At this point, Chad was staring at him with owlish eyes. The moving picture behind him was showing some sort of moving picture with lots of different character who all seemed to come from different worlds. Adam, with shaking steps, approached him until he stood right in front of him.

“Wassup?” Chad asked quizzingly, tilting his head. Adam sighed deeply, a thing he was now very happy he could do.

Without a word, Adam climbed up on the bed, and sat cross-legged by the head of it, leaving him to face the now very confused and somewhat alarmed Chad. Chad, as silently as Adam had, pulled his body up on top of the bed by the foot of it. With minimal effort, he folded his legs to sit cross-legged as well, mimicking Adam. Adam swallowed down his saliva and doubts.

Holding up one trembling hand, he allowed the palm of it to face Chad, with all his slender fingers pointing sharply in each direction. Adam’s flesh was made of iron and his blood was made of lead. He felt cold. There was a shiver in his body, slithering it’s way from fingertips to toes, biting and chilling all the way down. Combined with the decor of the room, he felt like an ice wraith stuck in a burning coffin.

Chad glanced between the outstretched, shivering hand and the pale, strained face of his friend. Chad feared Adam might pass out at any moment with how snow-white he was turning, but he had faith in his friend. And so, in return, he stretched out his right, feverishly hot hand, so broad and large it easily dwarfed Adam's hand. He carefully let his calloused fingertips brush with Adam’s, touching gently.

The second he did, he could see how Adam’s facial expression somehow became even more strained. His eyes went wide and his eyebrows scrunched up, his lips tensed and blue as he bit down harshly on his bottom lip. His whole face twisted brutally between disgust, horror, anger, and sheer force of will. His left hand, still lying on his lap, was balled up tightly, the knuckles white beyond belief, making Chad fear the skin might just tear open. Shaking, with veins bulging and teeth gritted and lip chewed and eyes wide, Adam could not tear the one thought from his mind, looping endlessly.

‘A human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me a human is touching me-,’ he thought, growing increasingly panicked and appalled with every second that passed.

And, yet, their hands still touched. Their fingertips were still locked together. And although Adam gradually pulled further and further inwards, his mind focused entirely on suppressing his growing anger and disgust and the need to get rid of this horrible feeling of this horrible human with his horrible hand, he still relented. His hand still hung in the air, together with Chad’s.

Chad was not undisturbed in this. He grew continuously worried, his blue eyes shifting around, easily noticing how Adam was pulling in on himself, his back hunching, his hand having more and more trouble staying upright. He couldn’t do anything. Going out on a limb, on a mere hunch of what Adam might have intended, he slowly, carefully rose his other hand, fingers stretched out.

Adam stared silently, slack-jawed and with a silent mind. He wasn’t thinking, he really wasn’t, but if he had been, things would not have gone as well as they did. No matter how bad he felt, no matter how flooded his mind had previously been by how much he hated the situation, slowly, surely, he reached up with his hand, unclenching it to reveal a pinkish white trembling mess, and as hesitantly as a man reaching for the stars, he touched Chad’s hand, their fingertips only barely touching, but it was enough.

Adam had only done this once before, but he knew the steps as well as he knew how to breathe. First, he collected all the Magick he had within him. It wasn’t much, barely a quarter of what an apprentice sorcerer had, but it would be enough. It was acidic, corrosive and venomous. Adam knew that, but he also knew how to handle it. Closing his eyes, he focused all his attention on the ball of green miasma that clouded his chest and made it move over to his right side. Through his right arm, into his right hand, and through the fingers and into Chad.

Adam didn’t see it, but he could feel Chad shudder. The Magick flowed sluggishly, forcing its way through inactive, narrow Radix, filling up the empty spaces, until it finally reached Chad’s chest. Adam could feel it. The Cerritulus. The place where Magick was stored, created and pumped out in the human body. It was exclusive to humans, and Adam had always wanted one. If he’d just had one of these babies he’d never have needed to become an Evil God in the first place, but… nevertheless.

