Calytrix's Journey

Part XVII: Goodbye Leo

Leo was waiting for us in the master study. Akios spell hurt him badly, but he was still standing and looking at us like nothing happened.

"You're really resilient, but you don't have a chance against my magic," Akios said while gathering his focus.

"No! I said I'll finish this," I stood in between Leo and Akios.

"But you contracted me and if you do it yourself, you'll pointlessly lose a part of my service," Akios tried to convince me, but I didn't care about losing a bit of the contract agreement when it got down to dealing with one zombie, with Leo.

"Leo..." I didn't have the right words to say so I just muttered his name. I wanted to ask him whether he was in pain and what he thought about us putting all the zombies to rest, but I couldn't say anything. I felt like my voice got weak and Leo wouldn't be able to hear any of my words.

"Mistress, are you happy?" Leo asked me an unexpected question.

"Happy?" I repeated it in a weird way like it was the first time I heard the word.

"I want my mistress to always be happy and smiling. I don't like seeing the current look on your face. It looks really sad," Leo said while looking at me softly.

"What a lame drama. If I wanted to watch something so boring, I'd watch soap opera," Akios said displeased.

A soap opera? Some kind of entertainment that includes soap and opera as in singing and drama? Akios words didn't make sense to me, but this was the time to focus on Leo. If I remember it, I might ask him later.

Akios didn't want to wait for me to take care of things and chanted a strong healing spell to hurt Leo.

"Inrito magicae" I cast a spell to stop Akios.

I managed to only partially stop Akios's spell. Leo got severely damaged, his arms were on the verge of breaking off from his body, but he was standing still under my paralyze spell while not showing any signs of pain.

"Why are you still standing? I just want to wrap up things quickly," Akios said in a foul mood.

"Akios, you're acting like it's necessary for Leo to move on to the spirit world, but before you were acting as though you didn't care whether Leo stays a zombie or not," I said.

"We only have two elemental spirits on our side, and we need three. The water spirit refused cooperation and the only one left is the fire spirit," Akios explained." It would have come to this sooner or later and time is slipping by fast."

"I still don't get it. What does Leo have to do with the fire spirit?" I asked.

Akios let out a sigh and started," Listen, Calytrix, Leo was..."

Leo let out a cry of agony and started walking towards us. My paralyze spell was still in effect, but Leo was fighting it and walking under an unbelievable amount of pressure. His body was barely holding together, yet he pushed on forward. Why? Why was Leo walking?

"Leo?" I said in a shaky voice.

"Mistress. I'm hungry. I can't stand the hunger anymore," Leo said.

I didn't have the right words to say. Making Leo a zombie was a terrible choice. I never wanted anyone to be in agony because of me. All this probably meant that sometimes you can't save someone even if that was your only wish.

I should at least dispel my paralyze spell for now. As I gathered focus and started the chant Akios immediately magically broke off my focus.

"Akios, what are you doing?" I turned my attention to him.