating. She held her disgruntled face for a while and was able to condense her mana a little. She let out the breath she was holding and started breathing heavily.

"See... huff, I can do it."

"Yes, but your mana is returning to normal and you were only able to increase your mana capacity by 2x. We're trying to go for 5x."

"Guh!"

Eris fell backwards with an exhausted look on her face. This was probably going to take a while.

After a week passed Eris was able to make some progress. In magic at least. She could now subconsciously compact her mana to increase her mana capacity to 3x. She still was struggling with moving on to 4x for now, but she's still making some good progress. This however, was only through the use of a magic bracelet I made that helped her do this. Without it she could only subconsciously increase her mana capacity by about 1.75x.

As her tutor I was also supposed to teach her things like math and literature. She often didn't come to those classes. I could tell it wasn't out of a lack of respect. She was always asking me or Raion to show her old world magic or tell her stories from our world. It's just that she hated learning those things so much that she couldn't bear to sit and learn them. So I started making small miniature figures.

That's right. I'm gonna teach this girl how to read, write, and do arithmetic through the power of DND! I just needed to finish the figures first.

I stayed up particularly late one night and was pretty groggy as I walked over to my bed. Physically I wasn't able to get tired, but I hadn't slept in a while and my consciousness was getting overworked since I never gave it a break. I plopped onto my bed and quickly rose up minutes later when Yoko suddenly shouted into my head.

'Master! Look out!'

I shot up and felt something click on my foot, and then it felt like my entire body was covered in lead. I started losing consciousness and the last thing I saw was a man grinning at me as he clicked a pair of crystal covered shackles onto my legs. I could faintly see Yoko shrinking as I closed my eyes.

"Hahahaha! It worked it worked! We got you yes we did!"

I groggily opened my eyes and found myself in a white void. In front of me were 3 individuals. 2 of them looked like statues. One was broken though. He was missing an arm and a leg, and part of his face was cracked. The other was a figure wearing a hood with white and gold robes hiding his body.

"Rudeus Greyrat. You aren't the one who caused this. You're different."

"He is? How so?"

"Look at this one's form. He's skinny, has long hair, and that smile won't go away. The Rudeus I'm familiar with is fat, repugnant, and depressed as all hell. He'd bitch and moan about being in his old body constantly. This isn't the Rudeus I tried to kill."

"Hmph. Oh well. Fates tricky like that sometimes. Either way it's the silent menace that wants an audience with the smiling freak."

"Like you're one to talk."

I looked over at the hooded figure. Just like when James was here he hadn't said a word. He started walking towards me and stopped a little past arms length.

"To what do I owe the pleasure tall and odd stranger?"

"A lot. You, Khaos Conton, have caused more damage than you could ever know."

"Who?"

"Don't think feigning ignorance will save you. You kill my brother, cut a part of my domain off from me, and you think I won't come looking for you? You shall pay for what you've done."

The man pulled back his hood and revealed a face similar to one I'd seen before. He had a white beard and flowing white hair. That was the only sign of his age as his skin was flawless and his body was covered in muscle, but I knew who this was.

"Poseidon? What are you doing here?"

"That should be the least of your concerns at this moment. We will meet again Khaos. And when we do I will kill you and those pathetic bratsthat call themselves Godkin."

I felt a scorching pain as my mind was forced back into my body.

I woke up just as I slammed into the ground. More specifically whenever the box I was in slammed into the ground. I could hardly move. I was bound in chains and had a constant stabbing pain in my hands and feet. I couldn't see out of the box and my magic was failing me. I tried channeling some magic into my demon eye and while I could it was taking a lot of mana just to activate it. I formed a barrier in between me and the chains.

I quickly made it grow and the chains broke with a loud clang sound. I huffed as I waited for something, but nobody came. I picked my feet up and kicked at the box lid. It easily opened and I sat up. It seemed to be the middle of the night. I was sitting in some random field.

"Where is this. I don't see any houses or a carriage. But if someone dropped me off then they'd still be on this road. It hasn't even been a minute."