It was warm. The second Adam let his Magick enter it, he could feel it evaporate. The burning hot Magick inside Chad battled his corrosive Magick fiercely. This was no ordinary element, Adam knew that. An element like this could only be cultivated through generations of selective breeding. Either that or Chad was some sort of genius. Nevertheless, this must have been the reason that the Magick Corrosion ravaging the Radix, the vain-like complex system of organic tunnels the Magick flowed through, had set in so soon. In most sorcerers, Magick Corrosion would only set in after a week or so of their Magick having stagnated. At this point, the Magick itself would start dissolving the body of the sorcerer, all in differing ways depending on the element of the sorcerer. In Chad’s case, it seemed to start out with fevers. But had Adam not noticed this as early as he did, it could easily have progressed into his limbs shrivelling up, hair catching on fire out of nowhere, dangerously high fever, and, eventually, Magick Burnout in the form of spontaneous combustion… in other words, nothing good.

But despite how elementally pure the Magick already inside Chad was, it was no match for Adam’s sheer skill. Adam’s goal was not to fight Chad’s Magick or even to let their Magicks mix. However, the second his Magick touched Chad’s, Chads Magick exploded out of the Cerritulus, overflowing into every single inch of Chad where a Radix could be found, which was everywhere. And, along with the Magick, a fiery heat spread out, enveloping Chad in a fever unlike any other.

Adam could feel the searing heat in his fingertips, the burning pain threatening to set his hands aflame, but… He didn’t much care for it. Sure, he hadn’t exactly been frayed alive much the past two hundred or so years, but before that, he was a target for many, and more often than not, those who attacked him were proficient mages, who could do much more than simply scorch his tentacles into burnt-out matchsticks. So, although Adam could certainly feel this pain, he had, over the years, learnt to ignore it, and persevere through it, which he now did.

Chad, on the other hand, did not fare quite as well. Peeking his eyes open slightly, Adam was forced to behold a wonder he was not prepared to experience on Earth. Namely, Chad was glowing. His mouth, hands and feet were all shining a bright yellowish red as if someone had ignited a flame beneath his skin, which was now scorching him from the inside. Chad himself seemed suitably pained, his jaw flexed hard and his entire face scrunched up in agony. Adam had to do something, or else Chad’s body might not last much longer.

But, as it was, Adam hardly had the Magick necessary to do anything drastic. Flooding his system was out of the question, casting some sort of spell to cool him down would only work in the short term, so, then, the only way had to be… that. Adam had really wished for this to be the last thing he had to do, but, right now, he wouldn’t have much choice.

“Chad!” he shouted, and since there was less than a meter separating the two, he knew for certain he was heard. However, at first, Chad could not bear to open his eyes to look at Adam. The pain was excruciating and all-encompassing, a spawn of hellfire threatening to swallow him whole. But, somehow, he did it. Through sheer force of will, he forced one of his forced-shut eyes to peek open slightly to lock his gaze with Adam’s. Adam nodded.

“I need you to say after me: Oculi ut globus igneus!” Adam commanded, making damn sure not to let any Magick of any sort flow to his Radix Collum, or else he might actually cast the spell. Chad seemed quite disbelieving but nodded a stale, nod trembling anyways. He trusted Adam, and although he wasn’t sure if he could speak at all, he would damn well try!

The second he opened his mouth, he felt as if a fire had erupted in it, as if he had stuck a half-molten rod of iron in his mouth, the metal drawing all liquid out of his flesh to harden to his tongue, and his teeth to crack under the unnatural heat. It was painful, beyond unbearable, worse than anything Chad had ever felt. His mind was flooded with the searing white-hot pain, but beyond the pain, there was also one, singular little other thought.

“O-, Ocul-,, i, ut-, ut gl-gl-globu-,s, ign-eus!” Chad stammered weakly, and within mere moments, the pain in his mouth exploded, becoming worse than ever, and if the previous pain had been a ten, this was a thousand. But the pain in the rest of his body, in his hands, feet and chest, quickly disappeared. As if the pain in his mouth had absorbed all of it. It felt as if a great big ball of fire had lodged itself in his throat, and that was because that was exactly what had happened.

“Spit it out!” Adam commanded from some faraway place where the pain was gone, and Chad obeyed, despite not knowing what the hell he was supposed to be spitting out. But Adam knew exactly what was about to pop out of Chad’s mouth. Opening his mouth wide, Chad revealed the mysterious flaming object, and without any further ado, at seeing a chance to escape, the burning ball of fiery combustible Magick shot out of Chad’s mouth, making a beeline straight at the one thing that was right in front of him: Adam's face.

