Villain's Second Heart: Trapped in A Fantasy Novel (BL)-Chapter 102: The Divide

Once Ezra finished informing Rav and Oberyn about the events of the night before, Rav shifted gears and readied them for the next step of their adventure.

"Bree should be around soon. I’ll do a quick fly-around and see if I can spot her. You boys play nice and wait here, okay? I’ll be bringing her back here, and she’s a lady - so keep your clothes on."

"Of course, Master Rav."

"Stop calling him that," Ezra’s eye twitched.

Rav waved them off and, instead of using the door like a normal person would, opened the window and leapt outside onto an awaiting cloud. He zoomed away as usual - before Ezra and Oberyn could even process what had happened.

"So, Magician-killer, hm?" Oberyn smiled. "Well - I guess you didn’t kill her, but you defeated her. I would have loved to see it."

"I’ll spar with you any time!" Ezra smirked, pushing Oberyn playfully.

Oberyn chuckled. "If only. My magic isn’t very well suited for sparring...seems all I can do is destroy things."

Ezra’s eyes flickered at his lover’s words. They stirred something different inside of him.

He reached for Oberyn and pulled him in to a soft embrace, kissing his cheek before burying his head in Oberyn’s golden locks.

"That’s not true at all," Ezra whispered softly. "You and I, Oby...we’ve created something, haven’t we?"

Oberyn stilled mid-breath as the weight of Ezra’s words came over him and took him someplace far away - to the place in his mind that only he and Ezra inhabited.

His hand fell to Ezra’s chest and pawed at his skin tenderly.

"Finding you was a sort of magic, wasn’t it...?"

Ezra wrapped his fingers around Oberyn’s, interlacing them.

"It was all the magic I ever wanted to find, Oby."

They were still locked in their embrace when Rav returned. The beautiful blue-feathered Bree entered the room behind him, her wings crossed over her chest.

"And you say the blond can fly?" Bree said sharply, looking him up and down. "I don’t see wings."

"Er...I might not be able to fly quite yet. My wings are still a little messed up."

Rav waved his hand dismissively in Oberyn’s direction. "He’ll be able to soon enough," Rav smiled. "They’ll be coming with me - with us, Bree. But...yeah, you wouldn’t mind giving him a ride, would you? Look how small he is!"

Oberyn blushed and Bree crossed her feathers even tighter, facing away.

"Absolutely not," she chirped.

"I would never intrude in such a way!" Oberyn proclaimed.

Rav tapped his foot. "You both know how much longer walking will take, don’t you?"

"Can the Great Sage really only take one person at a time?"

Rav’s tail twitched. "I COULD take you both, I suppose..." he sighed. "But that’s a lot of weight for a cloud. Not only will we fly slower, but I’ll have to use nearly double the amount of mana. I won’t get us there in one shot."

Bree unfurled her wings, beating them agitatedly. "When you said you’d come help, Rav, I didn’t realize there’d be such a fuss about it."

"I know, I’m sorry," he said quickly, his eyes meeting hers hesitantly. Ezra watched the way he interacted with the ’Ave’, Bree. It was a side of Rav he’d never seen before. A part of Rav who sought acceptance from someone who didn’t buy into his ’legendary Sage’ act.

Bree looked over Oberyn one final time.

"It’s nice to meet you, Nephilim," she said quietly. "I’ve met only one of your kind before, but they seemed...pleasant enough."

She turned back toward the door and murmured something to Rav.

"If it takes you an extra day to arrive, then so be it. I can spend the day gathering information that might be useful to you."

"Any leads would be helpful. Maybe a place I can use Mana Tracing."

She nodded. "I understand. We’ll meet again at the border gate, Rav."

On those words, she disappeared again. Rav looked from Oberyn and Ezra.

"Guess all three of us will be riding together - albeit in much different circumstances than I originally imagined. We can walk the first part of our journey, follow me! Hope you both slept well."

They left the village through the northern path. It was unfamiliar terrain for Ezra. The slightly yellowed grass that grew in the fields around the Ferin Village turned more muted, and the rocky ground forced them to leap and navigate through uneven paths. Still, it was no challenge for the three of them, light on their feet as they all were.

Soon, they reached a mighty cleft in the land that stretched so far into the earth that they couldn’t even see the bottom of it. The wide chasm cut across the entire landscape in front of them, a seemingly impassable scar on the land.

"This is The Divide," Rav informed them. Big battle here once, between the gods - or so they say. Now, the planet bears this scar as a memory of all that destruction. Quite an inconvenience for those without wings, hm?"

Oberyn and Ezra stepped to the very edge of the Divide and looked down. Ezra, who never was a big fan of heights, gulped.

If he fell down there, he’d probably die before he even reached the bottom - if there WAS a bottom. It felt like it went all the way down to the core of the Earth itself.

Rav summoned up a large, thick cloud - about the size of an SUV. It pulsed with cyan light, barely held together by his magic.

Oberyn looked at the cloud suspiciously - compared to Rav’s usual magics, this one seemed a lot...patchier.

"You’re absolutely sure this will get us over the Divide, right?" Oberyn smiled weakly.

"Hey, I’m the one who said he didn’t like flying with more than one passenger," Rav smirked. "But don’t worry - the Great Sage of the Clouds has faced far greater challenges than this!"

Rav eyed them both with a slight trepidation. "Well, boys...hop on and hope."