I felt the stinging pain again and looked back at my hands and feet. There were barbed nails tipped with magic stones stuck through my hands and feet. Oh this is gonna suck.

I slowly pulled my hands away from each other. I quickly stopped because the pain was just to much. I tried removing my sense of pain but the magic resistant nails wouldn't let my mana flow correctly. I took quick breaths and tore my hands away from each other. It hurt like hell, but now my hands were free. For the most part. The nails were still in my hands. Still hurt too.

"Gods damn it. I swear who ever is responsible for this is getting turned into a magic crystal through a very slow process."

I brought my hands up to my mouth and pulled the nails out one by one by grabbing the magic crystal with my teeth and pushing my hand away as fast as I could. There were 11 nails in each hand. Now that the nails were out I was able to channel a little magic into my hands. It took a few minutes but I was able to patch up the holes in my hands.

I was about to get started on the nails in my feet when I got distracted by the sound of horses approaching. I looked over and knights carrying the Boreas symbol on their armor and carrying torches were coming this way. Leading them was Ghislaine and Raion. They both quickly looked in my direction and Raion jumped off his horse and made it to me in one jump.

"Thorn! What happened?! Are you okay?!"

"Y-yeah. Hey I need you to do me a favor."

"What?"

I propped my feet onto the edge of the box, showing off the nails connecting them.

"Just cut my feet off please. Me regrowing them will be much faster than tearing out the nails. Besides, I already went through that with my hands and I'd rather never do it again."

"R-right."

Raion looked absolutely livid as he pulled Kajakut off his back and slashed through my feet.

It didn't hurt anywhere near as much as pulling out those nails did.

Now that I had full control of my mana again I was able to regrow both my feet in less than a minute. I put the nails and chains in a small pocket dimension. I might be able to find some kind of use for them later.

Raion and I went over to Ghislaine and they filled me in on the situation. I wasn't the only one abducted. Both Pin and Eris had been kidnapped as well. We didn't know where either of them were and Ghislaine and Raion couldn't start the search immediately because a bunch of assassins broke into the estate and needed to be dealt with.

"Alright. I'll fly around and see what I can find. You guys keep riding around and try to found any clues I can't."

"Thorn, one more thing."

Raion came up and placed a small kitten in my hands.

'Master, I'm sorry. By the time I got to you they had already scrambled your mana and forced me to shrink. Now that your mana is running free again however, I shall be returning to my normal form soon!'

"Good to hear. Stay in touch with me through our Kumus."

Ghislaine and Raion nodded at me. I used space magic to fly up and started surveying the area. I flew for a few minutes and eventually came across a carriage with what seemed to be a magician sitting on the back of it. He'd hold up his wand, say an incantation, and then the tracks their carriage was leaving behind would fade away as if other were never there. I could see Eris and Pin's souls with my magic ryes inside the carriage.

'Raion, Ghislaine. Would you guys be able to move faster on foot?'

I sent out a call and got a message from Ghislaine in response.

'Speed is the key to the Sword God style so yes we'd be faster on foot. Did you find them?'

'Yeah. Get off your horses and run as fast as you can down the road. They're using magic to cover their tracks.'

'Got it. We're on our way.'

I followed the carriage for a bit when I saw a grey blur shoot under me and slam into the magician. The magician fell onto the ground and the carriage stopped moving as the horses were unhooked from the carriage and flew into the air. I flew down and saw Raion and Ghislaine stacking the unconscious bodies of the kidnappers on the ground. They took out two trunks and opened them up.

Inside were Eris and Pin's unconscious forms. Pin had the same anti magic treatment as I did, but now that I had my magic back I was able to painlessly remove them and heal her with space magic. Eris was bound in simple ropes and woke up as I untied her.

"H-huh? Rudeus? Where are we?"

"Some bad guys tried to kidnap us, but they were really bad at their job."

"Oh. Okay. I'm gonna go back to sleep."

"You're not even a little worried about anything I just said?"

"I know I'm safe with Rudeus. He's super strong, so I'll be fine."

