A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing-Chapter 805 - Captured?

A few minutes later, Erik was sitting cross-legged on the ground, still surrounded by the dark fog. His brow furrowed in concentration as he focused entirely on both maintaining the spell and recovering as much aetherium as he could to sustain it.

Above him, Emma and Astrid calmly watched Gabriel struggle, while Elora was doing the same thing as Erik, but from Emma’s shoulder. Since they shared their aetherium storage, she could help by absorbing aetherium as well. She might not have access to Elorium, but she was still extremely proficient and made a significant difference.

Yet, even with all that effort, it took only fifteen minutes for them to start scraping the barrel of their aetherium storage. "Damn this spell," Elora cursed softly under her breath. "Without Elorium, we would have run out of power fourteen minutes ago!"

Erik, having heard her from down below, nodded sombrely without losing his focus. "It definitely feels like a spell that should belong to a higher ranking," he muttered in response. "Perhaps this, too, is related to the insights I gathered before."

Suddenly, just as he finished, the dark fog surrounding him started dissipating in the air.

"Oh?" he hummed, curiously opening his eyes. Craning his head around, he could finally start seeing his surroundings again. Quickly standing up, he dispelled the thundersnow storm raging around him, as he didn’t need it to see anymore.

As his vision cleared, he could now see the results of his spell with his own eyes. Despite the situation inside the bubble, Erik and his companions could see Gabriel and his surroundings normally, albeit through a kind of lightly shimmering veil.

In the middle of the bubble, Gabriel was lying on his back, arms spread wide. His walking stick had rolled slightly to the side and out of his hand. His chest rose and fell quickly, with soft panting noises escaping his lips, yet there was no other movement.

Erik couldn’t see if the confessor’s eyes were open or not, nor could his omnisense reach that far—not to mention that he’d noticed his omnisense ’was’ getting affected by the spell as soon as he tried sensing past the edges of the bubble.

With Gabriel down and his aetherium running out, Erik quickly decided to dispel the spatial bubble. Even if Gabriel was faking, Erik could always cast the spell again after using a few moments to recover energy.

The spatial distortion faded away, and Emma used her golden disk to land next to him, together with Astrid and Elora.

"You think he’s faking?" Astrid asked curiously, craning her neck to try and see better. "I could see his eyes were closed when we were in the air." She then narrowed her eyes at Emma and Elora. "I wanted Emma to get closer, but these two scaredy cats refused."

Emma giggled, and Elora rolled her eyes. "Come now, Astrid. I know you’re practically begging for him to be faking so you can try fighting him, but you’re more intelligent than that."

Pouting, Astrid looked back towards Gabriel again. "Spoilsport..." she muttered under her breath.

"No clue," Erik answered with a shrug, ignoring their exchange. "If Naeku wasn’t in seclusion, we could ask her to check, as her nature sense would easily reach that far."

"As it stands, though..." he continued, and glanced at Emma. "If you don’t mind, little Glimmer?"

Emma smiled brightly at him, always eager to be of service to her husband and master. "Of course!" she chirped cutely. Stepping forward, she raised both her hands, conjuring two bright green magic circles. Immediately, a mass of vines broke out through the gaps between the sandstone surrounding Gabriel and wound themselves around him.

Emma’s experience with bondage became immediately obvious as she directed her writhing, green vines to bind his body with various uncomfortable and hard-to-escape methods. Erik, Elora, and Astrid all smirked at this. Emma preferred being the one in bondage, and that meant she was always researching new predicaments for Erik to put her in.

As if oblivious to their looks, Emma enthusiastically continued. Gabriel didn’t move an inch as this happened to him, and the other three watched him with hawk eyes, alert to the slightest movements he might show.

Yet, Gabriel appeared to remain completely still until Emma finally put her hands back down again. "Not even a third-ranked Runebound will escape from there anytime soon, Master," she smiled, proud of her own work. "At least not without using abilities."

Erik smirked wryly at Gabriel’s body, twisted and bound in ways that made him shudder and immediately believe Emma’s assessment. "Good girl," he chuckled, caressing her head. Almost purring, Emma leaned into his touch with joy.

With that done, they watched Gabriel for a moment longer, clearly hesitant to get closer. Neither Erik nor Astrid was actually worried that Gabriel was still a threat to either of them, but their hesitation stemmed from who actually would have to get closer.

"It only gets more dangerous the longer we wait, Erik," Elora smirked from Emma’s shoulder, knowing what they were worried about. "I need to apply a suppression sigil before he recovers."

Sighing, Erik glanced sombrely at her. "I really hate that I was only able to reach second-rank in my spatial affinity, but haven’t managed to deal with the Elorium core yet. If you could just apply the sigil from inside my body, this would be much less worrying..."

Elora sighed and shrugged. "I know, my love, but this is the situation we find ourselves in. We’ll open up my spot in your soul soon enough now that you’ve gotten this far, but for now, we’ll still need to deal with it."

Sighing, Erik nodded and turned back to look at Gabriel. "Fine..." he nodded sombrely. "But I’m going alone first to check."

Knowing there would be no way to convince him that even that much could allow Gabriel the time he needed to recover, break free, and do something annoying, Elora nodded.

Not wanting to waste any time, Erik immediately sprinted over to Gabriel’s body... but before even getting halfway, his eyes widened.

"Oh, fuck no!" he cursed.