But Adam was no fool. Well, he was mostly, but not in this particular area. As it was, Adam had already set up the necessary requirements to cast Ingest, and the second the fireball was dislodged from Chad’s scorched mouth, Adam activated it, making the otherwise devastating attack simply disappear into nothingness. This left Adam feeling slightly bloated with the sudden influx of Magick, and Chad, who had been gradually building up his stock of Magick, albeit unknowingly over the past couple of days, quite empty. Empty to the point that without a word, he simply passed out, buckling over with a whimper, only to be caught mid-air by Adam, who felt somewhat reinvigorated.

Adam knew exactly why this had happened. At the same time as having too much Magick in your Radix could cause Magick Corrosion, eventually leading to Magick Burnout, using up all your Magick can in the short term cause the wielder to pass out for a couple of hours, during which the Cerritulus is somewhat weakened, and, if sustained in the long term, it has the effect of causing damage to the cerebral cortex. There was a brief spat in the 850s where people believed that constantly undergoing so-called Magick Starvation would make the Cerritulus grow or increase in effectiveness, but it was just a hoax of sort. The Magick community as a whole lost a lot of great sorcerers because of it.

Nevertheless, Chad was now extremely weakened. Taking his pulse, Adam noted that both Chad’s breathing and pulse were weak and shallow, meaning the state was exactly parallel to how a sorcerer back on Lutum would handle it. In other words, the only reason people here hadn’t started awakening their Cerrituli was that there was no original sorcerer to awaken it, no Magick to jump-start the process. But… now there was. Somehow, sometime during his transferral, he had brought Magick back with him, and it had effected Chad, of all people. Then again, there was no reason for it to only be Chad. There could be more, couldn’t there?

There was that red ant, wasn’t there? Who flew and slashed him like no tomorrow… where was it now? It couldn’t have died from just being swatted down, could it? No, it must have survived, otherwise, he must have heard of it somewhere. So, it lived. Much like he had, it had slipped into the shadows, hidden itself from him like the queen of a new colony, a future problem to be sure. But, the real problem here was the fact that, within around two weeks, unless they figured out the basics of Magick in two weeks, which the people of Lutum still hadn’t even after 899 years and was thus able to stave off Magick Corrosion like the people back on Lutum did it (daily shooting lots of big spells in the sky at 3 ‘o clock) there was no way they wouldn’t be subjected to it. Unless… they fought again. Used Magick again. It would be a gamble, but…

No. Adam did not want any part in any Magick in this world, he was done with it! All he wanted right now was to go to school, be with his family, and… do all those things he used to do as a teenager. Whatever that was. Chad might know. Oh, yeah, Chad-, Chad was snoring softly, his head resting in Adam’s hands as the rest of his body was squashed together like a flexible yoga-instructor. But, curiously enough, despite having touched a human, despite being touched by a human, despite CURRENTLY touching a human… Adam felt pretty alright. He was alright. It was okay. It was a strange feeling for him, to suddenly not care much for the one thing he’d always loathed so. He didn’t know how to feel about it, but, for now…

Chad could hardly sleep in such an uncomfortable position, could he? If he did, his back would probably hurt in a few hours, and that’s hardly a fun thing to wake up to, especially when he’d need a couple of lessons on how to prevent Magick Corrosion in the future. So, with a better idea of what he’d do later in the day, he carefully stood up and laid Chad down on the soft mattress with as much consideration as he could possibly awaken for a human. He made sure Chad was laid on his back, with the legs straight and the hands facing down crossed over his chest, all in the prevention of unconscious Magick use, which is a thing that can happen when the sorcerer is in a weak state of mind or isn’t really thinking.

But before he completely left Chad to his own devices, he had to make sure there wasn't any lasting damage to the Radix or, well, all the other parts of the body. Placing his fingertips against Chad's once more, he allowed his Magick to probe and prod here and there. Adam had no talent in healing Magick as far as he knew, but he could try. Sure enough, the mouth was scarred horribly, and the Radix Collum, the Large Radix transporting Magick to the mouth, was especially damaged. Carefully, carefully, Adam healed the damage. Putting things back in place, melting down dead cells and using Magick as a catalyst for the cells to regenerate. After he was done, Chad looked much calmer. More at peace.

And with that done and done, he turned to the moving picture, which was still making sounds and doing stuff. He was going to try and shut it off somehow, but after picking the red device up and pressing a button, he couldn’t help but get a little into it.

He spent the following two and a half hours before Chad waking up playing Superior Crash Siblings Penultimate, getting rather acquainted with the Squid Child character.

He always used the school uniform skin.

Because that’s the superior one.