Having said that Eris immediately fell into my arms and passed out. I grew in size so I could gently carry Eris and Pin in one set of arms each, one on my left one on my right. We then made our way back to Roa. I couldn't help but feel like someone was watching me the whole time. I noticed about halfway back that Raion seemed to be staring at me.

'Something wrong?'

'Gah! No nothing! Nothings wrong!'

'You sure? Your face is red. Like really red. Are you sick?'

'Nope! I'm A okay!'

'If you say so. If you ever need anything I'm here for ya.'

'Yeah I know...'

Raion seemed to say something, but I wasn't able to hear it as the connection was cut.

*-Raion-*

'Yeah I know. Always right there, but always out of reach.'

I couldn't help but sigh as I ended my connection with Thorn. I glanced up again for stared for an unusual amount of time. I couldn't help it. I liked him, but I knew he couldn't like me back. Not in the way I wanted him to.

I first realized my feelings when we all first met together as the Godkin. I wasn't the most outgoing child, but I wanted to do better and make friends, so I made us all a friend group and started scheduling things to do together. Things were a little awkward since we were just shoved together and told to look after one another for a bit. Thorn was the one to break through the awkwardness by telling jokes and making everyone laugh. He just had an air about him that made it hard not to smile.

A few years later Phoebe went missing and no one could find her. Thorn spent day and night looking for her, and even went so far as to contact a sin to find her. The very things he hated the most. I wasn't blind. It was obvious Thorn had a thing for Phoebe. He didn't notice, but I saw him sneak after her at our 7th birthday party. And I said nothing. Besides before I was taken in by Kemono my parents weren't the best. Not for me at least.

They were extremely religious. They'd preach day in and day out about how the world was damned to hell because of homosexuality and the new generation. They drilled it into my head that boys got with girls, and girls got with boys. They claimed that any boy that got with a boy or a girl who got with a girl would forever be burnt in the pits of hell.

I could never understand why. I cried nearly every night in fear of what was gonna happen to me. I never saw things in girls like my parents said I would. They'd say, "You'll like their eyes and hair, and once they grow older you'll be mesmerized by their breasts. Just remember to save yourself for marriage Raion. Premarital sex will get you cast in hell fire." Why they were telling this to a 4 year old child? No idea!

What I did know was that I just didn't find an interest in girls like that. Boys though...

One night I had found an old iPod in one of the drawers of the house. It was one of my parents' old phone before they had gotten a new one.

I got curious and looked up a site on the internet I heard some of the high schoolers talking about. It was a p*rn website. Curiosity got the better of me and I watched some of the videos on there, but as I watched through the videos I realized that it wasn't the women I was watching. I was watching the men.

I was terrified that one of my parents would find out what I was looking at so I dunked the phone in a glass of water and threw it away. After that day I was constantly scared about what would happen. Would God smite me as I was riding the bus to school? Would Satan rise from the ground and pull me down to hell like my parents said he did? No.

Instead on my 5th birthday my parents seemed to just disappear. I couldn't find them no matter where I looked. That's when the lion showed up. It brought my to Kemono and you know what happened after that. Even though my life was changed for the better I was still terrified. Terrified that if anyone knew how I felt that I'd lose it all. So I never said anything. But things aren't like that here. Not in this world. My favorite cafe hear is run by a married gay couple... now that I think about it I think I realized why that's my favorite cafe.

I'm sad I can't be with Thorn, but I never stood a chance anyway. He isn't gay, and I'm pretty sure he's not bi either. So long as I can still hear his jokes I suppose I can be happy though. Yeah. So long as I can laugh at his jokes I'll be happy.

And that's the 17th chapter of Rosey Reincarnation. Eris is here and the kidnapping starts off strong just for it all to fail because of a loose knot. Womp Womp. Poor kidnappers. Jk not really, I don't give a crap about those guys.

Also yes, Raion is gay. Will the poor guy find love, or will he stay on the shadow of a taken man just to get small wisps of light every now and again. Find out later, on Rosey Reincarnation!