Vanessa calmly followed Eina from the shadows, although wherever the moon elf was going, she couldn’t say. Eina had balked at the idea of being assigned Vanessa as her bodyguard, but since then, hadn’t so much as acknowledged her.

Of course, that might have been because they were sneaking around in the middle of the night. As soon as Eina thought that her bodyguard had fallen asleep, she left the hotel they were staying at.

The joke was on Eina though, for as long as she was within the city’s limits, Vanessa could track her from her energy signature. She had been the best Tracker among void users on earth, and she wasn’t about to let that title go.

Even if it meant that Vanessa had to swallow her pride and put up with the thankless woman. Eina’s initial thought was to curse at the gods for, ‘giving me a child as a bodyguard,’ which Vanessa just shrugged off. Leo had let her know that the average height in this world was taller than that of earth’s, so she just let it slide.

Besides, given how they were currently investigating the woman, she wasn’t surprised by the sudden outbursts of anger. It was as if Hazeel, Leo, and herself were implying, ‘We don’t trust you on your word, so we need to watch over you to confirm what you’re saying.’

Regardless, Vanessa had sacrificed her own time to give Hazeel and Leo a chance to talk. While Vanessa remained fiercely possessive of Leo, she couldn’t deny that the wood elf had helped Leo out more than he could have asked for after she went into a coma.

‘Also,’ Vanessa thought as she followed the moon elf around a corner while inside voidspace, ‘I have been hogging Leo recently. When everything came back to me, I-’

Her thoughts immediately cut off as she bore witness to something that disturbed her. While she had been lost in thought, Eina had acquired a body. Whether alive or dead, Vanessa couldn’t tell, but she recognized it as something bad either way.

‘Leo, we have a problem.’ She reached out through their oathbound mental connection, and flinched. Even a month into it, she was unused to feeling Hazeel’s presence in their communications. She would attribute the feeling as that of getting a new pet. For a while, it would feel unnatural, but after that the company could be quite pleasant and comforting.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t reached that stage yet, and thus, the feeling was still foreign and unpleasant. ‘Understood.’ He replied. ‘I’ll head over to you now. Should I come through the void, or directly into space?’

Void. Quickly. Vanessa spoke urgently, as a glowing purple light had appeared on Eina’s hand. “The God of Equivalent Exchange, Lord of the Moonlight, Vana, hear my call!” Eina cried, and the purple light intensified around her and the body.

“Let your scales be tipped, and summon a demon in order to rectify a wrong that occurred on this land!” The air began to tremble as a beam of light shot down from the moon right in front of her, consuming the body.

Suddenly, the moon seemed to wink out of existence, and Vanessa felt a chill run down her spine. A chill that was immediately eased by the presence of Leo’s strong hand on her shoulder.

She smiled, and together, they stepped out of void space. They stepped out right behind Eina, who hadn’t noticed the pair yet. Instead, her gaze was focused on a large, black being coming down from the sky.

“It’s… an octopus?” Vanessa muttered, but Leo shook his head. "Not just any octopus. It’s a-”

With a keening cry, Vanessa felt the photons in the air shift and begin to gather around the monstrous being. A dimension eater!

A scowl appeared on her face, and she forcibly pulled the creature into voidspace, who resisted and screamed all the while.

“Leo…” Vanessa looked him straight in the eyes, and she took his outstretched hand. They completed the oaths, and soon Leo was diving into the void after the creature, his hand tightly wrapped around her hilt.

Maybe she wouldn’t get back to complete normalcy for a while, but she’d take it one step at a time. She immediately snapped out of her musings when they finally found the creature, who was gorging on the billions of particles in the voidspace.

“Ready, Dantae?” Leo asked, and her blade shone in response.

Ready, Leo. He smiled, and opened a portal under himself, and another on top of that one. They fell through, continuously, until Leo had reached terminal velocity.

By this time, the monster had grown sufficiently in size, and was starting to try to force its way out of the temporary prison that they had made for it.

Leo, now! Vanessa cried through their link, and the upper portal disappeared as they left it, appearing above the Dimension Eater.

Vanessa felt her ethereal body shudder as she was driven through the photon being. It was a familiar sensation, yet one rooted in an entirely different chapter of her life.

Leo made a portal appear under himself, and continued their velocity horizontally, bisecting the dimension eater as they skidded to a stop.

It crumbled, releasing all the photon particles it had absorbed into the air. Vanessa assumed her human form, and held onto Leo tightly, locking her lips with his as photon particles spread out around them.

This was the best she had felt in a long while, and she wasn’t about to let the location dictate her display of affection.

---

Eina slumped to the ground as she watched the creature she worked so hard to achieve vanish into thin air.

“Why!? Why are the gods so unfair!? It’s always me that suffers from others, I can’t-!”

She stopped as she felt a hand on her shoulders. She turned and saw Hazeel standing over her. “What do you want!? Here to rub it in?”

Her rage lost steam, and she ended her outburst quietly. Hazeel merely shook her head, and pulled the moon elf off of the ground.

“It’s ok Eina. Leo told me about people like you. You have what’s called a mental disability. We don’t know which one yet, but you’ll be ok, I promise. They have medicine for you in his world.”

Tears formed in Eina’s eyes as she listened, surprisingly comfortable in the wood elf’s embrace. “I… I don’t understand. Even then, how can I atone!? Tonight, I summoned a demon to destroy the town, and I-”

“Then it’s a good thing this was all a dream.” Hazeel said to a confused Eina, right before delivering a knockout blow to her temple.